This Bob Ross Sleep Mediation Is The Mental Escape I Needed 

This Bob Ross Sleep Mediation Is The Mental Escape I Needed 

Photo: Calm.com

The meditation platform Calm.com has released a new track in its “Sleep Stories” section. The audio is from an episode of Painting with Bob Ross, the TV show that introduced Ross to the world so that we could fall in love with art, sage wisdom, and calming presence.

While the track is meant to be a bedtime story, it will bring tranquility into your life no matter what you’re doing.

If, for instance, you’re blogging, as I’m doing right now. Oftentimes, blogging raises my blood pressure. Especially when I’m writing about security breaches or scammers or other examples of people doing bad things. But right now, I’m listening to the soothing voice of Boss Ross, as he paints a mountain landscape.

I’m going to make a distant mountain first. Little mountain that lives far away. So I’ve added a little white. And maybe. Yeah, right in there. Just a side where you think this little mountain lives in your world. And drop it in. Painting is a very individual thing. We all see nature through different eyes and that’s the way you should paint it.

I’m visualising the painting. The canvas filling with colour as the scene manifests in my head.

I want to darken the colours on this. So I’m going to take Prussian blue. Prussian blue is much darker than phthalo blue. It’s a beautiful blue though. And right up in the corners, I’m just going to take a small amount of the Prussian blue like that. Now when the painting is completely done, these dark corners are going to lead the eye to the center of the painting.

It’s a little mind massage. I can hear him dabbing his brush on the palette and I can hear the smooth strokes on the canvas. It’s as if the paint brush is caressing my brain.

So pull from the outside in and it leaves a little area in here that’s sort of light. If everything works just right, it will look like a sheen of lights just streaking right across your water. Sneaky, but it works great.

There’s only one episode available on the app currently. But Calm reportedly plans to release two more this summer, and may add more depending on the reception.

Maybe there’s a little peninsula right here. Yeah. When you paint you begin to see things. Let ’em happen. Just let ’em happen. Don’t worry about em. Learn to compose as you paint. Learn to take advantage of what happens. We call those happy accidents. And they can be your best friend.

Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross Inc., told The New York Times that this is the first time the Ross estate has licensed the audio from his show. “We asked ourselves, ‘What would Bob do?’”said Kowalski. “Using his voice to help put people to sleep? Well, he would love that.”

The app provides a week-long free trial, but the service costs $US9.99 a month after that. While I enjoyed the listen, it’s just unedited audio from the one episode. So in the future, I’ll probably be playing episodes from the Bob Ross YouTube channel and listening to the audio.

Ross died almost 23 years ago, on July 4, 1995. Thankfully, his spirit lives on.

[New York Times]


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