In addition to teaching art & meditation, I lead a yoga class every morning. On the 3rd Sunday of the month, I combine Drawing Meditation and Satoyama Yoga. Today we created fanciful drawings based on our movement in Sun Salutations and Warrior Flow.
Before sitting to draw today, we visualised our movement as we practiced sun salutations and warrior flow poses. In a typical hatha style yoga class, we focus mainly on reaching and holding the shape of the asana, but what happens if we think about the movement from one pose to another. What track does our head trace, or our hand?
When we sat to draw, we started by tracing out one of those tracks. In the drawing above, I sketched (in blue) my head’s movement in Sun Salutation A. Then we took our shape and turned the paper around until we could see an object, animal, or other figure. We used the movement trace as a framework to embellish with details.
As a second, longer movement-to-drawing exercise, we danced freely for a few moments, then put the sense of that dance onto the page and again, created an object or animal from the result. There were fantastical drawings of animals including fish, turtle, cat, and crow and even a ukulele.
This was a fun class. Bringing a different perspective to the movements we do every morning in class, and stretching our imaginations to create playful figures is a happy way to meditate without trying too hard.
Join me for an upcoming session (September 19, October 17, November 21, and December 19) for a different Drawing Meditation exercise combined with the gentle physical exercise of yoga. Contact me for details and the Zoom link.