Fotografia e meditazione

 

 Con Mauro Magrini

LA CHIAVE DELLA CREATIVITA’ 
Luglio 3 a 6

 La meditazione è una chiave per accedere alla creatività. Nello stato meditativo, nell’apertura a ciò che ci sta attorno e nella presenza all’attimo, si creano le condizioni ideali per vedere la realtà con i nostri occhi, sgombra da condizionamenti e preconcetti e per accedervi con la nostra sensibilità entrando in simbiosi con l’Unità. In questo stato la nostra creatività è capace di esprimersi in maniera originale e corrispondente a noi stessi.

 Fotografare in questo stato significa aprire in nostro terzo occhio, essere capaci di cogliere quello che realmente ci colpisce, nella modalità estetica più consona alla nostra sensibilità artistica.

Diventiamo un tutt’uno con ciò che fotografiamo e l’immagine diventa realmente espressione di noi stessi.

Nel workshop saranno sperimentate queste condizioni e questo approccio alla fotografia, per renderla più consapevole e più affine al nostro essere.

Mauro Magrini 
A starstone

Photography and Zen

Steve's going viral, I'm sure of it. His new book 'Photography and Zen' has just been published, so check it out on this Amazon link.

And remember too that our retreat 'Zen and the Art of Photography' with Natasha Lythgoe is in October this year.

A year full of Zen
A blog full of links

And what's more.. Stephen Bray, Colin Tracy and I have our photographic show in Marmaris, Turkey just about the time that the hardcover of he book is ready.

Michael at starstone
michael@starstone.org

The magic of words

Creative Discovery Weekend; Word and image

Word and Image;  May 15 to 18 and September 18 to 21

Ages ago, Colin Pink and I initiated our Word and Image workshops. Could have been a hundred years back but it was just five, or six;  my exaggeration a vain attempt to give weight to our accumulated wisdom. We began them at our famous Tiger Eagles retreats which are held in all sorts of exotic places but also France (slight jest here). And an extra famous one in Italia, that's two of us in this photo of the Gola D'infernacio, 'The Throat of Hell', in the Sibillini mountains, a favourite inspiration venue.
As we play in time, words and images collide together and create something manifestly greater than what they ever were or could be by themselves. Haiku, that marvellous liberator; that poetic device which colours like a paintbrush over a freshly prepared canvas of the imagination; the magic of words; that you can work with them as easily as you can with shapes and colours.
 And then...Playing with words, exploring the joy of liberating words from their everyday use. And storytelling; expressing ourselves as a language opens up within our minds, where words and then images begin to take on lives of their own, part of and apart from ourselves..
You will amaze yourselves with the way you learn to open up an avalanche of creativity; so much magical stuff hidden inside.
This emotive weekend is also, by its very nature, about laughing, daring ; meeting each other on a different plain and sharing thoughts and ideas.
This is what we did, is what we do.
And in Italy, that anarchic country where nothing makes sense, but where the senses run free, liberated from any constricting rationality.
Come along if you can, if you dare.
In the meantime read on my friends, read on

Be Kind to Yourself

 Eleanor Darley writes about her weekend retreat in June

'Be kind to Yourself '

Well, these four days in the warm italian countryside will be a place to breathe and let go. This is TIME OUT FOR YOU. We will create a safe nurturing space full of art, vision and gentle transformations - a space to really listen to the secrets of the soul, the wisdom of our true being, and what nature can tell you. This is a creative journey to encounter the art of communicating with ourselves - come prepared to feel informed, and to discover a good feeling about who you are. read on ...

at Starstone in Italy this summer

Fireflies in June

June is the perfect month. Summer is still young and the sea air drifting up from the Adriatic takes the temperature down at night. But best of all are the fireflies which hover beneath the olive trees at evening time and through our open windows where they dance their magical dance in the darkness of our rooms. It is in June that Maria Banks and I run our annual Creativity Retreats. It is when we subtract past and future from our lives and live for a short while in the Garden of Now, where our true selves dwell and our innate creativity flourishes.

I Cigni (below) is so very Italian. The food is homegrown, the wine and olive oil from the farm and the atmosphere friendly. It is tranquil with no traffic or noises which disturb our sleep and all in all it is conducive to what we come here for; to take off our masks, let our hair down and play. We paint, we write poetry, dance, sing and laugh a lot too. There is time to swim in the large pool any time we feel like it and for beach lovers there are sessions where we go down to the sea which is only 3K away

   Not forgetting a trip to the Sibillini Mountains (above)
                                                                                                                      

Come and join us this summer, and dance and play with the fireflies!

Michael

Visit our starstone site for full summer programme

One2ones

I popped down to I Cigni to check out some details for our summer programme, and this was waiting for me.

A present!

I love getting presents especially when they are paintings.
It was from Jiven Banghar, (she of 'Purplestars') who came on a One2one weekend with me in the summer. These fast moving, and deeply emotional snatches of time blast away any obstacles there might be, or could ever be, to being at one with your true creative self. 
In practical terms they are about whatever
medium of expression presents itself, be it painting, photography, poetry, writing, but especially they are more than the expression of any particular art form; more about the art of living itself. The Art of living creatively.
This was Jiven's first ever painting in her entire life. And I am proud to be the owner.
It's hanging on my studio wall already.
Oh, and this was her kind thank you message

Michael at starstone
email: michael@starstone.org

BIG PAINTING

                                    BIG PAINTING May 8 to 11
                                         With Michelle Rumney and Michael Eldridge

Creativity, as we all know, is something which the world, business, industry, education, is crying out for. Problem is, few people know how to get achieve it; how to loosen minds from the more rational corridors of constraint which restrict out ability to embrace it.They talk about it but do not know that it is a parallel world just waiting for us to inhabit. It's been there all the time. Some secret!

Let me explain.

Take as an analogy baby in the pool; those videos we see, where babies swim happily under water. The amazing thing is that they don't have to be taught; it's an instinct they are born with, this experience is like going home for them, and in turn gives them joy and confidence and also takes away the fear of they must at first experience at arriving in a harsher new world, so much harsher than the warm sweet water that they had become used to, floating inside their mothers' bodies. And this experience is something that stays with them all of their lives, a love for water and something which gives them confidence too, essential in their new quest to survive and prosper

Creativity is somewhat like this. It is something we are born with and something we would float within forever, if it weren't for all the abrasive things which happen to us as we grow older, the infrequency of play with parents, the exposure to rational education etc.

So our technique, if you can call it that, is a sort of psychological unlocking, facilitated easily through play and games and group dynamics where I take people back to the tailing off point in their childhood where their natural creativity began to be squeezed aside and give them once again permission to be carefree and playful and thus creative; swimming once more in the warm pool of the creative unconscious.

Our BIG PAINTING weekend is a direct and powerful way to immerse yourself into this parallel world; to be released from the constraints of rationality and to float once more in the delicious flow of creativity which has been simply waiting for you to awaken to its presence. You will paint BIG and feel BIG and learn that art is life and that life is art. You will find that you can at last paint your life anew on every waking day of your lives.

So creativity is innate within us all, never leaves us, simply has to be re-awakened. What we also do is give people a sort of survival kit to take way with them, allowing them to source their rediscovered creativity at will and whenever in whatever form this make take; and not necessarily art but also in the art of living itself.

Michael

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