See pages 110-111 for reservations, fees, accommodations, scholarship information, and discounts.
Jennie Oppenheimer’s work, a playful exploration of pattern, texture, and color inspired by fabrics, weathered architecture, and colors found in cultures around the world, has been featured in cookbooks and magazines, as gift cards and papers, and as backdrops for retail environments.
“Improvising asks us not to be clever but rather to be awake,” says Patricia Ryan Madson. “It calls upon us to access our common-sense intelli- gence as well as our chutzpah. Sometimes as we age, the world starts to become gray and serious. We lose touch with our capacity for delight and play. Fortunately there is a yellow brick road back to this place of color and adventure: The world of improvisation offers a metaphor and a practice that can renew our vision and crack open our hearts to unexpected insights.
This weekend is especially for those who cannot imagine themselves as improvisers. Join Stanford professor and award-winning author Patricia Ryan Madson, who will shepherd participants with a gentle hand and a twinkle in her eye. Imagining can be as effortless as breathing. Come and kindle the spark of the spontaneous life.
Recommended reading: Madson, Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up; Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and Theatre.
Patricia Ryan Madson, an Emerita professor from Stanford, is the founder of the Stanford Improvisers and a certified Constructive Living instructor.
Winner of the 1998 Dinkelspiel Award for innova- tion in undergraduate education, she is author of Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up.
How much are you present for your own life? Most of us spend more time in our own inner world—worrying about the future, replaying the past, or lost in fantasy—than experiencing what life is offering to us right now. The present moment is where we can most directly be inti- mate with our life—touched by beauty and inti- macy, while learning through the difficult lessons how to open our hearts.
Mindfulness—or vipassana—meditation is the practice described by the Buddha for developing wisdom, compassion, and peace by learning to be mindful of what is actually happening in the present moment. Using the breath, body sensa- tions, thoughts, and emotions as objects of attention, we can learn to be more fully awake.