Drawing without purpose…

Last month we hosted an amazing Happy Spontaneous Me workshop as part of Chorlton’s famous Arts Festival. We are pleased to showcase a little piece from yogi Hannah Patterson who took part. We love the pictures from Hannah’s little shrine…

The combination of yoga and drawing is surprisingly beautiful. Not only will you express yourself from a deeper place, you create something to display that is a reminder of how perfect the present moment actually is, no matter how you’re feeling.

Within the workshop, we were guided through meditation and simple yoga postures and then asked to put pen/crayon to paper with some specific techniques. These techniques weren’t to teach you how to draw properly. Quite the opposite. You experienced how to draw without purpose, perfection or judgement. We were encouraged to draw with feeling, allowing our hand to wander across the blank page aimlessly. Very therapeutic.

The reason I love yoga so much is because it allows me to let go of the need to be perfect and achieve. I find peace in the postures and zone out from the people around me and I give up my urge to compete. In fact, I am merely comforted by the closeness of others. Happy Spontaneous Me gave me an opportunity to experience this two fold. After the yoga postures, we’d turn to the page to again connect with our inner world as well as having the closeness of those next to us – knowing that they too were connecting with their own self.

I’d really recommend attending one of Mick’s workshops or classes. If you’re new to yoga, it’ll be a beautiful introduction to your journey. If you’re a regular practitioner, you’ll experience an authentic class and gain a little more wisdom to add to your tool kit.

Here are some pictures of one of my drawings from the workshop – it is part of my shrine at home as I genuinely think it is a brilliant expression of myself at the time. It may look totally arbitrary but to me it’s a reminder of my happy spontaneous self.

Hannah undertaking jappa drawing

Hannah’s shrine

Hannah’s shrine

You get in touch with Hannah here and find out about her inspiring work with healthy foods and healthy living…

Happy Spontaneous Me 2015 Om Yoga Show

Here is a small gallery featuring some of the spontaneous work produced at this year’s Om Yoga Show in Manchester.

Getting into the flow….

On Wednesday 20^th May Mick is leading the special yoga in action YLP workshop Happy Spontaneous Me, as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival.

Happy Spontaneous Me, combines ancient yoga science and practice with the latest thinking on ‘flow’, creativity and happiness. The workshop takes the form of an active meditation, merging being and doing into one – a favourite theme at the YogaLife Project. Using simple techniques such as repetitive and free mark making on large sheets of paper, using chalks, pastels, pens etc, we begin by utilising a yoga mind set to connect, moment-to-moment with what we are doing. You can chose any action to be a flow creating activity. What is key is your relationship to the activity. Its not what you do its how you do it that’s important, and this is where yoga science comes in.

Being and Doing…

This is yoga practice, which can be taken off the mat and into the realm of where everybody lives and works. It teaches you to take notice, observe and find harmony with what ever you are doing. This experience is sometimes defined as autotelic awareness, or ‘flow’ when we are fully and consciously immersed into, and with whatever you are doing purely for its own sake. The term autotelic derives from the Greek, ‘auto’ meaning, self, and ‘telos’ meaning goal or task. When we are in the flow, action is effortless and smooth. The moment fully lived.

Happy Spontaneous Me, points to a deeper form of yoga practice called Karma Yoga or the yoga of action. At the YLP we call this ‘Being and doing’, where work is done without some future expectation of reward in mind but just for the sheer joy of doing it. When we pay attention to the activity for its own sake, not thinking about future results or past mistakes we become centred, we stay present. We are in our own yoga state or ‘union’ – the goal of yoga.

To get into the flow experience we have to change our mode of thought from trying to exert force over what we are doing towards an imagined result, to aligning our action with an inner harmony and intuition. This is an essential and fundamental yoga teaching that leads towards a happier more creative and fulfilling life. We are in a world now of image, appearance and desire. Most people are fooled into confining themselves this world placing themselves onto never ending treadmill of expectation, desires, and rewards. We know this causes frustration, anger and unhappiness. But its possible to step off the treadmill, still be in the world, but free, once we realise where real happiness and creative contentment can be found.

But I am not creative…

Yes you are! If you breathe, you are creating yourself everyday moment-by-moment. Imagine if you could harness that amazing, powerful creativity and direct it with purpose into the heart of your everyday.

Everyone is creative – that’s the whole point. The fact is that when you are in your yoga flow, self created expectations, desires or limiting feelings about oneself are stilled. They simply do not matter. You will feel in total control, present and fulfilled. In the workshop, emphasis is on letting go, stepping outside your comfort zone and learning to get out of the way.

During the workshop we will learn to:

• Understand how to make any activity into a flow or yoga experience.
• Unlock your creative flow and liberate your inner joy
• Develop a sense of meaning, effortless control and involvement in what you are doing.
• Discover a deeper a sense of self and your purpose.
• Feel what it means to be totally present and not lost in an imagined future or past.

Life flows through you…

When we practice this technique correctly and with an open heart you will sense a new type of reality different to what you feel in your day. A world of effortless, creative being where your sense of self and purpose is there to be felt and acted upon. A richer, rewarding more creative life that flows from and through you and not determined by the imagined expectations but being right here, right now.

Happy Spontaneous Me workshop

At Happy Spontaneous Me we use mark making and drawing as a way of supplying a simple creative flow producing action. We use timed exercises, combined with breathing and drawing, fast mark making, flowing and mindful action techniques combined with guided relaxation and special pranayama. The main technique is karma yoga combined with jappa (simple repetitive) action. Mick will guide you through all of these techniques to get you into the flow…You will not need any art or yoga experience.

You can book you place at Happy Spontaneous Me here.

All material is provided

Zombies and handbags

 Falling out of the Guardian this weekend was another one of those pointless, highly produced, expensive looking supplements on fashion and design.

It didn’t really contain either. Most of the content was advertising trying to sell stuff none of us need and even if you did would wear it? The advert for The Coach New York 2015 Spring Collection, called Swagger, really excelled. 8 zombies cluster around an open top car. Judging by their lack of weight, lank hair and vacuous expressions they have been dead for sometime. If you have seen the 1970’s version of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers you will know what we mean. In an effort to look arty and challenging the Coach reveal their real business model- to keep us all zombie-like so that we buy more and more of their pointless stuff. You don’t have to look dead to be dead, but in case there is any doubt the advertising executive have just gone a little further to put their point across. Which is if you want this stuff hard enough you can transcend death…you will be dead but what the heck you will look good and won’t stick out, appearing different from the other zombie friends. If you want to avoid the zombie in you the key is to know the difference between what you need and what you want. As the Rolling Stones told us…

You can’t always get what you want You can’t always get what you want You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometimes you just might find You get what you need

Or as we say in yoga: Breathe in, Breathe out, repeat.

Om Shanti everyone…

It’s the thing…

This weekend we completed our first YLP Beginners and Group meditation classes for 2015. Well done to everyone who, as usual, brought their energy, attention and serious intention to the class, sprinkled with a little humour and delight.

As one of the class realised..

’this is it – meditation is the key, its the thing. I could quite happily never do another downward dog as long as live if I am meditating’.

Exactly…

Meditation is the thing. Its the principal yoga practice. The postures are designed to firstly strengthen your physicality in order to sit still, but more importantly to build a deeper awareness.  If postures are about the mind, than meditation is about the body. They work hand in hand until you learn the core skill…..that everything you do is yoga – is meditation.

Another of our class summed it up like this….

‘Yoga gives you access to what we are’

We are faced with obstacles, challenges and limitations. Yoga teaches us to accept them, know them  and then  move on. That way we really do begin to gain access to what it means to be a human ‘being’. Any previous assumptions regarding what we take to be our physical state  begin to fade away revealing a deeper reality.

Its a transforming process and if we feel a, little more happier, spontaneous, optimistic, clearer in our purpose, more  loving and compassionate, even just for a moment two then we are succeeding.

Breathe in Breathe out – know and let go. How easy is that? That is all you need to do to practice your yoga.

Fourteen going on fifteen…

So 2014 is nearly over, although as yogis we know there is no such thing as time….just change.

First, a big thank you to our YogaLife Project tribe who had to put up with building works for the last month or so. The church space is now nearly finished and we start on the hall January 5^th. Our classes and workshop will take place in the new church space.

Witnessing change all around us, even in the form of builder’s dust reminds us that nothing is permanent other than the continuous moment of stillness inside you. The goal of our practice is to experience that stillness so that we can project it out into the world. It doesn’t require anything extraordinary other than you just being yourself.  That’s when yoga really takes off and impacts on everyone and everything around you. You can be a force for change. In fact without you, change would never happen and that simple goal will continue to underpin the YLP.

This year, the support shown from all of you has given us the confidence to ramp up our projects and activities in 2015. We start with our usual Back On Track workshop on 17^th January. A yoga intensive to help refocus your intention for the coming year combined with a Sankelpa, a personal yogic business plan – a self generated reminder to help you keep focused on what you need to do.

Next year also sees the start of our YogaLife Project Teacher Training School. We are very excited about this new venture which is planned to start around August- September. We are also starting a brand new Beginner’s Class called, Yoga Basics on 6th. January. This is designed to help rationalise the class levels more efficiently so that everyone can get what they need from the YLP (remember you need to book ahead now except for the Thursday Drop-in). Other ideas include a whole day workshop called: ‘Live like a Yogi for a Day’. Where we will offer a pocket sized ashram experience of full on yoga, meditation, eating, teaching and talking. The whole event will be a dry run to future longer events such as retreats. We are also continuing to develop our Beginner’s Meditation Course held at YLP HQ starting 24^th January 2015.

We are also making better use of social media. We have a new twitter, @YogaLifeProject so that you can easily keep in contact with Mick and the YLP.  We also plan to make a couple of short films explaining  how we bring real yoga, to real people, who live real lives…Other plans include more downloadable stuff such as short, How To eBooks and apps featuring more of Mick’s guided relaxation and meditation.

If there is one thing we can take with us into next year – it’s the idea that everything good in the world starts with you. Try if you can to see the whole thing, the bigger picture, the wood, not the trees. It’s a message we are beginning to hear a lot, and have to act on, if we want to live sustainable, happier, purposeful lives. Mick, this year joined the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS). Based in California and founded by one of his heroes, Dr. Ed Mitchell the sixth man to walk on the Moon (Apollo 14). This team of scientists are researching into consciousness with a mission to help bring profound change on how we live in the world. This is yoga by another means and IONS have developed  the world’s largest on-line resource on meditation research. Here is Mitchell in 2012 asking us to see a bigger picture. Not me, or you but all of us.

So thank you everyone for your support. It has been brilliant. Next year we plan to go both higher and deeper.

Relax, just do it…

Really interesting article by Tim Parks in this morning’s Guardian on Meditation. It’s a big thing now.

He describes how he came to meditation as a way of dealing with  chronic abdominal stress. He describes his experience of meditation as , ‘being very awake inside, with a sense of growing space’. We often try to get there with our guided relaxation and orientation into the present at the beginning of our YLP classes.

What struck a chord with me is that Tim’s experience is more than just feeling better. He explains, as  one makes  progress through meditation you will tend to start  to redesign your goals, what you do and how you do things. This is perfectly natural. What Tim is experiencing is his essential nature coming through as the notions of I, Me and Mine (your ego trio) start to lose their grip.

He has a new book out (natch) called, ‘Teach us to Sit Still’. Where he describes his earlier experiences of learning to relax. He describes sessions with Dr David Wise where Tim was taught, ‘Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Breathing in Preparation for Paradoxical Relaxation’.  I have no idea what that means but it’s something to do with breathing and heart rhythms.  You see…words, notions, labels and images. They just get in the way. I don’t need to know how this computer works in order to use it and know it. We will be starting a special YLP meditation course next weekend. We will be keeping it real and authentic because just like yoga there is a lot of information out there.  Most of it not helpful.

The key with yoga and meditation is simplicity. Don’t get taken in by pseudo scientific definitions. With the world as it is now, we often feel that we  have to label and define everything,  separate things out. Paradoxically, when you experience meditation you realise how labelling and defining is pointless and everything is connected anyway. Nothing is separate.  With meditation, as with life, the gift is in the process – not the result. It’s a cliché but very true.

See you next week for our YLP Meditation sessions.

 

180 degrees…

A few weeks ago The New Statesman magazine called for a ‘Revolution of Consciousness’ There is a well thumbed copy at YLP HQ. You can read about it here.

It’s worth tracking down. Between all of the excitable stuff from Russell Brand who was guest editor there is a well-organised argument for change based very much on Yoga principles.   There is a great article from one of our heroes David Lynch. We have tagged him before with his work on meditation via his Foundation. He too calls for revolution. A revolution of 180 degrees where we turn attention inwards, inwards, inwards, as opposed to outwards, outwards, outwards. We often do this at the start of our YL classes. This, he says, is where we will find the solution – in particular to the economic, social and environmental turbulence we currently experiencing following the greed of banks and the incompetence of our politicians, which is very much the theme of the NS issue.  We were really struck by Lynch’s accompanying sketch diagram which is a brilliant illustration of how we move from the ‘surface’ of life’ as he describes it, into the Unified Field – something we often talk about in class and most certainly experience in our practice.  In many ways if we were to write a manifesto to support our YogaLife then the NS Revolution of Consciousness would form part of it. It’s important though that we rise above politics and economics, as they are not real, and still very much part of the problem.

So what can we do?

Given the mess we are in, the lack of any plan for the economy, energy and the environment – .our role is to stay tuned. Keep paying attention and carry on with our yoga practice. That’s the way we can make real and lasting change right in the heart of our own community and make, as Lynch says a beautiful and peaceful revolution.

Lynch’s route map…

Lynch and Brand. Lynch has no idea who he is…

NS Front Cover…