flash mob

I was wrong about Trafalgar Square’s meditation flashmob

June 14, 2011

Naseem Khan, the Guardian: I’ve never been too drawn by flashmobs.

If people chose to gather clandestinely and suddenly burst out into song en masse or into a dance routine, it seems harmless enough. Maybe a burst of a surprise activity in a public place is a good thing, momentarily shaking people’s assumptions of what is normal, and maybe raising their spirits.

But the idea of a flashmob of people meditating? In Trafalgar Square? I didn’t care for the idea. It seemed to either present meditation as a display of the weird and wonderful, or be making an ostentatiously pious comment about the dehumanisation of urban contemporary life.

Weirdness or smugness, why go for it?

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Meditation flashmob takes over Trafalgar Square

June 4, 2011

Wildmind Meditation News

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Flash Mobs are large groups of people who gather “spontaneously” in a public place, perform an unusual act then quickly disperse. On June 2, the Wake Up London sangha organized a flashmob meditation in London’s Tragalgar Square, which attracted several hundred participants. The event was modeled on public meditations such as the one in Austin, Texas, that took place this spring.

The project’s goals included creating an environment for people from all walks of life to come together in meditation, spreading awareness of meditation to the public, and coming together as a community to send positive intentions out into the world.

At 6:32PM a female member of Wake Up London started meditating between the square’s two large fountains. Over the next few minutes she was joined by others for a 20 minute silent meditation, which was followed by an hour of freeform chanting, which the group called a “sound bath.”

More images of the flashmob meditation are available on the group’s Facebook page.

Meditation “flash mob” convenes at Austin capitol building

March 1, 2011

Wildmind Meditation News

news

The Statesman reports on a Meditation Flash Mob, that converged on the State Capital grounds in Austin to promote a message of peace and harmony.

People convened at the Capitol on Sunday afternoon for the first Austin flash mob meditation. They meditated all over the capitol grounds from noon to 1 p.m. using their meditation power to bring positive intentions to the state. Then they moved inside the Capitol and formed a circle in the rotunda and chanted OM for about 20 minutes.

This was the second such event in Austin, and the organizers said in a press release that they would be joined simultaneously by eight other cities around the nation including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cincinnati, OH, Boulder, CO, Asheville, NC, and Phoenix, AZ.

The organizers had predicted that 1,000 people would attend the Austin event. Judging by the photograph above the numbers were much smaller, but this sounds like an excellent event and one that should be emulated elsewhere.