Saturday’s retreat was a rousing success. Four people participated in a day of creativity, nature, and enjoying one another’s company.
I was delighted to meet two new faces from Tokyo and to welcome two old friends to my dining room turned classroom. Everyone got on so nicely that it was hard to interrupt the conversation to get started on the workshop. But I did.
We began with a simple relaxation exercise that focussed attention with a repetitive task – drawing lot of lines – to reach a state of calm.
I do this one frequently for my own mental well-being. In fact, I sometimes have a piece going on my desk for a week or more. I’ll add to it when I need a moment to think or refocus my attention. The nice thing about this exercise is that it’s never really finished. You can stop and start at any point, which was good for the retreat, since we had a lunch date at the nearby cafe.
Our meal at Gombei was delicious and we had animated conversations as we enjoyed the food, all grown and prepared by my neighbors and members of the Oyama Senmaida NPO. Everyone was interested in the history of local cheese and Indian gods in Japan.
We left Gombei and took a walk up to Oyama-ji to meet Fudou, the Japanese incarnation of Shiva. Along the way we admired the thatched house (it’s on the market for only 290,000,000 yen) and got some exercise on the steep stairs up to the temple. Tod kindly dropped our car at the temple so we could drive back afterwards, saving us some time for more drawing meditations.
Our second Drawing Meditation exercise involved layering colors using watercolor paint. Watercolor is a little bit messy and wonderfully unpredictable. It’s an experience that requires releasing expectations and accepting whatever happens.
I have written up both of these exercises in detail on the Drawing Meditations website, so if you want to try them yourself or get links to the materials we used, or find out more in general, please go check that out.
And if you want to join a future retreat, I am planning to run them seasonally, with the next one being during Golden Week, then again in August and in November.
