| Looking for Stillness in our Lives The world runs at a frenetic pace, especially the online, constantly connected side of our lives. Constant notifications, texts, emails, social media updates. As we learn to live at this new speed it seems even more important to find a balance by being still. Allowing your mind to be still takes practice. Allowing your body to truly rest takes practice. Not a lot of new skills or explanation required, just reminders and practice. The New York Times recently offered a challenge to sit and look at a painting for ten minutes. Don’t do anything else, just look at the painting. What do you discover in the work? What do you see in the strokes? What captured my attention about this article was that it was adapted from an art history lesson where students are asked to study a single painting for three hours, which sounds incredibly hard, but compelling. It feels like our attention spans have been shrinking with the size of our technology. The smaller our devices are, the more convenient they are to carry with us – the more we need them, the less opportunity we have to be distraction free. Constant interruption creates a fight or flight response in our nervous system, and how can we possibly ever relax? I often find when I journal or draw, or during another focused activity that I pause for a moment and capture a bit of stillness, where the silence envelops me like a bubble. Every once in a while during the course of the day, I find myself mesmerized by the wind in the trees, or one of my pets being cute, and I slip into a pause of stillness as I watch, it is almost as if my energy knows I need this pause, and drops it on my like a gift. I find these moments of peace frequently arrive on my busiest days, and welcome them, but as I strive for better balance, I have also started to practice just being still for a moment in my day. It takes a bit of practice to allow myself into these moments and to absorb the stillness they offer me. These still moments in our day are like a breath of fresh air for our minds. |
| A simple practice for stillness Sit quietly for a few moments with all your screens and sounds off. Watch the raindrops fall outside the window, or the flames flicker by the fire. Sit still with yourself physically. Feet flat on the floor, hands gently resting on your legs. Take five minutes, two minutes or one minute to sit gently. Start small, even if it isn’t long, its a start. Close your eyes or focus on the distance and just sit. Breathe and be still. Sit still with your mind. When your mind wanders, bring it back quietly reminding yourself that you are still. Breathe evenly. It is a practice to be still for even a moment when you are used to constant stimulation. |
Connect your breath to your line…
Practice focus with this simple Line Meditation
If you have taken one of my classes, you will recall the emphasis I place on breathing with your tangling. In class we find focus practicing with how the cadence of our breath relates to the pen and paper before us.
Perhaps you are practicing The Zentangle Method from online resources or books, where this relationship of the focus-relaxation-breath and tangling is often missing, or glossed over in favor of lovely pictures and discussion about how to make beautiful art.
Finding an activity to completely focus on is very beneficial. I find it allows me to forget my worries a little bit and gives my spinning thoughts a little rest. It does not have to be a complicated task – but it might take a little practice.
Try this simple line meditation to see how you can use your pen as a tool to bring focus to your day. It is one of the simplest strokes you can do – just a line. It can be straightish or a little wobbly, the beauty is in the time and focus this practice can bring.
LINE MEDITATION HOW TO:
- Create some shapes on your paper like the square outlines above
- Take a deep breath in
- Pick one shape and draw a line from top to bottom
- Draw your line as you slowly exhale
- Pause
- Take a deep breath and move your pen to the top of the page again
- Continue filling the spaces as you work, one line at a time
- Focus on your pen and the paper
- Draw your line as you slowly exhale
In a Line Meditation, there is no back and forth scribbling. You draw a line from the top of the page to the bottom.
If you scribble back and forth, you are activating a sort of aggravating action – think about other times when you scribble – you are frustrated, or you want to cross something out. Often your pressure is really hard with a scribble. This is not that.
This is a methodical way to practice with your pen and paper – to bring the focus to your page. Draw a line, then pick up your pen go back to the top, and begin again.
As you practice this cadence and focus you may be able to use this simple exercise to take a little breather and clear your head of swirling thoughts a bit.
Line Meditation with Trees.
Finding focus with your line.
I began “collecting” trees in my journals after taking a class on forestry stewardship in order to increase my knowledge of the forest around me. I had never really looked at the rings of trees as storytellers until I became fascinated with some fallen trees and began to learn how to read them. As my knowledge grows, so does the wonder of the secrets the forests hold. I could spend hours in the forest looking at the details of life, growth and decay with my sketchbook in hand.
From these sketch breaks came the inspiration to bring the growth back to my studio where I added watercolor and soon found myself in the trance of line meditations, forming my string (in Zentangle terms) from the shapes of the trees fallen in our woods.
Combining the wisdom I found in the forest, and many of the principles of the Zentangle Method, I soon found myself engaged in a regular exercise of line meditations with the trees.
Upcoming classes incorporating this practice and working lessons are coming soon.
The Misfit Tile Project
When working on a recent TanglePod episode, where we talk about Winter Tangles, I went through my stash of tiles (hundreds of them!). They go back to 2013, when I received my first book and supplies as an introduction to Zentangle. Those first few tiles were really shaky, but I can tell by the notes on the back that I was enjoying the process!
While going through the tiles, I started popping out any unfinished tiles into their own little pile, I don’t know why but they seemed to need their own space. By the time I was finished, I had 83 tiles of various shapes and sizes. Since then as I jump start spring cleaning I have found even more! Some are on the lovely Zentangle 3.5” Fabriano paper, some are cardstock. Most are white but some are buff. A few have watercolor, wine or coffee gracing the background.
That I had this many unfinished tiles surprised me. I felt like I had landed on the Island of Misfit toys like in the Rudolph cartoon. Some of them are just missing shading, some of them look more like scratch paper than a tile. A few look like a tile I was using to demonstrate to a student. More than one look like perhaps I was frustrated and so set it aside. All of the tiles are unsigned, and not dated on the back – which I pretty much always do. With this growing pile, my Misfit Tile project was born.
All these unloved, unfinished tiles are now nestled together in a little box, waiting to be finished up. They are tucked in there with a pencil, and green pens. Green Pens?! I decided that I want to remember the original, and be able to see where the new growth on the tiles is placed – so I chose a green Micron 05, and a green/gold Gelly Roll, and a lime green Stabilo fine 0.4. It is fun to be able to see the original within the completed composition.
We will be talking about this project on an upcoming TanglePod episode – and I hope you will join us in dusting off your unfinished tiles, finding a new way to enhance them and enjoy your tangling practice.
Back to the Basics
Lately I have been playing with some of the tangles that show up in a lot of introductory classes, and are great foundations for learning the practice of the Zentangle Method.
It is really fun to revisit the same tangles in new ways, and I love making a mosaic that spans time, experiences, moods and locations. It is like my own little set of historical markers.
You can see how much variety there is to be had with just a few tangles, I could easily and always entertain myself, find focus and relaxation by just using these tangles.
What’s old is new again!
If you are old enough to remember using floppy disks and their younger cousin’s diskettes – you may have the perfect tangling container laying in the back of your closet!
Not only are tiles exactly the same size as the little plastic diskettes we used to use, but Zendalas are the same size as CD’s! So your old diskette organizer, and CD pockets can be perfectly upcycled to hold your Zentangle tiles.
The Bittersweet: End of a Journal
It is quite a milestone to complete a journal – this one is almost done, and I am a little bittersweet about having it be complete. It has been with me for nearly a year – creating a bit of panic!
Do I rush to finish the last 7 pages as the one-year anniversary of starting it nears? Do I let it take its natural course to completion whenever that comes. It has travelled with me through a number of adventures, and I am excited for fresh new pages. I will feel a bit lost not having all of the references it holds with me constantly, but the fresh pages of a new journal always hold so much potential…
The Unexpected Doo-Dah
While tangling in a local tea shop – I started playing with Doo-Dah and ended up with some unexpected results. My first few strokes went a little wonky, not quite a straight line and since I was using a the pretty fine Micron 01 pen, it called for a fairly delicate little horizontal line.
I have also been experimenting with adding a little weight to the corners of line intersections, so the resulting doo dah looked a little curvy, which was fun. I drew a second doo-dah next to it, and suddenly I saw a forest emerging from these basic strokes. I lost myself for the whole length of my tea latte on that cold day and was happy to have my watercolor with me to add further interest.
If you have never tried doo-dah, here is the more traditional way it is approached. But it is certainly a tangle that has a lot of potential for play!
A little MARASU Meditation
In a recent class, the students were stumped on the tangle MARASU, and so we started at the beginning a few times, and reconsidered how to approach the tangle to make it click. Every tangler has a different feel for tangles, what works for them, what frustrates them. Some tangles you can fall into, and some you never want to try again.
With so many patterns in the world, and so many that have been deconstructed into tangle step outs – there is no reason to spend time on the ones that are a frustration. Let it go and move on to a tangle that suits you today, in this moment.
Tangle with Breath and Focus Day 6
I hope you are having fun with TanglePod’s 31 days of breath and focus. Yesterday was one of my favorite tangles (did you hear my enthusiasm in the podcast?!) but I find as I edit the podcasts and get them scheduled that I say so many are my favorites! It really does depend on the day, what tangle I can fall into.
Teaching a class yesterday, the students fell into BUNZO (see step out below) and were mesmerized with it for nearly an hour. That is how tangling goes sometimes, and that is what is so wonderful about the artform.
Today’s TanglePod episode is Knase – which is has so many ways to play with it. I hope you are able to find a few moments to do so!
The rocking motion of BUNZO makes it especially easy to fall into.
