Why Beauty, Creativity, and Wonder Matter More Than We Think
A piece of music stops us in our tracks. A painting holds our attention longer than we expected. We lose ourselves in a garden, a story, a woodworking project, or something we're creating with our own hands. We experience awe beneath a night sky and somehow leave the moment a little different than we entered it.
Artists, musicians, poets, and spiritual teachers have long understood that encounters with beauty and creativity have the capacity to change us. Today, neuroscience is beginning to help us understand why.
Inspired by the bestselling book Your Brain on Art and other readings, this four-session series invites us to become curious about the relationship between art, the brain, and the inner life. Together, we'll explore emerging research around creativity, movement, symmetry, nature, awe, and wonder—and consider how these experiences can influence attention, memory, resilience, relationships, community, and our overall sense of well-being.
Along the way, we'll also turn the questions toward our own lives. What forms of creativity draw your attention? Why does certain music move you? What happens within us when we make something simply for the pleasure of making it? And what might beauty, creativity, and wonder teach us about living more fully?
Each gathering will weave together accessible neuroscience, thoughtful conversation, personal reflection, and occasional simple creative experiences. You don't need to consider yourself an artist, and you don't need to know anything about neuroscience. Bring your curiosity, your questions, and a willingness to notice familiar things in new ways.
Details:
October 8, 15, 22 & 29
2:00 - 3:30 pm
at Retreat House Spirituality Center
Reading as a form of preparation or reference is encouraged but not required.: Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
About Your Guide:
This series is facilitated by Karen Ebling, Retreat House Covenant Partner and Board Member. Karen spent decades imagining, designing, and developing new technology—a life at the intersection of science and creativity. These days, she's exploring a different kind of intersection: art, spirituality, curiosity, and the questions that emerge when we give ourselves permission to wonder.
Perhaps with a little wandering along the way, too.