Let's take five minutes to enjoy a slow look at Redon's 'Ophelia among the Flowers'
So starting by sitting comfortably and taking a moment to
notice your breathing: its rise and fall.
The sound it makes.
The way it feels.
And bringing your awareness to your shoulders where we can often carry tension.
What sensations are there? Imagine breathing into the shoulders and
with the out-breath softening and dissolving their tension.
Breathing in and softening as you breathe out.
Breathing in and letting go.
The breath washing over the shoulders like flowing water. No need to feel any
different, just inclining the mind in this way may have an effect.
Starting to look now as you continue your slow breathing, taking in the intensity of the
glistening red berries and the vivid blue of the flowers and leaves.
The oranges and pinks of the sky.
The jagged line of the cliffs.
Dropping down to Ophelia,
pale and ghostly, barely there as if dissolving into the atmosphere.
The cold drag of water and then coming back up to the flowers.
Exploring the leaves with their hard outlines, the colours softened over their
edges and the flowers that seem to release or exhale their scent, suggested
by the smudging of the pastel.
Imagine breathing in the scent of the flowers.
Their fragrance like the powdery pigment: so fragile and fugitive on the paper.
And looking closely at the marks on the paper: the long, dragging strokes,
short, quick ones,
hard scribbles
and softer areas of rubbing and blending
and then finally settling on a colour: perhaps the blue mist or the flush of pink in the sky
and imagining this colour surrounding you, enveloping you,
allowing yourself to dissolve into that colour.
And as you breathe, imagining breathing in this colour.
All the way in and all the way out.
Imagining that colour flowing through your entire body
and taking a moment to notice how this feels.
How is your body feeling right now?
Sometimes we just need to pause, take our awareness to our breath
and invite the body to soften and let go.