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August – the month of travel

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on August 4, 2014| 1 Comment »

In my 12 monthly themes, August is the month of travel

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So, where are you going to travel to this month? Have you any trips booked? Are you going somewhere you’ve never been before, or returning to a familiar favourite destination?

Or, if you aren’t going to travel this month, can I make two suggestions?

Either make this the month to chart a new direction – set your compass on a new goal, or goals, and begin to lay out your course to get there.

Or try the 30 minute discovery challenge. (You’ll be surprised how much there is to “get away” to nearby)

 

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The A to Z of Becoming. Part 2. E for Exhale

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography, psychology on August 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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Breathing is something we do automatically. We don’t have to remember to breathe out every time we breathe in. But we can deliberately influence our breathing rhythms, choosing now to inhale, now to exhale.

When we exhale, we stimulate the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system, and one of the things that does is calm us down. The parasympathetic nervous system slows the heart, and is a very deep, very basic part of our survival behaviour. You’ll be familiar with “fight or flight”? That’s the sympathetic nervous system at work – preparing us to hit or run when under threat. We feel pretty “wired” when the sympathetic nervous system kicks in – heart racing, fast breathing, adrenaline pumping. The parasympathetic nervous system has a complementary function – it is part of what creates a “rest and digest” response.

When we exhale, we stimulate this system and induce the “rest and digest” response.

Do it now.

Fill your lungs, then slowly, slowly, breathe out, taking your time to completely empty your lungs. Now do it another couple of times. Just three exhalations like this will stimulate your “rest and digest” response.

One of the things I love to when I am beside the sea is to breathe in time with the breaking waves on the sand. It seems to me that every rush of the surf up the beach is like the ocean breathing out. It’s the sea exhaling. Sometimes that rhythm is even and calming and tuning in your breath to the ocean by timing your exhaling to match the exhaling of the sea can not only induce the “rest and digest” response, but creates a deep sense of being at One with the Earth.

 

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Book sharing

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography on August 2, 2014| 2 Comments »

I’ve seen a few different varieties of book sharing around – the most well known is probably “book crossing“.

In Bordeaux, right next to one of the tram stops, I found this bookcase –

book sharing

….no instructions, no locks, just some books in a bookcase with sliding glass doors.

I wonder how long its been there. I’m amazed that such a piece of furniture can apparently sit quite happily in the middle of a city. And I wonder how often the books change hands?

Have you come across any interesting book sharing platforms or facilities?

By the way, in the hot e-books versus paper books debate, surely one of the best arguments for paper books is how you can pass them on to other people after you’ve read them (Did you realise that you only rent an e-book? You never own it the way you do a paper one)

 

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The shape of the space

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on August 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

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Here are two buildings I visited recently in France. The first is a church and the second is a castle.

In both cases I was struck by the beauty of the arched ceilings and looking at them both together I here I see how different they are and remember how different it felt to be inside each of these buildings.

How do you think the physical space created by the building you are in affects what you feel?

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Not all copies of a book are the same….

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, photography on July 30, 2014| 3 Comments »

OK, I’m going to take a guess….you love books, huh? I’m not going to ask you if you prefer e-books to physical books, or vice versa, but two things recently got me thinking about book buying.

First up was the unexpected discovery of “bouquinistes” in Niort (I’ve only ever encountered this selling books from wooden boxes fastened to the wall at a the side of a river in Paris….didn’t know it happened anywhere else)

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And the second was reading a fabulous essay by Gustavo Faverón Patriau about reading Borges and buying books. (Click through that link there, and read it, it is a treat)

He talks in that essay of buying books from a street of second hand booksellers in Lima and here’s the point he makes about buying the same books later in the US –

During these years, in Ithaca, New York and Brunswick, Maine, where I live now, I have bought once again many of the books I bought in those remote years, in different versions and editions, books that arrive by mail from unknown bookstores that I suspect do not exist, in parts of the country I have never been to, with yellow “used” stickers, impersonal, books that no human hand puts in mine, books without a context, that seem to materialize at my door. I read them and remember the first time I read them, how they impressed me, and I think of how, in my new copies, they seem to be different books, with different meanings. Now they tell me other things, or they do not tell me anything at all, certainly not what they told me then. The words seem weaker, immaterial, vague, powerless. What a contrast compared with the thrill they provoked in me when I saw those words in the yellow pages of the volumes I bought on Grau Avenue, in the second-hand copies I used to start reading while walking down the street or climbing on the bus, books that, later, when I placed them in my bookshelves at home, used to retain the smell of the street.

Have you ever had an experience like that?

Do you think that where you actually bought a book influences your reading experience of that book?

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Somebody should move that rock

Posted in books, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, humour, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on July 28, 2014| 1 Comment »

Big rock beach

I noticed this huge rock on a beach recently (OK, I agree, how could you NOT notice it!?)

I suppose I was a little surprised that some people had chosen to sit right in front of it……were they hoping to shelter from the wind? Or were they seeking some shade from the sun? Or, maybe, just maybe, they were working up to having a go at shoving it out of the way?

I’m guessing a LOT of people have wondered about moving that rock. I mean, there it is, sitting RIGHT in the middle of beach! So, why hasn’t anybody done it yet?

Then I got the answer – it’s down to “structured procrastination” –  as John Perry describes it –

All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it.

So maybe the people sitting on the beach there are doing some marginally useful things instead – like increasing their vitamin D levels by sitting in the sunshine, or measuring the temperature to check for global warming, or counting seagulls to for an RSPB environmental monitoring project, or……..

Or maybe this is not about procrastination at all, maybe it’s about being fully paid up members of the slow movement, like Christopher Richards, the founder of the International Institute for Not Doing Much (Christopher, thanks for sending me an email a few years back, I think my reply might be heading your way soon).

What an inspiration for slowness……..watching a rock change!

Hope you’re able to enjoy a nice slow holiday this summer (and if you haven’t figured out how to use structured procrastination to actually book that holiday up yet, check out John Perry’s book, “The Art of Procrastination” – just make sure you’ve got “Buy with 1-click” switched on)

 

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The A to Z of Becoming. Part 2. D for De-clutter

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on July 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Twilight over the estuary

In the A to Z of Becoming a “D” verb is “de-clutter”.

What does it mean to “de-clutter”? It’s going to mean something different to each of us. I’m not making the case here for a physical environment which is minimalist (although my personal preference tends towards minimalism).

This photo of the sea at twilight looks calm and open to me. That’s the feeling I want to get when I de-clutter.

It’s amazing how much “stuff” we accumulate unconsciously – both physical stuff in our rooms, our cupboards, shelves, drawers (and floors!) – and mental stuff in our heads which we carry around with us everywhere.

De-cluttering for me is just a process of making conscious choices. Do I really want to keep that (whatever “it” is) and if I do, do I want to keep it just there where it is at the moment. I find when I de-clutter I do throw a lot of things away – de-cluttering the bookshelf consists of putting into bags books I have read which I know I’ll never want to read again and then taking those books to a charity shop, or giving them away to friends and relatives. De-cluttering a room is often more a process of tidying rather than throwing, or giving, anything away. De-cluttering a wardrobe involves trying clothes on to see if they fit (and realistically am I EVER going to be that size again??) and if they don’t, out they go.

De-cluttering might take effort but once you start the liberation and freedom and space which starts to emerge can be quite thrilling.

De-cluttering your mind is something else again. Meditation practices definitely help to de-clutter the mind. Just taking the time to watch the stuff (the thoughts) which are looping through your mind and watching them go is a de-cluttering all to itself.

Go on, make some space – in your room, in your house, in your head!

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Look again

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on July 26, 2014| Leave a Comment »

What do you see?

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I saw the gable ends of a couple of blocks of flats.

I saw a woman looking out of her window and a man with a rugby ball in his hand standing on his balcony.

I saw the see through the arches.

Then I looked again……..

I saw a mural.

This provokes two thoughts for me –

Firstly, how often do we take the time to really see what we can see? What’s familiar is often worth a brand new look.

Secondly, how much attention do we pay to the creation of our lived, physical environments?

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First and last

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on July 25, 2014| 2 Comments »

There’s a classical teaching about living life to the full which says to embrace each experience as if it is the very first time you are having this experience (which is true…..every experience you have today is for the first time). This is quite like the mindfulness or awareness teachings which tell us to be fully present, as fully aware as possible, as much as we can. This, in fact, is the essence of “heroes not zombies” – it’s about waking up, living consciously and not on autopilot all the time.

There’s another teaching which says to embrace each experience as if it is the very last time you will be having this experience (which is also true……you will never have exactly the experiences you have today ever again).

I find both these teachings come to mind as the sun rises and the sun sets (or Earth Falls and Earth Risings?). Have you ever seen the movie, “City of Angels”? (an American re-make of Wim Wenders, “Wings of Desire”) There are beautiful scenes there where the angels all gather on the beach each morning to experience the sunrise. To be quite honest, I’m not out and about experiencing sunrises all that often, but the other end of the day, sunset, is an equally entrancing event.

If you are ever somewhere where you have an unobstructed view of the sun setting, you’ll likely see that you aren’t experiencing the sunset alone. I was lucky the other day to watch some spectacular sunsets from Biarritz, watching the sun sinking below the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean (and, no, I didn’t see any green rays)

The play of the light on the waves and the wet sand were amazing…..

 

 

Sun set light on surf

Low sun on sand

Sunset Biarritz

Setting sun up close

 

Live life fully today – living every single experience for the first time and the last time.

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How do you start your day?

Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, personal growth, photography on July 23, 2014| 1 Comment »

Breakfast

I’m sure we all fall into routines or habits quite easily. As I was having breakfast yesterday here in Biarritz (on holiday!) I got to thinking about how our start to the day influences our experience of the whole day.

I imagine that starting the day with an expresso and a croissant taking in a view like this might set up a good experience for quite a long time!

But I wonder what our routine morning starts set up?

Do you start the day in a rush?

Do you start slowly?

Do you have breakfast or grab something on the run? Or do you meet up with friends or colleagues in the same cafe each day?

Do you watch, listen to, or read the news, and fill your mind with stories of deaths, disasters and crimes?

Do you start with meditation, or exercise, or reading (and if so, what do like to read first thing?)

However you start your day, why not try changing something…..and see how that feels?

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