Artistic Sādhanā: A Praxis of Embodied Awakening

This thesis explores the practice of Sādhanā within an arts context. The practice of Artistic Sādhanā—art and spiritual practice together as one practice, is a journey of attunement and refinement—breathing both art and artist awake—cultivating each alongside the other—refining one through the other. This embodied and performative arts-based inquiry of Sādhanā follows the path of resonance, weaving together a spiritual and aesthetic questing through body, breath, text and tone, beyond the separations of mind and body, self and other, to the transformative presence of Being—an awakened space within the self wherein spiritual revelation and creative insight abound. Through the practice of Artistic Sādhanā, the art medium becomes an extension of the bodymind self, and the creation process doubles as an allegory for recognizing, reflecting, and reflexively crafting the practitioner-self into a work of art towards an awakened presence. Through my thesis, I offer a vision of Artistic Sādhanā—art practice as spiritual inquiry—as an embodied, subjective, and performative inquiry into the nature of the self through artful processes. What begins as a subjective, inner, personal quest and focused discipline evolves through Sādhanā into a dynamic intersubjective experience of self in relation with self and other and self as other. This research thesis journeys through several Sādhanās, and is written with the intention of inspiring the reader towards an Artistic Sādhanā of their own.