Mindfulness For Intentional Living Workshop

I had set my intention for this year – a year of daring greatly. I wanted to open myself to new learning and experiences. Mid-April, I came across information about a workshop that was being shared by two people I had been following and admiring from afar – Subha Nivedita and Subhorup Dasgupta.

Here’s what the Mindfulness For Intentional Living Workshop (April 17-19) was about:

The Mindfulness for Intentional Living will help us look at how mindfulness of our inner world and our outer world can help clarify us, make us more creative, intentional and alive in our everyday life.

The goals of the workshop:

• Learn to live more fully and creatively in your everyday life
• Learn to work with difficult emotions
• Appreciate the complexity of life and clarify your own desires and priorities
  Gather tools to use in everyday life that will help you live intentionally
• Practice using different tools and fall in love with those activities you can use on an everyday basis.

The programme was open to people who love to introspect, love to go on an inner journey and uncover their wisdom – anyone who yearns to live more creatively and mindfully in everyday life.

I spoke to Jose and decided to attend the first day of the workshop. While he was quite sure I would go for all 3 days, I decided to dare carefully! By the first half of Day 1, I knew I was sold on the entire workshop!

We set an intention for ourselves for the workshop and it was very interesting to have to answer that difficult question ‘What do I really want?’ Using collaging and intuitive painting, we began to get the answers from within ourselves. For me, the aspect of creative journalling, linked so well into my attempts at Julia Cameron’s ‘Morning Pages‘.  Through the three days, using a variety of exercises and tools, including short meditations,  the main facilitator, Aarathi Selvan introduced the whole aspect of mindfulness to us and how we can practice it in our daily lives.

We had a few guest guides for the workshop too:

Simple yoga stretches –  Selvan Srinivasan, introduced us to simple yoga stretches that could be done through the day to help one relax and become more mindful.

Contemplative Photography – Mallika Rajkumar introduced us to the concept of Contemplative Photography and we had an interesting session of trying to capture pictures mindfully. More about this in another post soon.

Drinking tea mindfully – I have been trying to get Subhorup Dasgupta to do a guest post here about his Blend of Tea venture. I was so happy to listen (and imbibe cups of tea) to him talk about the process of preparing and drinking tea and how we can bring mindfulness to this. (Subho did write a post – read it here).

The participants of the workshop ranged from the age of 17 – 49 (almost 50, me!). I was so suprised at the openness and authenticity of each person attending and their willingness to listen non-judgementally to the others.

To me it seemed that the Universe sent this programme my way, just when I needed it.

Let me share with you some pictures from the workshop, courtesy Subhorup.

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The main facilitator, Aarathi Selvan, EdM, NCC(USA), MPhil(ClPsy) is a Licensed Psychotherapist, Mindfulness Guide and a Contemplative Artist who has run over 15 workshops on mindfulness and creative journaling. She has over a decade of experience in the field of Psychotherapy. She has a private practice and also heads the psychology wing at Identity Wellness. She is a workshop leader, and further runs online courses.

This programme was organized by Eight Winds, a business solutions company specializing in digital branding and social marketing. Find out more and connect with them: eightwinds.in / https://www.facebook.com/eightwinds /
twitter.com/8Winds.