Tροποποιημένα βιβλία (altered books) και εικαστικά ημερολόγια

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Scan489Scan488Mindfulness practice… a voice of my own

I’d like to share an experience that occurred during my mindfulness practice today. A not that long ago memory surfaced out of the blue, something that I had not really thought about for a long time, and also something that I had not registered in my conscious mind as that significant at the time it had occurred. So, about nine years ago after I had published my little book ‘Let me be’ I had been thinking of trying to exhibit the original artwork and other drawings, and one way of going about it was to visit some of the art galleries that I had visited in the past and ask. On such one occasion while I was visiting a small art gallery in the centre of Athens – specifically, the artist exhibiting her artwork was Christina Kalbari – I asked about the possibility of my presenting some of my work and was given the phone number of the owner. A little while later as I was walking down the stairs to exit the gallery I heard people shouting outside and as I opened the door to exit I was shocked to see a man holding a gun, a meter away from me, and two policemen trying to sort of convince him to hand his weapon over. The whole scene was surreal; I mean this was a sunny morning in Athens, not a scene from some film, and here I was waiting for this man to hand over his gun so that I could leave. It shook me a bit, but I shook it off and went on to the next thing, and interestingly, I forgot all about phoning the owner of the gallery. During my meditation today the sensations held in my body from that day surfaced along with a string of memories of times when as a child, teenager, but also later in adulthood, my expression or voice had been discouraged or oppressed through debilitating stories or severe punishment (Tonya Alexandri, 2017).

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Tροποποιημένα βιβλία (altered books) και εικαστικά ημερολόγια

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The Big Picture

‘Illness and disease do not appear overnight. They develop over time. Yet our health care system is not set up to accommodate this obvious fact. We pool together a pattern of symptoms, put a name on it, and call it a disease. Then, a one-size fits-all protocol is applied. When you come in with breathing problems and get a diagnosis of asthma, you get a prescription for an inhaler to help you breathe better. But what about the answers to questions “Why did I develop asthma?” or “What do I do to reduce my need for the medication?” It is the equivalent of focusing on and treating the exhaust pipe when your car begins spewing black smoke. Of course we want to feel better and need our symptoms addressed. But the bigger picture – the accumulation of all the small events that have occurred – facilitates the understanding of where the disease has come from.

Our symptoms and our current state of health are an accumulation of actions, events, and environmental influences that have taken place over the course of our entire lives. Events in our distant past, even our childhood years, may provide clues to solving the puzzle and identifying the root cause. Even events that occurred at or before birth, influenced by your mother’s health years before you were born, may play a role. Scientists are discovering that our genes and the way they are expressed are influenced by what our ancestors may have experienced several generations ago. In fact, this discovery has spawned a whole new scientific discipline – epigenetics – to understand how our nutrition, lifestyle, environment, and events in our daily life influence gene expression. Imagine that somehow last winter your small backyard garden had a spill of 10 gallons of gasoline, and you didn’t know about it. In the spring your seedlings do not take root and grow, leaving you wondering “What’s wrong with these seedlings?” That’s why a “Big Picture” history is so important‘ (Tom O’Bryan from http://livingmatrix.com/betrayal-the-series)

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