Body and Consciousness are two components of a person, where the body is the shell of consciousness, the way the mind interacts with the world. We use the functions of the physical body — sight, hearing, smell to create a picture of our personal Universe. We evaluate the body as a characteristic of something material and earthly, where the other pole is our invisible conscious Mind.
We live in a time of rapid development of new technologies and science, where the decisive word always remains with the mind. We turn to the body only in terms of health, well-being or what can make our intelligent life more comfortable. The body is subordinate to the mind, being its auxiliary part.
The greatest creation is the Body, which no (rational) science can reproduce, being only its appendage.
Is it possible, using only the Body, to penetrate into those parts of the universe where the mind has no access? To go beyond the boundaries of your comprehensible world, beyond your personal limits, the boundaries of your Self, and enter into something completely different, unknown Paradise, Nirvana, samadhi, identity with God, Brahman, the Absolute.
India offers us such a path through self-understanding through Yoga or, as it is correctly called, psychopractice that transforms consciousness.
The central position in meditation in such contemplative practices is concentration on the object, entering into the object, and subsequent dissolution in it. Regarding physical exercises, — this is the observance of correct postures (asanas), entering into the physiology of your body, concentration on different types of breathing and sound therapy, for example, like reading sacred sounds such as «Om».
«The body is a rare treasure, and finding it is a great happiness, since only man is capable of achieving liberation, and it is extremely unwise to miss such a difficult to find opportunity» E. Torchinov
In her practice, Anastasia uses images of imaginary landscapes as an object of concentration, where the artist seeks to turn off rational thinking and give free rein to the physicality, for example, a hand moving along spiral lines. The artist explains her idea of the technique using the example of a signature on documents, which we put mechanically-physically, without using the mind. In painting, the artist uses spiral lines, which she applies with oil pastels. Then
she shades with a brush also along spirals. This in a way creates a rhythmic repetitive movement, like «asanas» hand, where there is no place for fixation on oneself, but there is movement and feeling of one’s body, and concentration on the image without turning on analysis (that is, without assessing one’s actions).
To choose the object of concentration, the artist settled on the theme of light, its phenomena in nature, accessible to our perception (vision). Observing the action of light, the constant movement of light spots across the airspace, immersing oneself in this atmosphere of lightness and weightlessness, where rapidly changing images stop at some point, and when the image changes in reality, only one moment freezes in a person — which the author was working on. The fusion of the seer and the seen, where reality loses its relevance, and the author’s state itself comes to the fore.
The artist’s work is more reminiscent of a psychopractice that transforms consciousness, the yoga of painting, the creation of one’s own mandala — a psychogram, «a symbol of mental self-regulation, a means for integrating disunited aspects of the human psyche» (Jung).
The landscapes, which seem calm on the surface, upon subsequent analysis represent active dual scenes of Light and Shadow. The artist reflects on the duality of human perception as the only possible description for understanding something: light-darkness, good-evil, good-bad, and so on. In order to understand something, there must be another polarity in consciousness, two principles that are not reducible to each other, like opposite principles. According to many mythologies of different countries, the only place where two oppositions unite into Unity is entering the Absolute, Brahman, paradise or nirvana.
For many of these «entrances», the designation «light» is used, as the only constant description of the highest reality, where every believer strives.
«Light», as the highest manifestation of something, a blissful state, liberation, complete peace, emptiness, enlightenment, is the eternal foundation, where everything must return over time.
Curator Anastasia Loktaeva
