Place Your Thoughts Here: Meditation for the Creative Mind

As the creative mind engages meditation practice, creativity flows and sensorial experience—the basis for inspiration in art—explodes in vivid display. In Place Your Thoughts Here, Steven Saitzyk describes how meditation enhances creativity and artistic process. With this capacity for fresh perception, we can see and experience our world and the art that captures it in ways that touch us profoundly. This leads us to genuine spontaneity and pure, unselfconscious expression. It also dissolves creative blockages, reveals the source of creativity, and offers a path toward the sublime - through which we experience ecstatic feelings of union with ourselves, our process, and our art.   Steven Saitzyk began studying meditation and Dharma Art with the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master and founder of Shambhala, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1974. Today, he is the international director of Shambhala Art, a nonprofit arts education program and teaches internationally. See: www.shambhalaart.org. He has been an adjunct professor at the world-renowned, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, since 1991. See: stevensaitzyk.com. He is also a painter, and the author of the acclaimed Art Hardware: The Definitive Guide to Artist's Materials. In addition, he has been a writing consultant to film and tv writers. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Anne, and son, Brian.   “Place Your Thoughts Here is truly unique in the way it guides the reader to a landing zone: a place to begin our creative journey. It inspires us to discover the source of unselfconscious spontaneity and the nature of beauty. Any artist, or anyone with aspirations of being one, must read this book!” —Stanley Weiser, screenwriter for Wall Street, W, and Freedom Song “Through the lens of Buddhism, Steven Saitzyk taps into the human need to create. This is a handbook for clearing one’s mind so the creative process can blossom. Place Your Thoughts Here is a valuable resource for artists and CEOs alike because, after all, creativity is at the core of all human endeavors.” —John Millei, visual artist “With insight and compassion, Steven Saitzyk takes us gently yet firmly by the hand and introduces us to the workings of our own mind. This is a wonderful book for anyone looking to grow and deepen as an artist … or just, as a person!” —Winnie Holzman, writer of the TV drama My So-Called Life, cowriter of the musical Wicked “Steven Saitzyk’s Place Your Thought Here has put words to my experience of creating art. It’s is a must read for all artists who wish to be guided in creating from a place of nonego.” —Salomon Huerta, artist “When I'm standing before a live audience and about to improvise a solo, how do I avoid becoming a deer in the headlights? By simply being myself, in the moment, smiling at the possibilities and taking the leap! That's what Place Your Thoughts Here reaffirms. Steven Saitzyk uses examples of the common perceptions about artists, art making, and experiencing art to assist in a deeper understanding of where our meditation practice might take us or what it might open our hearts and minds to.” —Michael Doucet, musician, composer, United States Artists Award recipient “I am a huge fan of this book. Steven Saitzyk has done a masterful job of synthesizing East and West into an accessible guide for seeing deeply into the world around us, as well as into the human heart. Groundbreaking and original; a must-read for anyone in the creative arts, and those who aspire to be.” —April Smith, TV writer/producer, author of the FBI Special Agent Ana Grey thrillers