27 - eavesdrop on yourself

I'm sure I've spent plenty of time thinking about the past or what's yet to come, rather than actually just listening to what's around in the moment.

This practice encourages a shift of attention from thinking to just listening, even if it does just seem like jabber!

Before you start, make sure there are no distractions... that's important.

Use an A4 piece of scrap paper or a cheap writing pad you don't mind messing up, the main thing is not to get precious about it.

Wait as long as you need to for any words, sentences or phrases to come to mind, it may take a while to notice them, don't rush it. When they come into your head just copy the words down onto paper. 

Close your eyes if you need to, just start writing the first things that come in to your head and keep going. 

It's important that you don't plan forward, just stay with that moment and don't stop to think. 

If you can't think of anything, then just write that down too "my mind is blank, I can't think of anything-- until something emerges and allow that thought to lead wherever it will.

Don’t censor, edit, check back on correct spelling or correct words or grammar. Ignore the sentence structure.

This technique produces a rawness that helps switch off that left analytical brain and it's naggy old self-criticism.

You'll find if you just let go a little, your subconscious will take over giving you all sorts of insights and probably a good laugh too. Hey, let yourself go, why not write on the side of your house?

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves. Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.
(Lewis Carroll -  Jabberwocky)

If we can be fully present in our practice we will naturally find an overflowing of a deeper more alive presence in our every day life. We open to a deeper dimension of ourselves."Ultimately there is no longer a subject who sees nor an object which is seen. There is only oneness.."
Dr Jean Klein (European doctor & prominent KASHMIRI YOGA teacher) 

The Mungle pilgriffs far awoy. Religeorge too thee worled.
Sam fells on the waysock-side. And somforbe on a gurled,
With all her faulty bagnose!

(John Lennon -  "The Faulty Bagnose")

26 - self portrait

Find as many ways as you can to illustrate how you see yourself. 

Start with the most obvious - your appearance and how you like to project yourself through things like your shoes or your hair. 

Photographs are a good tool to begin with, as they are most literal.

Gradually become more detailed and specific, notice patterns that start to develop. 

Move past the obvious external aspects and start to come to a more subtle place. Your traits and interests.

Become more abstract still by using sketches and collage. Keep going through the layes of "youness", see where it takes you?

“Your self image is your pattern!. Every thought has an activity visualised. Every activity belongs to a pattern. You identify with your pattern or thought. Your patterns lead your life.”

J. G. Gallimore

25 - time contrast

Next time you're in your local high street, look up! The contrast between the modern shops and the buildings they've evolved from is often astounding. It gives a real visual representation of the passing of time and 

24 - drawing music

Music has a way of freeing emotions with its rhythms, vibrations, and beats. 

Dim the lights right down, put on a piece of music that you know moves you in a particular way.

Just listen for a while and then when you feel ready, without looking down, let your response to the music move down your hand and into the pen through to the blankness of the paper. 

Hold the pen loosely and let it move as around as it wants to. Move with the pace, tempo and style of the music and don't be tempted to make your scribble 'into' anything.

Take on the idea that you're a witness of what your hand is doing rather than its controller.

Open to the idea of not drawing to music, rather drawing the music itself. It doesn't matter what the end result is on your paper, don't think about it in fact don't look down.

 Not trying to make any forms or shape, just responding and following the pace, tempo and pitch.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. 

Plato 

23 - what is interesting?

What's more interesting, a Paris skyline or a dirty window?

I would have unquestioningly said the former but on a recent visit to the Pompidou centre, my mind stimulated and frankly mixed up. I found myself unnervingly attracted to the latter.

It's dust and scratches shimmering in the light and creating textures and patterns of infinite variety.

The thought came to me that there is of course no difference in it's interestingness.

Take a walk from here to the end of your road and look down as you do. 

See if you can find at least 10 objects along the way that catch your eye, to photograph.

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

(Elliott Erwitt advertising and documentary photographer known for black and white candid shots of absurd and everyday settings )

22 - get lost in colour

Investigate the effect of color on your behavior and feelings.

Take yourself off for a walk, a slow walk. Pick a colour and focus on it all around you while you do. 

Take your camera along and capture the colour in as many shades from as many sources as you can.

Cool colors can evoke both calm and sadness. Depending on the intensity. 

Peaceful, dependable, cool blue is the most popular color, it can still the mind or feel cold and unfriendly depending on your mood?

Red can feel Passionate and provocative but also aggressive. It can be cozy or mean danger, commanding us to stop in traffic or just stamping it's foot and demanding attention.

Just notice how your chosen colour makes you feel?

“Speed kills colour... the gyroscope, when turning at full speed, shows up gray.”

(Paul Morand novelist, poet and early Modernist)

"Colour is the key. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many chords. The artist is the hand that, by touching this or that key, sets the soul vibrating automatically."

(French Expressionist Painter, 1866-1944).

21 - Continuous line

Synchronise the movement of your eye with the movement of your pencil. Move slowly and steadily.

From the start of the drawing to the end don’t let your pencil leave the paper.

Be aware of the thread and fluidity, the connectedness of each aspect of the image you’re creating. The tying together of it all, as if the drawing was being fashioned with wire. Let it overlap itself as your pencil weaves around the page.

When One tugs at a single thing in Nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

John Muir (1838 - 1914 Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and conservationists.

20 - bury your watch

Just for one day in your life refuse to be a slave to time. Bury your watch in your sock drawer and turn your clocks around.

The world won't come to an end just because your not ticking away, your day may even seem a lot longer.

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. 

William Faulkner (1897 –1962 Nobel Prize-winning author, poet and screenwriter).

19 - express yourself

On a recent trip to Amsterdam. I was struck by how much self expression was put into peoples highly individualised bikes. I myself can't drive and my bike takes me everywhere but I've never considered customising it or really enhancing it in any way in particular. I guess the point here is that, in Amsterdam, bike theft is an everyday thing and a good proportion of inhabitants wouldn't consider leaving a new or expensive one lying around. Whilst it's easy to get precious about something perfect, an old rusty bike is a blank canvas, calling out to be embellished. Your personality is bound to be infused in the result. Take something you're thinking of throwing out anyway and see if you can make something quite lovely out of it?

Expression of one's own personality, feelings, or ideas, as through speech or art: "Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment" (Pearl S. Buck)

18 - take note

This is more about observing and capturing a thought or a moment, than impressing yourself. 

I like to use a cheap unruled notebook. The cheaper the better. 

I steer clear of moleskin and the like, It'll only make me care too much. 

Interestingly, I also find it stops me hoarding. If I have a record of something, I don't necessarily need to keep hold of it.

“Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. . . . Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.”

 William Osler (1849-1919 Physician, described as the Father of Modern Medicine, pathologist, educator, historian and author)

17 - set yourself to macro

On a walk home along London's South Bank with my camera, on an uncomfortably cold Feb' day. I started to notice I was thinking about where I wanted to get to, rather than where I actually was. 

I'd become so familiar with the scene that I hardly noticed it at all. My companion said that this was why she loved to travel to far away places, because England was "just too familiar!"

I could obviously see her point, as was told in the way I was marching off towards my tube station but it didn't feel quite right!

I walked the long way back to my train station rather than getting the tube and decided to look out  through my lens. Once my camera was set on macro a much less familiar place opened up to me. 

It opened the idea to me that when I get into that way of thinking, I can always set myself on macro and view a new world of detail, colour and shape and texture... a lot cheaper than flying to Thailand!

“We think in generalities, but we live in detail”

 Alfred North Whitehead (British Mathematician and Philosopher, 1861-1947)

16 - sit there

I'm quite sure that I've spend as much time thinking about life as just experiencing it. I'm becoming increasingly aware however that when I do have a change attention from thinking to just plain being there, I  feel a lot happier and generally more connected, time slows down and it all feels less like hopping on and off a fast train. There's room to breath and notice and enjoy a simple moment of not very much happening.

“Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.”

J. Donald Walters - (Yogi, author of over 100 books and the composer of over 400 pieces of music, speaks Italian, Romanian, Greek, French, Spanish, German, Hindi, Bengali, and Indonesian)

Don't just do something - sit there!  

Author Unknown

15 - your doorstep

What inspires me about my own culture...

Well humour is something I really appreciate about where I live. It's used to establish a good atmosphere, to bridge differences, introduce odd ideas and to show appreciation or contempt. 

I like it that the British joke about everything... the queen, politics, religion but most importantly ourselves! 

Understatement too is a brilliant thing... "Not bad" actually meaning "very good" and "not bad at all" being the highest praise.

There's also nothing like a nice cup of tea!

“A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations.”

 Russell Page (British landscape architect) 

14 - ugly beauty

Quite a few beautiful things, are really pretty horrid, and many ugly things are quite good in one way or another. 

Insect-eating plants are uniquely beautiful and captivate the eye of all who behold. 

Each produces shimmering leaves lined with glistening droplets of glue that attract, trap and kill insects and other small animals in a fairly ghastly way. 

During a walk in the park, I found myself turning away from the perfect blueness of the sky and became transfixed by the marbling of scum on a dirty pond. It lead me to question which was the most beautiful, at that moment, I had to admit the scum was strangely and surprisingly more captivating.

“It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds.

Swami Vivekananda (influential spiritual leader of the philosophies of Yoga and Vedanta 1863-1902)

13 - celebrate pegs

Take time to notice the simple and ordinary. Wander around your house or street with a cheap camera. Don't bother about taking clear or precise shots, just notice what's all around you in the raw. The blander the better, a sock drawer or a peg on a washing line.

As you get drawn into the minutiae of it, you'll begin to notice it's actually quite intriguing.

I've become unaccountably enchanted by pegs and buttons.

“The greatest discoveries have come from people who have looked at a standard situation and seen it differently.”

 Ira Erwin

12 - investigate aversion

For me music has an instant way of bringing underlying aversions to the fore - maudlin music, for instance takes my mood down to a place I instinctively and fervently try to avoid. 

A friend suggested I try doodling whilst listening to the very music I'd normally avoid, using it as a kind of soundtrack or prompter for the pencil. 

The result was fascinating and what's more, when my chattering mind stopped complaining and busied itself elsewhere, I found the emotions it brought out were a lot less bothersome than I'd first imagined and made the doodle a kind of visual representation of my emotions... quite a cathartic thing!

Unexpectedly, I also developed an unaccountable fondness for brass bands!

“The senses have been conditioned by attraction to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant: a man should not be ruled by them; they are obstacles in his path.”

Bhagavad Gita (Composed between the 5th and the 2nd century BC)

11 - a special place

Set aside a special place, even if it's a tiny area of the house. Two of my most inspiring places are in fact my under stairs cupboard in the winter and my garden shed in the summer. Both places close off distractions and help me single pointedly focus. I suspect a big cardboard box would do pretty well!

10 - jumbled words

Takes a finished draft of something you've written or something existing in an old book and cut it up with scissors. The cutting can be of paragraph, sentence, phrase, or word by word, or a combination of all of these. 

After cutting up the writing, stick the pieces back together, experimenting with different ways of organising the paper until you feel most happy with it. (Magnetic words are good to use too if you have them).

Making serious sentences into silly, witty, whimsical or Nonsensical verse is very freeing and is very good if you're feeling uninspired.

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.”

 A. A. Milne (English Humorist, creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, 1882-1956)

9 - question function

It's an interesting question - how we define objects by their function? 

We’ve given them all these different names but what if somehow, one day we forgot what they were called, would we start to look past their limitations?

If on the other hand we start to recognize that what we see and understand is simply one view of what is, we have the start of an awakening and an expanding of our view of the world. 

Have a good throw out of any clutter, it'll clear your mind and you'll find all sorts of funny little doodahs you don't want to throw away. Well keep hold of the bit's that intrigue you and put them in a little box. then think about recycling them into something completely different!

I became quite attracted to the colour and textures of carrier bags and decided to heat fuse them into a rather natty bracelet and a poor man's stained glass window!

I really look at my childhood as being one giant rusty tuna can that I continue to recycle in many different shapes. 

Augusten Xon Burroughs (writer - New York Times bestselling memoir Running with Scissors (2002)

8 - get lost in a zentangle

Zentangles are a way of creating images from repetitive patterns, a process of doodling that brings about a meditative state. This is the meditative state in drawing that is needed to tap into your best creative energies. It increases creative freedom and creates a shift in focus and perspective. Because you have no idea what its result will be when you begin it's not restricted by your expectations and can be quite profound creative meditation.
To relax and intentionally direct your attention while creating something quite beautiful is an uplifting experience. I find it an excellent starting point for any creative undertaking.

"Any mind activity is much more likely to be beneficial and to be creative if it's preceded by presence and stillness."

Eckhart Tolle (author of The Power of Now)

“In deep meditation the flow of concentration is continuous like the flow of oil.”

Patanjali (150 BCE - compiler of the Yoga Sutras)