Download Subtitles for How to Work with Mindful Photography Webinar

so you may want to use the chat at this point just to say hello to people to maybe say where you're calling from we have people from I think lots of different places around the world which is wonderful you may also want to just sense into how you're feeling right now and offer one word in chat to describe how you're feeling so I'm using this this little time for people to arrive just to have a bit of Silence a bit of Stillness you may want to do the same feel free to just kind of adjust your posture maybe you might want to just make sure you're really comfortable and I'm suddenly feeling a bit of stress in my neck so I'm just gonna stretch my neck out a little bit you might want to do the same with your shoulders lovely to see a couple of familiar faces and lots of other people here I've never met before or not not visually anyway I think I've I've actually chatted with quite a few people on social media and where it various other ways over the years so lovely to see you as well um you know who I'm who I'm talking about if you've been if we've been connected from for a while so lovely to see you thank you I'm just going to put everyone on mute just um just sorry I muted myself just uh to keep everything nice and quiet for everyone so you may depending on how you've got your screen set up you may want to see everyone on the screen or you may want to go into view and change your settings to just view speaker I'm I'm intentionally keeping my screen so that I can view all of you at once because I want to feel like I'm part of you that we're all in this together rather than that I feel separate from you but if you would like to to sort of I don't know if you feel like you can connect more with what I'm saying if if you put me on speaker view then feel free to do that so I have my colleague Charlie here with me I'm actually in her home right now which is marvelous very glad to be here and she as as we've said in the information we are recording the um the webinar today so if you'd rather not have your face well actually the she's recording it just in speaker view so we we won't be seeing your faces or names anyway she's because she's recording it just in speaker view but obviously if you don't want to be seen at all anyway by me or anyone else then just just turn your just turn your video off okay so before we get started properly um I'd like to well more formally welcome you it's really really glad um it's really great that you've made it here today quite a few people came to the webinar on Friday and we had a couple of technical glitches so I'm I apologize if any of you tried to get on on Friday but weren't able to make it um but for that reason but also because of high demand we've decided to rerun the webinar to today as well which which is great so before we get started just maybe bring your attention to your why you're here today just think silently to yourself you don't need to write anything in chat unless you want to just think about why you're here today what is your intention for being here today so what we're going to be doing is running through um what a little bit about what is mindful photography um what isn't mindful Photography in um coming from our perspective that is um from the look again perspective we'll do a couple of meditations or activities one is specifically a visual meditation and one is one that will involve your your camera or your phone if if that's what you'd like to do I'll also share a little bit about my personal journey and how I've used mindful photography for my own mental health my own well-being and how how that continues to sustain and nourish me now as I as I go through the ups and downs of life um and a little bit about the look again Journey more more broadly as well and where we're at right now and then towards the end I'll go into a bit more detail than what you've already probably seen around the training program that we're starting on the the fifth sorry yes the fifth of October so um in just over a couple of weeks which we're really excited about and um yeah can't wait to get going on that so what is mindful photography so mindful photography is is a a relatively new field in the world of more a kind of more therapeutic side to photography it's it's something that a few years ago when when I started to think about what it was that I was doing I was thinking well what is this you know what what is this that that I'm doing and I I Googled a few things and there was hardly anything that came up at all this was going back about eight years now um and all I all I knew at that point was that when I was recovering from a breakdown which I'll go into a little bit more later I started to use or experience Photography in a slightly different way than what I had before and I was bringing in a real sense of Consciousness and awareness to to what I was doing in a way that maybe I wasn't before together with specific um aspects of mindfulness as well as connecting in a really meaningful and really engaging way like a really practical personal level level with with nature and those three things really are the three things that from our perspective anyway is what mindful photography is all about so it's a blend of Photography mindfulness and nature connection now there's loads of people um working with mindful photography and and each of us have our own little approach our own methodology our way of seeing our way of of doing our way of being um and I think that for for look again it's been very much um well it started off being quite a personal journey and now the methodology that we've created is really as a result of uh years of working in mostly Community settings working with people on the ground and then during lockdown of course we had to go online but it was really about um working with all these all of all of the people that we're working with and coming up with something that actually is really meaningful and potentially transformational for a lot of people I'm gonna stop a few times as I go um the intention that I'm bringing to this to this webinar today is that I hope to model the approach that we take the model the the way that I facilitate online a model um through through my own actions including these little silences that I will take at times to cut that enable me to come back to be grounded to be here right here present with you in the moment and I feel the need to do that right now so I'm gonna I'm gonna do that for a few seconds and you may want to do it as well so for us mindful photography is not just about the photography it's not just about seeing it's really about being and also doing differently so through the seeing Through The Looking Through The Looking again and actually seeing things differently we become more conscious of how we're feeling how we're being in that moment and also then maybe okay so do I want to reframe something do I want to change something do I want to take action do I want to do I want to do something differently so it's not just about seeing in the head which is I think for most of us and I include myself most of the time I'm looking and I'm thinking and I'm seeing and I'm in my head still this is about also seeing with the heart and it's also about seeing with our hands that might sound weird but it's a lot of the work that we do actually involves all of the senses not just not just of the eyes um and it's about working with mindful photography not just for the well-being of myself other people that I work with but it's it's it really is about the collective it's about how this can benefit the individual as well as the collective and that might mean in your communities it might mean um in your in your family life it might mean in in The Wider world and your interests and other things that you might be involved and engaged with it's about looking and seeing with calm with curiosity with compassion and also celebration for for what is for what is here around us um it's about gratitude but it's also around resilience building how we can use what we see to build resilience in our own lives and also help the people that we we hopefully want to work with and share this with as well so I won't go into the details of um of our mission our vision and our values Etc but if you if you would like to go in if you would like to see more of that and there's a page dedicated to that on our on our website um and you will you will see there that it really is about taking this work out and benefiting as many people as possible in a way that's really accessible um and I mean accessible in the broadest possible sense the the other thing I just wanted to mention is that the methodology that that we've created over over the last few years has come partly through my personal lived experience but also as a result of the research that we've that we've been undertaking with the University of gloucestershire here in the UK um for for about four years in total um and they've been evaluating our work and as far as I know and I'm I apologize if I'm wrong but as far as I know we're the only organization offering mindful photography that is evidence based in the in the sense of offering this in a way that helps to decrease specifically anxiety and decrease depression therefore improving Mental Health um if there's other research studies out there please let me know about them I'd love to know so before I go any further um just like to also mention what from our perspective mindful photography isn't so mindful photography isn't therapy although what what people experience can vary always is often very therapeutic um because we try to make things as accessible as possible it's not about gadgets it's not about the tech it's not about the rules or the so-called laws of photography it's actually about keeping things really simple and letting go of a lot of that stuff that can often come with with photography about getting it right from our perspective there's no right and there's no wrong around around how we create the actual images or the or the outcome in particular that's that the process is a really important thing it's not just about creating beautiful photographs in fact often we encourage people to to not create beautiful photographs although of course a lot of photographs may be beautiful but that's not that's not the the point um and it's not just about getting up close and looking in detail it's a it's actually about the bigger picture as well and as I've said and I think it's really important to really emphasize this it's not about just the individual it's about the collective and The Wider world so there's a definition that we have um on for our approach to mindful photography is again and I won't I won't read that out now but um I think Charlie's probably shared a link by now to to that to the methodology page on our on our website if you'd like to have a look at that later so before I go any further I'd like to offer a little visual meditation I'm just going to I just need to do something here hang on one second sorry okay okay sorry about that just had a little techie moment though so this this little visual meditation is one that we often use if we're doing work online but we do it face to face as well um in when we're actually in a room with with people we refer to it as a visual meditation because it is about actually being slow it's about being potentially well quite still quiet you can do it seated or you can do it standing up and actually you may want to stand up right now and do it especially if you've been at your desk for a long time already today so please feel free to stand up and all you need is to be able to look out of a window now I'm hoping that you will have access to a window most people do have access to a window in a room occasionally that's not the case so if you don't have access to a window maybe imagine in your mind's eye a window that you that you're very familiar with maybe it's at home or maybe it's your office that you're that you're familiar with so when you're ready sit or stand and move your chair or move yourself move your body so that you can face the window and I'll just be talking through this so you don't need to be able to see me on the screen and I'd like you to try to imagine that you've never seen out of this window before however familiar you are with it try to imagine that you're a young child you're using the frame of the window like a frame that you might look at through a camera or a phone and you're really curious as to what you're going to see I'd like to invite you to bring your attention to what is closest to you so what is closest to you in the foreground and be really curious what colors can you see are there any particular textures that you're that you're noticing are there any shapes or patterns is there anything interesting happening with the light and now take your attention to the furthest away so right in the distance now obviously we'll all be seeing things very differently here would have very different experiences some of you may have a very very small amount going on outside your window some of you may have a huge amount going on I happen to be looking out of a window that I'm really unfamiliar with in that I'm at my colleague Charlie's house um and I've only been here a couple of times before today and I've never sat in this position and looked out the window in the way that I am right now so I'm I'm being very intrigued I'm noticing all kinds of things and in the distance you may want to start your your little exploration by starting at the top left hand or whatever is the to the left of your field of vision in the when you're looking at the distance and then slowly moving across to whatever is in the right look at the left look at the right generally notice if anything is moving is anything changing right here right now and then in your mind's eye in your imagination consider what what you're looking at right now might look like this evening or depending on where you are in the world in the morning basically imagine what it's like if it's light outside and if it's dark outside imagine what it might look like if the weather changes so I've been sitting in this in this lovely room for a few hours today it's changed so much since I've been here it was raining really bad really badly this morning and now it's really beautiful sunshine consider what it might also look like as the seasons change so here in the UK we're going into the autumn things outside this window will change really quite substantially over the next few weeks and months and then going into winter and then as things might change again otherwise things will change again in the spring and coming back into the summer so what we're doing here is using our eyes and our imagination as well to see in a more conscious way bringing our awareness to the present moment to the here and the now to really taking no tests but also considering how things might change over time the sense of things are uncertain things do change things never stay the same and again depending on your where you are and your circumstances you may be looking out and seeing nature you may not now I realize I'm very lucky very very privileged to be in this place right now that is really beautiful and when I'm at home I also I'm able to look out and see lots of greenery and trees I'm very aware that that is not the case for everyone but what we do do is encourage people to get out into nature as much as possible and when we talk about nature we're not talking about the big Wilderness we're not talking about going to the woods or the forest although that is great as well we're actually talking about working and connecting with what is there at any one point in time so it might be a little bit blade of grass coming up through the paving stones it might be a tree down the street it might be finding a lovely park bench down the road in the local park and we can use our eyes in this way wherever we are whoever we're with no one needs to know what we're even doing as a way to reframe how we're feeling but also how we might want to change what we're doing through becoming more aware of of what we're seeing and also how how we're being in ourselves okay so if you've gone away from your desk or your your screen come back feel free to come back now if we had more time we're going to break out rooms we'd have a little chat and you know we would kind of go through how we feel Etc but we don't have time to to do all of that today um but if you do want to share anything in chat around how you experience that how you felt what you saw feel free to do that but I also really don't want people to get distracted um by by what's coming next so absolutely no no obligation at all to do that so I'd like to share with you a little bit about my personal story some of you may have read a bit about this on on our website um the reason I'm I'm sharing this is is because for me it's really important to be open um around the fact that I'm a human being we're all human beings we all have our ups and downs some of us experience our ups and downs more than others um I I believe that part of my my work of look again is around trying to to do something to to Really um to really get good well to have to help decrease the stigma that still surrounds the whole area of Mental Health um and particularly as all the all the stats are showing that mental health is something that's affecting so you know more and more people especially as we face this increasingly uncertain world with all its well all its craziness that we're facing and you know us as individuals on our own personal circumstances but also collectively and in a more Global sense as well wherever we are in the world some of course more than others so I'm just going to share screen and share a few photographs okay hopefully you can see that right so back in 20 15 I had what at the time I described um or what felt like and certainly what I described was a breakdown a mental health breakdown as a result of a combination of things which I won't go into but it was episodes I'd had episodes of anxiety which led to depression sense of real overwhelm and then burnout and for quite a while like I could just about get out of bed to make sure my son got to school and that was about it I had to stop working etc for it for a few months um I was very fortunate to um to be able to go on a retreat up in Scotland um which at the time was gifted to me by some lovely friends of mine which was perfect but at the time I was in a very dark place and all I wanted to do was be with that darkness and I just allowed myself to be in this in this dark Woodland after a few days I started to feel um a lot well I felt I felt like I wanted more space more light and I ventured out more in into this lovely beautiful Valley that that we were in um I took a lot of photographs but it was whilst I was doing this that um I started to really think about or realize what what was going on here and that I was bringing aspects of mindfulness together with the photography and for me the nature connection was so so so important those of you who may know me know that I love walking around Barefoot I still do so by the end of this lovely week I started to to feel more joy again I started to feel more more gratitude for for what was literally there around me so the beautiful autumnal colors this this Photograph was intentionally Overexposed it was that was part of the creativity that I was consciously paying into that process um so that you know this was just kind of showing um from in that one that one small week of my life how the photography started to help me and this this was before look again became what it what it now is but it was part of my process and then more recently um I've been in a in I have I have to watch it you know I'm I'm not someone that that that has this kind of well I don't think many of us do have this lovely stable kind of existence you know I'm someone that does experience my ups and downs and it's and at times much more than others and I was I was again very close to home at this point but in a really lucky situation where I actually stayed overnight for a few nights in this place not far from where I live and I know that being in the Woodland is so important for me and there was this lovely sanctuary and I took a few photographs that I use a lot now when I when I want to refer to them myself to remind me of how important these things are to me so these are a few this one was as I was walking down the steps I it reminded me of the importance to remember of how how far I'd come so rather than looking forward all the time and thinking oh that to-do list oh all those things I haven't done all those things that you know and getting overwhelmed really easily with work or with other things it's like no Ruth right here right now you're fine and also remember how far you've come and it's an activity that I actually use quite a lot with with in different in different Workshop groups that that we do but um and of course everyone has a different way of doing this you know it's very open you know we're very open in our approach this was about letting go letting go of some of the things that don't serve me anymore again letting go is a really important part of mindfulness this was a reminder to walk my talk which I still struggle to do and to slow write down to sit to allow myself to sit and be still that may resonate for for others of you here today this one also was really important to me at the time this was around um I don't want to do this alone I can't do this alone I need other people in my life so this was about connection this is about connecting with other people in my work but also in in my life generally um this this was um these lovely Futures were very much around um not just seeing these the the fuchsias as flowers each of these fuchsias were well were little people Magic fairies in in the in the bush so to speak you know but in my mind I started to literally imagine certain people that were in my life at the time and that still are in my life these next three three or four photographs are literally created um to about two weeks ago so I was on a regenerative Leadership Retreat down in Devon here in the UK I've recently completed a year-long journey with um well hundreds of people around the world in um in regenerative leadership this was very much again around walking my talk coming back to being in nature myself to bringing the mindfulness to the present moment to using what I do for myself for my own for my own well-being um but also it was around the Collective Now what you can't see here is that there are 40 people sitting around this fire and it was very much around that importance of connection with others this was also spoke to me of connection if people shining little lights in the darkness or in those difficult times and me being hopefully one of these little people this one was a very difficult photograph to take it was also something that I've never been comfortable doing before and that is looking at myself in the mirror but doing it for an hour so I found this mirror really quite unexpectedly in the Woodland that um that I was in at the time and it was I was like whoa okay there's a mirror there um so I did go and have another look and I thought oh I think this is actually trying to tell me something so I was very very uncomfortable doing this but I thought no I'm gonna have another look I'm gonna look again at me I'm gonna spend some time really looking and what you know and allowing myself to see me for who I really am and for who I really at that moment and I won't go into into the details with you of course um but it was very very powerful very meaningful to me um and it's all about actually it was all about love and compassion um working with compassion through mindful photography is a really really important part of of the work that we do and this was about actually going through a portal into the future so most of the work is a of mindful photography is around um reframing the now and you know looking at the now in a different way being present in the now but as I said at the beginning for us it's so much more than that it's also about looking at the future looking at the future with different eyes and helping to create a new story a story that we would like to see rather than a story rather than just accepting a story that's coming our way um and that this part of the work is is becoming more and more important to to me personally and also in the work that um that we're doing with with others now so hopefully yeah I think everyone's still here hasn't put people off feel free to leave if you'd like to anyway so hopefully that gives you a little bit of an insight into the process um but also you know in into our our approach and how this could can be applied so I'd like to just quickly share another activity with you so normally this activity takes half an hour to do but we're going to do it in five minutes okay so um you can do it properly in your own time and normally we use these little frames to have another look through and those of you who may have been on on our workshops or courses whatever might well you'll be familiar with with these little frames um but I'd like you to imagine that you've walked into the room that you're in right now as if you've never been in that room before so maybe turn around and have a look at the door imagine that you're a really young child maybe you're too so you can walk you're really curious you walk in and you're like oh what's in here you're really really curious you've never seen anything like it before maybe you've walked in you know you're visiting an auntie or an uncle or some member of the family or a friend or something and you know like what that's like when you're a child and you're you like it's full of surprises and you walk in and you're suddenly drawn to something that you maybe haven't noticed before so look around the room notice the colors the textures the light there may be shadows there may be reflections there may be an object or a small area of the room a corner of the room literally a corner of the room like maybe even in the you know the corner of where the ceiling meets the wall or something literally it could be something really mundane it could be the floor sometimes the most boring the more most mundane the most ordinary the better and if you feel like it stand up and go and have another look and you might want to take your camera or your phone with you if you've got it to hand so walk over to the area that is that is drawing you to it and don't be afraid of getting up close you might want to move your body so you're literally almost touching it you might you might actually want to touch it use your hands to to touch to feel to even smell if that feels appropriate where I am there's loads of really beautiful plants and there's also lots of amazing light there's artificial light there's lots of natural light there's still all kinds of things there's amazing Reflections amazing Shadows I could spend literally hours actually looking again at this room and quietly slowly walking around and feeling differently as well as seeing differently whilst I do that and then once I'm feeling really connected to something and I'm feeling like I really want to spend some time with something like a little area or an object or whatever it might be to then really consciously get out my phone or my camera maybe take a few deeper breaths maybe not just really bring my awareness to what it is I'm looking at and consider really instinctively what I want in the frame and what I choose to leave out of the frame and when I'm ready and only when I'm ready to slowly press the shutter and to create an image so I'll give you a few moments to be with whatever it is that you're being with those of you who are doing this not right now you may want to consider what you're looking at in the room and consider if there's anything that you're looking at that offers you a sense of gratitude and if there isn't anything that you're feeling particularly drawn to that's okay too that's absolutely okay it doesn't matter what's important is to notice that there isn't anything so the fact that you're bringing your attention your awareness to what it is that there that there is in that space if you're not feeling drawn to anything that's absolutely fine you may want to go somewhere else after the call and undo it then or you may want to try again later in the same room and see if something different happens and Trust really trust that you can't that something will appear to you it's almost like the image finds you rather than you find the image okay so I hope you found that activity useful the sort of thing that you can literally do anywhere you are literally wherever you are whoever you're with whether you're on your own or with others whether you're at work or wherever you are people don't actually need to know that you're doing it I remember once um when I was at Victoria Station in London uh it was really busy it was really noisy and I'm I'm a highly sensitive person and I found it incredible I found it really tricky um I had to wait quite a while for for the train and I was feeling quite stressed because of what was going on and I remember thinking okay well what can I see right here right now and I and I looked at the floor and uh and I just started to see amazing things in the floor at Victoria Station you know and then I started to look up and see the bigger picture and again it was like okay I can totally reframe this experience and see things totally differently that's just to give you a little practical example okay so as you know from what we said in Eventbrite um we've we've got this um training program for practitioners coming up very soon um it's it's something that um basically we developed as during lockdown we were running lots of courses online and found out after after a while that lots of the people attending our courses were practitioners you know when I when I talk about practitioners I'm referring um to health well-being practitioners to artists to photographers um to environmental you know Forest bathing type practitioners coaches occupational therapists and lots of different kinds of practitioners um and they a lot of people was like well we want a bit more than this you know what's what lies behind all of this stuff um and so I thought okay well maybe what is necessary is a training program that we can write up about the methodology the facilitation framework that we use all the various Frameworks that we use um as well as going to the research of what you know what works what doesn't work what we found out Etc and then and then actual um examples of how you you put this into um into practice in with the communities that you serve so the idea is that um on this that people come on this training program who want to then be able to deliver the train um what they've what they've learned on the training program to the communities that they work with so we've for years now we've worked largely with non-profit organizations like Charities um with people um with Community interest companies the social Enterprises also the public sector um and we've worked in all kinds of different settings so people I'll just name a few people maybe living with cancer with other health health related challenges mental health a lot in specifically older people younger people teenagers the whole lot so basically loads and loads of different settings and you can on our website there's a there's a link that you can find a page to community um Community program and there's lots of case studies and examples there so the training is for people who are really interested um and or who want to to work to find out a lot more about the methodology and the practicalities of delivering this in the communities that you work with um it's there's it's over eight weeks there's seven modules we go into as I say the methodology the research Etc The Wider field of the more therapeutic side of Photography but we don't go into that in any detail we just kind of set a context just getting out my notes here because I'm going to forget something um but and then and then we we every session we talk very much around uh we bring in aspects of mindfulness lots of practices it's really really practical and lots of opportunity to practice facilitation we work with people all over the world so every single person that comes onto the program is coming from a often a different country but also from a different setting so there's lots of conversation that happens between people lots of learning that happens um in a very practical way all the materials are put we have an online platform all of those materials are um are put up from one week to the next online and can be downloaded the week before so every session is new is unique but then at the beginning of the next session we we review the week before and we have an opportunity to actually put it into practice so from one week to the next you have a week to process what you've learned and to think about how it actually um relates to to your particular work settings um so we we cover things uh the the attitudes of mindfulness that we specifically cover um other beginner's mind for example curiosity gratitude compassion um we then do a whole week on specifically around nature connection although nature connection is is linked in with everything that we do um a big focus on resilience building resilience through looking and seeing differently and then the last two modules are more specifically around the practicalities of how this actually works in real life with the communities that you work with and we use visualization techniques and we share a lot of the things that we've learned over the last eight eight years or so um so that's that's the um the program in a in a nutshell um the it's it is quite an investment um and that's for well there's a reason it's a lot of work but it's also a really jam-packed um eight weeks with a huge amount of materials and it's nearly fifteen hundred pounds for for the eight weeks but we do also have bursaries so we've got a few places left on the program we have one fifty percent bursary left and we have a couple of 25 bursaries left as well but it's all our discretion as well so the the process that people go through for this is that um I think Charlie's probably writing stuff in in chat anyway but there's an application process because we really want to make sure that that this that the program is right for you but also that it's right for us so we're looking for for people who we we really think uh are going to you know benefit as much as possible for this from this but also benefit the people the communities that they work with um so in terms of numbers it ranges from um uh gosh I think yeah from 15 to 22 I think was the largest group we have we had so this will be our our fifth cohort we've trained um 74 people in over 20 countries um over the last couple of years um and you have an opportunity to carry on meeting afterwards to continue to connect with each other um and to yeah continue learning from each other and lots of people from the previous groups are now doing collaborative projects together as well which is really lovely so I'm going to stop well actually no I'm not going to stop talking there's one more thing that I'm going to invite you to do and then it's over to you for questions I would like us all to be quiet for a moment you may want to take two or three slightly deeper breaths you may want to close your eyes or just keep your gaze soft or low whatever feels right for you there's no right or wrong and I'd like you well I'd like to invite you to reflect on how you're feeling right now and reflect on if there's anything that you've heard will seem or experienced today that you can take forward and use in some way as a form of caring or nourishing yourself I'd also like to invite you to consider if there's anything you've you've seen or felt or learned today that you'd like to offer to others in your communities in your family your friends Etc okay when you're ready come back to the screen okay so we have a few minutes if you have well I hope you found that useful um obviously if you'd like to find out more just let us know you can book a zoom call with me this week if you'd like to if you're interested in the training program if you'd like to go through it in any more detail with me or just feel free to make an application and if we need more information from you we'll let you know um but yeah and any questions anyone please please feel free to ask I think I think we'll actually stop recording now um so that we don't have to uh yeah we'll just stop so