Wrap-Up and Closure

Continue your journey as the protagonist of your own life

Do you ever feel like you're observing the world from the sidelines, disconnected from what is alive around you? You might feel invisible to others and even to yourself at times - especially if you've overlooked your own needs and desires to serve their's.

When you don't have time to recognise your own feelings, hopes, and needs, you start to feel like an outsider. These are often personal emotional responses and don't necessarily mean people intentionally disregard you. But rather than belonging to your own unique life, and by adapting to a supporting role for everyone else, you find the opposite of belonging.

By photographing you can become visible to yourself,
as we have practiced during this course.
With photography, through your photos,
you can analyse feelings and things that
need more light or letting go.

One of the goals of this course has been to burst the bubble of invisibility. Through the self-portrait tasks we've been gently playing with discomfort in order to become more flexible and comfortable within ourselves. This helps us become familiar with who we are, how we look, and what is going on for us right now, so that we can assume the lead role of our own life.

Being the protagonist doesn't mean shutting everyone and everything else out. It's about owning who we are as we integrate into the interdependent ecosystem of humanity. Extreme independence might highlight issues with trust as a trauma response.

Self-esteem and gentleness towards oneself

The way we see ourselves emerges from the seeds of acceptance planted by those around us growing up. Our self-esteem comes from how much we accept ourselves; a script that we can continue to rewrite and edit throughout life.

Instead of defaulting to harsh words, guilt, and shame we can ask ourselves different questions: where am I thriving, what are my strengths, where can I use my strengths and experience a new sense of meaning?

Thriving does not mean being perfect or the best. To thrive is to shine in your own element. You are a unique combination of 'your things'. No one else has ever had the same combination as you, so you're already the best at that.

Find your element, find your tribe

Are you operating in an element you're not optimised for? Or are you trying to force it with the wrong equipment, approach, or motives?

Use your intuition and sensitivity to recognise your element

I GET IT = This makes sense

I LOVE IT = I think about (or do) this from morning to night if nothing prevents me. This is what I am naturally drawn to.

I WANT IT = I'm willing to give up many other things for this.

Finding your element isn't quite enough though. The real thriving begins when you find your tribe.

WHERE IS IT? = There are others somewhere who do or think the same thing, and if you haven’t found them yet, you will soon.

As you step deeper into your own element, passion and intuition will become stronger driving forces in your life, and everything else will fade into the background.

"At the end of a day, if you’re doing something you love to do, you can be physically worn out but elated.

Everybody’s life is different...everybody has to face their own struggles. But your life’s not over until it is over, and it’s never too late. I think it is about taking stock. I think if people looked at how much time they spend in doing things they dislike, things where they fritter their time, they may well find there are opportunities there they hadn’t seen before...If you take the trouble to find your talents and the things that excite you, new opportunities open up that you hadn’t even considered were there.

It’s like a whole new portal becomes available to you. There are lots of examples of that, of people who’ve found a way forward that they didn’t know was there until they started to look for it. It’s about making a conscious effort. But it’s not a 10-step program. But it is, in the end, up to you."

Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life by Sir Ken Robinson

We have touched these things through photography. What it feels like to be here now and how it feels when something moves slightly. You can only start where you are, but you can start: in the first week you stopped and looked at yourself, in the second week you brought yourself into the light and explored the message in the shadows. Then you noticed your shields, showing compassion to yourself and your story. In the fifth week you explored the state of your boundaries. And last week you reflected on your ability to recognise your need for recovery and you threw yourself into creative play.

When you really see how things are now, it’s easier to crystallise what you love, what you want, and where to find them. It is easier to make decisions, create changes, and look to the future.

Creativity and Play

Two hours of spontaneous, unplanned fun per day. That's the prescription I got from my doctor last spring. I recommend the same to all of you.

Elements of play were also included in each week of the course. Hopefully you dared to let go, played with shadows, built concrete boundaries and played with image processing. We have been inside and outside of our minds and dared to feel emotions.

We are ALL allowed to create and play. In fact, we've got to. As humans it's a prerequisite for our well-being.

Go To The Prompts

"Feeling like an outsider is something almost everyone has experienced at some point in their lives. Sometimes it's because of a new environment and people you haven't had time to get to know. So feeling like an outsider doesn't necessarily mean you are separated from others. Feeling like an outsider can surprise you in familiar place too, in the company of people who are close to your, if expectations don't match.

The feeling of being an outsider has been said to have a similar meaning as pain, in terms of human survival. People need each other and a supportive community. A feeling of externality makes us look for a group that accepts as a member and defends us when needed.”

Mielenterveysseura.fi (Finnish mental health association)

There are three questions we use in The Haven to help develop awareness and presence in life:

- What do I need right now?
- What am I letting go?
- What is changing?

You can play with these questions and approach them from any angle. You could use them to inspire a photo diary. If you would like to keep sharing your images, the Creativity and Play Group is a great place to do it.

What did this course give to you?

In what kind of light you see yourself now?
How do you feel about your own story, is it clear where you are right now?
What are the dreams that can no longer wait?
Or did you realize that you are happy with your life and story as it is?
What concrete change are you going to make if you addressed a particular problem?
What's in your new story?

Changes don’t have to be big as long as they lead towards what you want to be or what you want to do in the future.

"One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself: What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?"

- Rachel Carson

BONUS PROMPTS

1. Graduation Photo - feel the pleasure of completing

A seven-week online course is a short time. But maybe even in such a short time you have found something new in yourself, even something quite small

Feel the pleasure of completing something or letting go of something: letting go can have very opposite emotional contents, joy and relief or longing. Completed processes don’t always have to be big, they can also be small processes inside big ones.

Take a graduation photo of yourself.

2. A Keyword Which You'll Take as a Souvenir From This Journey

Connection, Gratitude, Joy, Respect, Responsibility, Prosperity, Forgiveness, Trust, Enthusiasm, Patience, Frustration, Listening, Positivity, Humility, Creativity, Light, Gentleness...

Which word resonates with you the most right now? Feel the word you chose - or the word that chose you.
What it wants to say to you. Could this chosen word be the beginning of something new?

Connect this word with your graduation photo.

3. The Most Impressive Image

Now is the time to choose the most impressive image you created during this course, the one that made your eyes and mind open. What that image tells you, what it made you realize or change?

GALLERY
There is a photo gallery for these Most Impressive Images on Photoyoga website, so if you'll send your photo to me with a permission to publish it, I'll add it to the gallery. Please tell me whether you wish your name will be mentioned or whether you want it to be published anonymously.
https://www.fotojooga.com/kurssikuvagalleria

Upload your photos to the Photoyoga WhatsApp Group

Mark your photo: GRADUATION

“Life is not only for consuming other people’s creations. Life is for exploring our own creativity: giving yourself to imagination, creation, and dreaming.

You are an artist. The world needs your art. Now, go and make somebody's day."

Andy Mort - The Gentle Rebel Podcast

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