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there are so many wild turkeys here, in the mountains. It feels like a turkey farm! :))

Picture is clickable.

 

particularly  by such women as Tatiana Yakovleva (Lieberman), Tamara de Lempicka and Gala Dali.

This post is not about visual art understanding. It's about its daily impact on your mind, energy level, behavior.

Usually a question "would you hang it in your living room?" is considered banal and not intelligent, because art is more than a primitive decoration, right? But not everybody understands the difference between an art as a philosophic category, and an art as a decoration of a living space.

Sometimes people use art in their home with the purpose of making a statement about themselves. That statement directed to others, who will be visiting the house and getting the certain impression about person who lives there. Sometimes people pretend to be more sophisticated that they really are, or want to build some image in the eyes of their guests. So, they choose the art which carries some specific message, working for image development. That's perfectly understandable and acceptable.

However, while you choose art for your home (or any other space, where you will be spending significant amount of your time) with any goal considered - your image representation, simple color coordination, or any other - you should never forget about how the art on your walls influences you.

Let's talk about what art is doing to us. It is pretty simple with traditional representational art which deals with specific recognizable objects and usually carries straightforward, clearly understandable messages.

Things are getting more complicated with the abstract art, which usually appeals directly to your subconscious mind. The purpose of non-representational art is to produce feelings in the observer, bypassing literal perception and going straight to emotion, when all your brain energy goes to this process. And here lies its power over our mind.

As we know, our subconscious mind acts and reacts according to the stimulus it receives, whether you recognize it or not. Thus if you have powerful abstract art piece in your living room, which you appreciate very much due to that fact, that you can relate with the feelings it produces, you understand the power of it and the message - but if you feel it's not positive, if it seems either sad, or provocative in the negative way - it will affect your mind negatively every time when your eyes will be glazing over, even if you don’t think about it at all. It will cause your subconscious mind to feel the sadness and/or other negative emotions day by day, year by year, programming your mind, your behavior, your cognition. The power within our subconscious mind is much bigger than the majority of people understand. Correspondingly, the art, which causes good, positive feelings will program your mind and behavior positively, making your life happier, more positive, and balanced.

The subconscious mind is a major component of our behavior. This is where the most subtle things we take in either visually or audibly affect one's whole conscious being. We should be very careful of the things we let in. It is sometimes difficult to do, but we should try hard. It just takes some filtering and discipline.

So the bottom line - one should be very careful and attentive to his subtle feelings while choosing the art for the surrounding walls. By getting it, you will let it enter your mind and your life - don’t underestimate its power over you.

 

 

 

Hi there!

Today I will share with you the story of my dramatic fight with my own brain for developing an exercise habit. All my friends know, that I am very hedonistic person, which means that  I strongly prefer  to do only things I really enjoy, and all other tasks mean a big fight with my self-indulgent brain: “Lena, do you really-really need it? Wouldn’t it be much better to skip it? Let’s skip it! Oh, please, imagine how nice it would be not to do it right now! What? It will be bad for you later? C’mon! Live here and now! …oh, well…OK, OK… but remember, I don’t like doing it, don’t like! Don’t like!! You push me too hard!!!... No, I’m NOT excited at all!..I hate it, hate it!!....are we there yet? No? oooooooohhhhh……aaaaaa….”  And so on.

Speaking of exercise, I always thought that I have very different body chemistry that all others have. Others have their body filled with endorphins after a good exercise, and my body got only exhaustion, without even trace of that famous post-exercise euphoria.  Even more, regular pushing myself to walk on a treadmill, gives me more pains in my body and even more panic attacks! I was totally confused by this fact, even discussed it with my doctor, but there were no answers.

The main thing which made my cardio/weight loss routine so unbearable was the boredom in combination with the signals that my untrained body sent to my stubborn brain: “I’m not comfortable, I have low energy, I’d rather be seating on the couch”. And one part of my brain was reacting fiercely:” “AAAA!!! - how many minutes of this torture left? Fifteeeeen???!!! Oh, NOOOO…” But other part of my brain was set to the state “we really need to do this walk, remember, there is diabetes in the family!” – so, it was constant fight inside my conscious mind, which literally took all my energy.

I tried almost everything to cheat my brain – I gave it audio books, movies, talk shows, energetic music – just to get it busy-busy. Nothing   worked, the fight stayed and drained my energy to that black hole.

And  finally….

When we moved to Woodside, I was so impressed by the surroundings that I started to develop my personal retreat–like environment.  I decided it would be a shame to live in place like this and not use it for healing my soul and body. So I started collecting meditation and relaxation music from YouTube and other sources, focusing on stuff, which sounded VERY positive.

And once I mistakenly went to walk with this music on my MP3 player. Guess what happened? YESSS!! My brain was in a very peaceful  trance all the way!! So next time I repeated the experiment on my treadmill. I went on a treadmill with relaxation “massage” kind of music - and it worked again. And  then again and again. One time I tried guided breathing relaxation with Paul Collier music right after my 45 minutes cardio routine. For about 10 minutes I was meditating and giving myself that stupid positive affirmations about how happy, healthy, and talented I am – and after that I found myself in absolutely, absolutely marvelous state of calm and happy mind, floating on the cloud of happy feelings  about myself and my life, which stayed with me all that night. No any mental therapist or massage could give me that feeling. Gradually in a month of these experiments I literally got addicted to my treadmill exercise, and started thinking of it not as a torture, but as a big pleasure.

So, if you like me, here what you need to get addicted to exercise:

That’s it.

Good luck!

Love,

Lena.

P.S. And, please, see my galleries and new additions at Amazon.:)