Hey guys! Sorry its been a while but theres a new post up on the blog :) Im posting it below, but you can also check in on my website ellengomory ! Also, if youre in the area come take class with me tomorrow - 10:30 am at yogaraj in west LA and 1 pm at Yogis Anonymous on the Santa Monica Pier!! xoxo Blog Post: Sept 29, 2014 DIY Projects to Awaken Your Chakras Namaste guys! I wanted to apologize for my recent absence from blogging… I moved into a new apartment a couple weeks ago and have been completely consumed with redecorating—mostly in the form of cheap, time consuming DIY projects. As you may have guessed I discovered Pinterest… and that discovery opened up a whole new world of time sucking, impractical, and amazing projects—both voyeuristic and IRL (in real life). Did you know that in only 40 hours, and with over 600 yards of rope and two hula hoops you can make yourself a hanging macramé chair? Or that with an old piece of wood, a handsaw, a sander and a free week you can make your own beautiful, ornamental welcome mat? Perhaps you can see how I started to get sucked down the rabbit hole… Compared to some of these wilder DIY adventures on Pinterest, my projects were relatively tame. Since we moved into the new place with only a mattress, my first priority was getting a table (my pug sheds a lot and eating off a skateboard was feeling a little grubby…) First I hit Target and Bed Bath and Beyond, but found their tables to be high priced and poor quality. So I shifted my sights to the second hand stores. Luckily I found an awesome wooden coffee table at the first store I went to, Out of the Closet on Lincoln at the corner of Rose in Venice. The surface of the table was pretty beat up, lots of water stains and discolorations in the wood, so I decided to sand and repaint it. I borrowed a hand sander from my uncle and got some paint and primer at the paint store next door. The project took about one full day and was a lot of fun. There is something incredibly satisfying about reworking furniture. The results are fast, and everything you do has a noticeable, tangible effect. It is also functional (in this case very necessary) which is doubly satisfying. After the success of my first project I was hungry for more, so I decided to paint the walls. I wanted to paint them something dark (a dark blue or turquoise) as I was going for a sort of Bohemian, Moroccan décor (just type those words into Pinterest… if you dare…) This project proved infinitely more challenging. Confident from the table I decided to down price my paint and grab one of the $5 discontinued cans from the back of the store. The guys working there assured me that the paint was still good, but when I got the first coat on it was watery and washed up and I could see every single stroke. I painted another coat (about two hours of work) and still the paint was uneven and washed out. At this point I had run out of paint, and had to go back to the store to have them mix up a new can. The guy behind the counter at the paint store took one look at the contents of the old can and told me not to worry—I wasn’t a terrible painter, it was crummy paint. He was incredibly nice about it and mixed up a new can of paint for 40% off (despite the fact that the old, crummy paint had been in the old, crummy $5 bin) and sent me on my way. Third time was a charm and I finally got a nice even coat on. Phase Two will be to stencil on a cool Moroccan pattern that I cut out of an old yoga mat, using gold paint… but I’m giving my shoulders a couple of days to recover… Doing these projects has been fun and creative, and actually yogic in a very different way… Painting can be incredibly meditative—a moving meditation just like yoga, but with the added benefit of seeing immediate results, and visibly improving your living space. Moving can easily cause a first chakra imbalance as the first chakra, or root chakra (Muladhara Chakra) is connected to your sense of grounding, home and stability. By making a new place feel like home you can help to create solidity and stability, and find some balance. I also found these projects to be creatively stimulating. Visualizing and actualizing, especially in a creative realm that I am not as familiar with gave me confidence and inspiration in other creative realms. I found that I was so excited and stimulated by the planning and doing of these projects that my sequencing in yoga became more playful and energetic, and my cooking became more daring. The second chakra is the seat of creativity, and I was definitely feeling some second chakra stimulation. While it is interesting to identify and recognizes these separations and definitions within the chakra system, what I like the most about it is that it is fundamentally integrative. An imbalance in one chakra may cause another to fall into balance to compensate, and stimulation in on chakra—for instance the first chakra may lead to abundance in the second (as I saw) or the fourth (the heart chakra) or any other. The system recognizes that we as human beings are highly complex and interconnected, and seeks only to help us to understand and balance, not to impose a binary structure. I highly recommend Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith for more on the chakras and how they relate to western psychology…really interesting and informative read. Thank you guys for checking back in, and I promise to be more diligent in my postings ☺ Love, Ellen (Below are some pics of my projects, enjoy!)
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 03:55:27 +0000
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