Weekly Challenge #7

First of all - a few house keeping items:

• if you haven't seen the slideshow for Week #6 - you can see it here
• Please grab the button for the Weekly Challenge (on the right sidebar) to display on your blogs! 
• and i want to say a very extra special big heart felt thank you to everyone who donated funds last week.  I continue to be amazed by the generosity of spirit of this wonderful community.  HUGS!

I went to a hot yoga class this week with a friend of mine.  I've never been to a Hot Yoga class before - and they're not lying when they say it's hot in there.  They keep the room at a constant 38℃ (that's a balmy 100.4 ℉ for my American friends) and the humidity is high.

I have gone to regular yoga classes before, but nothing as intense as this one.  The poses were tough, and i'm not going to lie, i was pretty sore for the next couple of days.

I took a few things away from the class, but what stuck with me the most was how much i depended on Pranayama, or Yoga Breathing.   When practicing poses in such an intense environment, it's not unusual to feel light headed or hallucinate a bit, or to feel nauseous.  When this happens, we are advised to lay on our mats in Savasana (Dead Man's Pose) and breathe until we feel able to continue.  What surprised me in this class was doing an Active Savasana.

Generally, Savasana is done at the end of a yoga sequence as you prepare to end your practice, and you let your body sink into the mat, your eyes to soften and close and your breathing to become relaxed.

In my Hot Yoga class, in Active Savasana, the eyes are kept open with a soft focus - and you don't allow yourself to relax, just to rest.

With all of this, we practice Sama Vritti Breathing - which translates roughly into Equal Moving.

Each breath is equal and focused.

In our sedentary lives where we spend much of our time hunched over desks or computers, or 'lounging' on the couch, as a race humans generally breathe shallow and light.  I found this to be a real challenge for me as i struggled to find the balance of breath so that i could keep moving through the poses.

Laying there on the mat, breathing, i thought to myself - i really don't take the time to breathe in my life.

Isn't there something about breathing with Zentangle®?

;)

yes.  Yes there is.
 Create a Ceremony - relax, breathe, smile.

(you know where i'm going with this, don't you - you clever folks, you)


This week's Challenge is: BREATHE!

When the Breath wanders, the mind is unsteady, but when the Breath is still, so is the mind still." - Hatha Yoga Pradipika

If you've taken a class with a CZT®, you may have heard this: Relax. Breathe. Smile.

If you've taken any kind of class or seminar from Rick or Maria i KNOW you've heard this before.

i wanted to see where Zentangle would take me if i consciously made the decision to Relax.  To breathe.  To smile.

wanna know what happened??

I struggled.

...did i EVER struggle!  This has been, without a doubt, the most challenging of all my challenges...

...for me.

Trying to remember to make the choice to steady my breath and not worry about the outcome, this was tricky...

but i did it.

Y'know, it's not bad. It was hard - and i really worked at slowing the breath to an even deliberance... and i like the tile, but it didn't really portray the feeling of "breathe" i was trying to capture - so i did another one which i think captured it a little better...

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it - is to create a tile or piece using conscious, even breath. To Relax. Breathe. Smile.

before the small print, a quick note:
A few people have emailed or sent message on facebook or through comments during the week looking for the slideshow.  As the deadline to have your entry in the slideshow is Saturday at midnight, i won't be putting the slideshow up until sometime on Sunday.  I was putting it up halfway through the week, then adding to it as more people joined, but there were 70 images in the last slideshow.  It gets too confusing, so i do it all at once on Sunday.  :)

If you have a blog, add the site-specific URL where your tile is posted to the linkey machine below! Don't forget to link back here so that others can join in the fun! (if you don't know how to find this, you can see my half assed tutorial here)

If you don't have a blog but still want to participate, you can email your tile to me and i will post it here. (See the contact tab above for my email address)

The deadline for each weekly challenge is Saturday night so that i can round everyone up by Sunday. What this means is that i will stop adding tiles to the slideshow on Sunday. You're still more than welcome to do the challenges and add your name to the linkey machine.

I will be more diligent with the linkey machine - by editing out the ones that don't work, the doubles, the links that lead to nowhere, the links that go just to blog home pages (this is why we need those site specific urls), and the spam. And there is some spam. :(

Have a great week everyone!