Mindfulness Images and Prompts

Choose an image and guide yourself, or your students, through the prompts.

1. Trace the lines of the object with your mind. Follow each indentation, dip, crevice or wave. When another thought pops into your brain, return to the exact spot where you were in the image and resume tracing. Imagine escorting other thoughts away and telling them, “I’ll attend to you when I finish with this line.”

2. Conjure gratitude: Choose an image that allows you to feel grateful for something: play, fruit, shade, color. List one item that brings you joy. Then use that item to launch into one more, connected to it. And try one more.

3. Receiving and Offering: Consider the hands in Do-Ho Suh’s Untitled Vessel. They are made of glass and seem somewhat fragile, but they are crafted into the bowl, which provides a base. Are they receiving a gift? Cradling a soft object or a secret that someone has just shared? Are they lifting and holding someone up to the light? Hold your own hands in that position and imagine receiving, cradling, and lifting up a precious gift (a specific friendship, a talent).

4. Go on a sensory journey: travel through each sense (taste, smell, feel, sound, and sight) and explore this object in each way. What does bright orange smell like? How does the glass taste? Hear the wind rustling the leaves and feel it brush your arm hairs. Transport yourself.