Lena Dunham is the creator, executive producer, and one of the stars of the HBO series “Girls” about four young women living in New York. She bases the acclaimed show on many of her own experiences.
In a newspaper interview, she was asked, “How do you manage an awareness of the pitfalls of your age while you’re still in the midst of it?”
Dunham: “I’ve been in therapy since I was 7; that’s probably helpful. The way I process my experiences is to translate them into some artistic form. I don’t know another way to get through them.”
From post: Using Our Demons To Create.
She has commented about solitude and her creative life:
“I learned what I really loved doing by not having a ton of friends.
“I spent a whole semester in college just knitting and watching old VHS tapes, and I consider it one of the happiest times in my life because I had a chance to connect to my passions and who I really am.”
From post: Using Solitude And Our Shadow For Creative Ideas.
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This is an excerpt from an interview:
“Lena Dunham on Transcendental Meditation”
In the full interview (51:03), she comments:
“I often find that if I’m sort of up against the wall creatively and don’t understand how to fix a problem and feel totally at a loss, if I meditate and take that time, when I emerge the idea has sort of almost happened without me, because it was sort of in their the whole time, the solution, and meditating allowed me to calm all the noise around it and let it emerge, and that is one of it’s greatest uses.”
See link to the full interview and more videos with David Lynch, Hugh Jackman, Jerry Seinfeld and others on a page on the David Lynch Foundation site: “Success without Stress” With Bob Roth on SiriusXM Indie.
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Here is a ‘different’ take on the practice:
Lena Dunham Tries Meditation | Vogue
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Lena Dunham on acting:
“I play these girls who are close to me, but they’re the parts of me that I find the most shameful, or the parts of me that I kind of want to excise.
“So I sort of distance myself from it. I have the comfort to feel free and un-self-conscious.
“I sort of go, ‘These are all the awful parts of me that I don’t get to talk about all day. Here she is.’”
From post: Lena Dunham on Creating From “The Parts of Me I Find The Most Shameful”
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Related articles on meditation and emotional health
Meditation for Emotional Health and Creativity
“Mindfulness meditation can have benefits for health and performance, including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure and enhanced cognitive function.”
Also see quotes by Anderson Cooper, Kate Hudson, Moby, creativity author and teacher Orna Ross, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, David Lynch and others.
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Biofeedback and Wearable Tech for Stress, Meditation and Fitness
Biofeedback and neurosignaling devices – one example is the Fitbit – can support physical and emotional health by helping you meditate, relax more deeply, relieve anxiety and stress, and enhance focus for creative work.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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