Lightseekers

Lightseekers is a creative social enterprise that uses photography and storytelling as a platform to learn about and engage with important social issues. They specialise in cross-cultural education and deliver thought provoking programmes to low-income areas, where creative engagement is low and students are likely to experience exclusion and discrimination.

How did I get involved with Lightseekers?

I started Yoga in 2019 while finishing my doctorate and I met Kajal Nisha Patel, founder of Lightseekers and yoga teacher at Nilu.Yoga. The rest is history. We became friends and collaborators through the Breaking the Silence Initiative at Quetzal. Over the pandemic, we discussed in great details the impacts of poor mental health on wellbeing and physical health. Through our discussion, a project started emerging that will become Ways to Wellbeing - a 9 online session programme providing the tools and knowledge to communities to enhance their wellbeing. She invited me to become a director at Lightseekers in 2021 and we delivered the project that same year.

Activities

2021

• Ways to Wellbeing
• Bhensexplaining Kitty Party

Learn more about Lightseekers

• Instagram

Ways To Wellbeing

 Ways to Wellbeing is a 9 online session programme delivered by Lightseekers in May 2021 featuring 10 practitioners

The project aimed to equip communities with  techniques, knowledge and information to support individuals and communities in their journey towards better mental, physical, social, environmental and spiritual wellbeing.

The project was funded by Near Neighbours.

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A post shared by Founded by @kajalnp (@lightseekers)

Stop manipulating your mind

Write up 20 negative thoughts that come to your mind well too ofen.
Look at them, rank them by order of affect.
Once this is done, start meditating on each one for them to disappear... get a new meaning... you will feel better for it...

Time to eat

You wake up, have a bowl of porride. It is 7am.

10am comes, you are hungry again. Are you really? 

You may just be thirsty. 

Wait at least 6 hours before your next meal.

Feeling ungrounded? Bring a plant in your space

If you are feeling a bit dizzy, anxious, spacey and ungrounded for most of the day. In other words, if you are feeling like all your problems are in a cloud above your head and you cannot be fully present where you are, get a plant in the room, look at it and remind yourself that you are rooted in the current space and time ready to deal with the task ahead. Your problems of yesterday are gone until then...

Learning the Violin as an Adult

It is now approximately a year and six months that I am learning to play the violin.

I started the violin because my friend and now tutor shared with me her philosophy of teaching children to learn this musical instrument. I was taken by what she shared with me. It resonated because I was experiencing difficult life events at the time, learning the violin appeared to be a potential solution to my problems.

She told me that she teaches the violin through the Suzuki method. Her main role as a teacher and mentor is to help her pupils to deal with and express difficult emotions through music. Learning the violin is hard and going through life is not always easy. Hence, being mentored and equipped with the skills to deal with those difficult emotions are an asset which is not only useful in playing music but also in dealing with difficult life events.

When I started to learn the violin, I was in a dark place. My father had just been diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia and I could not find a way to deal with the way I feel. She helped me in many ways in being present in the moment, in focusing my mind, in recognising where in my body I was feeling tension and pain, in focusing on the details to keep going when the overall picture was boring, to accept imperfection and appreciate the little and small achievements.

The road is long til I become ready for full concerto but I must say I revealed to be quite a good player.

Ultimately, learning to interact with an object such as the violin or one direct environment demand full attention. I was distracted by emotions that were not helpful in moving towards my goals. By learning the violin, I became aware of how much distracted I was. I became aware that I was getting distracted because I did not want to deal with difficult emotions in my being. I learnt to reduce distractions and deal with them. I gave my experiences new meanings which ultimately transformed me. I am now present for the better.

Failed to quit smoking, Learn to Breathe Instead

I thought I'll share my experience in trying to stop smoking and what was the trigger to completely stop.

I have been up and down in regard to trying to stop smoking completely in the past two years or so. I'll stop sometimes for a month, then start again, then stop again for another month. I'll smoke sometimes only over the weekend, then stop again for few days. 

My body was so confused that I caught some chest infection and got pretty sick.

Nevertheless, I kept going on the smoky ride.

I was fed up and wanted to really know what was going on.

Time for reflection. Is it because of others? Is it because I am depressed? Is it just the addiction?

Then I came across a video about breathing and how beneficial it is for the brain to breathe properly.

I read around the topic of breathing from a medical and spiritual perspective taking into account studies made on yogic breathing techniques in tackling depression and other health issues. 

I reflected on how I breathe when I smoke. The truth is it is when I inhale and exhale the smoke that I fully pay attention to my breathing. I like the feeling of my lung getting filled with air and I stop there and then paying attention to my list of things to do. But wow, smoking is horrible for my health.

So I decided to stop focusing on ''stopping to smoke'' but instead focusing my energy into learning to breathe properly.

Right now, It has been not even a week, I stopped. I am giving myself a lot of fresh air by inhaling and exhaling deeply in order to get calmer. 

I am taking some honey to heal my lungs, I am going for long walk in the forest to breath some fresh air. I try to stand up more to breathe with my belly and not with my chest.

We will see how I can keep going.

I'll share in a month or so how learning to breathe again is helping me leaving behind one of the biggest compromise I have made to calm myself down i.e. > to wreck my health through smoking.

You feel that there is enough to get around - well there is a treasure in your house

Have you ever heard about the girl who had a messy house and used to complain all the time because she did not have enough money, she did not have love, she did not have anything to go about. She fights with everyone to let them know how horrible life is and that we all have to fight to get what we want.
Victim mentality at its best.

She meets a woman with clairvoyant abilities. The woman tells her: ''there is a treasure in your house''.
To get it, the girl got to clean her act and deal with the messy house.
Before she knows it, she sells all the clutter and in her pocket find the treasure...

The moral to the story is : You know what the solution is to your problem,
maybe it is time to see it, if you can't, clean the stage and your act.