WEEK 28
Hey there, thanks for joining us for Week 28 of HOMwork 2020!
This week, we have the amazing Annie Wong as a guest teacher.
Annie Wong, a.k.a. Headexplodie, hand crafts mixed media for the digital world. Her work includes short form videos, GIFs, and stop motion animation that is cute, weird, and sometimes creepy, but is always focused on building human connections. Annie is a Giphy Featured Artist with over 13 billion views and her Ovary Actions project has received global coverage.
From Annie:
Breathe in, breathe out.
When I first tried meditation I was full of nervous energy and skeptical of what could be gained from sitting still and doing nothing. Now that I’ve been practicing for a few years I consider it to be one of the most important tools in my self-care regimen! It helps me relieve anxiety and allows space for my creative inner child to play and make art. Meditation has also taught me how to sit with uncomfortable feelings so I can be more responsive and less reactive while riding the rollercoaster of life.
Meditation is versatile and accessible. There are mediations for focus, for relaxation, for compassion, and it doesn’t cost anything. It has been said that if you can breathe, you can meditate.
Your assignment: Try doing a meditative practice of your choice and create a piece related to your experience.
A couple of meditation apps I like to use are:
Liberate: Talks and mediations for the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color community
Insight Timer: A huge library of meditations which you can filter based on length and topic
Here are some sample prompts:
If you are a beginner meditator you might be surprised at the deluge of random thoughts that fill your head when you try to sit still. Letter or illustrate the stream of thoughts- my hunch is we may have a lot of these thoughts in common!
Letter or illustrate the instructions for your favorite meditative practice. One of mine is 4-7-8 breathing, which helps me to fall asleep at night.
Share a teaching or insight you’ve learned from meditation.
One of my favorite teachings is Sharon Salzberg’s invitation to “begin again.” Sharon talks about how if you get distracted during meditation you don’t have to worry about it, you can always begin again. I find this concept applicable to life in general. Made a mistake? That’s ok, begin again. Didn’t quite reach the goal you set? Tomorrow’s a new day. You can always begin again.
Don’t forget to use the hashtag #HOMwork2020 and tag @headexplodie and @homsweethom when you post your work on Instagram. We’ll be sharing our favorites in our Stories all week!
x Annie and Lauren
P.S. To find out what else is going on inside of Annie’s brain you can subscribe to her Patreon where she is sharing journal entries, works in progress, and behind the scenes process posts that show you how she makes her stop motion magic.
