rachel johnston

Monday, 24 November 2014

Overview

OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo.

On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.

The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment.

STUNNING.

Pumkin Eyes (and pelvic floors)

READ THIS
by Katy Bowman.

Tibetan Eye Chart

Eye exercise using Tibetan chart

Spent to much time in front of the computer? (guilty!) My first yoga teacher once sent me home with one of these...

These exercises are to be done without glasses or contacts. Do each movement for 30 seconds while in a sitting position, spine elongated and do not move the head side to side. Move only the eyes.

1.) With the palm of each hand cup both closed eyes to relax them.

2.) Move the eyes clockwise around the outer circle of dots

3.) Repeat this movement in a counterclockwise rotation

4.) Move the eyes back and forth between the dots at 2 and 8 o’clock

5.) Repeat this movement back and forth between dots at 4 and 10 o’clock

6.) Blink the eyes briefly and finish therapy with the palming same as exercise #1

Repeat exercises as desired being careful to avoid strain.

more info here. image and text from here.

Sight

images from here

Senses

Still Life by Pieter Claesz, 1623. The painting illustrates the senses through musical instruments, a compass, a book, food and drink, a mirror, incense and an open perfume bottle. The tortoise could be a possible illustration of touch or an allusion to the opposite, screening of or shielding the senses (the tortoise isolating in its shell).

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Wind, Sand and Stars

When the wild ducks or the wild geese migrate in their season, a strange tide rises in the territories over which they sweep. As if magnetized by the great triangular flight, the barnyard fowl leap a foot or two in the air and try to fly. The call of the wild strikes them with the force of a harpoon and a vestige of savagery quickens their blood. All the ducks on the farm are transformed for an instant into migrant birds, and into those hard little heads, till now filled with humble images of pools and worms and barnyards, there swims a sense of continental expanse, of the breadth of the seas and the salt taste of ocean wind. The duck totters to right and left in its wire enclosure, gripped by a sudden passion to perform the impossible and a sudden love whose object is mystery.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

Photo found here.