About CCCS
The Centre for Contemplative Creative Science (CCCS)
CCCS is an educational hub with workshops, courses, and coming programs developed to focus on embodied mind training and the innovative model of contemplative creative therapy (CCT) and its creative specializations. CCCS is informed by traditional Indo-Tibetan and Japanese Zen Dharma, Dharma arts, and “Buddhist Modernism” (McMahan). We offer multimodal and holistic contemplative creative science based on Buddhist and Western psychologies with the latest research on contemplative science, mindfulness, compassion, and meditation-based interventions on the embodied mind fueled by the joint mission to address and transform global mental health and wellness need.
Emma JM. Ates is the developer of Contemplative Creative Therapy (CCT), a multimodal and holistic treatment model, and some CCT specializations: Contemplative Photo Collage (CPC), Contemplative Photo Therapy (CPT), Contemplative Brush Method (CBM). And she is the founder and director of the Center for Contemplative Creative Science (CCCS). Ates’s work integrates Buddhist psychology, Dharma art and Miksang contemplative photography with art therapy, contemplative science, embodied creativity, and perception of reality research on cognitive, emotional and behaviour and into transformational clinical work with clients.
Our Mission
At CCCS, we seek to bridge contemplative Buddhist and Western wisdom, creativity and science to foster and disseminate knowledge, practices and modes of living that actualize liberating patterns of thought, emotions and behaviour. These new patterns break us out of the habits that continuously cause pain and suffering and reorient us in empowering ways. Our workshops and courses aim to nourish lives at the physiological, biological, psychological, and spiritual levels by making accessible the wisdom that has transformed lives for thousands of years in Buddhist traditions and Western psychology to develop new ways of living in harmony with self, all beings, and the planet.
Defining Contemplative Creative Science
Loizzo (2023), during the opening of the Embodied Philosophy’s conference on “Embodied Brain - Yoga, Neuroplasticity, and the New Scientific Paradigm,” said: I think something incredibly exciting is happening in the convergence between science and spirituality or science and contemplative practice that's allowing us, finally, to really approach the mind in a much more robust, and authentic way (p.1-13). [This is a] new multidisciplinary science of mind, the meeting between contemplative approaches or experiential approaches to the mind and modern science.
Contemplative Creative Science (CCS) is a branch of Contemplative Science and Psychotherapy, according to Nalanda Institute and Mind and Life Institute and Research. Contemplative creative science is a discipline of first-person, subjective internal and external inquiry (CCR 2021*) into the embodied mind and its multiple layers of experience of reality and interconnection with other beings, life on this planet, and beyond. CCS utilizes multimodal contemplative creative and bio-based methods and practices to cultivate attention, mindfulness, compassion, insight, and introspection to observe cognitive functions, content and projections directly and their impacts on functioning in relationship with self, other humans and beings, the planet, and the universe at large (Ates, 2022).
*Center for Contemplative Research (2021), What is Contemplative Science? Retrieved from: https://centerforcontemplativeresearch.org/contemplative-science/what-is-contemplative-science/
Defining CCT and CBBT Models
Contemplative creative therapy (CCT) and Contemplative Bio-Based Therapy (CBBT) are innovative models incorporating Buddhist and Western psychologies, contemplative arts, art psychotherapy, and bio-psycho-spiritual approaches. CCT is about re-training the embodied mind by transforming a reactive embodied system into a conscious and flexible one. CCT approach and methods may expand understanding of the embodied mind's functions, content, and processes to cultivate a broader consciousness that empowers clients (and practitioners) to have more choices over their conditions and circumstances, thereby supporting clinicians in psychotherapy. The reasons for integrating Dharma teachings, Buddhist psychology and Contemplative arts in CCT are multifold; the most critical aspect is a set of embodied mind training (psychosomatic) based on first-person inquiry to develop insight, wisdom, and compassion.
CBBT is also based on first-person inquiry; it is an approach that focuses on our bio-nature relationship contemplating from within and expanding at the micro and macro levels. It is about retraining and healing the embodied mind with the planet and all its beings using contemplative creative practices and meditation.
