Creative Journaling

I just spent a lovely afternoon in the light filled, high ceilinged rooms of the Old School building (Denman's first school, built at the turn of the last century). Seven women gathered to while away a January Saturday making art and sharing life insights. We did some dream collages and shared them, then began a collage about visioning a more balanced life. I teach lots of fun and sometimes complex mixed media techniques, and I love to play with all kinds of art materials, but today I wanted to play with keeping it strictly casual, cheap, and low-tech. Our main tools were old magazines, glue sticks, some donated paper, and our rich and vivid lives and imaginations. As often happens in an all-female group, the talk, and focus of the art, turned to the many challenges of the various stages of the feminine life cycle.... and the challenges of staying peaceful, healthy, and balanced while juggling a multitude of commitments and relationships.... but hooray for us for taking a whole afternoon for pure creative play and self-care!

Creative Journaling

I'm teaching a workshop this weekend sponsored by the DI Women's Outreach Society, part of a series of free workshops for women entitled "Empowerment Through The Arts." I'm looking forward to spending two hours playing with art supplies... yay! I'm going to focus on personal visioning and goal setting through creative journalling. There was a fun article in this month's Cloth Paper Scissors magazine on the topic, worth checking out. Here are a couple of examples of my own recent brainstorming and goal setting in my journals; above from my Terra Home sketchbook, and below from the recent teleclass I took with Hip Tranquil Chick. If you are on the island this Saturday and have a free afternoon, drop by the Old School between 1 and 3 and join us for some fun, creative, empowering art-play!

Sacred Life Sunday - Vulnerability

I took this photo last year in early spring - these sweet wild blossoms grow near the beach, and they are tiny. I had to get in really close to appreciate the delicacy and beauty of the little flower. There is something about this image that reminds me of an open, vulnerable heart - of how my heart has been feeling lately. I'm not sad; life is good. I'm contented. I'm just open; I feel newly awake. I have invested a lot of time, energy, and desire in peeling away the layers to expose this sensitive place, this new, soft self. I have yearned for this change! But now it feels a little scary. I am tentatively, gradually learning to live life from a less defended, less armoured place, and also learning that there is true strength and greater resiliency in this more open approach. I'm definitely beyond my comfort zone, and I know that is the place where we grow! So today I celebrate the wild and open heart. Here are some simple but powerful tools I have used to cultivate open heartedness:

1. Read the books of Pema Chodron. This American Buddhist nun is a gifted teacher whose writings urge mindfulness, gentleness and radical self acceptance.
2. When you are angry, count to 90 before acting or speaking (I count backwards because it occupies my mind more!) 90 seconds is just how long it takes for the most intense of the brain chemicals inspired by anger to flush out of our system. Just 90 seconds. Try it.
3. Practice Yin Yoga. This discipline takes you to your edge of discomfort - just a small safe distance beyond your comfort zone - and lets you hold that space for long enough to observe yourself and build courage and acceptance.
4. Take a gentle but honest look - just a look - at your "shadow comforts;" the distractions you habitually turn to when your inner life becomes uncomfortable.
5. Most of all, be kind to yourself. My aunt, a truly loving person, has a code word for this, which she'll use to remind you to be loving towards yourself: toy cups: Take Care Of Your Precious Self.
   

mist

This was the view from the deck of my studio yesterday mid-day. It's a little bit of an icy mist that creeps in under the doors. It's a beautiful grey plum colour and looks gorgeous blanketing other islands in the distance, but BRRRRR...... SO here are seven ways to invite warmth in January, if you can't travel to it!

1. Listen to music from hot places. I especially love to listen to Cuban and African music this time of year. Here is an interesting choice.
2. Indulge in tropical scents. I get this fantastic pure, organic coconut oil - it's the only brand I've found that retains the amazing pure smell of fresh coconuts. I use it as a body oil. YUM!
3. Tap into the healing power of colour. Combat icy grey with orange, fuschia, lime green - any fruit and flower colours. Paint a wall, or your fingernails - reupholster a chair or buy a sparkly sari to drape over it.
4. Cook spicy food - make tortilla soup or serve sweet potato curry with hot lime chutney
5. Go somewhere where you can have a swim, sauna, and hot-tub - if (like me) a spa day isn't in your budget, check out the local pool or aquatic centre.
6. Adorn the house with fresh flowers (freesia!) , bowls of fruit (limes!), and scented candles or incense (coconut or sandalwood!)
7. Get out your photos from a tropical trip and do some creative journaling.
   

looking out the door of my favourite room at hacienda mosaico, one of my favourite places!

and here are the two world leaders I admire most.

Sacred Life Sunday

"Wealth", Mixed Media on Panel, 2008 Bronwyn Simons

Many of the blogs I follow have been participating in Sacred Life Sunday for ages. I love the idea, and I love reading the posts, so I decided to jump in for 2009. Lately I have been contemplating the idea of wealth. I have begun to think of wealth in terms of how much we feel we have to give. This in turn is a reflection of how interconnected we feel. There is a beautiful passage in Shantideva in which he is making offerings to the buddhas and their heirs:

I offer every fruit and flower
And every kind of healing medicine
And all the precious things the world affords...

All the sweet and lonely forest groves...
Lakes and meres adorned with lotuses,
All plaintive with the sweet-voiced cries of water-birds
And lovely to the eyes, and all things wild and free
Stretching to the boundless limits of the sky;

I hold them all before my mind, and to the supreme buddhas
And their heirs will make a perfect gift of them....

For I am empty handed, destitute of merit,
I have no other wealth...

Shantideva sees all the beauty of the world as his wealth, and his to give. I love this.

These beauties are blooming on my desk in front of the window. They make it a little easier to wait for the real thing. Witness the brown, barren landscape beyond - the snow has melted. Now I start waiting for Spring. I've had to make my peace with this time of year here. It's not biting cold, snowy and bright like back east, it's not mild and foggy and scented of lemon blossom like coastal California. It's dark and gray and brown and not quite freezing and it makes me groggy! It's a challenge to my sense of beauty; I have to really look. When I really look, I find snowdrops, big swell and high tide, deep quiet in the woods, trumpeter swans in pairs on the wetlands, a silence that highlights the early triumphant voices of tree frogs and returning geese. Long sweet dark mornings that let me ease into the day with cuddles then meditation then steaming earl grey tea. Early nights that bring my little family together. And seeping in around the edges slowly, slowly, the promise of Spring.

a little buzz

I love bees. They're magical. In ancient times, there were entire bee cults presided over by priestesses. Imagine! I'm not sure what it is for me about bees - the life force, the passion for flowers, the industry, the female-centered culture? Or just that moment in the early spring, when I can stand under the canopy of the blossoming plum tree and here them BUZZZing like mad - one day, by secret agreement, they all arrive, and I know the sweet season of spring has truly begun. I'm dreaming of that day now...

Here's a little buzz that's happened lately, that I wanted to share with you. It always makes me happy, of course, when people enjoy my work!

• My little buddha dish made it into a pretty Etsy treasury... always nice...
• Wendy at Dharma Designs did a little feature piece on me this week - thanks Wendy!
• I just sent off a package of tableware to Jaden at Steamy Kitchen; she's going to showcase them bearing her fabulous food - I can't wait to see what she does...
• Last but not least, I LOVE that Kimberly Wilson, who I think is fantastic, posted my little drawing on her blog after I participated in her really fun teleclass on Monday.

btw doesn't this honey look amazing? the image is from here.

mindfulness

This question has come up several times in the last week or so: "What is your word for the year?" In other words, what is the theme, the feeling, the quality you wish to cultivate in 2009, or that you intuitively feel will guide you this year? For me the word this year is mindfulness. I really wanted my word to be something easy like joy, prosperity, or laughter. What kept presenting itself was mindfulness. Slowly it began to dawn on me that mindfulness actually creates the climate for all those other beautiful qualities to thrive. Mindfulness opens the space for joy, prosperity, laughter, love, generosity, compassion, optimism, ease, hope... it's so simple, really. We are all capable of approaching our life - the small actions and details as well as the big dramas and decisions - with more tender loving care. All we have to do is pay attention.

btw I hope you love this buddha tile, I made it mindfully! You can see the whole nine tile mural here at Terra Home.

happy and new

gifts of 2008:

starting blogs! and Etsy shop
a wonderful new friendship
sweet sixteen daughter
my marriage, still
major healing
discovered kayaking
doing work I love

a year of subtle but profound gifts
a year of heart opening, inner renewal &
well-being
I am very very grateful

intentions for 2009:

mindfulness
ease & grace
financial well-being
strong fluid happy body
continued opportunity to do my work
some good travel adventures
continued happy healthy home & family
true self care
meditation
appreciation and gratitude

my 2009 wishes for you:

well-being
happiness
good friendships & love
freedom from pain
the opportunity to do work you love
wishes fulfilled

xo
peace