Creative Workshop 1

Creative Workshop Breathwork/Meditation (seated position):

Start by deepening your inhales and exhales -- Allow your mind to travel back in time to visit the moments when your yoga practice fumbled (where your mind wandered, or where a posture caused frustration). Breath into these feelings that come up. --Release-- Remind yourself about the reason that it is called a "yoga practice" not a "yoga perfect."

Thinking of your creative practice in broad terms - writing, drawing, singing, acting etc... Again, travel back in time to the past to a place where your creative practice fumbled. Whether it was from your own artist's block or from a harsh critique of your work from someone else.
Observe your feelings and take 3 deep breaths to release them. 

Now go back again in both your yoga and creative experiences and remember being in the "flow" (you know, the space where hours fly by). Remember the beauty of this space - breathe here. Remember what it was like to be a kid.
No hesitation, no worry about doing it right, just living in the moment.

Coming into the present moment now, imagine being open to your own creative energy- Take Risks -- Be Bold-- Reach into your intuition while resisting the urge to be the judge. 

As you create, allow your mind to come back to your breath. Be aware of the balance in your body- notice if you favor one side or the other. 

Most importantly make this your own practice!  

-t

 

 

 We have a home that's bigger than all our properties,
we have a knowing that's broader than all our knowledge,
we have a time that has never been measured by our clocks,
we have a vision that has never been contained in our horizons,

There is an us in us that's so much bigger than all those small personalities we have been wearing in the clumsy attempts to fit into the limited beliefs caging our awareness since we arrived here in this dream we call Life on Earth.✩

Giorgio Sergio

 Big ideas for a small Sunday cup of tea, but I like this a lot. I had a blast opening up my home/studio space yesterday. It was such an amazing energy that this group brought to my studio. We started with some yoga and dove into making art- the place was turned up-side down in no time. 

Work alone is your privilege, never the fruits thereof.
Never let the fruits of action be your motive; and never cease to work... abandoning any selfish desires.
Be not affected by success or failure. This equipoise is called Yoga.

-Bhagavad Gita 

So counter to much of what I've learned up until this point, yet so right on.
The less that I can get on that rollercoaster of ups and downs the better off I am.
You can ask yourself, "Am I doing my best?" If the answer is "yes" well then, there you have it.

The problem is that I really like rollercoasters.
-t

Being Naive...

Always remain open to experiment, always be ready to walk a path you have never walked before. Who knows? Even if it proves useless, it will be an experience. - Osho

I have always tried to live my life like this. I once had a drawing teacher in college who said to me, "If I could teach you one thing, it would be to take every chance to try new things as they come up..." I took these words to heart and a few days later I signed myself up to study abroad in Kenya for half of a year. It was a life-changing and often difficult experience when I was there, but I never regretted it.

As for today, I took 19 teenagers to the MIA for a field trip. I spent at least 20 hours to prepare for it and had all of the students caravan over. I decided trust them in this museum (that is filled to the rim with priceless art) and gave them questions to answer, and artwork to find throughout. I told them to meet me down in the coffee shop at 11:30 sharp.

Every single group did the work and were able to meet me on time. Little did they know that this trust was my own experiment. A test to see if teenagers could step-up and follow through even though I've been "burned" before. I'm not sure how I am still so naive after teaching for so many years.

na·ive - according to Webster...

 /nɑˈiv/ Show Spelled[nah-eev]

adjective

1.

having or showing unaffected simplicity of nature or absence of artificiality; unsophisticated; ingenuous.

2.

having or showing a lack of experience, judgment, or information; credulous: She's so naive she believes everything she reads. 

Consumer or a Creator?

 Today I took Ted Rosen's Slow Flow class (amazing) and at the end during savasana he mentioned to imagine the edges of our bodies erasing or disappearing and to take note of the expansive feeling when these borders dissolve.
I imagined my body as a pencil drawing and I slowly erased the edges.


Once Matt mentioned to me that he liked a part of one of my paintings. I responded, "thanks, but I didn't paint that, it just showed up in my painting. " I love this idea of synchronicity...

I paint not by sight but by faith. 

Faith gives you sight. 

-Amos Ferguson, The Artist's Way

 

Just a quick thought about Black Friday. 
How do you identify with yourself? Are you a consumer or a creator? 

Why should we all use our creative power...? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of
objects and money. 

-Brenda Ueland, The Artist's Way

On meditation and drawing...

I've been waking up gently by starting my day with a dreamy meditation.
If you think that you can't draw, then maybe you need to rethink the purpose of drawing. Is it possible for you to do it without judging yourself or live in fear of others judging you?
- Make a drawing today of something that is sitting right in front of you. Study it, notice the light and shadows around it. Resist the urge to erase parts as you go. Then throw it away without showing anyone else. And before you do, you could try the following before you start. -t
The following meditation I found in the book, "The Yoga of Drawing" by Jeanne Carbonetti:

Breathe deeply

As you do imagine that all of the tension in your body drains through your feet

Take a second deep breath as you imagine that all of the extraneous thoughts are
floating weightless out the top of your head

With a third deep breath bring your attention to your heart center. Imagine a golden translucent cord traveling from your heart to the heart of your subject. Through that cord you can feel the movements of the subject... You are able to register the subtle nuances of feeling, as energy shifts within your own body... -J.L.

Ashes to Ashes...

Last night I had a dream about an actual experience that happened to my friend's son, Josiah (9) last summer. We were all at  a Minnesota state park along with twelve other families. We stayed up late most nights and told stories over a big fire pit. The kids got up in the morning to run barefoot through the woods. When Josiah saw the soft gray charcoal, he walked through the pit. Just under the gray material were bright hot burning embers. Fortunately, he got out quickly and wasn't badly injured.

Aparigraha is a Yama that means non-hoarding, or letting go.

The dream made me think about how the gray matter is like all of the things that we hold on to, both material and emotional. The glowing embers are like the the internal fire both beautiful and strong. It so close (even though it doesn't seem to exist) and is able to be restarted with our breath.

Commitments for November

So far, so good. I've been doing a lot of yoga, watering (and talking to) my plants and I've been cooking/baking too. Above is a picture of the cupcakes that I made today. This weeks focus is Brahmacarya (moderation) and I'm bringing these tasty little guys with me to yoga class.

"Brahmacarya is the feeling of freedom that comes when we have let an addictive craving go -- when we eat to live, not live to eat; when we can work to live, not live to work; when we stand firmly and with ease of heart in the postures of life."
Ralph Gates, Meditations from the Mat