WEEK TWO: SIGHT

Week Two uses the sense of sight to experience the state of mindfulness. We use our sight in everyday life for almost all of our activities, this way we understand and observe the world, receiving information, either we are of them conscious or unconscious. The practices help us to explore the difference between thinking about a sensation and experiencing it. Many of us spend so much of our time living in our heads that we almost forget about the world experienced directly through our senses.

Mindfulness drawing and painting helps to train our mind so that we can focus your attention directly on your bodily sensations while we do something, without judging or analysing what we do or the final result.

Throughout much of our modern way of living, we tend to forget that we’re breathing. While the breath continues on without our conscious effort or awareness of it, drawing our attention to it can deepen our sense of peace and ease by easing the body’s stress response. Mindful breath awareness and deep breathing practices can help to reduce cortisol levels, one of the body’s primary stress hormones. So it goes without saying that the breath is a powerful tool that is worthy of our fullest attention.

Practice: MINFUL OBSERVATION I

• This exercise is simple but incredibly powerful. It is designed to connect us with our self and our objects as a result of our state of the certain moment of creation. This way we can collect more information about us without using the process of though or feeling, but through observation, a nonverbal mindful living of being.
• Choose one of your final results of the following practices (a drawing or painting) and focus on watching it for a minute or two.
• Don’t do anything except notice the thing you are looking at. Simply relax into a harmony for as long as your concentration allows. Look at it as if you are seeing it for the first time. Visually explore every aspect of its formation. Allow yourself to be consumed by its presence. Allow yourself to connect with its energy and its role and purpose in the world.

Practice: MINDFUL OBSERVATION II

• This exercise is simple but incredibly powerful. It is designed to connect us with the beauty of the natural environment, something that is easily missed when we are rushing around in the car or hopping on and off trains on the way to work.
• Choose a natural object from within your immediate environment and focus on watching it for a minute or two. This could be a flower or an insect, or even the clouds or the moon.
• Don’t do anything except notice the thing you are looking at. Simply relax into a harmony for as long as your concentration allows. Look at it as if you are seeing it for the first time. Visually explore every aspect of its formation. Allow yourself to be consumed by its presence. Allow yourself to connect with its energy and its role and purpose in the natural world.

REFLEXION – WHAT DID YOU NOTICE?

• Describe your general experience during observation
• Are you uncomfortable while observation?
• Why do you think it’s important to spend time doing nothing, and being still?
• In moments of quiet observation, or in meditation, what do you learn?