This session proved to be a very frustrating lesson for us all.

Technology really impended our ability to connect. We’d actually had a really smooth run up until now. I could see and hear Ms. Kyle and the children but they couldn’t see or hear me. I must admit the experience was both frustrating and upsetting as I fely much arise for me around ‘letting everyone down’. It was a slightly surreal experience and brought up much feeling around…. really wanting to be present in person with Leanne and the children. I felt the restrictions of this particular medium and the virtual space between us.

So we worked separately and at the end of the day we sent each other WhatsApp voice messages.

We continued to work with our attention to ‘hands’.

Looking,

listening,

tasting,

smelling,

touching,

moving,

drawing,

placing,

dancing,

gathering.

Creating and building layers.

My attention is with, ‘how are we promoting positive experiences with our own bodies and with the natural world outside?’

Through our layered creative process, how are we all developing an ‘interest, sense of care, love’ for our own body as a place and our own place (the environment around us)?

Then I receive Leanne’s photographs of the children’s work today.

Acknowledging my absence in the session today was difficult for me.

I recognise the beauty, details and sense of care in the children’s art work today.

Response time: I feel moved by their work to go outside – listen, see, touch, sense and taste.

I visit Dzogchen Beara, a Buddhist retreat centre in West Cork and attend an ‘Exploring the Senses though Meditation’ retreat (www.dzogchenbeara.org)

I wish to learn more and experience other ways of ‘being’ through my own senses. This feels important for me.

Here are some images of my time at the retreat.

From Lisa’s personal journal,

‘Knowing and sensing the place I’m in and the world around me. 

Fullness of internal place.

Fullness of external place.’

A final word for now –

Interrelatedness.