It’s six months into the year 2020 and I feel more connected to my word of the year than at the start. I can see it’s an easy word to hide behind and say wildly and openly, I see it’s gifts and vulnerability too.

My word for the year is Authentic.

I spoke about it at the start of the year in this video, I put on my website header – live an authentic life now. I have been more direct in communication, through intentions, and with what I want and feel is right over agreeing with everything, an easy thing to do.

I’ve taken social media off my phone and I feel more ‘in the world’ and getting to know myself better without the images, thoughts, and opinions of others so much.

What struck me is that I realised it’s not about saying ‘I’m authentic’ or ‘I live an authentic life’ but in the doing first. I changed my entire website while doing 40 Days of Mala Simran and on the top image I put ‘rediscover your power with art and yoga’. These were aspects I wanted to show and share, I didn’t have a plan other than upload journal pages and teach yoga each Wednesday. I knew these were important to me.

It’s while she napped and I had a spontaneous two-hour play with acrylics while watching Art Club on my bedroom floor that it hit me.

How are you going to be authentic? Sure through habits, daily actions, and better communication though what makes your heart sing?

This. Art making. Yoga doing.

It’s as if Art making lifted me up and out of my own limited thinking and away from the ordinary happenings of a household. There is more out there than this.

I realised that Authentic has a hidden gift, that for me kept emerging through words, books, and a TV show (I rarely watch TV and it’s always through a catch-up service).

It’s said our entire self changes within seven years, I’ve been going back in my mind to that time and the strongest memory is of being at Psychology and Art retreat, talking with a new friend about life, Art, and mantras. Wondering how I, I could teach that? Both of us thinking aloud of which way to navigate our lives next. Retreats are wonderful experiences for taking yourself away from the day to day thinking and towards inner and outer views.

I feel this ‘lockdown’ way of life has been like a retreat (with a baby that sentence is a stretch), in the time I’ve had I have listened to the whispers of what’s next, I’m starting to own Art making again, playing, reading and mantras.

In the same week, as these thoughts swirled around my mind and paint smudged into my pages, I found after months of looking for it, a book on Art and Yoga by Hari Kirin Kaur Khalsa. Feeling inspired I created a Facebook group called Yoga & Art, in the group I will teach Kriyas for creativity and share Art exercises, from this book and others too.

This is a chance for people to share what they have made, painted, created in a private space. You can share for likes, comments, feedback, or simply accountability.

A lot of what I put out there I feel is seen at face value ie. white woman in a turban. That’s not what I truly want and with a group, I can question who comes into the creative space too. Unless that sentence is a woman in a turban living her truth and supporting others through art and yoga to live their most authentic lives now.

You can find my Facebook page here and join the group from there!