Tag: mindfulness

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Painting my Emotions

I have come to realise my emotional nature is my greatest asset in creating art and writing poetry from ‘inside out’. Connecting with my creative ‘voice’ is a satisfying practice and with this comes joy and a sense of fulfilment … even a realisation of why I am here in this body, on this earth and what my purpose is.

I am learning to ‘let go’ and relax when I create, not try too hard and to trust myself in the process … to go with my instincts and keep my heart open. When I get into the flow of creating, I discover what really moves me, what I care deeply about and what excites and inspires me … this is the doorway to finding out who I am.

I am … I have discovered … painting my feelings … my emotions …. these come from my thoughts … from my mind … and as I always (mostly) have a busy, overactive and stimulated mind, these ‘play paintings’ are a beautiful way where I can process and empty my mind.

Over the last few weeks, I have been creating art each day, sometimes settling down for a couple of hours, other times, snatching a narrow twenty minute window. However long I am at my art desk isn’t important, but turning up every day is. Everything we wish to achieve in life (even if it’s resting and doing nothing) requires a consistent approach. If we can find the discipline to practice, then we will reap the rewards.

As I have moved from memoir and short story writing into poetry and from a realistic painting style (where I tried so hard to find a likeness be it in a portrait or a landscape) towards abstraction, I am learning to:

  • Always be kind to myself (silencing the inner critic)
  • Trust the process and keep going
  • Have trust in myself and my instincts, even when things go ‘wrong’
  • Distinguish between emotions which enrich me and keep my energy levels high and those that are negative and deplete me
  • Accept that fear and hurt are part of growth
  • Accept that showing my vulnerability and staying open to connection are also part of growth
  • Keeping being curious as curiosity ignites inspiration and new ideas
  • Know that I will discover my creative purpose … that it’s not something I ‘should’ have or will ‘earn’ … it is simply who I am.

Below is a poem I wrote from ‘inside out’ and the above images are two peeks inside my sketchbook where I have painted my emotions.

Listen to the Rain 

Imagine waking after a dream debacle, discovering a deluge of rain, a wind that is never weary and a porcupine lying beside you. Considering options, you succumb to an overwhelming urge to break free and give yourself over to the rain and listen to what it says:  Days go by, depressing days, dark days, lonely days. Life is hard, life is lonely. You miss everyone that ever mattered and everything is harder now you are older and another biscuit doesn’t help anymore. Walls are cold and your body is colder, stiffer somehow but you don’t understand why, nor why absence scatters wide and low, shattering any hope you have for everything you yearned for. But with rain comes flowers, thirsts are quenched for every being. When it’s raining, the drops hit the roof and harmonic sounds make melodies, a unique genre of music and despite all your misery, being soaked by tears from the sky, it will always rain and that is a good thing. 

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Emerging

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Emerging is a process.

For many weeks now, I have been pondering how I will emerge from this extended period of personal isolation.

I have written previously about my contentment during the period of forced isolation and how I have welcomed the time to reflect, heal and consider my own life and how I can make positive changes in the way I live, the way I am.

If the world and all life on earth is going to thrive and survive, then we as human beings need to change because it is us who are destroying this beautiful planet.

Emergence for me is about that — change. I don’t want to ‘go back to normal’. There is no normal. I want to be the change that can help the world. I want to help create a ‘new normal’ — for my own wellbeing, for my immediate community, society and for the world.

I want to be able to see and feel that I have lived through the past seven months and grown and developed as a person. I want to emerge with compassion and love in my heart, with an energetic and joyful body and with a peaceful, calm and alert mind. I want these things not for myself in a selfish way, but because I believe if I can have wellbeing, then I can better serve my community, I can be a kinder person to myself and I will be able to reach out to others with empathy and love. My relationships will be rich and rewarding and I will find peace, joy and fulfilment.

We all make choices, almost every moment of every day, some small, some significant. Even if we do things automatically, at some level we are making choices. The change in us begins to happen when we become aware of our choices, when we become self aware and conscious.

When I consider my own wellbeing, I can recognise that many of my choices in the past, I made when I had very little self awareness. Many of my choices were not beneficial. Now, with full awareness, I can make lifestyle choices that aid my wellbeing rather than hinder.

I have spent much of my time during lockdown focussing on my own personal healing.  The word healing comes from wholeness. To be healed, is to be whole. Healing comes from within and I have been concentrating on self care, making the best choices I can to ensure I maintain homeostasis – an equilibrium in my body, mind and spirit. I have recognised that healing comes from within. With self awareness and consciousness I can heal myself, I can renew my body, mind and spirit and emerge as a new me willing to re-engage with the world in a new way.

So, what’s in store for me and what’s all this got to do with writing?

I have developed a creative life, an artist’s life, a spiritual life and a willingness to take what I have learned, what I have discovered, out into the wider world with the hope of helping others. I have plans and ideas of how I can do this. All I need now is the continued belief and faith in myself, the daily rituals I have established and the trust that I can fulfil my dreams.

As for my writing, I am pleased to have established a writing routine and to have a growing body of work, a store of stories and ideas for stories which will sustain me for years to come. I am grateful to my writing community — my writing friends with whom I have shared work and given and received feedback, Norwich Forum Writers, my writing group and the many tutors and mentors I have engaged with for their continued help and support.

As I emerge from lockdown and my time of self isolation, I hope I can do so with a lightness of being, replacing all fear with love and the sustained awareness to look after my wellbeing and to keep writing.

 

LIHazleton.
Follow me on Twitter where I connect with other writers and all things writing. Follow me on Instagram if you love nature, dogs and other animals.

 

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Rhythms of Bliss

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In recent weeks whilst in the midst of the shut down for Coronavirus, I have been spending my time absorbed in daily rhythms of bliss – practicing mediation and yoga, reading, writing, painting, communing with nature and communing with my inner self. It has been a time for reflection and an opportunity for growth and for making positive changes for how I live my life.

A wind of anxiety, a hurricane of panic is threatening to envelop the UK and the world. Now, more than ever it is important to be still, to be calm and to find inner peace. We are being encouraged to exercise daily to keep ourselves healthy in order to support our NHS. Exercise is fundamental to good health, but there is more we can do. To help ensure the immune system of our body is working as it needs to in order to keep us free of infection, we can build into our daily lives practices that still our minds and boost our immune system. Practicing yoga and mediation with integrated breathing practices strengthens the respiratory system making it more efficient and the whole approach helps to keep us calm, centered and stress free.

My hope and my wish is that everyone considers their own daily rhythms of bliss and keeps safe. Namaste.

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During these weeks, I have also been observing my patterns of behaviour and watching myself closely for any slippage … any backward step into the fear and anxiety I had been suffering since when the result of a routine scan in October last year threatened to turn my life upside down.

In the personal challenge I faced, I wrote about how I used my daily yoga practice to centre myself and transition to a state of mind where I could begin to manage the debilitating emotion of fear. I slowly realised that fear is an absence of love and with this realisation, I focussed on moving mediations to instil a practice of deep listening where I could connect with my inner self, the real me, the ‘I am’. As I looked at my greatest fears and lived through the worry, anxiety and trauma of what I was facing, I discovered unbounded blessings, compassion and gratitude for my experiences. I encountered loss and profound change, but by embracing the ensuing grief, I discovered a new way of being.

Emerging from this hugely testing period in my life, I realised it presented the opportunity for a new beginning and a new way of being in the world. I no longer needed to live with fear. As I began to focus my attention on healing, both physically and emotionally, I discovered I no longer felt any need to control my circumstances, I could let things be and trust the journey.

I have unearthed truths about myself, about my boundaries, my foibles, my behaviours, and my relationships. I have learnt valuable lessons and I am committed to ensuring I honour where I am, live in the present moment and keep focussed on what really matters, by practising self love, compassion and being open to all experience.

I live in hope. I live in trust. I live in love. I live in bliss.

 

“Bliss is not a feeling but a state of being. In the state of bliss, everything is loved. Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real”

Deepak Chopra

 

In my writing life I am taking this opportunity of being in lockdown to write flash fiction and short stories and to enter them into competitions. I am doing this with two friends from my writing group. We choose a competition we all want to enter, write our stories and peer review our work. We enter our pieces and then we keep our fingers crossed! Writing is fun, writing in stimulating and thought provoking. Most importantly, writing keeps me connected.

 

LIHazleton.
Follow me on Twitter where I connect with other writers and all things writing. Follow me on Instagram if you love nature, dogs and other animals.