Posted in from the dark room, photography on May 2, 2010| 1 Comment »
I had a stroll around Ueno Park in Tokyo this morning and went to the Paeony Garden.
The plants grow shaded by parasols and the combination is stunningly beautiful.
Here’s one of the gardeners at work.
…and one of the many keen photographers…
Here are some of the ones which especially caught my eye.
Posted in creativity, from the dark room on April 26, 2010| 4 Comments »
I’m a great believer in nurturing creativity and play is an essential part of that. Since I got an ipod touch I’ve found several apps which encourage me to play – especially with my photos.
Here’s a photo I took of Stirling Bridge and the Wallace Monument
And here’s what happens when you run it through the “Lego photo” app –
Isn’t that fun? I guess the next step would be to actually get the lego bricks and make the image in 3D!
Finally, here’s a lego photo-ed version of a picture of Ava, my youngest grand-daughter.
Have you found any apps which encourage your creative play?
Posted in from the dark room, photography, Uncategorized on April 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Isn’t this beautiful?
Here’s an idea – look out for some water today and notice just how amazing it is – take a photo and share it!
Posted in from the dark room, photography on April 20, 2010| 1 Comment »
Carrying a camera, even the camera in that mobile phone you have in your pocket or handbag, is a great way to find something amazing every single day. If some part of your mind is on alert for what’s interesting, you’ll find that you just notice more.
Look at this for example –
I don’t know what this plant is, but as I got out of my car, the sun was streaming through these petals and I couldn’t resist capturing it with my camera.
Posted in from the dark room, health, photography on April 15, 2010| 1 Comment »
Here’s a double page spread from the newspaper the other day –
Isn’t that interesting? On the left, an ad for fast food, and on the right a drug to deal with stomach acid!
Posted in from the consulting room, from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, photography, tagged flow, healing, IPNB on April 7, 2010| 2 Comments »
I’ve long held that a way of thinking about health is to use the concept of flow. When the various different aspects of our selves and our lives integrate in a coherent way we experience flow – good energy, good vitality, strength, the feeling of being alive (there are many ways to describe it)
I recently came across an interesting expansion of this idea when I read “Mindsight” by Dan Siegel (ISBN 978-0553804706).
He describes health as being like a flowing river and he says the river has two banks, either of which we tend to drift towards as we become unwell.
One bank is rigidity, and the other is chaos.
It’s true. We can see that in some illnesses we are stuck, caught in loops, trapped in ever decreasing circles which shrink our world. What should be flowing has become solidified, sluggish, frozen, or blocked.
In complexity terms, this kind of pattern exists around “point attractors”. You’ll be familiar with point attractors in the universe; they are the black holes which suck everything into them. Nothing escapes.
In other illnesses everything seems to fall to pieces, life itself falls apart and we find ourselves lost, or overwhelmed with confusion. We don’t know who we are, or where we are, and we don’t know how to find a way out.
In complexity terms, this kind of patterns exists as a “chaos attractor”, a zone of chaos where there are no clear patterns but which somehow maintains itself.
Which of the patterns are most familiar to you?
Rigidity?
or Chaos?
Healing involves a release from these states – from rigidity, or chaos, to flow.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, tagged meditation, mindfulness on April 6, 2010| 1 Comment »
Attention is like the sun’s rays. Whatever we shine it on looks clearer and brighter. Whatever it lands on increases.
Attention is a kind of focus. It’s a way of allocating energy and resources. Whatever we pay attention to receives more of our energy, and as a result, it grows.
Have you ever stopped to wonder what it is you pay most attention to? A lot of people pay attention to the future. Their minds are full of what ifs and if onlys. They experience anxiety and fear of the unknown. If you’ve got a good imagination it’s easy to spend a lot of time thinking about what hasn’t happened yet (and what might never happen!). Other people pay a lot of attention to the past. Their minds are full of memories of the past…..the bad times, the hurts, the wounds…..or the good times (which are now gone). The interesting thing is that you only live in the present. The past is in memory, and the future is in imagination, the present is reality.
If you focus your attention on past bad times, they loom larger in your life. If you focus on future fears, they also loom larger in your life. If you focus on the present, you experience more of the here and now. And whatever you choose to pay attention to in the present is what you’ll experience most strongly.
Meditation practices are ways of training your attention, so that it doesn’t get pulled this way and that by habits or the demands of others.
Morning pages are another interesting way to explore where your attention is hanging out! (that’s a habit I need to re-establish!)
Becoming aware of what we’re focusing on gives us choices – the choices to decide whether or not to focus on that as much as we are doing, or to focus on something else instead.
Whatever it is we pay attention to increases, colours our whole life, becomes our whole world.
Posted in from the dark room, photography on March 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Here’s one of my favourite activities – finding wild orchids. They tend to be really small and not so easy to spot, then when you get down on the ground to see them up close, they’re consistently, amazingly, beautiful.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, photography on March 25, 2010| 5 Comments »
Thich Nhat Hanh teaches a lovely meditation practice for children, and points out that many adults like it too.
He calls it “four pebble meditation” and here’s how to do it –
Collect four pebbles and keep them in small bag.
Each pebble should remind you, in turn, of a flower, a mountain, still water and space.
Take the first pebble in your left hand and say “I see myself as a flower. I feel fresh.”
Repeat three times, then lay the pebble down.
Take the next pebble in your left hand and say “I see myself as a mountain. I feel solid”
Repeat three times, then lay the pebble down.
Put this pebble aside, and take the next one in your left hand, saying “I see myself as still water. I reflect things as they truly are.”
Repeat three times, then lay the pebble down.
Put this pebble aside and take the last pebble. “I see myself as space. I feel free.”
Repeat three times, then lay the pebble down.
Posted in creativity, from the dark room, photography on March 21, 2010| 1 Comment »
Who do you think might answer if you press the top button? (use google translate if you don’t speak French)
Heroes Not Zombies 