Date: December 14, 2024
Venue: Sri Aurobindo Society
As part of our year-long exploration on The Spirit and Forms of Indian Art, BhāratShakti team recently invited Ms. Jayashree Ashok and Ms. Cyntha Gonzales for a conversation on the topic – Art for Chittashuddhi, Purification of the Heart. The topic was inspired by Sri Aurobindo’s essay titled ‘National Value of Art‘. The session highlighted how art and creative expression can be used for refining the vital as well as facilitating healing and growth in an educational context.
The conversation focused around a few key questions:
- What inspired the leadership at Creative School to design their curriculum in way which uses Arts and Creative Expression as one of its central foundations?
- What kind of arts-based modalities and approaches are primarily incorporated at Creative School? And how do children of different age groups respond to these approaches?
- What have been some of the key observations, experiences, and outcomes over the years regarding the impact of such arts-based pedagogical approaches?
- What role does arts-based therapeutical and healing approaches play in creating a sense of overall well-being of the learners and teachers?
Starting with these central questions, the conversation flowed into several other important dimensions such as how arts based practices can also address different kinds of emotional traumas or struggles which so many youngsters these days face. The role of school in helping teachers work on their own emotional wellness through arts was also discussed.
About the guests:
Deeply inspired by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Integral Education, Ms. Jayashree Ashok is Co-founder and Director of Creative School and Prajña Living Wisdom Centre at Bengaluru. She has extensive experience in the area of education, working on the ground and researching alternative educational approaches including the time spent at Auroville schools.
Sacred Parenting and Sacred Classroom Life and Living are some of the frameworks she has developed at Creative School which are completely inspired by the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Led by a deep personal shift in consciousness she left an illustrious career at Microsoft and took a plunge into the world of education and healing. She is widely trained and certified in several healing modalities and has been facilitating healing through private sessions and workshops for almost two decades.
Ms. Cyntha Gonzales brings decades of experience in transpersonal counseling and healing work through arts based approaches which incorporate breathwork, mind-body work, Kundalini Yoga and many other modalities. She has worked with people across cultures and in highly diverse settings. She has been practicing meditation since her teens and is a lifelong seeker of that higher truth which animates all existence and life. She has a long experience of facilitating healing work for individuals, couples, groups in various contexts, including at Prajña Living Wisdom Centre and Creative School.
Ms. Gonzales has a Master’s of Science in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology, UK, and has also done post-graduate studies in Transpersonal Counseling at CIIS, USA. She is the founder of Creative Response Therapy™ and has certification in various healing modalities.
Recording of the conversation will be released soon!
