Haris Epaminonda

www.harisepaminonda.com

Dear Good Looker,
 

Gosh. So much to tell, so little time. Let's cut to the chase....

I need your help, dearest reader, with a project I have been busy putting together. I cordially invite you, and your loved ones, to celebrate the space of otherness, difference and delight that your body occupies through THIS SURVEY all about movement.

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**** ABOUT MOVE ME ****
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Move Me is an ever evolving survey designed to prompt people to think more deeply about their bodies in terms of movement choices, habits and patterns. The project is about commonality: The one thing we all have in common is that we have to move to live.

Researching the whys and ways of movement is a part of my job as a yoga teacher. I know there is a vast amount of information and advice about the way we 'should' move out there,  but often lacking from this are the personal stories, from a variety of different backgrounds and experiences,  that shape each of us in discrete and individual ways. Through eight years of teaching it is these stories that have come to help finesse what I do beyond the more 'evidence based' scientific discourse. This thread is a vital part of the map to understanding what it is we need to feel well.

Human beings are not built to float you see. They need an earthly anchor of meaning and care so they don't get left in confusion. This survey, with your help, is my contribution that anchor of meaning. The information gathered is being used on an ongoing blog and as research for an art project, both aim to express a riot of opinion and give a snapshot of the complexity of modern movement decisions with cultural influences; a portrait of the human body today revealing impulses that influence our daily ritual of being.

Anyone who has a body is invited to take part and I am also open to creative submissions about movement, like this wonderful story, from everyone and anyone.

Join me for this major shift in cultural thinking and be the laxative which lubricates the constipation of the way we contemplate movement (I'm so sorry about that sentence).

 CONVINCED? THEN MOVE TO THE SURVEY
(please note, you can answer anonymously and you DO NOT have to answer everything, just whatever takes your fancy.)

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**** FORWARD THIS POST ****
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The revolution is now. Yay! However, I know finding people willing to give up precious time to fill out a long winded survey is hard (I have no idea why). So, following the runaway success of my past newsletters free hug initiative, I urge you to forward this email to ALL PEOPLE WITH BODIES that might be interested in taking part. Come to me (click here) with evidence of your benevolence, and I will send you something magic in the post.

You can be social and forward via the magic of these buttons....

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Forwar

we cannot know that we are illuminated by a great light

My Red Hills, Georgia Okeeffe

Ed Ruscha

Rite of Spring, Pina Bausch

Agnes Martin

Stefania Vasques

That light cannot be known directly is expressed in contemporary terms by Peter Russell. When speaking of the light of consciousness, he asserts:

Although all we ever see is light, paradoxically, we never know light directly. The light that strikes the eye is known only through the energy it releases. This energy is translated into a visual imagery in the mind, and that image seems to be composed of light—but that light is a quality of mind. We never know the light itself. 

Russell is speaking from a scientific viewpoint, but the fact that we can never know light itself is helpful in appreciating the working of boundless compassion. When the light of compassion illuminates our existence, it reveals our self-delusions. Hiroyuki Itsuki ... describes this as follows: 

We cannot know that we are illuminated by a great light simply by looking up into the sky. But if we lower our heads and look down at our feet we can clearly see the long, dark shadow that stretches out from us. We know that the darker and blacker that shadow is, the brighter the light that shines upon us.

Taitetsu Unno, Shin Buddhism: Bits of Rubble Turn into Gold.

Found via Evencleveland

water is patient

“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

like real people do

Sitting with Snake, Kiki Smith

Mountain Crest, The Alps (1933), Marsden Hartley 

Mural Murals, 1981 documentary film by Agnes Varda.

Ann-Marie Rayney, Silkscreen

Lyn Marshall

Giacometti

Dave Hardy

Grand Canyon

Eventide fan - sheila hicks

Mostly inspired by yellow things, eavesdropping on the Ocean, 'your body is your soul' with Jaap van der Val and this....

"The validity of an answer often depends on perspective. Looking at things up close often reduces the number of components you're considering. When you perform cost/benefit analysis, or figure the efficiency of something, scale matters tremendously. What's the impact of your choices on the world?" --Katy Bowman

all day

Victor Palla’s House, Lisbon.

Chiyoko Tanaka

Eric Rohmer

National Geographicn Jan 1973.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields
which is what I have been doing all day.

– Mary Oliver, The Summer Day.

changes

this blog page is going through changes (sing it David!)
it will remain space for gathering movement/art ideas and inspiration, but my posts might just be a little more sporadic and chaotic as I will be dedicating my blogging powers to my Move Me project. if you've yet to check it out, come on over!

sunday tune

saturday poem

-- Key Ballah From Preparing My Daughter For Rain

friday cartoon

'three deep bows to a beautiful son'

Here It Is

2016 by Alice Walker

Here it is
the beauty that scares you
-so you believe-
to death.
For he is certainly gorgeous
and he is certainly where whiteness
to your disbelief
has not wandered off
to die.
No.  It is there, tawny skin, gray eyes,
a Malcolm-esque  jaw.  His loyal parents
may Goddess bless them
sitting proud and happy and no doubt
amazed
at what  they have done.
For he is black too.  And obviously
with a soul
made of everything.
Try to think bigger than you ever have
or had courage enough to do:
that blackness is not where whiteness
wanders off to die: but that it is
like the dark matter
between stars and galaxies in
the Universe
that ultimately
holds it all
together.

-AW

Three deep bows to a beautiful son.

From Alice Walkers Garden. 

listen and amplify

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor -Desmond Tutu”

Franchesca Leigh with @tk_wonder & @ciprianaquann at the #MillionsMarchNYC

'You can see this intention to go toward the right wing in politics that's taking place. But it will only bring us to a darker place and a rainier season. Whenever humans lose their courage, it's always followed by all kinds or tragedies.' 

- Ai Weiwei

ai weiwei

week 18

DANCE DANCE DANCE

I'm back on this movement challenge malarkey! Missed a chunk of the year due to life celebrations, but I hope that will be forgiven...
I'm going with that celebration theme for this week and it's somewhat of a cliché...but there usually something to those oft said things so here we go...

DANCE LIKE NO-ONE IS WATCHING
thats it.

each day pick a song you love and loose control. There is joy, endorphins and giggles to be found in this challenge and those are self care musts.
On a side note i've fallen down a Michael Clarke choreography rabbit hole so its now inspiring everything I do.

sunday tune

saturday poem

friday cartoon

life's work

My body is accustomed to compromise.

I learned at a very young age how to 

negotiate space.

How to apologies for the way that my 

body fills all the places that it

occupies and all the places that it 

doesn't.

Teaching my body to grow free, 

and wild, 

and to not be afraid to exist, 

has become my life's work.

-- Key Ballah
Preparing My Daughter For Rain

"In the cathedral of the wild, we get to see the best parts of ourselves reflected back to us." Boyd Varty, a wildlife activist, shares stories of animals, humans and their interrelatedness, or "ubuntu" — defined as, "I am, because of you." And he dedicates the talk to South African leader Nelson Mandela, the human embodiment of that same great-hearted, generous spirit.

opal bones

"Skeletons are a sort of "living story" you are continuously writing. bone robusticity is a result not only of genetic data, but of data created via behavior. It is through your choices of movement and the cellular loads these choices create that your body becomes your autobiography."

 -- Katy Bowman: Move your DNA.

stories have shapes

 

“The fundamental idea is that stories have shapes which can be drawn on graph paper, and that the shape of a given society’s stories is at least as interesting as the shape of its pots or spearheads.” Kurt Vonnegut on the shape of stories.

(via The Paris Review Tumblr)

stories

"There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories" 

-- Ursula K. Le Guin

sunday tune