Archive for 2012

  • The Forty Day Challenge

    Intention & commitment.

    I taught a yoga class for the addictive Personality today at Alchemy on this topic and it was potent and powerful.

    I talked about seeing an intention all the way through, the duality of the word: that it can be a desire in the future “I intend to ……” but that it can also be that you empower posture, yourself, ambition and desire with intention and in this aspect it is a very life changing experience.

    I invited the class to join me in my intention to generate change and create structure in their life by committing to a 40 personal practice.  I did not count hands but I think most of the class were with me and I took them through the daily routine.

    The intended intention behind the 3 postures is to build grit, heat in the body, creativity, projection, will and strength. It may sound like a tall order but I know from previous commitments to this practice for 40 days I have achieved all that I set out to do and more.

    So join us. Starting tomorrow, for 40 days, ending on June 4th, find a quiet time that you can give 7 minutes to yourself.

    Lie on a mat or folded blanket. Wear loose comfortable clothing. Eat after, not before.

    10 sit ups. Knees are bent, feet on the floor, fingers at your temples so you don’t pull the neck. Inhale up, exhale back 10 times.

    Take a few deep breaths.

    10 leg raises. Head up off the floor to keep the lower back strong, fingers on temples, raise legs on the inhale, slowly, and lower on the exhale, slowly. Do not let the feet touch the floor in between.

    Take a few deep breaths.

    10 sit ups as before.

    Take a few deep breaths.

    10 leg raises but this time head up, arms out wide and as you raise the legs your arms come up to touch your toes and open back out again on the floor as you exhale and lower the legs.

    Take a few deep breaths.

    10 sit ups as before.

    Take a few deep breaths.

    10 leg raises, keep the head up, and this time as the  legs raise up keep going up and lift the pelvis up as high as you can off the floor towards the ceiling. Exhale and lower pelvis and legs.

    Take a few deep breaths.

    Now turn over and do, or aim for and build up over the days, 10 press ups with only the hands and toes on the floor. If this is impossible do from the knees, keeping the body straight and making sure the elbows go back, not out.

    Take a few deep breaths.

    10 more press ups.

    Sit back on your heels, close your eyes and slow the breath down, feel the heat and energy in the body and visualise what you want to project, create, change and manifest.

    You will build strength very fast. Take your time, make a set time each day and let me know how you are doing! I want to know how it feels, what changes.

     

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  • On Swearing…..

    I am an unabashed feminist, a single parent, recently divorced, ex-drug addict and ex alcoholic…. Swearing is part of the programme, or at least it has been for me for a long time. I can honestly say that given the last few years’ experiences, swearing felt completely justified.

    I have done so much work to stay centred, present, focused, de-stressed, calm and aware, yet swearing has just been one of those things that I gave myself permission to do.

    I do not judge myself for it and my children who are used to it, do not judge me either, and rarely swear themselves unless “fucking arsehole” is completely appropriate to the situation.

    I had no reason to think about it until recently. A fundamentalist yogi was staying with me and with a sneer, commented on my “nasty little habit” and then a friend mentioned it twice within a two week period.

    These moments made me stop and think about it. Attempts to have an intellectual conversation about swearing with several friends were thwarted by judgements and the main thrust of why I wanted the conversation was lost in the melee of me trying to say I did not need the judgement, nor was I interested in their thoughts in my verbals, I just wanted a dialogue about swearing…. What it meant, why not, why, etc.

     

    So I sat back and thought about it for myself. After a few days of mulling I decided to try life without swearing. No fanfare, no Lent-based support of Christ in the wilderness, just a casual attempt to see what it would be like to manage my vocabulary along with no drugs, alcohol, sugar, wheat, cigarettes, caffeine….

    At first I was surprised by how much of my swearing was unconscious. I could put a gate in front of most of my swearing, but there was a surprising amount that I did not notice until it had galloped out, and I am happy to say that I can put my hand up and say that I am the queen of alliterated swearing. The amount that escaped before I had even noticed was quite extraordinary. So the next learning curve was to stop that happening.

    Two weeks in and I am astonished. I am. I have reduced my swearing by 95% and find that my stress levels have also plummeted… So my expulsion of expletives was expanding my experience of what drove me to explete in the first place. A new verb: I explete… No longer.

    Well,  just 5%……. Must try harder. I will report back when I get to 100% no swearing. I am currently looking into Elizabethan expletives. Some are hilarious. If I sound out of time and place, you will know why….

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  • Workshop & Events Schedule 2012

    Core Abdominals & Deep Meditation

    Sunday 27th May 10am-1pm at Alchemy Studios, London

    A workshop on strengthening the core abdominal muscles and then using this energy to go into powerful, life transforming meditation. 

    Three hours of posture and meditation.  

    £ 30.00 Click here to book online at Alchemy.

     

    Mind Body Spirit Festival 2012

    30th of May – 4th of June 2012  Earls Court, London

    Saturday 2nd June 11am – 1pm Class on Mastering the Kundalini.

    Tickets for this event cost £16.00 and can be bought in advance from the Mindbody Spirit website; Click here.

    The other three classes will be free admission.

    Sunday June 3rd. 3.30-4.30. Mastering the Addictive Personality.

    This hour long yoga session looks at key yoga postures for the issues that we face when dealing with the addictive personality: Fear, depression, stress and low-self esteem. You will need to wear loose comfortable clothes to take part, this class is not suitable if you are pregnant. NB: Minimum 9 months post natal.

    Monday June 4th at 10.30-11.30am. 

    Core Abdominals workout. This hour long session will help you to build core body strength and to understand how the abdominal strength is linked to creativity, boundaries, depression and raised self-esteem. You will need to wear loose comfortable clothes to take part, this class is not suitable if you are pregnant. NB: Minimum 9 months post natal.

    Monday June 4th at 2.30-3.00pm

    A journey through the chakras. Understand the path of the Lotus Flowering up through the spine to the 1000 petalled Lotus. You will need to wear loose comfortable clothes to take part, this class is not suitable if you are pregnant. NB: Minimum 9 months post natal.

     

    New Masterclass on Core Abdominals Dates to be Announced Soon

    A core abdominals masterclass at Alchemy in Camden with Carolyn Cowan.
    Do you want to expand your self and your practice, build self-esteem, boundaries and physical strength?
    If a resounding yes! is your answer to any of these questions, then come and join me for a potent 3 hour workshop on the core abdominal muscles of the body.
    Yes, it will be challenging, and yes, you will ache the next day, but you will work at your pace and learn how to build core body strength, how that affects your reality and your sense of self. You can book on the Alchemy website, or turn up on the day. Please do not eat for two hours before the session.  Not suitable for pregnant women. NB: Minimum 9 months post natal.

     

    I have  new classes running at Alchemy in Camden. In these classes we will work on the techniques for mastering the Addictive Personality.  Tuesdays, 4.15 to 5.45pm.  Classes so far have included sessions on anger, fear and depression. Book online at Alchemy, or just turn up for the class. I look forward to seeing you.

     

    Bodypainting Masterclass Schedule 2012

    I run two day Bodypainting Art Masterclasses on various themes from my home in Camberwell, London, SE5. I teach all levels of students within a class, from absolute beginners to experienced teachers. The days are structured so that all abilities are catered to and given space to expand. I also can deliver my workshop in Colleges, Universities and one-to-one. If you would like more information on the courses, to book a place or to find out more about bringing the course to your workplace to set up your own course please email me. 

     

    Masterclass on the Art of Illusion – 21st and 22nd April 2012

    This workshop is totally dedicated to learning how to paint illusions. Highlights, shadows, dimension, trompe l’oeil and other disciplines are studied. Perspective and illusion are looked at in depth. The second day is spent painting on a model and a portfolio standard photograph is taken at the end of the day. Click here to go to the shop to purchase this Masterclass.

    Masterclass on The Art of Painted Clothes – 12th and 13th May 2012

    This course is set around painting clothes on skin. All types of fabrics, easy textures and finishes, shading. transparent work and fabric illusions are covered. The second day is spent painting on a model and a portfolio standard photograph is taken at the end of the day. Click here to go to the shop to purchase this Masterclass.

    The Classic Bodypainting Masterclass – Dates to be announced soon.

    This is an excellent workshop giving a comprehensive overview of all the materiels used to bodypaint. The second day is spent painting on a model and a portfolio standard photograph is taken at the end of the day.

     

     

     

     

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  • Homogenous Life

    I have strong feeling about a lot of things and the feelings are getting stronger.

    It would be easy and snappy for you to judge this as me being menopausal and in doing so the lid of the box would be closed and I would be disposed of by that sweeping statement. In a flash all my individual relevance, experience, history, wit, sexuality and strength would be dismissed and I could be quietly relegated to a shelf in an endless storage facility in a long dark basement… I can see it, like a scene from a Terry Gilliam movie…. With either a really dumpy, ugly, sweaty man having the authority to put me away or a young woman, a perfect size ten, texting whilst nonchalantly chewing gum, whilst listening to headphones, whilst pushing the trolly with my box on it, along a dimly lit corridor……

    Insane thinking? Surely not….. It is rife, it’s rampant, sexism and ageism, everywhere. Even the “oh, so PC” Guardian does it….. It is everywhere and we are inured to it…

    Sadly not me. I am not in any way menopausal. Regular as clockwork, to the day, I still could go on to procreate again. Trust me, it is on the end of a long list of experiences I have had enough of. I love my children, I do, but to look back at the pit of hell that is early motherhood combined with a lonely marriage, and no thank you.

    Women over 45 are completely invisible in the media. How did that happen? Why did it happen? I use my own image to sell my clothes. I get a really good response, and armies of women then go on to talk to me about how invisible they are in the media. The most fascinating,witty, elegant, intelligent women lost in the maze of corridors that we started with:  inch your way past 45 and bang, box closed….. None of us see ourselves reflected back to us. We just get to look at miserable anorexic models portraying some bizarre image of femininity that owes it’s roots to the swaths of vampire movies and shows that we are all drowning under. Why? I don’t want to look or dress like a vampire…. I want to be me with the smile lines, the grey hair, the body that bore children… All my experience written all over me.

    I am now 52 and have changed more in the past two years than I managed to change in the last 20. I tore a staggering sweep through dogma, assumption, expectations and pointless commitments leaving me clear, calmer, more empowered, but damme and blast, the lenses are off, my view is clear, and at some ungodly hour in the morning I am sitting in Heathrow’s Terminal 4, looking around me at the sparkling shops selling the illusion of luxury, watching the mass of life trying to find its way forward to the next adventure and I am not enjoying what I see. 

    Apparently it is relaxing to have really loud, really awful music playing all the time. Men straining their vocal chords to tell me how much they want to love me in the most awful rhymes.

    And then there is the notion that because I have paid a fortune for a ticket, and then a fortune for the journey here, that I want to buy generic crap… Why? It is plastered everywhere, the mad illusion of wealth, luxury and difference, and you get it by paying over the odds for something that was made in a sweatshop in china, by underpaid humans in appalling conditions, in the millions… Not just the number of underpaid minions but the number of luxury items, too. Somehow the keyring, the scarf, wallet or pair of shoes will magically elevate the wearer out of the dross of their daily routine and transform them into someone with taste and style. Pray tell, how will this magically happen? Ah, by the Emperor’s New Clothes Syndrome which is now at epidemic proportions.

    I can go on like this around all sort of things: the lack of Internet connection I am promised by some dork with Richard Branson’s beard stuck on his face and so locked into a two year contract which the engaging and kind seller of said contract failed to mention. Or the voice of the woman who welcomes me to Orange…. If I used that voice to speak to them, and I kid you not, I can do an excellent mimic, they would think I was insane, yet that is the voice that drove me so crazy I had to turn off the answer machine on my phone: I still have to hear her if I call orange but I have created a damage limitation zone. And the voice of the woman who comperes Masterchef…

    Facebook! What is this? I have 1300 friends. Fantastic, all delightful, but do we really want to look at endless posters commenting on how positive we should all be. A friend, James Delingpole, write recently that the way to get rid of swathes of friends on Facebook is to post something negative…. Suddenly it is the new PC to be stupidly positive or post endless YouTube clips…. Why?

    Or Hipstamatic. Arghhhhhh! A loud scream of boredom. Look any of the millions of pictures, and think oh, Hipstamatic. Not, what a great picture, just oh, another iPhone turning life as we know it into a very tiresome photo opportunity and the pictures are all rendered homogenous. 

    Somewhere it has all gone awry, very quickly, and no one seems to have noticed

    Wake up! Live! Get real…… Please…… 

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  • Coming Home

    I am coming back into working as a photographer again and I love it. I cannot describe how much I love to take photographs…. There is a line in the film Billy Elliot, where he is auditioning for the Royal Ballet School. It is all going really badly, and just as he leaves, despondent and rejected, a woman examiner asks him what it feels like when he dances. His reply brings him to life and is word-perfect for my experience of taking photographs.

    I have been privileged by some extraordinary sitters recently: I have been doing a series on Make Up, and another on Scars, plus other personal portraits, and each one, each portrait, each Divine Human that sat in front of my beautiful Hasselblad, was an utter delight, a treat, an extraordinarily personal moment and I feel so happy to be back behind the camera again. 

    I have made a new photography website, www.carolyncowanphotography.com, and although I have an excellent past history, my vision, my view has changed profoundly and it is great to be gently and with great commitment, building to the portfolio again.

    So apropos of all of this, if you would like to be part of any of the current projects listed on my site - do please be in touch, but I am also very excited by having just entered the first photography competition for years! I won one ten or so years ago, the prize was an unusable weekend for two in Libya or somewhere equally sprung loaded…. Let’s hope this one is more fruitful…

    I have put three images into the Memory category of the Renaissance Photography Prize. All recent images, all of them I am very pleased with.

     

    http://renaissancephotography.org/launch/index.php 

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