Off to India

Dear people, I'm off to India for several weeks and will be partaking in yoga and meditation sessions taught by my yoga teacher from Amsterdam. I expect to come back totally relaxed and in a slower state of mind. I hope you all have a good summer.

Yoga and Art (Yoku): Full moon Yoku

painting in a circle

Last Thursday night was another Yoku night, my first in many months because I've been so busy I simply could not find the peace and quite to go. The theme was Full Moon and it was all about seeing and meeting the other out of a deep grounding within yourself.
The yoga part consisted of a simple physical warm-up and a long meditation with chanting a mantra together with arm movements. The chanting and the arm movements coincided with each other, the energy went flowing through our bodies and afterwards I felt cleansed.

meeting my neighbours in a drawing

The art part consisted of depicting the grounding within yourself, we used the vertical sheets of paper for that. The connecting horizontal sheets represented the grounds on which we'd meet our neighbour, the other person. That was exciting and scary at the same time. In the picture above you see the drawing of my grounding and my drawing flows over to the left and right where I met my neighours. You can clearly see the difference in my drawings to both directions. In real life that is also the case: I don't make contact with everybody in the same way, with some people I am open and with others I am more on my guard, more testing the grounds.

meeting my left door neighbour

And this man on the left is a bit of a special case: he makes me feel butterflies inside. We've known each other for a couple of months and everything is at an early stage, but we like each other's company very much. In the drawing you see that I reached towards him, but then got cold feet and stopped abruptly. He on the other hand, quietly meets me in a playful manner. This is what we are doing in real life too: dancing around each other, testing the waters. And that is very exciting.

At home with Karin

On a beautiful evening last week I went to my friend and graphic designer Karin to finalize the design of my logo. There were a few things that we needed to discuss and it was more efficient to do that face-to-face than over the e-mail.

golden light on the wall

This time we met up at her home. Even though we've been friends for ages I don't visit her house frequently, so I entered her space with fresh eyes and could not help but to grab my camera and capture a few stills. I must admit it is a lot easier to see afresh in another person's home than in my own where I tend to take my environment for granted or thinking it not special at all. 

red sofa

Thinking, that is the key word. Once I stop thinking, making up excuses or labelling my rooms as "a mess" or "it's too dark" I can see what is there right in front of me. For now, I'll just show you a few pictures of Karin's home before the sun set in for the night.