Next in our Arts + Culture Partner Spotlight series is Mindfulness, Musicality, and Movement by Leaders of Tomorrow Youth Center. This innovative workshop allows participants to explore the connection between sound, movement, and mindfulness through beginner-friendly yoga, modern dance, guided meditation, and journaling. Inspired by Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch, the program fosters self-discovery, emotional balance, and creativity, equipping students with tools they can use beyond the classroom. Let’s dive into how this unique workshop inspires lifelong change!
What can educators expect from Mindfulness, Musicality and Movement?
Mindfulness, Musicality and Movement is a workshop that combines beginner friendly yoga and modern dance with guided meditation and journaling. Participants begin with a warm-up stretch session prior to being guided through improvisation exercises derived with inspiration from Stephen Nachmanovitch’s “Free Play”. These exercises ignite your intrinsic ability to identify tension points within both the body and the mind. Participants will explore how sound and movement relate and what colors and shapes they associate with sound. Participants will be guided through intermittent journaling prompts to explore any discoveries and create a plan to use sound and movement as a tool to adjust mood in the future. Free Play Improvisation exercises have a meditative quality by nature but this can only be accessed through an empty mind. Contrary to typical meditative practices, this workshop will permit participants to explore the thoughts that pop up opposed to pushing them away. The workshop will allot the opportunity for participants to debrief and provide feedback about their experience. They may also choose to share details about the transformation they may have experienced from the session. The workshop will close with a cool down and with every participant receiving follow up resources to address any mental health concerns that may arise.
How is this program an arts integration lesson?
This workshop is integral to grasping academic units within physical health. Biology naturally intersects with dance, stretching and other forms of movement. Movement classes adopt vocabulary and language from biology in order to guide movement along without touch. Mindfulness directly intersects with psychology as participants experience the science first hand by triggering happy chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin. Musicality is mathematical as it requires counting and identifying note types. The arts themselves can have an impact on students critical thinking and academic achievement as a whole (Ruppert 2006).
Why should teachers and students be excited about the workshop?
Workshops such as this one inspire lifelong change. This experience will welcome motivation and evoke transformation in your life as a whole. The impact and benefits of the workshop extend beyond the workshop itself. The techniques participants learn are skills they can weave into their everyday lives. This workshop works well for people with different social limits. Participants have the flexibility (no pun intended) to have a very collaborative experience or a more internal experience. Everyone is provided to option to share their realizations with the group or to keep them to themselves. It will be curated to meet the social needs of all participants. Participants will be taught by artists that are masters in their craft. The instructors are living, breathing testaments of the benefits of fusing mindfulness and movement together.
Learn more about Leaders of Tomorrow’s programs on their website!
Don’t forget–for SY24/25, all Baltimore City Schools are able to apply for up to $2,500 in funding support for school-day arts experiences booked through AED’s Arts Directory, including Leaders of Tomorrow Center!