Sunday 30 March 2014

Kayaking adventure


Brisbane City Council has a GOLD (Growing Older, Living Dangerously) Program, which we now qualify for.  This Sea Kayaking activity at Nudgee Beach today was free! Ok, it rained, but it was still awesome.


 The best part was paddling amongst the mangroves on the coast at high tide...


Avoiding the other paddlers...


And seeing the birds like this egret...






And the cormorant spreading its wings in the sun. When the rain stopped.

Rainbow brooch by Curly Pops

If only I hadn't done body combat and pump the day before, my arms may have hurt less.

One more day in my old job, and then I will have Mondays free-ish.

Looking forward to April.

more later.





Sunday 23 March 2014

heartfelt gallery/crop fest remix


heart #1: felt and applique pocket

After what seems like a long break, I'm back on the blog again.

Meanwhile, I have been trying to adjust to full-time work - in fact, I'm currently doing three jobs, as I am still in my old job for another two weeks, as well as teaching at UQ, and in my new job with Mercy (aka Sisters of Mercy) Services. Which, considering I was basically working only two days a week between November and February, is a huge culture shock!

Change has been pretty much a constant for the past six months. Perhaps longer, it depends when you start counting. But that is when S. resigned from his public service job, which threw things into flux.

 heart #2: deflated patchwork heart

 heart #3: oven g/love heart

Finding things that stablise me has been really important. Art has surprisingly not been a big part of this process, at least recently. Art takes time. I did try to tune in to some tutorials by Michael Nobbs at Sustainably Creative, but found I was too overwhelmed. I remember dad (also called Michael, who was always busy, and who died four years ago this month) saying he played the jazz trumpet as a substitute for painting, as it was easier to pick up and put down again. But I don't play an instrument: basically, yoga, meditation and body combat are my jazz!

 heart #4: Sustainably Creative Heart, drawing

 heart #5: origami

Dad often painted squares when he did paint, being influenced by Joseph Albers (who painted squares) and Frank Stella (who painted stripes) in bright Pop Art colours. I must admit I love the almost ritual quality of the repeated shapes, and patterns, which he claimed to work out on graph paper. which leads me to my repeated heart shapes in this post. 

The idea came from Curly Pops, aka Cam, blogger and fabric artist, who is creating a tea towel of Instagram heart pics to raise money and awareness for heart and lung transplant recipients via the Tour de Transplant currently happening in Victoria (22nd to 30th March). Cam had a lung transplant last year.

 heart #6: flowers and planets

On Friday night we went to crop fest, at Wandering Cooks, at 1, Fish Lane, West End.
Sustainable veggie soup, music, and a good community vibe - what more could you want?

wonky felt rainbow: detail of bigger picture fabric collage

This is a sneak preview of fabric collage I am (secretly) making for my old workplace, Silky Oaks: its going to be called the Tree of Life, and it features hearts on trees. Now the secret is out.

I also have to mention the wonderful Billy Bragg, who we saw and heard on Thursday night at the Tivoli (yes its been a busy week). Bragg is a great communicator, singer and songwriter with a big heart, who creates an instant community at his gigs. I know, I've been to a few now...

Here is Billy busking with Jack Monroe of food blogging fame. Worlds colliding again...

 
 from Mercy Centre, where I attended a mindfulness retreat last Sunday.

Perhaps things will settle down soon. 

more later

Sunday 2 March 2014

secular Buddhism 101: 'mudita' and the everyday sublime

 reverse applique felt, embroidery (using rainbow thread) and button mandala

Since becoming aware of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) almost 4 years ago, when I attended my first Russ Harris workshop, I have also been discovering (and rediscovering) various forms of meditation and mindfulness practice.

I first learnt Transcendental Meditation (TM) when I was fifteen, thanks to my friend Susan, who suggested we attend a talk one evening after school at the Adult Education Centre in Dartington, South Devon. We went on to learn TM, which involves the repetition of a mantra (or sound), and focusing on the mantra instead of thoughts, which leads to a deep level of relaxation, and change in brain wave patterns, quite quickly. We practised regularly for a while, but being teenagers, we didn't like the feeling of being monitored by the teachers after the class - to be fair, they were only being supportive, but I was very rebellious.

 water soluble oil pastel Buddha face

I practiced TM intermittently since, but started to do so regularly again after seeing the value of mindfulness in my clinical practice, and also as a self-care tool, soon after learning about ACT. My teenage clients are fairly unimpressed with the idea of regular meditation, so I often talk about mindfulness in daily life, instead. This means noticing what your senses are telling you, rather than your thoughts.

I have just realised I have been doing TM incorrectly, after reading this article by Stuart Heritage, who points out that you are supposed to meditate twice a day for 20 minutes, whereas I have been doing it for 30 minutes once a day. So I am in a ten minute deficit, but no doubt some is a lot better than none.

I am also curious about the secrecy surrounding the mantra that Heritage refers to. The cynical part of me suspects this is a way of keeping the teachers as the experts, so new learners don't teach their friends - its a pretty simple technique. There was quite a ritual to the giving of the mantra, and it being specially chosen to suit our personality: however, when Susan and I eventually told each other our mantras (against instructions - but we were rebellious teenagers, what did they expect?) we realised we both had the same one, which was kind of deflating. Perhaps that is another reason for the secrecy...
 appliqued new and vintage textile labyrinth meditation path 
(which formed part of my social work frameworks presentation - social work is represented by the  embroidered tablecloth)

The idea of the labyrinth as a walking meditation path is an ancient one and occurs in a variety of cultures including christianity. I became aware of the potential of the finger labyrinth as a meditation tool through one of my students, also an ACT afficionado, who conducted a pilot  research project into using finger labyrinths.Basically the finger traces the path, which resembles a walking meditation path, but is obviously much smaller.

sitting meditation - pastels

This weekend I attended talks by Martine and Stephen Batchelor, who teach within the Buddhist tradition, but from a secular and contemporary perspective. The talks included walking and sitting meditations, with a focus on developing 'mudita', or Appreciative Joy, which is one of the four virtues/divine states of dwelling or 'feeling tones' as Martine described them. The other three are Loving Kindness (metta), Compassion (karuna) and Equanimity (upekkha).

Stephen then talked later about the Everyday Sublime, (he also said to be very wary of any nouns beginning with capital letters, but anyway). This equates to mindfulness in everyday life, and includes appreciative joy, but also suffering, which Buddhism is often concerned with. This all fits very neatly with ACT, which emphasises the human tendency towards'experiential avoidance', or how we try to avoid feeling anything we label bad, sad or mad.

The main point of Stephen's talk was the role of the arts and the artist in practicing the Four Noble Tasks (often called Truths, but he prefers Tasks, which is also very ACT-ish, as it emphasises action). The sublime is a term from aesthetics, which includes terrifying yet fascinating experiences and the emotions they evoke, as identified by the Romantic poets, for example. Stephen suggests the role of the artist is to articulate the everyday sublime, and this includes:
  • Embracing Life
  • Letting go of Reactivity
  • Affirming Freedom from Reactivity and 
  • Cultivating this way of life, 
which together leads to Awakening or Enlightenment (more capital letters).

All very interesting and I feel very inadequate in trying to relay the concepts, but I am hoping this will help me remember and understand, as much as anything. This is quite a long post, and now I am going out to dinner. It was my (our) wedding Uni-versary (we got married on Leap Year Day) this weekend.

Congratulations if you made it this far, which is also a good thought for an anniversary, albeit not a 'real' one.. embracing the everyday sublime, appreciating the joy, and the wisdom to know the difference, or something.

more later