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Read more about the article cave of the heart
cave of the heart, 2022

cave of the heart

  • Post author:sarah kowalski
  • Post published:March 23, 2022
  • Post category:Paintings
  • Post comments:0 Comments

  Cave of the Heart, 2022, watercolor on paper, 18"x24" March, 2022 Sometimes paintings emerge as attempts to convey a somatic experience that can't totally be conveyed. At times, in…

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About Me

Sarah Kowalski

Writer, artist, yoga teacher, parent. Obsessed with how things heal, grow, and change.

sarahtarrkowalski

Have you been away from yoga for a while? Or stuck Have you been away from yoga for a while? Or stuck in a rut in your practice, going through the motions but feeling a little disconnected?

You know that feeling of a moment in life where you feel ALL IN? Like you're exactly content to be exactly where you are, like the moment you're in is worth paying close attention to, like it might matter to be in it as your whole entire self?

When we spend so much of our days distracted or out of sync, finding those moments of FLOW STATE or deep presence can be hard.

But without it?

I feel like if I go too long it's like I'm missing a vital nutrient in my whole being.

Slow Flow and Mindfulness is a place where I'll aim to help you get *fully inside yourself* and remember just why that matters so much.

Because you live this precious life in your precious body, and every day matters.

And moving and breathing with intention and embodied kindness is a gift you'll carry off the mat with you into the rest of your day, and your week.

Come hang out! I'd love to see you on the other side of the screen.

Slow Flow and Mindfulness
Tuesdays, 10-11am eastern
Live via ZOOM
(and recording available with purchase)
via @sweetfireyoga

Link in bio to register! 

#phillyareayoga
#phillyartist 
#onlineyoga 
#sweetfireyoga
Why SLOW FLOW yoga? SLOW because we all spend a l Why SLOW FLOW yoga?

SLOW because we all spend a lot of our lives rushing -- from one task to the next, scrolling the phone half the time.

SLOW because most of us lead lives that ask us to forget we have bodies, or use them only as utilitarian tools to accomplish the next item on the to-do list.

SLOW because moving at a pace that lets you *feel* and *witness* and *learn* -- rather than just going through the motions -- is a profound gift to yourself.

FLOW...? Because breath has a rhythm. And when we breathe slow and steady, and sync movement to that tidal current, we shift the body and nervous system from the inside out.

FLOW because it's a way to practice being in motion while still being present. It's one thing to sit still and pay attention (and I recommend it). But sustaining deep focus *while* moving is a potent skill.

FLOW because you create an experience of yourself, in yourself, and then you surf it.

We'll be layering in loving-kindness meditation with the movement all month, and easing space into those late-winter stuck spots.

Come hang out with me!

Tuesday mornings
10-11am Eastern
Live on Zoom
@sweetfireyoga

Link in bio to register🥰
a quiet little creature that feels like spring, de a quiet little creature that feels like spring, despite the gray January day outside...
This particular teal, and how colors contain memor This particular teal, and how colors contain memories.

I have a specific image of sitting next to my Grandma (who was an artist) at the dinner table at my childhood home in Illinois, probably on Thanksgiving, about 20 years ago.

I was wearing a fuzzy angora wrap sweater from H&M in this exact color (do you remember when H&M was like this new thing and their clothes were actually decently made and didn't immediately fall apart?) and she told me it was the best color for my skin and it felt like a gift, like she'd made it belong to me somehow, and I always think of her, still, when I encounter this color.

And my friend (a poet) just shared yesterday that apparently there are three categories of languages in the world: those that contain words for colors; those that use metaphors ("the color of sky") to describe colors but do not have words for them independently; and those that only have a word for the color red.

So now like a game of telephone I am passing that thought on and going to read about it more...

Do you have particular associations with very precise colors like this?

I'm chewing on bringing this into the next Entering the Cave somehow (which I am still sloooowly fermenting and hope to crystallize into form soon-ish).
I love that each painting only happens once. Even I love that each painting only happens once. Even if it's a technique I keep playing with or shares elements of prior practices.

Every day you live is the only time you live it. Every moment in life, when you remember to feel it, is once in a lifetime.

We think we can hold onto things. And some of them we can, and do. But we are also, as Pema Chodron puts it I think, perpetually being pushed out of the nest.

These past few years have really hit that point home for all of us in different ways, I think. What's been lost, and what remains, and where we go, and what we let go of, and what we carry forward... amidst so much personal and collective grief, amidst so much necessary reimagining, amidst so much need for change.

I'm grateful for friends and art and for the ongoing daily unfolding beauty and poignancy of all of it. 

I'm leaning into taking things slow and trusting the rhythms of things -- on that front, I'm still looking towards getting another cycle of Entering the Cave scheduled soon, and launching more yoga classes, but I'm trusting it to happen on its own pace and not forcing it. But hopefully soon, loves.

I *will* be teaching online this coming Saturday, Jan. 21st, from 10-11:15am via Sweet Fire Yoga. These online classes have been feeling (I feel okay saying this because it's been emphatically affirmed by the people in them) REALLY good. Slow, purposeful, DEEP. 

I'd love to see you on the screen this weekend if you want to mark your calendar!

And I'd love to hear whether this -- the slowness, the grief, the need to let things unfold in their own time -- resonates.

Also lemme know if you have yoga requests...? xoxo
Something from late night painting practice. Still Something from late night painting practice. Still obsessed with this thing of "one" color that can shatter into component pigments, and with these drip pathways.
This series is emerging and shifting and feels lik This series is emerging and shifting and feels like it's opening more with each painting. Elements of movement and time and deep presence. They each seem to become an image, though not one I plan or choose. They emerge and I simply midwife them as they become. The way one waters a garden and the plants grow themselves.

I painted this one listening to the You're Going to Die podcast interview with Sophie Strand @cosmogyny, who is becoming one of my favorite sources of inspiration. Her mind washes over me like the natural world itself, a process I long to commune with but don't fully understand and never will. Something so intricate I want to pause and let it really slow me down. I might listen to the whole thing again.

And somehow in my mind during this painting, a specific memory of a batik shop in Indonesia many years ago. The bleeding of indigo dye, the blue and white. That slow process of wax and time and heat and cold, hardening and melting.

Things take time to become themselves. Including you and me, all of us. And unlike a painting, which at some point we call "done," we are each continuing, forever becoming.

For me, this is a season of slowness. Of rest and retreat. Of grayness and grief. Of gradual emergence. Of gratitude. Of letting go of believing I can know the future or control it. Of friendship and of faith.

And, when it gets too heavy: 80s/90s dance music, really loud, will shift a mood. January/February living room dance parties after dinner are becoming a yearly practice of managing the season's blues. Recommend.

flow/bleed, watercolor on paper, 18x24", 2023
blue green creature, watercolor on paper, 11x14", blue green creature, watercolor on paper, 11x14", 2023
song of the sun, watercolor on paper, 18x24", 2023 song of the sun, watercolor on paper, 18x24", 2023
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