Ikigai (生き甲斐, pronounced [ikiɡai]) is a Japanese concept that means “a reasonfor being”. The word refers to having a direction or purpose in life, that which makes one’s life worthwhile, and towards which an individual takes spontaneous and willing actions giving them satisfaction and a sense of meaning to life.
Which of these are your ikigai or will/reason to live and be?
Feel free to choose the first 3 and share .
The reason to be…
1To not perish without a passion
2To not miss all the great deeds
3To sample all the great senses
4.To ride on, no matter the storms
5.To never back down
6.To dare to dream, no matter
7.To be unconventional
8.To love unconditional
9.To see hope beyond all odds
10.To tune inwards and sense wellbeing
11.To choose health in every now
12.To learn as much as you can
13.To understand life in the living
14.To rebel and be free of the mundane
15.To make a name and garner fame
16 To make merry till the light shines
17.To be a reason for others to live
18.To play with life and risk it all
19.To live in this now no matter what
20.To protect my ones from harms way
21.To sense love living life lovingly
22.To explore and see the far off lands
23.To lead others and create prosperity
24.To act upon every possibility
25.To show the way for others to follow
The will to live …
Whatever is your reason or will to be may be, may you find happiness and contentment in your chosen path.
Life often challenges and surprises you
So make each moment matter as you live.
And not for single day
Just exist without living
Such is the will to live.
Learning to dance is indeed a labor of love and I cherish every moment . How privileged are we to share this indescribable Magic of Dance.
Hoping to continue to take this beautiful art of Dance to empower more and more people to sense and love the beauty of every movement in the moments called Life.
Savvy
Happy Fathers Day! God Bless Dads!
This is one of those moments when writing and sharing stories from our lives bring us a deep sense of connection… with our readers and ourselves in gratitude for the learnings. And there is that sense of magic sensed in our hearts which evokes poignant feeling of fond memories of the people that are attached to it.
“One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.”
~Albert Einstein
Life reflects itself through the things you do, the people you meet as well as in your passions and perseverances, in so many intriguing yet enthralling ways.
One such beautiful reflection I am experiencing is right here happening in France.
A sense of deja vu, a throwback to a decade ago, fond memories of teaching dances to people in the different places, all thanks to the magic of movements.
I am visiting Rennes France currently and last week I went to met my colleague from the world of dance, Celine Maheo who resides here.
Celine is a practicing clinical psychologist and an Argentine tango dancer.
What’s beautiful is that she is a dedicated professional who uses the dance therapy for helping Parkinson’s patients with their movements through Tango dance sessions.
My interest was piqued, as earlier I had been conducting similar dance sessions for Seniors, namely the Dance for Wellness workshops back in India.
So over a beautiful meet and greet sipping cups of hot herbal tea at the Les Grands Gamin at the heart of Rennes, ensued a free flowing conversation where we exchanged notes on each others life. Our passion for dancing was the visible to see as we hardly knew how moments passed by.
And when Celine invited me to her next Tango Therapy Workshop, it was an offer I could not refuse. I was actually keen to understand whether and how the cultural differences change the way of conducting and experiencing workshops here.
Dancing can improve the mobility and balance in senior adults.
Adapting the dance to suit the requirements of the group, like simplifying the steps, the placement of the feet, improves their coordination, mobility and balance.
The dance session was deeply engrossing & truly inspiring to witness and participate as well. The music played that day stayed with me well after the session.
So the next step turned out to be me conducting a Chacha session for them. The challenges of language barriers were surrmounted easily as Celine offered to translate my teaching from English to French.
Everything fell in place beautifully and voila time flew again.We danced a bit of Chacha that day and also some more in the next few sessions as well. I was told later by the learners how much they enjoyed it!
It was an amazing experience sharing the joys of movements and I thank Celine for her inclusivity in requesting me to conduct the dance sessions as well. And I deeply appreciate all her beautiful learners that I met,connected and danced with. It was a truly warm and wonderful time spent with them all.
As dancers, our every endeavour to bring smiles from the heart is a beautiful and creatively fulfilling experience.
Savvy
After the sessions we would gather together and discuss opening many facets of the learning and imbibing. It was a beautiful way of empathising and understanding each other.
Some of the beautiful souls I got to interact with in these few months…
Dance has a way of soothing your entire being and bringing forth and connecting you with the depth of who you are. That is when dance begins to feel meaningful and transforms life.
The dance connects established here in these sessions will be a beautiful memory etched in my heart, that I will take back home with me and cherish forever.
Today is 8th March 2020 and celebrated as Womens Day all over the world.
I dedicate this post to my friend and colleague Celine Maheo and all the women in the world who are making the world a better place, with every step in time.
Almost every one today owns a mobile or two! People forget time when they are on them. It is so very addictive. But what happens when your mobile crashes or there is a new one with more features that is attractive … you move on to the next to stay updated.
Mobiles are certainly the most valuable addition to our lives when they are in working condition.But the moment they stop working they become trash and lie gathering dust somewhere until they are thrown away.
The above clip is my dedication to my dear mother. They are a compilation from her own set of artworks dated around 55 years back in time or more.
The reason I share this is to encourage people to see possibilities in creativity and how it can soulfully connect us all, through creative enrichments.
To give you the background…my mother had and still has a fine sense of design and her drawings always had an artistic flow. But unfortunately the daily grind of life and living took its toll and art and creativity was pushed into the background perhaps not realizing the innate talents. But the truth is, a lot happens in appreciation than in indifference.
So her skills were lying untapped and unrecognized. In time as I grew up and while on a visit to my maternal grandparents home in the village, I chanced upon her collection of drawings and paintings stacked in the attic gathering dust in complete ignorance.
The moment I saw them I knew they have to be brought out to see the light of the day… although sadly it was personally disheartening, to see many of the beautiful pieces made on paper, crackling and crumbling in time.
I brought them back with me to the city and took pictures of what was left of it and tried to salvage it piecing them together.
By then I was encouraged by friends and relatives who saw and deeply appreciated them too.
I hit upon the idea of creating a video clip using technology to enhance her original design sense. Yes, they are not as good as her original artworks, for technology is way too perfect to bring out the joy of uniqueness in the human hand.
Yet it is my humble attempt to value the time spent in creating by her own hand with the limitations of the resources available to her in those times.
There are far too many paintings, so I pieced them like a kaleidoscope of sorts to get a sense of her artistic endeavours.
Many times we fail to see the hidden talents in our loved ones. We relate with them for years and hardly know the depth of who they truly are.
Art has a way of bringing out the brilliance of the light within us by bridging gaps in our understandings but also opening new perspectives of thinking.
Today is the day I was born, and one of the ways I choose to celebrate it, is by dedicating this post to my dear mother Anjana.
Thank you, mom, for the beauty you create, being who you are! God bless.
Love makes you hear music, you have never heard before,
Love makes your steps look like a dance.
Love makes your heart flutter in abandon.
Love makes you see the truth of beauty in the ordinary.
Love is the gift of grace from your soul.
Be in love. Be in love
With yourself and the world around.
And make both a better place to be in.
Today I complete my 500 days of writing consecutively here on WordPress, with my 500th post. Special and heartfelt thanks to all my readers and followers who have supported me in this journey of writing.
I would like to mark this day by writing about one of my favorite topics Creativity.
Creativity is fueled by the fire of passion. Often instinctual and deeply captivating, it is an expression of your innate potential. With it you are in touch with your deepest core. You are consciously awakening to the infinite abundance within, in every channelling.
Creativity spurts in the most unexpected ways.
It surges forth a river of possibilities
It amplifies the potential within
It leads you to rethink and challenge the norms.
It dares to question the accepted and projects perspectives.
It explores and creates paths for evolution.
It defies conventions to envision out of the box ideas.
It justifies the necessity of freewill through the art of movements
To create resolutions in times of confusion and chaos.
To manifest simplicity in times of complexity.
To innovate and change the statuesque in times of staid compliance.
To design and redesign towards efficiency and effectivity of purpose.
When creativity dares it is in communion with infinite abundance.
Vincent” is a song byDon McLean writtenas a tribute toVincentvan Gogh. It is also known by its opening line, “Starry Starry Night“, a reference to Van Gogh’s 1889 painting
TheStarry Night.
McLean wrotethe lyrics in 1971 after reading a book about the life of van Gogh.
Strikingly poignant.
It touches me every time I hear this song.
Brilliantly picturised on Vincent’s artworks.
The song by Don McLean is poignant yet peaceful in itself.
The mood mellow and sombre.
The truth is stark of reality.
Listen to this evening song
Literally speaks to the depth of our souls
Million thoughts runneth over
Amid the arresting hues of blues.
Until sleep beckons curtains are drawn.
Life poses the questions.
And life seeks the answers.
Poignant is the wisdom that arises in the challenges.
“A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?”
Can you waltz on ice?
When winters turn grim and cold
Can you create joy and cheer?
Even in moments of melancholy.
Can you see a silver lining of hope?
In the dark dreary night to help you cope
Can you see beauty in every dusk and dawn?
Letting go of fear & doubts in the twilight hours.
Can you instill trust in another & move in faith?
Inspite of not knowing the way as yet.
Can you believe you can lead the way?
Inspite of being in a maze in the now.
Verily you are stable in balance
And you have taken your stance.
Clearly then you are dancing in this moment.
Clearly you are waltzing on ice.
Savvy Raj 
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