Slow Down in Forward Fold
I remember when I started yoga, I was still living from my perfectionist, do gooder, all or nothing protective parts. I wasn't even aware of these parts (which I have to say, was quite nice at the time for as most of us know on this journey, ignorance in the short term is bliss).
My first yoga class was at 18 and through my 20's I would practice off and on. Gentle, hatha, ashtanga, yin, flow. I'd take two classes in a row. Feel blissed out afterwards, then check out at home..because that was what I did.
I'd take a yin class, love the way my muscles felt, but the chatter in my brain was so loud and critical and judgmental I eventually stopped going because I couldn't stand the teacher any more.
At the time, I felt like he chatted so much, I couldn't find stillness, I felt overstimulated. I didn't realize at the time his chattiness was competing with my own minds commentary.
So where does a forward fold come in? I have to smile when I think about how much I get out of ONE POSE now.
My previous self would have called me lazy, weak, unmotivated. Luckily, I don't listen to that voice nearly as much anymore. Doing ONE POSE is so completely nourishing, such a great way to listen to the conversation within our bodies between the muscles, emotions, and thoughts. And does it help release!
If you can do an entire sun salutation and stay connected and release, that is wonderful. Keep doing that which feels good. But many of us are on a different stage of the process and we have to start slow to stay connected.
Over time, the nerve connections will start to gel and the mind body will be more integrated and you can "do more" (to satisfy that achieving brain:).
That is if you want to. No presh. But remember, less is more as my Restorative Yoga Teacher always would repeat. There is so much MORE in this moment. So savor it and listen to it for all it's worth.
Feel into the pose completely.
Feel every breath, texture, fiber, and sway of energy and let yourself be immersed in it. This is how we heal. Through releasing as we are connected to the compassionate witness within. This is the true surrender.
Which is why I chose Forward Fold. What's more surrendering than a pose that can be done almost anywhere, by almost anyone, at any given time. What's more releasing than letting whatever you don't want anymore roll off your back, giving it up and sending it off into the earth?
To Forward Fold this Way or To Forward Fold that Way- That is the Only Question :)
Some places to practice!
In a Chair:
At a Desk
Sitting on the floor or on a bolster or blanket
Standing
Enjoy!!
No need for perfectionism
'Be content with learning, and not impatient. We will not be, and cannot be "abruptly lifted up and hurled into reality" (ACIM T-16.VI.8:1). It would terrify us, like a child in kindergarten abruptly being made President, or a first-year piano student being forced to do a solo recital in Carnegie Hall.
Each of us is exactly where we belong, learning just what we need to learn. Let us, then, enter wholeheartedly and joyously into the process, practicing our holy instants, receiving our little glimpses of the real world, each one assuring us of the reality of our goal, and the certainty of its attainment.' ~Allen Watson
I love this. So often in sessions, clients dismiss those special moments of shifts and love, waiting to only give themselves credit when the goal of everlasting happiness is DONE. I do this too. With my own personal work. With my art. Jonesing for an outcome when the fulfillment comes in the now, regardless if it's a beginning, middle or end.
Knowing that we are exactly where we are meant to be and that these glimpses of joy are strengthening our capacity to accept this love is a beautiful way of looking at the process of being patient with where we are at.
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Meet the Artist Event | The Power of Emotions
The following blog article below the flyer is a replication of an article that I submitted to a local newspaper to be released with my November Exhibition at the Ewing Town Hall. Unfortunately, the paper chose not to include the article. How ironic! This very article discusses the importance of sharing our feelings and our experiences with each other!
Wow, well here I am, writing about myself as an artist and talking about my new collection. It was only a few short weeks ago that I was contemplating putting myself out into this little world to share my work and art with others. I didn’t have a space to exhibit yet. I didn’t know what to expect. I just had a story and a vision to share. And now, with a large amount of bravery and willingness to listen to those little whispers from within, I am writing directly from me to you, continuing the conversation and inspiration that started it all.
A lot has happened over these past few weeks. I'm exhibiting at the Ewing Town & Mayor’s Hall as the featured artist for the entire month of November! I will also be holding a Meet the Artist Event on November 10th from 5pm- 9pm. It’s the first event of this kind and I’m really excited!
I would love to meet you in person and share my work with you. My collection of abstract art, Primal Dreams, will be on display as well as other work. Original Paintings of all sizes, prints and gifts will be available for purchase.
I will be doing live painting and a meet & greet at Art All Day on November 4th too!
I am deeply honored and grateful for these opportunities!
I shared in the previous article that my creative awakening happened as a culmination of years of releasing the layers that had covered up my true self. I didn’t go into specific details about what those layers were and what caused me to shy away so deeply from who I was in the first place. There’s a lot of story here, too much for one article, however, I’m going to step into the arena, as and be vulnerable, as Brene Brown would say, because there are certain things that I feel are important to share in the message behind the work I create.
Where to begin? Well, over a year ago I finally discovered that I am a survivor and still currently living with unresolved grief and complicated PTSD. There are many of us. Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s your family member. Maybe it’s your next door neighbor. There is no one untouched by unresolved trauma and grief.
Going back to the beginning, I didn’t even know I had anxiety until I opened up a textbook at Boston University in 2001. It wasn’t a common word back then. That was over 15 years ago. It took me another 10 years to realize that the continuous rumination I was experiencing was actually a trauma response.
After that, it took 3 years to get present enough to start to feel my feelings. A few years later, I realized I needed to stop fixing and care taking others, despite it being a necessary and vital survival trait at one point in my life. Shortly after that, I had my largest creative awakening to date and have been painting, feeling joy and sharing my soul ever since.
This is the main reason I feel compelled to share my story. We don’t talk about our pain often in this culture. Luckily, we talk about stress now that anxiety is a well-used descriptor. However, do we talk about what is really causing it?
Keeping secrets in, judging normal human experiences and hiding our loss and suffering only perpetuate the shame and fear that slowly wither away our vulnerability as humans. And the longer we keep stifling the pain inside, the longer we live life from a place of empty longing. Luckily, once we start to open up, share our experiences, and let the feelings out, there becomes much more room for pleasure and joy.
What is unresolved grief and complicated PTSD? Why haven’t most of us never heard of them before? These descriptions haven’t been given formal clinical relevance, however there is a large community recognizing and acknowledging that many health issues that we see in our society can be a direct result of it or at least influenced by it.
Generations have passed unexpressed grief down because it's impossible to process without the compassionate skills needed to diffuse such a huge weight. There’s really no answer as to why this is. I feel maybe there’s no answer because this IS the human journey.
At some point, we have to look at it. And gratefully, as we learn how to and then look at it, we see that it is truly important to acknowledge the pain of miscommunication, misdirection, feelings unfelt, rage unprocessed, sadness stuffed and terror reinforced. As we look at it with compassion, it dissolves away.
For those of you who know me, you have seen my life and business grow so that Art and Creativity are my foundation. With 15+ years of yoga and mindfulness training, 10+ years of working with clients and students in counseling, workshops and trainings, the art of colors, movement and energy are the channel through which these messages come through. The emotions, the expression, the healing comes before, during and after the process. My life is art and my inner artist is paving and creating the way for me to journey through this life.
I hope that my experiences and awarenesses can serve others. I have found that the best possible way to help another is to be honest, authentic and to honor myself first. Then instead of giving what I do not have, I can give what is naturally within me. In doing this, I have connected with a beautiful tribe of artists and creatives, I have reconnected with people, family and childhood friends from my past. I have reignited my desire and passion for life and how I show up each and everyday.
My work shares all of this raw, authentic journey with the viewer. Luminous and fierce, probably one of the best compliments I have received from someone when they viewed my art.
I like to see my art as conversations and inspirations from within that continue to be an ongoing language with those that view and collect my work. If my pieces inspire you to feel more alive, tap more deeply into your soul, uplift you and bring you joy, then there is no greater gift than I could receive.
I hope you will join me at the Meet the Artist Event in Ewing on November 10th!
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The Most Important Conversation You Can Have
SACRED CHAOS- 8"x8" ACrylic on LINEN CANVAS
Sometimes life doesn't meet us with the conversation we so deeply crave. To be seen, heard, received. We're craving connection and interaction and support and to express. Yet, we are in that place of "can I truly get what it is that I need from the outside?"
9"x12" GEM RICH ACRYLIC on CANVAS
It's painful. That gap. Tormented at its grittiness, confusing at its best. And it can feel as if it's lasting a verrrry long time.
That need is truth. It is a yearning that is meant to be responded to.
And that gap represents all the suffering, neglect, abandonment, and minute fibers of where we didn't get what we needed when we needed it.
I believe this transition is the conversation growing within us...to be seen, heard, and received by our greatest inner genius and creative aliveness.
From this place we have cleared out enough space, and for some of us that's taken years (and do we ever completely finish? I don't know). And that space is the embodiment of our own seeing, hearing, being...loving, holding, appreciating.
DETAIL of STAINED GLASS (ACRYLIC PAINTING ON CANVAS 20x20)
I don't believe this is a spontaneous experience for most. It is a culmination of in the moment choices to keep loving ourselves bit by bit, loss by loss, burden by burden because really...we've gotten to a place where there is ABSOLUTELY nothing left to do, nothing else we can do.
The conversation is in YOU. Between your own body and mind. Between you and your highest power. Between you and the space around you that is yours and yours alone to explore. Just like any relationship, there's ups and downs, a struggle to understand when communication is misunderstood, and possibly years and years of resentments and not being heard. Maybe even deep soul crushing loss that has to be waded through.
This is your battle ground. This is where your deepest honesty is required of you, because, just like in any good relationship, that honesty is what brings you through the battlefield and into the land of intimacy and closeness.
And then from this place, this sense of being and fullness and aliveness, of being heard, felt, seen for all that we are, we become like the waterfall. Receiving from the circulating source and overflowing onto those who wish to bathe, dabble and play right along with us.
#block-yui_3_17_2_8_1507508743573_23553 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid { margin-right: -20px; }#block-yui_3_17_2_8_1507508743573_23553 .sqs-gallery-block-grid .sqs-gallery-design-grid-slide .margin-wrapper { margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; }
We all can do yoga
Hip OPENER- ACRYLIC INK on YUPO
We all can do yoga.
After my yoga teacher training, I couldn't even forward fold without wanting to burst into tears and feeling like my body was filled with lead.
Once I really let go of judging myself for this andtrying to move through those feelings to "be better" in the pose, I began to honor the pain that needed to be listened to in my body.
This experience taught me gentleness, presence AND was the next step in opening a gigantic door into the art and creativity of my recovered Artist Self. Gentle micro awarenesses. Over and over again...because I couldn't do anything else.
With this hand gesture I'm doing yoga. I'm pressing each finger into the floor. I'm feeling my palm rest on the fabric. I'm breathing. I'm listening. Simple. Small. Practices. Create. Shifts.
An Inspired Dream Come to Life | Naming My Collection + Inspiration Board
Just like my body I want my art to breathe life. I want my space to breathe life. Art contains the energy of the artist as messenger and the collective energy of the world and the different tribes we connect with. Art IS Life.
I had no idea where I was going with this collection when I started out on it. I also had no idea that it would connect so much to the artist awakening that I had the summer of 2016.
I didn't quite realize the connection until I was answering some questions about my artist journey during an interview the other day.
The question I was asked was when I started painting and the interviewer was surprised to find out that it has only been a little over a year. I'm surprised myself! I never expected this.
I shared the name of the collection, Primal Dreams and the story that follows...
I believe that awakenings happen from incremental shifts over time.
Without a doubt, the last 10 years of serious healing energy I've put into taking care of myself was the largest precursor to my creative revival and awakening. Everything I have done has helped me lead me up to this point.
However, the specifics of that last summer are quite interesting and synchronous.
It had been over a year since I had completed my yoga teacher training and I was feeling like it was more difficult than ever to do yoga! My body felt like it weighed 2 tons and like I was wading through tar all the time.
I could barely do a forward fold without wanting to cry. And I couldn't cry! What an awful feeling!
It was during this time that I had an epiphany (built up from days and months and years of small moments).
It was that I needed to STOP. Completely.
Stop teaching, stop doing workshops...just do the bare necessity to support myself financially so I could take care of the true source of abundance (myself) and SURRENDER.
I took this message...seriously this time. Because there was nothing else I could do but listen. I'd tried every other way and I still felt like pick-your-word-on a stick.
Each day I would wake up in fatigue, pain, heavy body claustrophobia and just listen.
Starting from the ground up, I did restorative yoga and yin yoga. I took everything I'd learned over the years and gave it 100% completely to myself.
The attention, the presence, the intention.
I never left the floor really.
Instead of pushing my body through the heaviness and the pain, I opened up to it. I got curious about it. I validated it and saw clearly how it represented immense amounts of grief that were normal reactions to earlier experiences in my life.
It was extremely hard. Words can't really describe it.
As I listened, my body started to wake up ...through pain.
I intuitively knew that the muscles that were opening were connected to the fight/flight/freeze response in my body. I watched as it started from my legs and went all the way up to my head over months worth of time.
I remember feeling my back for the first time, feeling my legs activate like they hadn't in decades.
Then there were the muscle spasms through the night. Aching and pain during the day. Convulsions and cramping at night.
I was blown away by how much pain was coming up.
Yet simultaneously I wasn't fazed.
I knew I had been carrying muscle tension for decades and that I was just now starting to feel a lot of what that tension had been protecting me from.
I continued to do this day in and day out..it felt like it was going on forever!
And then one night, around 2am, I woke up around the standard time that my unconsciousness would throw me back into the room and reality to do some more yin poses.
After a lengthy hip opening pose, all of a sudden, I had a rush of creative inspiration pass through my entire body.
I felt imagery and impressions and a dreamlike state that surrounded my birth come through.
I was in a deeply meditative state and I felt tapped into my newborn self, appearing from the womb, greeting the world and feeling scared by it and confused.
I processed a lot of feelings that night about being in the womb and coming into life.
I didn't want to be born, I wanted to stay in the comfort of the soothing dark. The world felt harsh, bright, intense. People were staring at me, urgently waiting for me. It didn't feel easy or gentle. Childbirth rarely is.
I ended up scribbling lot's of doodles of this experience. Peeking through the sacred circle of the womb. Seeing round faces stare back at me. Fertility goddesses.
Then I fell back asleep.
From that day forward, the art and the creative inspiration hasn't stopped.
As I shared the name of my collection with the interviewer, I realized that this collection all started with a primal dream from that one summer's night. That my human life is the culmination of a primal dream. That this creative awakening is a rebirthing of my true self.
How funny that I was creating this collection from that nonverbal place and then read the language in the paint after!
It has never been more clear to me that I speak with energy and feeling and that the words often find themselves much later!
The primal and dreamlike aspects of this collection came through my hands and heart and now I can see that this relationship between myself and the canvas has been building for a long time.
That my journey is deeply connected to this work and that I am not in control or in charge of what I create when it is coming from this inspired place.
I also wasn't in charge of the awakening because I had so many starts and stops over the years and there was no forcing it!
I thought I'd share a few of the connections I made in free flow form to Primal Dreams:
I love organic marks and shapes because they are the same lines and movement that make mountains and flow water🎨
I love dancing, movement, free flowing.
A dream- a happy dream because I never thought I'd be doing this and feel this connected and joyful to my purpose
A dream because it's channeled through my perspective, my lens of the world.
A dream because it's representative of what my nighttime dreams feel like- ethereal, transparent yet slipping thru my fingers, edgy, soft, energized and full of emotion and passion
Representative of my daytime dreams, because my creativity, imagination and thoughts are where I've hung out for good and for bad.
The idea of a dream becoming a reality
Representative of my creative awakening. It happened at night around 3am in this dream like state
This collection uses a limited color palette, similar to primal and tribal art where our ancestors had limited access to the palette and tools they found in their environment.
The essence of mark making, using fingers, palms, impulsive and energetic movement couple with a grounded meditative state.
Real, raw, authentic, human dancing in the infinite capsule of spirit and in life.
Also, See below for a little inspiration board that I have created (again after the collection) that represents the modern dreams and imagery that inspire these pieces.
Thanks for listening in. I hope my story inspires you to listen deeply to yourself and to be patient with wherever you are. Something beautiful is unfolding!
Ofcourse, I can't wait to reveal the full collection to you! It releases Monday September 18th at 10am and on Sunday at 8pm for subscribers. Enter your email below to get on the list.