Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Passion feeds Passion

I am in love with yoga. I am in love with weaving.  In addition of course, to being in love with my husband, my family, my home, the sky at sunset, and a husky dog.  Such an abundance of love!

Recently however, I've felt a distinct imbalance between the yoga and the weaving.  I have been teaching yoga 2+ times a week, and finding time for my own practice in addition.  The last time I sat down at my loom was....  well.  It was a long time ago.  It is not just that my studio lies beyond the curtains hung to keep heat in the central living area of the house.  Part is habit.  Some is true time constraints, and priorities.  I have more energy for everything when I practice.  But the balance has been off, and I've started to keenly feel it.  I go through my day, and see inspiration for weaving (or for art quilting - that postcard project totally gave me the bug for art quilting!) in the mundane and in the sublime.  I see it more clearly if I've spent time on my mat or meditated.  But I've not been sitting down at the loom. 

A month or more ago now, I took a Yin yoga workshop with a visiting teacher.  It was amazing all around; she led us in a sankalpa practice: the practice of setting intention or resolve.  We were in a meditative state, and were led to allow the intention to arise from the heart of its own volition.  Then we were to repeat it to ourselves with clarity in the present tense.  So instead of "I intend to be happy" - "I am happy."  My sankalpa was "I am an artist." I've known myself as an artist for years, but as I have moved away from engaging in the creation of theatre art, I have not fully moved into engaging in the creation of fiber art.  My sankalpa is for that to change.  My yoga practice takes time and dedication of its own, but feeds the artist's soul and supports the artist's eye and heart. It fertilizes creativity.  But.  One has to sit down at the loom.

This past week, I've been filling in for a fellow teacher who has been out of town, and have taught a bunch of extra classes.  The next yoga paycheck, along with the one already sitting in my wallet, amounts to a chunk of change.  I realized the other day, that I could use the proceeds of the one passion to literally feed the other.  And so it is that in a week or so, I will be ordering a slew of beautiful colors of cotton to turn into colorways that speak of sky, mountains, and woods.  And I will weave shawls.

I hope to have a First Friday art show of meditation shawls (which can do dual duty as lovely scarves) at my yoga studio.  Assuming any of them sell, I intend to roll that back into either more yarn or into more yoga training.  Only time will tell.

But I think this mixture, this commitment to support between aspects of my creative self, will be both fertile and healing.

Expect lots of mediocre photographs of really pretty yarn!

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