Monday Musings

"Cotton Candy Dancer" - mixed media on canvas paper, 16" x 20"
"Tiny Dancer" - mixed media on yupo, 9" x 12"

It's a Monday two-fer!  Dancing girls in their party dresses, full of joy...what better way to start the week?  

Last week, my goal was to get out of my head and into my body.  Now this might sound a bit strange, but it worked.  I spend so much time cloistered in my own thoughts, constantly analyzing, mulling over, planning, fretting and wondering.  My book appetite is voracious, and I journal every day.  Reading, writing, thinking.  I decided to spend less time there, and more time in physicality, to give my brain a vacation.

So there were bike rides, long walks and days of super gardening (digging up shrubs and sod, moving rocks and mulch) and some much needed yoga.  Throw in some random dance movies in the studio and you get the idea!  What I learned was this: my brain needs an occasional vacation.

A recent article in FLOW Magazine about the benefits of daydreaming really caught my attention and helped fuel my determination to take a mental break.  In the article, the burden of "shadow work" on modern humans is described.  Prior generations learned one phone system (a landline), no computer systems, didn't make their own airline reservations or pump their own gas,  There weren't gadgets to learn, software upgrades to manage, grocery store self-serve registers to figure out....all of these things which require your brain to be ON and learning.  Think of the amount of information we have access to daily!  One statistic was that we view the equivalent content of 175 newspapers in a day.  175!  No wonder our brains are tired.

These dancing girls are a reminder to me to give my head a break, get into my body, and maybe bust out a few dance moves now and then.  And to be super thankful for the amazing human brain and its seeming endless capacity for learning.