“AYE! Slow down for a minute,” or your nervous system is safe, here

Event Details

Thích Thiên Ân, American teacher and Zen Buddhist Monk, once told us to “let the mind flow like water. Face life with a calm and quiet mind and everything in life will be calm and quiet.” In agreement with his wisdom, I’d take things a step further and say that the action of creation also asks us to be as fluid as water, for nothing has ever been created without first having taken a breath.  

Derived from its Greek root, poiesis—which translates to the act of creation—poetry allows us to bring into tangible existence that which has never existed. The powerful act of poiesis then, much like water, demands flow and memory. Whether you sit down to write a poem, brush stroke a painting to life, or mold a sculpture with your warm hands, think about how much flow your art form requires of you. How much memory it requires of you. What does your body, spirit, and soul want to communicate that your mouth cannot yet speak? Conversely, what if there is no flow? No memory? What if, instead, there was a blockage keeping you from accessing what your soul wants to create?  

In this workshop, attendees will experience an iteration of sound bathing and guided writing prompts as a way to calm the nervous system, unlock core memories, and make way for intentional, creative flow. Our time together will also allow for community dialogue about the relevancy of mindfulness. This workshop aims to demonstrate how slowing down and making space for our bodies to perceive the spaces in which we immerse ourselves eliminates our collective need to rush and gives us the room to create more freely.  

About the Author 

Thomas Kneeland is an award-winning author, writer, speaker, educator, scholar, and poet whose creative and academic research explores ancestry, ecological memory, and the effects of intergenerational trauma in Black, Afro-Latine, and Afro-Indigenous communities. He is deeply committed to making space for voices of those who have been historically marginalized by teaching creative writing and poetics in the Indianapolis community and beyond.

Kneeland has received grants and fellowships from the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) as well as the Indiana University Indianapolis Arts & Humanities Institute (IAHI). He was a recipient of a 2024 CICF Artist Ambassador Travel Grant and was awarded a 2024 Speculative Play & Just Futurities Fellowship from IAHI.

Recently named a 2025 Emerging Scholar by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Kneeland served as a writing faculty member for the LEDA Scholars Aspects of Leadership Summer Institute at Princeton University before joining the Department of Humanities at Anderson University as an assistant professor of English. Included in the vast collection of texts at the Library of Congress is his chapbook, We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep. His book poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in critically acclaimed journals across the United States and abroad, including Prairie Schooner, Obsidian Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Rumpus, and Modern Language Studies Journal.