Living Our Dreams

Evolution of a Painting...

This Saturday, Feb 4th, 1-4 pm is an intro to Painting Your Heart Out!

 

I thought I would share with you the beginning of this intutive painting called, Rising.

THE PROCESS

As you can see we begin with...

COLOR + SHAPES...

not pefect shapes...but shapes a child would make

SHAPES you have inside of

YOU...

And then if we LISTEN

and release

JUDGEMENT

a STORY unfolds...

 

This painting is not complete...

as the story is still

REVEALING itself to me...

 

Won't you join me in AWAKENING the painter 

who LIVES inside YOU?

Register here...

 

Living Life Through the Eyes of a Child

© 2012 www.sherigaynor.com. All rights reserved.

 

Every Thursday morning, the studio becomes a magic kingdom
for little hearts and minds and their families. 

 

This week I arrived at the end of Music Together with Annie Flynn and a mother greeted me
with "The kids were just WILD today, someone said it was the Solar Flares!"
As I looked at the energy that had now spilled into the round room, I could see exactly what she meant.

The little ones were running hither and yon and
 one little gal, was trying her best to keep up with it all,
crawling on all fours, at about 20 miles an hour.

The laughter and energy was absolutely contagious and I found myself in awe of it all.
The photo above of sweet J. was taken as the chaos went on around us.
It was seeing the world through her new eyes, as she held her mother's phone to take a picture
that allowed me to remember...

Do YOU?

Remember what it was like to be completly in your BODY? 

Remember what it was like to have the world and everything in it seem

BRIGHT.   ALIVE.   FREE!

 

This week...

Step out your front door and view the world through

THE EYES OF A CHILD! 

 

"Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child." ~Ron Wild

Chronologically Speaking

So...since turning 50 + 2 this weekend, I've taken to pondering...

what exactly does it mean to "act your age?

 

This is a confusing time to be a woman over a certain age...

You've all heard...

40 is the new 30...

50 is the new 40..

but what does all that REALLY mean...

and who exactly determines these things?

 

Am I supposed to follow these instructions?

 

or do I get to make my own? 

And now that I'm past that mid-life marker 

I ask you...

what's 52 supposed to act like?

?

Am I supposed to act like this?

 

or this? 

 

 

or this

 

 

or this

 

 

or this

 

 

or this

 

in the end...

I guess it all boils down to one thing gals...

 

 

we get to ACT the age we feel inside and in the end make our own rules! 

 

Wanna join me?

 

 

 

 

 

Today's Awakening: Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul, 
And sings the tune--without the words, 
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; 
And sore must be the storm 
That could abash the little bird 
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land, 
And on the strangest sea; 
Yet, never, in extremity, 
It asked a crumb of me.

~Emily Dickenson

 

Today's Awakening: Authenticity

    © 2011 www.sherigaynor.com. all rights reserved

 

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs 

Connection...

© 2011 Sheri Gaynor. www.sherigaynor.com.  No use without express permission. 

Last week, Susan and I invited several local families to join us for an equine practice session to prepare for our demonstration event up at the Strang arena. 

Participants were asked to observe the horses in the arena and choose one they were most attracted to. The magic of this work continues to unfold and never ceases to amaze me. I witnessed my horse Annie-usually hesitant to approach-walk to the fence to greet our group. 

We then invited the families to break into groups to choose the horse they wanted to work with during our time together. Autumn chose Annie, or Annie chose Autumn, I'm not really sure which and it doesn't matter, because the quiet intelligence of their connection was beautiful to behold and truly a creative awakening.

Join us Saturday, Dec 3, noon-3pm,  at Strang Ranch for our Equine Therapy Demonstration. Dress in WARM layers and bring a chair. We'll have a fire, hot coco, handwarmers and fun activities for you and your family.

Thank you to our sponsors CCAH, Special Needs Moms for Moms, YouthZone and Windwalkers for their support of our event! 

Map to Strang Ranch. We'll be in the huge white arena at the top of the hill. 

Freedom

Copyright 2011-Freedom, Sheri Gaynor. www.sherigaynor.com

The journey continues. Our Western culture invites-and sometimes demands-we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep marching. There is no time for grief. The battle cry is...Be strong, be brave..get back to work, back to life, you'll feel so much better if you do. These sentiments are lovely, maybe even helpful to some, but they run in contradiction to my own experience.

The recent loss of my mother has had a profound transformative impact on my life and I find that through this experience of death and grief, my own soul is experiencing a rebirth. Her passing has required me to stop and reflect.

Without knowing I would find myself here, I am saying "No thank you," more often. Guilt still surfaces in the "No," but I am trusting that people are able to take care of themselves and it's a perfect time to practice walking this new terrain. I'm listening to the voice inside that has been shouting out for some time, reviewing where I've been and feeling into where I TRULY want to BE. I am spending a lot of time alone. Not "isolating"-as they say-but enjoying the solitude of mySELF, nature and the company of the herd. 

As such, I am finding that there is space and that people are responding to this opening, as I believe I am more present and more alive than I have been in some time. 

Most of this last year I'm not ready to speak about publicly, but the writing has begun and with that, healing and awareness.... 

Guest Author Donna Druchunas: My Art of Intention

Happy New Year, everyone! I finally finished my December Art of Intention and it turns out it was more about new beginnings than about finishing and endings. However, it is still my intention to finish the things I'm working on before I lose myself in the new beginnings. It was very interesting to see my "art" confirm my thoughts that the reason I need to finish things now is so I can move on into a new and uncluttered, unfettered future.

All of the images of wings and birds and trees (for building nests) represent freedom and new flight to me, and the butterflies are especially evocative of the idea of a new birth or a transformation. I photographed my piece and put it on the computer and framed it in the film borders as a way of showing that I'm finishing with a purpose, just as Kodachrome film saw it's final day at the end of 2010, but photography is completely open to a new world of unknown technologies in the future, so I am finishing up the projects I've been working on for the last few years without knowing what I will be working on next. It's exciting and frightening at the same time.

I put "art" in quotes because I don't think my piece is really worthy of the name, but as Sheri said in the beginning of her book, you don't have to be an artist to use visualization to help you set your intentions and imagine your future successes. It was only when I reminded myself of that and the fact that I'm not trying to impress anyone with my (lack of) artistic talent with this piece, that I was able to finish it and post it here. I hope you will enjoy seeing the intention of my piece, rather than focus on my lack as a visual artist. I'm a writer and a knitwear designer and although I love playing with doodling and collage, I can't draw or paint at all. And that doesn't matter.

I enjoyed this process immensely and I plan to repeat it monthly throughout 2011. I hope many of you will join me in setting monthly intentions and watching as you grow creatively all year.

Sheri, thank you so much for letting me share my thoughts and experience with you and your readers this month. I had a wonderful time.

-Donna

Guest Author Donna Druchunas: Gypsy Spirit Day

Please allow me to share my Creative Awakenings thought process as I continue to explore my intention for December.

Sometimes it's hard for me to take time this year to sit still and envision my future because I'm so busy wrapping up the past. The finishing part of my intention is filling my days and the beginning part of the intention is simmering on a back burner. I was feeling anxious about this, after all I'd declared my intention to be about finishing and beginning, about a type of metamorphosis, moving from one year to the next. Ironically, this anxiety has been stopping me from finishing my Art of Intention. (That anxiety plus fear of creating something so hideously ugly that I am embarrassed to post a picture here!) 

Since I want to make setting and following my intentions a priority in my life, to ensure that I don't squander my days just crossing things off my to do lists for the sake of feeling productive at the cost of being creative, I decided I needed to pull out one of the Transformation Deck cards and see how it might inspire me. 

I'd been hoping to pull a card that prominently featured wings and birds and flight - the imagery that I've been collecting for my Art of Intention. When I turned over the card I selected, I was disappointed to see it had pictures from the past, photos of someone's mother or grandmother in the 1950s, dark imagery, a picture of home. Why was I pulling a picture of home when in my mind I was dreaming of flying over the rainbow?

The truth is, I pulled the perfect card. When I flipped in my Creative Awakenings book to page 117, I found out that the card I pulled is called "Gypsy Spirit Day" and lurking quietly in the background image is a bird sitting at the top of a tree. The combination of looking to the past while thinking about the future, being grounded by family and memories while dreaming of flying, the idea of being a gypsy while being in love with home: all of this reflects what has happened to me in 2010. Let me explain.

1. Being a gypsy. Gypsies might be known for not having roots, but that's not really true. The Roma people (what the European Gypsy's are properly called) are a very tight-knit group with close families and strong traditions. They are just not tied to a specific piece of land. I love this idea because I love studying historical traditions while at the same time being free to move around physically and mentally, getting to know new ways of doing things at the same time. It's hard because I don't bring all of the people I love with me on each new journey, but the internet has helped me keep in touch more recently than I ever was able to in the past.

2. Loving home. This time last year, I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep my house, or even continue living in Colorado or the United States. But after spending four months sort-of vagabonding around Europe, I have come to appreciate the comfort of home much more. Again, it's my friends I miss when I return to my nest, but I am completely thrilled to be back in my comfort zone where I can totally relax for the time being. It's true, the cliche, "absence makes the heart grow fonder, and also, "familiarity breeds contempt."

3. Grounded by the past. Just like the Roma, I have to remember that I am made up of my past. My mind is filled with thoughts and feelings about things I've learned on this journey, and my cells are filled with the DNA that's been passed down to me from my parents and grandparents and their parents before them. We can't know anything about the future, so it's only by looking at the past that we can gain any sense of continuity or progress and change. I love my past and even though I have some regrets, I don't let them hold me back. If I've learned one thing it's that I will most likely regret NOT trying something new, NOT opening myself up, NOT going through the next door, rather than holding back.

4. Preparing for flight. And that leads me to the final part of my intention for December, taking flight and moving on to something new. I won't be able to engage in that fully until sometime in the new year, but I don't want to keep looking backwards. While I am finishing up so many projects that I've been working on for the last weeks, months, and even years, I am remembering to muse about the future and keep an open mind about where I will find myself this time next year.

Home: Travel

Past: Future

Ground: Flight

Finishing: Beginning

All of these opposites are just like the two sides of the coin that is my life. Another cliche, but also true.

I love how all these images tie together, even if it's "just" my mind, my brain, my attention that makes it work. Coincidence? I don't think so. Setting my intention and giving myself time to muse over it is helping me form a better view of my future. Now I just hope that this weekend I am brave enough to pull all the materials I've collected together and finish my Art of Intention!

Guest Author: Donna Druchunas - My December Intention

My intention for December is FINISHING.

I knew that immediately. But at the same time, my intention is getting ready to start anew in January. I knew I wanted to focus on finishing things this December before I stumbled onto Creative Awakenings in the bookstore, but I thought it was only about finishing, just so I could cross things off my list. But as I've been musing over things and reading through Creative Awakenings I've realized that it's also to release myself so I can feel free to turn off of the current path and follow new interests, to explore the forest.

Where do I really want to go moving forward into 2011 and beyond? Are the projects I've planned the ones that are really the desires of my heart? Am I doing an planning things because I feel I should or because I have a true passion drawing me?

I want to follow my heart more and not over think everything. The writing, it doesn't help so much with that. I've done morning pages and free writing and even mind mapping, but it's always based on words and logic. This visual experiment with Creative Awakenings will help me to trust the faeries to show me the way. Like listening to music or just letting my soul float free. Where will the winds of my soul and my heart and my feelings take me? What does FATE have in store for me if I let go?

Before, I was THINKING of my work as making meaning - there it is again, that word "thinking"! - I found I forced myself to attach some mission, some social value and political direction - to my work. Here's what I wrote as a "mission statement" for 2006:

My purpose will be to help make the world safer and more comfortable for women and minorities. How will I accomplish this?

• By creating things that provide comfort, such as hand-knit items to donate to charity and knitting books that allow others to create comfort, and by continuing to provide free knitting patterns and charity knitting information on this blog.

• By using my writing to advance reason and enlightenment and to oppose fundamentalism and the beliefs that breed hatred, violence, intolerance, and ignorance.

• By valuing--and encouraging others to value--the ideas, creativity, and contributions of women.

• By supporting secular organizations that help women and the glbt community.

• By speaking out whenever I can in private and in public to point out injustice and to defy the censorship that silences those with no political power.

In each of these areas, I will volunteer, work for pay, and develop personal projects. As the new year begins, I hope you will join with me in evaluating your own purpose in life and choosing a path that brings comfort and joy to the world. 

Sounds great, doesn't it? But when I work on my art, when I write an article or knit a hat or play with beads and paints, I don't FEEL a mission. I feel only the love of what I am writing or knitting or painting. I feel the satisfaction of simply creating, and it frees me.

Why do I feel I must have a mission? Because books say I should? Because so many other artists seem to have political motives or causes infusing their work? If that's not me, and it is SO not me, why should I feel pressure to conform to some imagined ideal? I have always said "I will not let my happiness be in someone else's head," but I don't always succeed at achieving that goal. I do things because I think other people want me to. It's OK on a personal level, to do things for friends and loved ones. But on an artistic level, I must allow myself to follow the dandelion seeds floating on the air. Just see where they land, where they want to grow.

A couple of weeks ago, I made an excursion to Michael's and bought a pile of art supplies so I can start my December imagery! In my mind's eye I see:

• Wings
• Nest
• Wool
• Eggs
• Dandelions (weeds or flowers?)

I don't want to forget these images, but I want to process it visually, not with words. So next time I stop by here to give you an update, I should have a dream image to share with you. Here's a collection of materials I've assembled getting ready to visually represent my intention for this month.