Friday 1^st January 2016

Hello New Year! 

Any New Year resolutions this year? Erhmm!…forget it! In the past I have taken time to write down a rather long list of (mainly unachievable) resolutions but today on our walk in the Black Forest I felt no need! I know what I have to do…whether I will succeed is well…...down to me.  My thoughts revolve around the dreaded ‘P’ word!

I am going to strive hard and clean up my act with regard to PROCRASTINATION.

I waste too much time doing things in order to avoid doing what I really should be doing. I can get totally involved & very busy for several hours doing things that really don’t need to be done, and alas as the day slips away, I don’t get to what I had planned to do and the end result is that I feel frustrated, which leads into a downward spiral of dissatisfaction about how I am leading my life.

I had to chuckle when reading a new years resolution, ‘my goal for 2016 is to accomplish the goals of 2015, which should have been done in 2014, because I made a promise in 2013 and planned in 2012’.

There are all sorts of speculation as to why people procrastinate and I probably fall into the category of worry of failure. I put off doing what I love doing because I fear failure. It is so crazy & absurd because I love being in the studio and I love writing and I am failing anyway by all this procrastinating.  For example with writing, I easily become blocked about where to start, what will I write about, will it be good enough, will I write my ‘ramblings’ or should I write my life story, do I write another blog, should I share what I write with others? 

So my mind is made up from this day forth…. on 1^st January 2016, instead of finding immeasurable amounts of distracting jobs, I am going to ‘seize the day!’ and do what I have got to do. Easy as that!  Well lets hope so?!  ( I will write about it).  ‘I am going to be a little scared, but that is okay! (this is my inner therapist speaking). I am going to the studio as often as I can, instead of surfing FB or looking for flats to purchase which we cannot afford and don’t even know if we want to purchase accommodation in Germany I am going to write and make it a weekly habit.

Im going to take inspiration from the filmmaker Woody Allen, who put his success down to showing up 80% of the time. I am going to top Woody …..& show up 100% for ‘me’.  ‘Ohhh!’…….. that sounds SO good to make a promise to myself to show up 100% for ME!  I am going to do the things I feel passionate about.

And before I get all kind of worryingly guru…ish on you I thought I would share another New Years quote ”here is to another year of regret, procrastination, heart ache and insanity!!”   (Katherine Owen)

Along with the quote is an accompanying cartoon of a young attractive woman holding a champagne glass, a lot younger than me and probably taken up with partying and relationships (God! if only life was that simple again!). (Note to self for 2016 I must be careful not to sum people up in a few seconds, you don’t know their story!). It was the cynical words of that quote that made me laugh! And reminded me before I was getting ahead of myself to show up 100% for ME! (I do intend to do it) that life can sometimes just be truly shitty!  Even when we are armed with exciting intentions and optimism for change, we really do not have a clue what is coming our way and can get completely derailed by life’s ups and downs.

I welcome 2016 and look forward to what the year brings. I hope you do too. However I am completely aware that there will be good and bad times to come. And it has taken me a really long time to learn that the bad times will pass and the good times will pass and that is okay and the way it should be.

‘And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us,

new, untouched, full of things that have never been’.      Rainer Maria Rilke

And well if the following is true I will have better digestion, be brave like a bobcat! Gerhard, Bibi, my family, friends & foes will be happy that I talk & hate less and LOVE more!  

‘Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours’.
Swedish proverb

Happy New Year to you my friends.

Courage

Recently I have been struggling to come to terms with the death of a dear friend. She was such a lovely person, so generous and full of life. It seems so unfair that she has died and we will never see each other again. I was very shocked to hear about her death, then very angry about it and finally just so very sad. 

Some days after hearing the news I walked in the countryside with my husband, I wept and I ranted. My husband was brilliant; he listened, commiserated and comforted me as much as he could.

This loss took hold of me and I guess with my history of loss I got lost for a while in a real place of sadness.

I took refuge on the sofa with books, watched films, drank Scottish tea and ate cake. And I ranted some more and I cried.

As a young child I was deeply confused about why I had to live without my parents. They died when I was very young. It didn’t make sense at all!~ I was their child and now they were gone.  I developed a subconscious belief that life was cruel and a horrible place to be. 

I have been reading The Artist’s Way of Seeing by Roberta Weir and it helped me in some way regain confidence in the world, as well as my own self-care and soothing techniques learned in years of therapy, writing exercises, walks and baking.

‘In the midst of pain and turmoil I look up at the blue sky, the first plum blossoms: a voice inside me says, Oh! I am happy! There it is, the welling joy of merely being alive another day. Is this life an inspiration or a cruel joke?

‘We can’t let ourselves become fearful and disillusioned when we see the shape of destruction, misfortune and indifference that surrounds and infuses our life. This is the price we have paid to purchase the experience of life’.

The other quote I would like to finish on is ‘In life and in art, seeing the darkness brings out the light’.

So although I struggle to come to terms with this untimely death, I cherish the memories of a fun and beautiful friendship.

5 Rhymn Dancing

I wanted to tell you a little about my experience of the 5 Rhythm dancing technique. I enjoy the structure of the dancing, which is split into five parts in the order of flowing,staccato, chaos, lyrical, and stillness . The five rhythms, when danced in the sequence, are known as a "wave." A typical wave takes about an hour to dance.

Essentially what I love most is the music and how it makes me feel. When a certain piece of music resonates with me ....it can simply be amazing and you feel exhilarated. Dancing 5 Rhythm takes me out of my head (away from thinking about day to day things ). I focus on the music
and my movements. I  focus on the present moment. I think to myself " I am here, alive and present" and that is such a good feeling. I spend too much time not being really present.

I can be rather self-concious, but when I am doing the 5 Rhythm I dont feel judged by others.  I immerse myself in the enjoyment of the dance. Of course on occasions I have felt uninspired by the music and become stuck, but usually as you move through the rhythms, with the guidance of the teacher you become unstuck.

I do believe you need to have courage to dance the 5 Rhythms because you get in touch with your feelings and often you are unaware of what is lurking there. It is not easy for everyone to explore those feelings more deeply. It can be fun, sad, exciting, powerful, confusing, challenging ...... (please dont let me put you off though cos these are just my thoughts).

I have been working on myself for a while~ I hoped the dancing would be a way to deal with my grief. I am happy to say it did help and it still does. But what surprised me was the amount of anger & rage in me. In the 5 Rhythms I have danced with such aggression in my veins, wanted to wreck havoc on everything and everyone around me, felt such rage about what happened to me.

I believe it will be an on-going process, perhaps a life long process of dealing with the feelings of rage and grief about loosing my mum & my dad (in seperate incidents) as a young child and then my aunt when I was 17.

But I count myself lucky to have embarked on a journey of working through these painful emotions to lead a happier and more creative life. The dancing continues to be an enormously therapeutic experience for me.


.

Where am I at?

So as you see,  I enjoy writing my morning pages at least three times per week. It helps me de-clutter.  Another technique I came across is combining a little meditation, writing and doodling!  I got this idea from the book The Creative Journal by Lucia Capacchione.

Where am I at? 

Take a few moments to think what kind of a time this is for you. Ask yourself the question, Where am I at in my life right now?

Close your eyes and meditate on your life at present. Watch to see if anything immediately springs up. If not  think about things like,  is it a hectic time? a calm period? a time of crisis?  a time of change? a dull or boring time? Think about a particular event or experience that marks the beginning of the period. Think about the main characteristics of this time. 

Then draw any images, colours, forms or doodles that reflect where you are at in your life at this time. (It is sometimes enjoyable to have some relaxing music in the background)

The final step is to write about this period. 

An extra think I do is to finish the drawing, then do the writing and then I write about the drawing. I write what each thing in the drawing represents. Surprising things often crop up

I find this exercise really interesting as it is a great way to take stock of where you are.  You also have the opportunity to connect with your inner feelings and consider options for change etc.

At the weekend I read an article about the performing artist Marina Abramovic in die Zeit Magazin (part of Die Zeit newspaper). I havent seen Marina Abramović:The Artist is Present film which is currently being shown in cinemas or seen any of her perfomances live, nevertheless I found the article really interesting. Can you believe she is 66!   She is one determined woman and pushes herself to the extremes.

Calling herself the grandmother of 'performance art', she was born in Belgrad, 1946. She began using her own body as the subject and medium of her work in the early 1970s. For the exhibition Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, The Museum of Modern Art’s  (MoMA in New York) first performance retrospective, Abramović performed every day between March 14 and May 31, 2010. Visitors were encouraged to sit silently across from the artist for a duration of their choosing, becoming participants in the artwork.
(The film is based on this exhibition).

I find her work interesting because she works with the subject of pain and shame. (Many people critisize her for being too fixated with this and think her performances are down right depressing). She herself suffered greatly as a child.  She is interested how people hide from pain/ shame and how they process the feelings.  Whilst looking into the eyes of so many people she acted as a kind of mirror. She says when she looks people in the eyes she doesnt laugh. 'I havent managed to bring humour into my work yet' she says 'There is just too much pain everywhere'.

These were a few reactions from visitors at the MoMA in New York:
'I learnt so much about human psychology: how people came to see Marina but instead saw themselves in her reflection. Many visitors had not met the eyes of a loved one for a long time and when Marina looked right at them and smiled they fell apart'.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'This experiment/performance piece is very moving. I realize that it’s a very simple concept – I’ll sit here and you sit across from me – but in the silence and the setting it was in, it’s amazing what effects it had on people. It made the viewer part of the artwork, in a very naked way. I’m wondering if some of the emotional reaction had to do with the city it was presented in. I just moved away from New York, and while I was there I felt like I witnessed an excessive amount of bottled up emotions, suppressed hardships and frustrations, a pain that nobody wanted to admit'. 







 

For some years I have been involved in practising morning pages. Morning pages are two to three pages of writing long hand.

Morning pages is a tool used by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way.

It may at first sound daunting to write so much, especially by hand and you may be wondering when do I have time to do that?... I get up a bit earlier & I admit I dont manage it every day but at least three times a week. I give myself about half an hour to do my pages. (I know people who do morning pages during the day or in the evening). Personally I find it better in the morning because it frees my mind up for other stuff.

The point to morning pages is not to write a novel or even to share your morning pages with others, it is private stuff and is not even supposed to be re-read. The writing you do in your morning pages is anything that comes into your head. Its the little niggles or big niggles that run around in your head. The words may not even piece together into full sentences, that doesnt matter, what matters is to get it out.

Now, I do sometimes feel blocked, so I write down that I feel blocked! I also write a fair amount of whiny stuff..... that I have back-ache or a sore head. Sometimes I write about the weather and what I see in the garden. Often I start writing a list of things I want to get done and in doing this random thoughts & feelings arise that need attention. I write it all down.

When you start doing morning pages, you may be surprised at the feelings lurking within you. This can range from anger with a loved one or a friend, frustration about a situation, sadness, fear etc. Morning pages can also be a joyous thing, where you feel grateful and happy, write it down!  I find writing morning pages (when I do it regularly) so therapeutic. It frees me up and helps me focus on what really matters. I get much more done and my thinking is clearer. Additionally you may find you feel more patient or less irritated with the day's events, which is defintely a good reason to continue & do them more often!

I think this is a great idea at New Year. It is called Topics du Jour and is a journaling technique. It takes about 5-10 minutes per day and it is used to review, plan and put your life in more perspective. What you do is: Number down a page from 1 to 30. Write in each line one aspect of your life that you would like to monitor. Then over the next month, look at the corresponding topic and write a paragraph or two about it. You can write about your plans, or maybe about a specific problem you’re facing in that area. Or perhaps you will end up just rambling — it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you’ll be spending those few daily minutes specifically giving attention to what matters in your life. It is quick, intuitive and, above all, it gets you into the daily habit of connecting with what’s important in your life. Here are a few examples of topics you can write about: •Career •Family •Friends •Health •Money •Spiritual Life •Learning/Study •Freetime •Ageing