Bowspring is similar to Zen in its practice of transforming mundane life into a living art. An every day experience becomes the source of one’s artistic expression and knowledge.

With the right view any experience can hold a teaching. Anything can be a life lesson. If one considers him/herself a student first and foremost, then any relationship can hold a teaching. Anyone can be a teacher for a particular lesson to an individual student. In Bowspring, we are, first and foremost, always students learning and practicing body-mind refinement and expanding awareness while cultivating creativity each day.

Zen Buddhism has influenced the culture in Japan to consider all basic and mundane daily actions as an opportunity to practice the art of ever-increasing beauty. Every artistic act arises from a mindful moment-to-moment choice. You can choose to align the form of your body-mind and its correspondent actions to create more beauty and health or not. By your expanding knowledge of your own form, your self-awareness of where you are in space also expands. Zen-influenced students attempt to make harmony and beauty in simple actions – walking, kneeling, sitting, chopping wood, carrying water, eating with chopsticks, making a flower arrangement for the home, writing with a brush and ink, and making and enjoying a cup of tea.