CAPTURING THE IMAGINATION

“Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world awaits.  A world lives within you.  No one else can bring you news of this inner world.  Through our voices, we bring out sounds from the mountains beneath the soul.  These sounds are words.  The world is full of words.  There are so many talking all the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on TV, on radio, in the paper, in books.  The noise of words keeps what we call the world there for us.  We take each other’s sounds and make patterns, predictions, benedictions and blasphemies.  Each day our use of language holds what we call ‘the world’ together.  Yet the uttering of the word reveals how each of us relentlessly creates.  Everyone is an artist.  Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.” – John O’Donohue from Anam Cara

It is a cliché to say a picture paints a thousand words, and oversimplified at that, however, there is truth in the statement, and particularly when it comes to photography.  In this creative and interactive workshop we explore the photograph, not as window, but as mirror; not as document, but as highly persuasive text; as a convincing language which employs the eloquence of rhetoric with the seduction of realism and the allure of aesthetics.

The medium is particularly suited to an investigation of identity.  We look through the ‘window’ of images to validate the existence of an external world; towards a concrete and linear reality in which tradition and fixed views offer both threat and comfort; where everything that affects us happens ‘out there.’  Throughout this process we unconsciously  imagine ourselves in relation to the reality proffered for our perusal, sculpting narrowly defined identities as we succinctly and ‘silently’ dialogue with the barrage of imagery in our environment.  Mistaking ourselves for the wraiths we come to experience ourselves as through repetitive exposure to a limited selection of symbols, we inadvertently “sacrifice Self for self image,” abandoning our inner power as we fail to ‘listen’ to our essential, eternal, and infinite being.

“I have arrived, I am home, I am solid, I am free.” – Thich Nhat Hahn

The age old arts of Infinite Chi Kung and Tai Chi provide the means for us to re-connect with our intangible, yet felt sense, of True Self.  These internal martial arts foster a nourishing of the deprived inner being, allowing the enlargement of the silent space lost in the noisy connection of the consumer experience.  Re-experiencing ourselves through the beauty of moving meditation, we find the supportive solidity of our Real Presence, always there, waiting for our re-cognition.

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” – Antoine De Saint Exupery.

For workshop details please go to WORKSHOPS page.

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