Ideas To Master Mindfulness

For artists and writers, the creative process is a means to counter anxiety, but how do they channel stress into their art?

- Jayanthi Madhukar

How do you handle stress? Most of us face stress and anxiety daily, especially when negative thoughts run riot. People associate mindfulness with meditation, a practice that centres one’s thoughts, but to be mindful every moment of every day is an art that can’t be achieved just by meditation. For artists, focus and single-mindedness is key to creative thinking. Each of them has their own way to safeguard their creativity, remain mindful and keep working, and very often they weave this mindfulness into their art practice. For artists, writers and other creative minds, the creative process is a means to counter and combat stress and anxiety, but how do they channel it into art?

For Bengaluru-based artist, Aishwaryan K, it is his art practice that keeps his thoughts centred. For his solo show last year, Archive of Memory, the artist created a 10-metre-long installation, stringing together the names of all the people who had made an impact in his life. The work took almost four months to complete. While stringing the names, Aishwaryan would think deeply about the positive impact every single person had on his life.

“I was going through a tough time professionally back then, so this work helped centre my thoughts with positivity,” he says. “I mainly worked nights because I hold a day job. The immense stress I felt during that period was mitigated when I strung together the names of the people I was thankful to have in my life, however briefly.”

The repetitiveness of the work, he says, made him calmly reflect on the feelings he’d had when he had met the people, from trauma and insecurity to love and gratitude.