Looking beyond the obvious

I haven't posted in some time now. There are many reasons why--with feeling overwhelmed topping the list, but I'm trying to move beyond all that and just reconnect with my blog, my "art" and my yoga practice. I guess I'm trying to figure out how to just keep things simple and realizing that it's an ongoing effort.

I was playing with creating background pages in my art journal sometime ago using mainly paint, gesso and duct tape, which really is a lot of fun, and when I looked back at the pages recently, I noticed the shadow of a hairline peeking out at me. A few strokes of my charcoal pencil and a face was born! I still have work to do on this drawing, but I thought I would share my lesson of how looking beyond the obvious can yield an entirely new vi son of something. Not a new insight, but one worth mulling over every once in awhile!

Creative Every Day...Finally

A little over a month ago I signed up to participate in the creative every day challenge for November and while I truly thought about being creative every day, the action itself never quite manifested for me. My time was spent at work, traveling to Arizona to support my sister who was participating in the breast cancer walk, and unfortunately visiting and worrying about family members who were in the hospital. Just six months ago I would have considered this to be a failure, but today I’m simply happy to be aware of the creativity living inside of me. I feel more alive and vital than I have in a very long time and I think that is what the creative process is all about. I enjoyed visiting the blogs of other participants and learned a lot in the process! Lots of fun!

Art Every Day

I hesitated to post this drawing, but according to the Bliss Chick (who by the way is my new hero), in order to live a full life you have to take a risk every now and again. So here I go-- jumping in with both feet! I'll let you know when I can breathe again!

I'm taking a drawing class and this week our homework was a self-portrait in charcoal studying light and shadow. I look a bit wonky and my choice of paper was wrong, but I think there is some resemblance--hey, my family knows it's me! At any rate, I'm learning and growing and I can't ask for more than that!

My attempts at art continue...LOL, but I love it and so I move forward no matter how slowly. In my drawing class this week we worked on angles and planes, which I found easier than negative spaces, but that isn't saying much! In all honesty the class is so much fun that my classmates and I are already upset that there are only 4 classes left in this session! We are learning a lot and our teacher is very, very encouraging. She will find something positive to say about each and every drawing even if she has to search through gobs of charcoal! She's a saint!

Desire

Nearly every morning as I get myself ready to face my day I do two things: 1) I listen to some sort of recording—my areas of interest range anywhere from talks on yoga, meditation, Buddhist thought, and most recently, art--as I apply my makeup and 2) I jot down notes on a pad of paper. My notes range anywhere from a simple list of things I need to do to some gem that peeks my interest as I listen to that day’s talk. By the way, whoever invented the podcast has my full gratitude and appreciation! At any rate, the morning before I started to read chapter 3 of “The Joy Diet” I jotted this down, “what do you want your day to be?” and “protect your time.” In other words, I really wanted to get to the heart of what a meaningful day in my life would look like and how to treat it as sacred. A few hours later I began to read Martha Beck’s chapter on desire. Interesting, as I actually had not looked ahead to this week’s chapter.

So far I have been working on getting quiet, learning how to rework the stories I tell myself, and now examining what it is I really, really want--what sparks a “quickening” in my belly and a longing in my heart. I know I want to make things with my hands. I want to blend colors and shapes into something beautiful and for that to happen I think a bit of my soul must be embedded in the paint, gel medium, charcoal, or paper. I’m only just beginning, but I long from somewhere deep, deep within to translate that longing, that emotion, into something tangible. It is my deepest desire.

My thanks to Kelly Rae Roberts for her book, "Taking Flight" where I am learning techniques such as the one which I have posted. I smile every time I look at her work and then mine...what a long way I have to go--and that's OK!

Pause

As I read and reread "The Joy Diet" I find I am allowing myself to pause more often throughout the day. I'm feeling nervous about an upcoming trip--I'm a terrible traveler--but now that I am armed with the "inner story reworking game," as I affectionately call it, I can keep myself in the here and now and not off in some future "what if" scenario. It's helping, but it's baby steps all the way!

Catching Up...

The Joy Diet’s Chapter One: Nothing and Chapter Two: Truth

I’m home, enjoying a bit of vacation time, and finally able to post! For the last few weeks I have been part of a group that is working through “The Joy Diet” and while I have been carving out the time necessary for the book, my posts have been non-existent! Time to remedy that…

When you begin to actually let yourself do it, there’s something magical about carving out a bit of time that is yours and yours alone. In fact, I think there’s something that borders on miraculous about doing nothing if only for a few moments every day even if it is the hardest thing ever! This week has really shown me the importance of doing nothing which is funny because I have been practicing yoga for just about eleven years now and teaching for about 18 months. I know all about the benefits of meditation so there should be no excuses. So why, I wonder, has there been so much resistance? Frankly, confronting that “final frontier” of the mind is just plain old scary. There’s a lot of rumbling going on—a storm of a magnitude that is difficult to confront and sit comfortably with. Doing nothing puts you fully in touch with the shadow side of yourself and that can be a bit unsettling!

In order to find our truth (chapter 2) we are to ask ourselves the questions: What am I feeling? What hurts? What is the painful story I’m telling? Can I be sure my painful story is true? Is my painful story working? Can I think of another story that might work better? Just like doing nothing, digging deeper and exploring our “inner self” is uncomfortable work, but if we are going to unearth who we really are at our core we have to sort through the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. It’s hard, but so worth it! Just think of all the unnecessary garbage we can rid ourselves of!