Mandala Mindfulness
Last week I went along with my gorgeous cousin Sal to a Mandala workshop. And it was awesome. So I'm going to tell you about it.
If you don't know, the word Mandala in Sanskrit literally means 'circle'. It is representative of the universe. So the basics are it is generally (but doesn't have to be) a circle and it has a mid-point, a centre, which we will come back to a little later.
So, this particular workshop was located in Saint Kilda at the Linden Art Gallery. They are run by a young woman named Stephanie, who oozes calm and radiates creativity. We sat down on a Saturday morning at a long table with about 20 people all up, mostly women.
Stephanie began by telling us to think of something that was bothering us at that moment, write it down and put it in an envelope in front of us. She then mentioned that that worry was not likely to bother us by the end of the session. Then we began out drawing.
We each started out with a square piece of paper divided into four quarters, at the centre of which was the mid-point that we would be focusing on. She explained that throughout the process, if we were ever stuck, we should simply come back to our centre and inspiration would most likely come. Around us were many grey led pencils and varying widths of fine liners and pens. There was also a colour station filled with bright colours textas and gel pens for out use. We also each had a compass.
We began by placing the pin of the compass at the centre of the page and drawing a circle. Then we began to see other mid points and began drawing circles from there. Each person used a different circle width and drew a different amount of circles, but that was the basis we had to work from. From there, all you had to do was let your creativity flow. We erased lines to discover new patterns and drew new ones to create different ones. Some people's were small and intricate, others were large and bold. Each mandala was incredibly unique and utterly mesmerising. Literally no art talent was required and each one was so beautiful.
The best part about this experience was when the two hours came to an end, we couldn't believe how quickly the time had gone. It was an excellent mindfulness experience. We were able to focus solely on the task at hand for a solid two hours and come out of it with a beautiful piece of artwork!
I will definitely be trying this one at home, and I'd definitely recommend going to one of Stephanie's workshops!
The class cost $35, you can hop on over to stephaniejuneellis.com for more info.
Let me know if you want to know more about this great for of mindfulness!
Namaste x
Images from stephaniejuneellis.com
