Ramla Akhtar

~ rumi ~

February 2011 marks the fifth month of my year-long Year “Off”.

Starting 01 Feb, I am taking myself away on a 12-week retreat.  This retreat involves dance & movement therapy for the body, and an artist re-discovery course for the mind. My aid for the first is yoga and intuitive movement, which I am learning from various sources. More on this in a minute. The second part of the course is self-taught with the guidance of Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way.

For movement, I have enlisted the help of these various sources: Anna Halprin’s Returning to Health with Dance, Movement and Imagery; Tara Stiles’ Strala Yoga (aka Rebel Yoga); and a variety of wonderful excursions into the enchanting world of YouTube. Finally, my own body remains the master guide to my intuition.

This is it for now. Updates will be posted here.

* Update, 26 May 2011: The retreat, originally scheduled to end on 30 April 2011, has now extended until the Summer season. If I go by the book (The Artist’s Way) henceforth, I shall only take four more weeks, and conclude in the last week of June 2011. The course, however, has been demanding. It asks for practical action on the heels of inner and outer exploration — and this is where I am going by my own speed. The greater dysfunction in the land sometimes becomes a spur for action. Often, though, it occupies the mind and slows it. My method previously would have been to force myself against such pressure. Living intuitively, however, one knows better than to commit such folly.

Therefore the retreat continues for now. The creative output so far has been fantastic. Things have absolutely not gone in the direction that I expected them to. And after some weeks of struggling with this, I decided it was best to relax the reins on the inner horses of creativity and see which direction they gallop into.

So far, so wild a ride. Peace!

P. S. I hope to write a more detailed update, later. While the retreat continues, though, I prefer silence to talk. ~ Love!

* 08 April 2012: I discovered that the true verse may be: “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.” Well! That changes everything! Almost!