Thittato

Did a 75 min yin yoga class today. Pretty nice. My favorite forms of yoga is totally a combination of yin and vinyasa flow.

Had to do that 25 min yin yoga program one more time now before going to bed. Feels so awesome ????? Yoga is my safety.

25 min yin-yoga guided from youtube again this morning. It is ON again ???

Glad you mentioned her ??

And by the way, I just finished watching this one right now: https://youtu.be/ZhwcygYOxOc Teal Swan Answers To The Allegations Made Against Her (Exposed, Fraud, Fake, Scam) Haha, I’m turning into a Teal Swan fan. Didn’t see that one coming. It was totally awesome how she explained the controversy around her. I didn’t really know there was any controversy, but apparently she has a lot of haters, and it was really fascinating how she explained how this dynamic has developed. I could also really identify with what an intense character she is. Probably she is way more intense than me, but her personality profile was intensely fascinating and inspiring. I always love it when I’m having a kick on some new inspiring teacher. This is one of the latest drawings I’ve made. For me it is now turning into a symbol representing the inspiration and the connection I now feel with Teal Swan. I’ve been inspired by many spiritual teachers, and I’m always trying to be open to new inspiration, and right now there is a new source of inspiration being established. Pretty cool ?☺️?

25 min yin-yoga guided from a youtube-video tonight. Exactly one week since last time I did yoga. Now that my exhibition is over I want to become more serious about my yoga-practice again. I’ve managed to keep it alive for quite some time now, and now it is time to intensify again. Would have been awesome to strech this yoga-period into one full year. 26th of March was the official start of this new yoga period, as I had some strong yoga inspiration coming back as I was doing a session of peyote-microdosing. I have been slacking off a little bit lately, but not enough to feel that I have been falling out of it, fortunately, so the fire has been going steady, but now I need to bring back some more intensity to it again, and I’m really looking forward to that. It will also be a really nice way to process all my creative processes lately, getting more into my body again through yoga. Life never stops. It always just keeps on rolling. Just got to keep on flowing with it.

Hah! No one has ever said that, but just one hour before you wrote this I was exploring Teal Swan’s paintings for the first time!

45 min meditation today. So refreshing. Haven’t really done any meditation or yoga since last monday. I was supposed to go to a yoga-class, but couldn’t find my training-outfit, so I meditated home instead. Just very peaceful and nice. I felt centered and present. Good flow. My mind was getting quite still as well.

So tonight I did a little bit of painting back home, and after having done that I figured I wanted to carry all my painting equipment up to my studio. Haven’t painted in a long time, so I only had my drawing equipment up there. So having gathered absolutely all my art stuff in my studio it dawned on me that I really want to get an overview as broad as possible over this craft and what it entails. Then it came back to me again, as it so often does, that I haven’t really mastered the basics of this craft at all. So now that my exhibition is over, and my mental bandwidth is freed up again, I think my next project is to go back to the basics again. Seems like some kind of logical order to kick-start this studio-colaboration with an exhibition and a party, just to let people know we are up to something together, and then to go back to the basics in order to up my game for whatever comes next.

Hey! Thanks! Good to hear from you :-) I’ll add some pieces here. The first one is the main piece I made for this exhibition. It is meant to be a 2-dimensional sculpture, like some kind of monument attached to the wall, made up of 14 individual drawings arranged in a harmonious order. The 4 other pictures are 4 of the drawings in this main piece, which are similar in style to those I don’t have close-ups of here. I think of the whole thing as some kind of psychedelic light candle-ish monument, or something in that nature, made up of smaller psychedelic mandala-like drawings. Everything is drawn by hand. As for your other questions I’m not quite sure how to answer them, but I think if I could just find one really cool and recognized place to exhibit this thing, and give a really cool and concentrated explanation of the core essence of what this is, then I think I would have been really satisfied. Any thougths or questions?

No meditation or yoga today, but I spent a lot of time releasing some feelings through gestalttherapy self-therapy exercises regarding my exhibition. Basically I’ve been having a lot of feelings of disgust for two days now, just feeling really sick of my own visual expression thinking it is some really nasty yucky shit, but now I’m gradually starting to feel fine again and inspired to make more art. I saw a movie by David Lynch on sunday. He said when he started to paint he knew what he was doing sucked, but you just got to continue in order to burn through. Well, I don’t think everything I do sucks, actually I think some of it is pretty cool, but I can certainly relate to feeling those feelings and this attitude of continuing in order to burn through I found really inspiring.

75 min combined power yoga and yin yoga class. It was really nice. I’m just taking it really chill today after my exhibition which was on friday, saturday and sunday. 130-140 people visited during these three days, and it was a really awesome experience. I guess it will take some time to process the impressions from this weekend, and I don’t really have so much to say about it right now, except I understand much better what the process of building up an art business would be like. I’m still not sure if this is the direction I want to go in, or if this was just something I needed to express for this time only - something accumulated in my system that I had to get out there. I guess my attitude is that I will only continue if I cannot manage to stay away, so in a sense I could hope this was enough for this time, but probably it wasn’t. Anyways I’ve paid studio-rent for November, so I will have another month to process this while still having that studio. After that I’m considering moving out because my friend that I’m sharing the studio with, she has been there for 2 years, and she is the one having the contract, and I’m just renting it from her month by month and even though she is very nice and easy to cooperate with it feels a little bit too much like her space, which is fine for a shorter period, but I’m not sure if I could establish it as a home for my artistic process. Also she has different ambitions than I do, she is working with a lot of different creative projects which she started up with 2-3 years ago, where as I think my ambition would have been to have more like a pure drawing and painting studio, and she just simply have to much stuff on her half of the studio (which she needs because of all her different projects) to get that really cozy, settled drawing space. Maybe I will just continue to draw home in my appartment as I used to do, or maybe I will have to get a studio which is only mine where I’m in complete controll. Anyways, this was a really great learning-experience, and me and my friend managed to do all that we decided to do and have a lot of fun at the same time. I even managed to sell two prints, which was a very nice feeling, and my friend also sold some of her works, but I think the fact that we share a studio actually makes it harder for any of us to sell stuff, because when you come into a small studio where there are two artists at once, it is probably a little overwhelming and I don’t think it does justice to any of us. I could see from the two prints that I sold that the customer really needed to feel a connection with me and my works to get interested, something like «hey this is an interesting guy and I would really like to bring with me a piece of his energy.» From the two sales I had it felt like a really good energy-exchange, but I think it would have been easier to fascilitate that energy-exchange if they came into a space which was only about me. Of course the truth of the story is that none of us would have liked to sit there alone. This is an art festival two times a year on an island just right outside of town where there are about 50 artists who open up their studios for everybody to come visiting, so there is like a constant stream of people dropping by. I would not have liked to sit there alone, and neither would my partner, as it was nice to be two people there sharing the responsibility of entertaining them, but now that I know what this is about I think I could have much easier entertained them alone in a space which was only about me. We also had an opening party on friday, especially for people invited by us, and that was totally a really cool experience. I also think I was putting too high a price on my stuff, as I have almost been refusing to let it go, but as I got those two sales in and got a taste of what that was like, I would have much rather sold my stuff much cheaper just to get the circulation going. I also received a lot of really nice feedback, and that was nice, but I’m also sure that my stuff is not good enough yet, so if I’m going to continue with this I will certainly have to up my game, and I think that is just a honest reflection, and not being down on myself. Anyways, alltogether now I’ve sold two originals (some years ago) which I got a good price for, and now also two prints, so it is nice that there is a little bit of history of selling my stuff that has started - at the very least it is a great leap from not daring to sell at all. So all in all a totally awesome experience this whole thing. It just remains to see whether this will just continue as just a hobby, whenever there is something I need to express through the medium of drawing, or if I will actually try to build up an art business around it. I’m looking forward to process all these impressions from this weekend some more and sort out what is what.

Been working a lot with my exhibition lately, which is tomorrow. Finally I’m finished with the final product that I’m going to exhibit. Gosh, that was more work than I could remember. But very satisfying now that I’m ready. Basically the process was a huge process of cutting down and simplifying. Perhaps if I was a poet trying to get published my editor would tell me «ok, 90 % of what you write is rubbish, but 10 % is really gold, so we need to distill it down to those 10 %» The most interesting part is that I feel really confident about my art when I have managed to distill it down to its essence, but lots of times during this process I can only see those 90 % of rubbish and when that is going on that makes me doubt myself alot, but I think I understand this process much better now. Probably this has been the main insight this time. To sharpen and making my expression more focused and clear. To get rid of the noise and make the essence stand out much clearer.

60 min Hot Warrior yoga class this evening. Gosh, I love hot yoga so much. Took some time to develop a taste for it, but now I prefer it much more than normal non-heated classes. It is like everything is intensified, and especially the sense of emotional purification that comes from sweating things out, almost like the emotional purification one gets from going in the sauna, but also with the added effect of physically opening up the body very deeply by being able to go deeper into the poses than normal because of the heat. It feels like I crave to be back in that intensity, and the savasana at the end of the class is even better because of the intensity one went through.

30 day sitting meditation while working night-shift. Pretty chill. I’m starting to feel more and more integrated as a person. Less and less alienation regarding what is normal, at the same time that I’m taking care of my spiritual needs. I have even started to get seriously interested in football (soccer) hahha..... I guess I just want to be totally open towards everything that life has to offer, from the most mundane stuff to the most spiritual stuff. Gratitude.

Yesterday I started the day with 20 min yoga guided from youtube, and then in the evening I went to a 75 min Hot Flow yoga class. No yoga today. My stomach feels waaaaaaay better because of quitting coffee. That brew is simply not compatible with my body anymore. I’m at my job now working night-shift. Awesome how having a normal job gives me inspiration and lots of new ideas for my art. When I sit too much with it alone I kind of easily forget why I do it and it can easily start to seem like some kind of meaningless and stupid activity, but when I’m out in society participating in normal activities, like a normal job, I get inspired to go back to my studio and create stuff. Don’t know why that is so, but maybe it is because a normal job pulls me out of my own head and that is very necessary for someone like me. Also the companionship with my co-workers is pretty nice. A job fills me up much more than I knew before. Probably therapy has reduced my level of stess enough for me to actually enjoy work-life.

75 min yin yoga class this evening. Gosh, I’m really getting my yoga-kick back, and now this detox feels like it is going really well. Yesterday was really harsh, I think I went through some pretty heavy coffee withdrawal symptoms where it didn’t seem like there would be possible at all to have any enthusiasm what-so-ever for my life or my art without coffee, but today I have felt like my old enthusiastic self again even without the coffee. I’m starting to fantasize about perhaps going straight-edge permanently. What else do I need? I have my yoga practice, and I have all my creative endeavours, and I have nature, and friends. Like what do I really need those intoxicants for? I’m always prone to start drinking too much at some point anyways, and then I start to smoke cigarettes while I drink, and suddenly cigarettes have sneaked back into my daily life once again. I’m sure all this partying I’ve done this summer has been like doing my yoga with the hand-brake on, so now I’m really enthusistic about how my practice will deepen without the intoxicants. Being sober, I’m sure, is really easy with the support I get from yoga. As I managed to survive yesterday, anything is now possible <3 ;-D

Also did a 90 min Heated Dharma yoga class yesterday, and now I just came home from a 75 min Restorative yoga class. Glad to be back in the yoga-spirit. It is probably because of the detox.

75 min Hot slowflow yoga class on friday, and today I did a 90 min Iyengar yoga class. Felt awesome. Almost like I want to get rid of this art-studio, and just go back to pursuing yoga as I did this summer. Now I'm thinking perhaps that I'll rent my space through-out November, and then I move out of it. Our exhibition is going to be on 1st of November, and the facebook-event was launched on friday. We were getting good responses, and seems like a decent group of people will come. It was pretty challenging emotionally to get it out there, but now it feels like the worst part is over. Everything else will just be like hosting a regular part just with some art thrown into the mix. Anyways, I'm thinking that perhaps after this is done I have gotten what I needed out of it. It was like a huge cramp of some sorts that I had to get some sorts of outlet for, and probably I will always continue to draw, and this period will be one of several intensifications I've had regarding that that I've learned a lot from. But I've taken a lot of time off from my job during this, which was good, and my yoga-practice has suffered, but now I miss being at my job more and being more serious about my yoga-practice again, so perhaps it was just exactly what I needed and that after the end of November I'll just go back to doing my drawings back home in my appartment. This is so far the drawing I’m the most satisfied with during this process.

Felt inspired to do a second round of yoga for today, so this evening I did a 25 min yin-yoga session. Earlier today it felt pretty bad going without coffee. Everything felt really dry and boring, and I felt depressed, but at some point this evening the dryness sort of turned into a feeling of rawness. There was something raw within the feeling of dryness, and the more I focused in on that the more pleasurable it started to feel and gradually I’ve been feeling more and more fresh. Seems like coffee has been really putting a huge lid on top of my sense of freshness. Instead of feeling fresh and vital, coffee comes in as a huge bulldozer through the system, just bulldozing it all down and exchanging it with some kind of stressed and fake manic energy. My skin already feels much softer (probably comes from also quitting alcohol and cigarettes a few days ago before quitting coffee), and my digestion seems to work smoother again already. This is totally what my yoga-practice needs. Ironic I could use so many unhealthy stimulants and keep my practice going at the same time. Right now it feels like I’ve been driving around with the hand-brake on in my yoga. Very glad this detox-period already feels like something very inspiring, and not just some neurotic and oppressive type of renunciation.

20 min yoga guided from youtube this morning. Yeeeey, I’m holding on to my yoga-practice, even though there has been some lapses lately. This is first day without coffee as part of this 1,5 month detox period. Fortunately I was down into only one cup per day for a while now, so I don’t think this will be so difficult, it feels more like something I really need.

Did a double yoga class today. First 75 min Iyengar Yoga, and then 60 min Restorative Yoga. Wow, it has already been 10 days since last time I did yoga. But sober-period is going well. I hadn’t gotten addicted to the cigarettes yet, so there hasn’t been any withdrawal symptoms. But I really need this detox period. Been drinking too much this summer, even though I’ve been on this yoga-kick. But the worst addiction I’m removing tomorrow, and that one is surely the worst for me and that is coffee. Wouldn’t have been any problem if it wasn’t for the fact that my stomach can’t handle it, so it is crazy that I continue to drink it. Fortunately I’m down into only one cup per day now, but I know it is still going to be a hard one because I feel so boring and uncreative without the mental boost that it gives me, but yeah, from tomorrow on it is bye, bye coffee, until November is over. Yeah, desperately need this detox period now.

New sober-period starts right now. Ok, fuck it. Things are going really well with establishing this studio, and what typically happen then? Of course I start to get very social again and that of course leads to a lot of partying, so now I smoke cigarettes almost daily again, and I certainly drink almost close to daily. It hasn’t spiraled out of control, actually far from it, but there is manic buzz and new self-esteem on the rising that I have to take preventive action against so that something that is possibly very good will not turn into destruction, so I was speaking to a friend tonight about doing a white month soon, and we decided November was going to be a white month, but actually I don’t want to wait for that long, I need a break right now, so my white month starts when I wake up tomorrow, and it will last until November is over. Yeah, fuck it, that is totally what happens. What better way to celebrate this good flow I’m in!? No cigarettes, no drugs, and no alcohol until November is over. Decision is made. Hurrah ????? Perhaps instead of wasting my money on partying I could instead spend some money on some really good coaching that could help me get my art-buisiness going? ?

This is how my drawing turned out. It is 70x50 centimeters. I was putting 8 hours of work straight into this. Felt so good. I was blissed out for the rest of the day when I got home, just lying on my sofa listening to music. If I hadn’t had a separate place to work with this I would have been obsessing about this process back home to the point where I had gotten really sick of it. This process before has always been so driven by emotions. First I’m inspired and totally obsessed by it, but that quickly turns into disgust because I take the obsession way too far, and then the whole cycle of love and hate becomes too much so I just try to stay away from it, but soon enough I’m pulled back in. It is 10 years since I started trying to make art-works. Before that I was always sketching, but until that point 10 years ago it never occured to me that I had to try to make finished products. But because this process has been driven so much by some kind of love and hate dynamic, I think the process as a whole has been like driving with the hand-brake on. So I’m really curious to discover what the real potential is here. And the clue I think to figure that out is simply by grinding. It is not meant to be something that is just fun and pleasant all the time. It is basically just work like any other type of work. But work can be really meaningful and fulfilling with the right attitude. So back to the grindstone :-)

No yoga or meditation yesterday, or today, but I’ve been working a lot in my studio. I think my relationship towards creative expression is starting to get healed. Basically I think my frustrations around this has been a result of holding myself back too much for too long, and the solution is just to work on, let go of self-critical thoughts, and put way more fire into this and not care too much about the results. The results will come simply by staying in the process a lot. Here is todays drawing.