Creative Projects
Previous Projects
I started to create these sound-pictures from a desire for a new way of constructing and articulating through sound. The basic building-blocks of time, pulse, pitch and timbre form a musical language in which relationships between its component parts are free and spacious. This reflects a contemporary need for harmony in its broadest sense – the ecology between us as humans and in our relationship with the natural world and the planet. The pieces have an abstract, ambient quality. In some ways they are like film music. There are also echoes of the intertwining threads of Medieval polyphony and the sound-world of electroacoustic music.
I recorded all the sounds live, and then put them together and edited them on the computer. Some sounds are instrumental or vocal, others from nature or the urban landscape. There is a sense of architectural structure which emerges during the process. Putting them together is like creating a sonic sculpture, which ‘hangs’ in time.
Visit my You-tube channel
Collaborative Creative Projects
I’m currently involved in two collaborative projects with artists from other disciplines, preparing for exhibitions in the autumn and winter at Signal Arts Centre, Bray. These shared explorations draw very much on what I have learned from yoga, and my work is in turn touched by the creative work. I’m creating abstract, ambient ‘soundscapes’ as well as learning how to look.
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soundscapes
Collaboration with Nathalie Carnec and Magdolna Toth
Ongoing collaboration with Nathalie Carnec and Magdolna Toth, exploring links, connections and the spaces in between in three dimensions and beyond…
When: Exhibition 31st October – 12th November 2023
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ArtNetDlr projects
Inside ... pathless land ...
This initially formed part of the ArtNetdlr 2021 Metamorphosis project. The title refers to J. Krishnamurti’s famous 1929 speech, ‘Truth is a pathless land’. Created during the lockdown periods, we took the opportunity to explore the ‘pathless land’ of our inner space and potential through visual work, sound and words. See Greenhouse Culture for a ‘tour’ of our work, a window into our creative process, and to hear the soundtrack.
We are developing and expanding the work for an exhibition which will take place from 27th November – 10th December 2023
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Yoga for Changing Times – an online project
This is an evolving project. My intention is to offer a series of workshops- like a spiral growing and opening up over an indeterminate period. The workshops address how yoga can support us through the changing and often challenging times we are living through.
‘A shift in consciousness may sound grandiose to some, insufficient to others. But we live in a time of growing awareness of the intimate connections between outer and inner worlds’
(from The Future We Choose, by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac)
Yoga for Changing Times is for practitioners or yoga teachers wanting to explore how the essential teaching and practice of yoga can make a ripple effect for change in our daily lives. We dive in deep, so some experience is helpful, but essentially I’m hoping to create a diverse community of people working creatively with yoga and some of the important issues facing our planet and the people living here in these changing times.
The project began in 2019 in person in Dublin. It moved online in the pandemic in 2020 and has since acquired an international flavour. It remains an online project. We meet on Zoom for two 3-hour sessions over weekends. The timing is chosen to suit both European and transatlantic time zones.
See here for details of upcoming workshops
‘The state of yoga … is a beginning and not an end-point … a momentary state, the initiator of a process which transforms both our perception and our being in the world.’ (Peter Hersnack)
In essence, yoga is a philosophical and spiritual teaching for living freely and fully in the world. The practice on the mat allows for a change on a cellular level. In a world which is changing so rapidly, our relationship with yoga can be a support, but it needs to be a living support, which can change as we do – and allow for a transformation of consciousness which is needed to move into the future.
The practice on the mat is like a laboratory for exploration which has the potential to change us on a cellular level, so we quite literally become ‘the change we want to see’.
What is essential in yoga can then remain both relevant and resonant to our changing lives.
My ‘vision’ is along these lines, but always very flexible – it’s a joint project!:
Vision:
- an evolving community of people, some yoga teachers, others not, with the desire to explore how yoga can support and nourish us in this sometimes bewildering, fast-changing world.
- a nourishing space for practice, sharing and joyful living!
- an evolving process, led by the whole group.
- open to ideas and practices from other areas (somatic practices, ideas from environmental teachers etc).
- yoga in its broadest sense remaining as the hub of a turning wheel.
- online weekend workshops, with a specific theme to each workshop.
- all work to be grounded in practice– postures, the breath and meditative practice.
- 2 or 3 practices a day (some ‘mini’, some longer).
- workshop-style work to explore ideas and specific postures in more detail.
- sharing and discussion of key ideas from yoga teaching (mostly the Yoga Sūtra of Patanjali), which we then explore in practice.
- a recognition of our potential, and the need to tap into the unknown in order to ‘be the change we want to see’.
- yoga as a teaching for living– in order to inform our daily lives (work, family, and the local and global community ).
- inspired by the teaching of Peter Hersnack – filtered through our own experience.
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Ongoing course exploring Peter Hersnack’s book
A Walk Through The Living Breath
This course is currently running, but the description here gives an idea of how I’m committed to bringing peter Hersnack’s unique approach to yoga out into the world. I will continue to do this through courses and workshops into the future.
We are looking at one chapter each month for 7 months, starting December 2022. We’re take time to look at the ideas in each chapter, and I am guiding the practices. In between sessions there is the chance to reflect, to practise, and to read the next chapter for each upcoming session.
I see myself as a guide, rather than a teacher.
The course takes one chapter per month, as follows:
One: Introduction
Two: Form, axis, breath: prāṇa – apāna
Three: The relationship between form and axis: prāṇa – sūrya apāna
Four: The two poles of the axis: mūla – apāna and candra – prāṇa
Five: Axis, form and laterality: candra – mūla
Six: Confusion and discernment: bandha – kleśa – saṁyoga
Seven: Incarnation and unveiling: puruṣa – prāṇa – prakṛti
I record all the sessions, so that you can go over them again in your own time. Students can also attend by recordings if they have to miss a session.
About The Living Breath
The Living Breath is the translation of Peter Hersnack’s book La Chair Vivante (Cahiers de Présence d’Esprit 2003). It covers the proceedings of a week-long retreat which Peter taught in France in 2002.
The book is divided into 7 chapters, each covering one day of the retreat. The theme is the relationships of five ‘energetic elements’, which are vital for our healthy living in the world.
Peter states clearly at the beginning that this is essentially a practical book; the fruit of his many years of study with TKV Desikachar in Chennai, India, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Each chapter contains two or three practices, which are described in detail and represented by diagrams. These introduce key aspects of Peter’s teaching, including intelligent use of breath in yoga posture and different aspects of bodily intelligence. The whole book is shot through with insights from Peter’s profound knowledge and unique understanding of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali.
Several people who worked with Peter through English have asked for some kind of workshop or course which covers both the essence and more specifics of his teaching. We are sharing our experiences, but I’m there to facilitate, to guide the practices and to outline the theoretical material.
I spent many years completely immersed in The Living Breath and every time I read the book, I find something new. Peter encouraged me to translate the original French book, La Chair Vivante, into English, and from 2010 to his death in 2016 I worked on it under his guidance. After that, a small group was formed, and we worked together to complete the translation project, which was published in December 2018.
Since Peter’s death I have been working consistently with Peter’s wife Colette, and also with Sylvie Palot, who both work tirelessly to ensure the ongoing transmission of Peter’s teaching. I’m also translating Peter’s translations and commentary of the Yoga Sutra into English for the Association’s website, https://art-of-yoga.fr/en/hersnack-peter.html, as well as being ‘anglophone rep’ on their committee. I’m offering this course as a way of keeping Peter’s teaching alive – and so that those of us who want to can pass it on to a new generation of students – each in our own way, but with an understanding based on practice and study.
About The Living Breath
The Living Breath is the translation of Peter Hersnack’s book La Chair Vivante (Cahiers de Présence d’Esprit 2003). It covers the proceedings of a week-long retreat which Peter taught in France in 2002.
The book is divided into 7 chapters, each covering one day of the retreat. The theme is the relationships of five ‘energetic elements’, which are vital for our healthy living in the world.
Peter states clearly at the beginning that this is essentially a practical book; the fruit of his many years of study with TKV Desikachar in Chennai, India, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Each chapter contains two or three practices, which are described in detail and represented by diagrams. These introduce key aspects of Peter’s teaching, including intelligent use of breath in yoga posture and different aspects of bodily intelligence. The whole book is shot through with insights from Peter’s profound knowledge and unique understanding of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali.
rasa
YOGA & SOUNDSCAPES
WEBSITE DESIGN