Merging art, science, and spirit, authors and intellectuals Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross illuminate why creativity is essential for humanity.

Grab a copy of Susan and Ivy’s Book: Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us

In this episode of Mindrolling, Raghu, Susan, and Ivy explore:

• Redefining art as any medium that allows someone to express themselves
• Learning to see the world with fresh eyes and creative curiosity
• The powerful reflection: has there ever been a time when the arts have personally affected you?
• Resonance and vibration as the center of the universe
• Music as a pathway to experience oneness with all things
• The miracle of neuroplasticity—rewiring the brain and making new pathways
• Confronting ourselves with a new piece of art or doing a new arts practice
• Play through art: letting go of any preconceived outcome and simply playing with ideas and concepts
• Why change requires time, patience, and habitual practice
• Remembering that art in ancient cultures was highly valued and integrated into daily life
• The aesthetic mindset and walking through the world with attention to beauty in every detail

Listen to Sit Around the Fire, a collaborative musical journey with Jon Hopkins, East Forest, and Ram Dass

About Susan Magsamen:

Susan Magsamen is the founder and director of the International Arts + Mind Lab, Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she is a faculty member. She is also the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint. Susan works with both the public and private sectors using arts and culture evidence-based approaches in areas including health, child development, education, workforce innovation, rehabilitation and social equity.

“It’s personal; it could be crocheting for her, gardening for somebody else, it could be I’m a collager, we’re all talking about personalized medicine and precision medicine, and the arts are probably the most personalized medicine that there is.” –Susan Magsamen

About Ivy Ross:

Ivy Ross is the Vice President of Design for hardware product area at Google, where she leads a team that has won over 225 design awards. She is a National Endowment for Arts grant recipient and was ninth on Fast Company's list of the one hundred Most Creative People in Business in 2019. Ross believes that the intersection of arts and sciences is where the most engaging and creative ideas are found.

“I think we’ve been focusing on productivity and efficiency and pushing these arts aside as a ‘nice to have’, not as an imperative to our health and wellness. Through the work on this book with Susan, learning more about the physiology of how we are wired to receive the sensorial nature of life, it’s no wonder when we deprive ourselves of that, why we’re in the state we’re in.” –Ivy Ross

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Carried by a discourse on The Heart Sutra, teacher and author Susan Piver joins Raghu to explore the truth of emptiness.

Grab your copy of Susan’s book: Inexplicable Joy: On the Heart Sutra

This week on Mindrolling, Raghu and Susan chat about:

• Practicing The Heart Sutra with only one syllable: ahh
• The truth of emptiness through recitation of non-truths
• Understanding emptiness as bliss, not as voidness
• The commitment to self interest that many westerners experience
• Releasing the ego as the first step towards embracing emptiness
• Being both empty and luminous at the same time
• Thinking of emptiness as complete interconnection and fullness
• Susan’s psychedelic experience: staying in the present, being in the womb of bliss
• The six transcendent actions and how they all spring from generosity

Check out this free, downloadable translation of The Heart Sutra from Plum Village

“You’re empty of separate existence. Your parents, their parents, their parents, if someone ate a different sandwich a thousand years ago, you wouldn’t be here. Emptiness could just as easily be called fullness, completely connected.” –Susan Piver

About Susan Piver:

Susan Piver has an international reputation as an exceptionally skillful meditation teacher. She teaches workshops and speaks on mindfulness, innovation, communication, relationships, and creativity. Susan has been a student of Buddhism since 1995, graduated from a Buddhist seminary in 2004, and was authorized to teach meditation in 2005. In 2012, she founded The Open Heart Project, the world’s largest online-only meditation center. Susan is also a New York Times bestselling author. Her most recent book, Inexplicable Joy: On the Heart Sutra, is now available. You can keep up with Susan on Instagram or on her website.

Join Susan for a 5-day Kripalu meditation retreat this November

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