Sophia Ali: Expressive Selfcare: Recent Episodes
Sophia Ali
Transformation and growth is an intentional process. It took me a while to get hold of the work for my own self. I learned from my life challenges. My personal life is a base for my current practice. My intention of using expressive selfcare platform is to share resources that I gathered through my awareness and insight with everyone out there. Life can be overwhelming and sometimes even exhausting, through awareness and insight we can support and empower ourselves. Here you are acknowledging my journey to acknowledge yours. I am grateful that you found your way here.
Forgiveness for You, a beautiful gift we give ourselves. The intention of this meditation is to foster a sense of inner peace and compassion. The meditation encourages to release emotional weight of past grievances through breath, awareness and gentle movement.
Embrace the strength that comes from seeking support when needed, and release challenges with every exhale, knowing that you have the resilience to overcome them.
“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.” -Rumi
“Patience is not sitting and waiting. It is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day.” — Rumi Patience gives us a breather during the hard times.
Listen to your physical body, it is through our body that we can come to know ourselves and the world.
Are you Important to yourself? I often ask this question to myself, am I important to myself? More I step into this question, the more I respect myself and my needs. Now I feel comfortable with my body, feelings and thoughts. Accepting and allowing myself to sense, feel and think every shade of my life, I feel proud and confident of myself.
By simply noticing shifts in your body (physical, emotional and mental) we become aware of “where we are” and to see yourself “as you are”. This helps you to take care of your mind and body.
I often hear from my clients/students in my workshop that breathing practices are challenging and meditation is a heavy word. Instead of going with the word shift your intention to the practice and giving it your fullest attention. You can achieve success in this practice by noticing the calm energy within you.
We are experiencing new ways of living at this moment. The concept of physical distancing has taught me to listen to my needs deeply. Being in the moment of pause and daily check-in with myself is a way to focus on my physical, emotional, and mental needs even on the fullest days. I believe we all have the ability to pause and slow down. So, let’s bring our ability to practice pause by being persistent.
“Every experience I’ve had in my life is a resource in my body.” — Anna Halprin #livingartfully Resource Gathering is an ongoing process. Resources are everywhere, we use them all the time, it's just that sometimes we are aware and sometimes we are not aware. The process of acknowledging resources is to bring your awareness towards the resources in your life at the moment and to keenly listen to your needs. I believe everyone is creative in their own way and creative activities allow us to externalize our sensations, thoughts and feelings and observe it from a distance. By distancing from the life situation and getting involved in creativity, we directly work with personal material in a new way.
I hear you..... When you say it's difficult to sit and focus on your breath. The challenge of bringing breath-focused practice into your life is real. There are various breath-related techniques to practice, this might confuse you or push you away or on the brighter side you might see it as an option to explore. It took me a while to get hold of the breath practice I connect with. The moment I started acknowledging the shifts inside my body I started sensing the power of breath inside my body. I was including breath into my professional and personal life the moment I entered into the field of creative therapies in 2015. Later, vipassana meditation added value and quality to my breath practice. So here I am sharing my experience of 10 days of Vipassana meditation with you. For me, breath plays an important role, I consider my breath as my strongest support resource inside me.
Body is my home, Breath is my foundation block, I Breath-in, I arrive in my body, I Breath-out, I return home.
Breath has a vast coping mechanism to offer and I have experienced the process of connecting to breath closely. It is a way of being in order to cultivate more presence. Bringing presence into one’s life is an ongoing daily practice. It simply prepares an individual to meet the unknown. Join me to know more about this resource and cultivate into your life to refresh your mind and heart.
Tapping Your Creative Self..... Starting Where You Are At The Moment.... Tamalpa Life/Art Process.... Listening To Your Body.....
The concept of movement-based expressive arts therapy is new in India. Working with the new approach is challenging yet powerful. I feel proud to be the first Indian to spread this process out into different communities in India. The image of the wheel connects me to the circular movement of starting and returning to oneself with the aim of moving forward. It took me a while to get hold of the work for my own self. I learned from my life challenges. My personal life is a base for my current practice. My intention of using expressive selfcare platform is to share the resources that I gathered through awareness and insight with everyone out there. Taking care of oneself is beyond exercises or diet, expressive selfcare is diving deep into your own process by gaining insight and awareness of the present moment, getting involved with your own emotions and creatively expressing it out. For me, that’s walking, movement, art, and writing and for you, it might be something else or maybe that part requires exploration.