Elemental Exploration

Something clicked yesterday, or unclicked, I still can't figure it out. Participating in an AcroYoga workshop, I got to a moment where I couldn't handle it any more, emotions just unlocked and I needed to get outside and re-centre, breathe. It is quite amazing when things align - whether positive or negative - and get you to a profound place. Not that I got to any sense of closure or explanation for it all, but it happened.

I have felt slightly unhinged through my recent experiences with Aerial and AcroYoga workshops. The purity of taking flight and fully embracing the air element is unsettling, at least for me.

Woodcut, man and the four elements, Hans Weiditz, Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae, Remedies for Both Good and Bad Fortune or Phisicke Against Fortune, 1532

All this gets me wondering as to the elements and exploring their personal significance. Earth, Fire, Water, Air all harken back to a very basic experiences and everyone and anyone has some sort of relationship to each. What would it mean to lead a workshop where people explore their relationships to the elements? Which element feels more comfortable? Which element feels unsettling? Perhaps it should be a 5-part workshop, exploring each element separately, journalling on certain reflections/prompts, and then uniting the elements in various combinations? Somehow in parallel with the chakras?

Getting ideas out into the air...

Flowers at Blickling

Escape to Norfolk: A Triptych

Finding Ritual, Faith Lies Underfoot

"When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It's a bit like saying, 'If I jog, I'll be a much better person.' ' If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person.' ' If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person.' Or the scenario may be that they find fault with others; they might say, 'If it weren't for my husband, I'd have a perfect marriage.' 'If it weren't for the fact that my boss and I can't get on, my job would be just great.' And 'If it weren't for my mind, my meditation would be excellent.'

But lovingkindness — maitri — toward ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest."  -Pema Chodron

I  blame the changing seasons, but I have been feeling the flux lately and all the control issues and lack of control that comes with it. Amidst it all, I have been re-examining my yoga/meditation practice. Often, when I 'fall off the wagon', as I like to say, I tend to get anxious about it. I worry that I am not practicing, or, rather, I am painfully aware of the fact that I am not practicing. Yet it is something to realize that these practices themselves evolve constantly. It would be something to practice daily, every morning at the same time. However, such a staunch routine can ignore the flux of the body and the mind; there are mornings when yes, you would be better served to take that extra half-hour snooze in bed. And then again, it is good too, to establish a good habit of getting on the mat.

I also approach my yoga practice in the same way as the quote begins above. Many times, if I am honest, I have gone to my practice to be better, to look better, to feel better -- body image or perfect asanas coming to the fore. I am trying to re-found the core of my practice; health is very much a happy result of yogic routine but there is a deeper communion which should not be ignored; it should be explored. I think I miss ritual in my life, and would like to find within yoga a way to reflect more mindfully.

I'm not sure if it is being 27 and catching sight of 30 down the way, but the future presses heavily on my mind too lately. Where is my career headed? Where am I to live? Where am I to start a family? It almost seems like anything is possible (and, too, that nothing can happen). It's scary. It also seems so silly to get caught up in planning all the tomorrows and forget about the todays. But reconciling being present alongside keeping a steady but not-too-firm hand on the steering wheel is quite a delicate balance. And as always, it is about cultivating faith, that intangible concept to which I come back again and again.

So to practice loving kindness, to feel the earth beneath my feet -- and to breathe in and breathe out, it really is that simple.

"My path is the path of stopping, the path of enjoying the present moment. It is a path where every step brings me back to my true home. It is a path that leads nowhere. I am on my way home. I arrive at every step."  -Thich Nhat Hanh

Beyond the Runway

Sante d'Orazio, Versace, 1997.

Ethereal photographic treatment of fashion -- the fantasy beyond reality.

Buck Up

I have adopted the motto before to 'do one thing every day that scares you', and it has been really enlightening to notice those moments where fear paralyses you from action and, consequently, to let it go and move on.

I've also heard the expression 'Man Up', which in its batting around of gender in stereotypical ways really bothers me. Another expression in the vein of facing your fears and rising to the occasion which I think suits much better is 'Buck Up'. Whereas it is essentially the same as 'Man Up', somehow in jumping species, the use of the masculine gender as a verb doesn't seem as offensive. Man or woman, I think we can all buck up, i.e. don our antlers or horns and charge ahead!

Marc Swanson,  'Untitled (Black Fighting Bucks)', 2009

Dance Me to the End of Love

I didn't realize Leonard Cohen's song grew out of such a place. Darkness inspires beauty.

"'Dance Me to the End Of Love' ... it's curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that's why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt. So, that music, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin," meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song — it's not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity."