The Art of Revelation

Absorbing and throwing off creative sparks, plus mindful yoga sessions to feed body, mind and soul

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Not Paris :) © Design + Know-How

Having just returned from a soul-satisfying, eye-popping three-day holiday to Vienna, I am convinced more than ever in the pulse-racing, heart-bursting, mind-expanding, transcendent power of art.

Heart-bursting, mind-expanding, transcendent power? Yeah, those are the same things you could say about a yoga practice. In fact, we have said similar things before:

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A Yoga Practice is an Art Practice

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Contemplation? Check. A full-body experience that creates a resonance between what’s perceived outside and felt inside? Check. Attention restored thanks to art’s soft fascinations? Check. A realization that we are in the universe and the universe is in us? Check.

It’s true that as far as asana goes, a day at the museum is hardly equivalent to a vigorous Vinyasa class. Yet when you expand your definition of yoga beyond the physical, it’s not such a stretch to see and feel its principles reflected around you.

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Enraptured before Klimt’s dazzling, electric paintings (this one OMG and this one and this one) it was hard not to think of the Sanskrit word tejas or tejase¹ which means “quality of light” or “sparkliness”. Could it be the shimmer emanating from the works that put me in a transcendent state? Klimt used gold and silver leaf in addition to traditional pigments. Was it my own rapt radiance entering into dialogue with Klimt’s brilliance? In the Om Namah Shivaya mantra, tejase is the last word of the last line in an invocation meant as a call to return to your essence. It’s no accident that the mantra closes with this idea of illumination. Is there a better way to describe revelation?

After the jump: four creative, mindful Paris sessions that will make full use of your body and mind, and feed your artistic soul.