BLOG 4 5.6.20 So much has changed, for so many of us, in so many different ways. We are together, alone, walking this path to freedom. Supporting, cheering, wailing, keening,singing, painting, walking, cooking, clearing. And so it goes….
A little update on Mohini Elise – her middle name is her maternal Grandmother’s name, given at birth.
This soul has been a mover and a shaker, as so many of you know her as friend, family, student, colleague, online community or other. She is a daughter, sister, aunt and a creative mother. She has been a singer, teacher of singing, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, collectively, for over 35 years. She has been a carer, a care manager a PA, a PR and Communications Officer, at UNESCO in Paris. She has travelled worldwide. She has studied yoga in the UK, India, America. She lived in a yogic community in Florida for a year. She has met many a revered master (called “gurus”) Poonjaji, Ammachi, Moojibaba, Gangaji, and some disgraced ones too, now, unashamedly named here, Mickey Singer, Amrit Desai. She studied music and singing in London and Paris.
On her return from the USA, Heartspace Yoga was born (est. 1997). Never looking to be published, she became a published author, the innovator of Yogaflows™ (2002) a unique and natural way of practising and embodying yoga. The book “fed” for her for nearly a decade, as she travelled the globe teaching retreats, workshops, classes and seminars.
She is a singer and has been performing since the age of 4 until very recently, when the voice as it was then, the classically trained operatic voice, did not resound true anymore. A brief encounter, with a renowned artist and composer, cloaked in “fake spirituality” – associated with another “notable guru” to boot, rocked her musical world and her inner being, She was trusting, vulnerable, hungry – she felt and was taken “for a ride”. She even bought the dress for the promised “Albert Hall” concert. Seriously! What was spawned, however, from the last song she vocally and creatively created out of piece of his music, was the flabbergasted retort :“how did you do this”? Incredulous that she could create something as good or even better. She removed his music and wrote her own. It is “Call to Joy” on her first album “Alaya-Nam”. Trance like, it will transport you.
Enter a time of resting the voice – whilst she learnt music technology with a ex- Punk Rock Stranglers, Vibrators star, John Ellis. In that fallow period, and whilst learning, she crafted her first CD of original music of sacred songs, drawn from different cultures sung in ancient languages “Alaya-Nam” (2012). Her ancestry kicked in – Arabic, Indian, Middle Eastern and World music influences, threading their pearls across the staves which were “channelled” through her being and into her voice. Her humanity, the struggles, the fights, the abuses were fused into the voice, and people were touched, and people cried, and people laughed. Her spirituality, underpinning the ground of these productions. And Heartspace Music was born (2012) – her own record label, her London recording studio, now with 4 eclectic audio CDs in the catalogue. Now she loves the technology!
And what of her art? Yes, born of a prolific painter/artist mother, she dabbled a little in water colour, oils and pencils through her early years. Music always took centre stage. her “3rd arm” she would call it. After the loss of 3 close friends in very close succession in April 2017 she was led to painting again, to appease her sorrowful heart. Oils, her preferred medium, she has painted over 70 works since then. She is studying with Angelika Privalakhina – who is her main inspiration, resonating with her technique, her soul, her spirit, teaching methods, her heart and art– see the Tuscany paintings en plein-air 2019.
Deep in her soul, beneath all the exterior, beyond the shattered dreams, existed an ongoing longing to rest, to be, to harness the inner teacher to assimilate and drink into herself, what she was teaching others, over decades, to meditate with herself, to seek the Divine within, to being to hold herself dear, to begin to really tune into the frequency of when she could love herself enough, a new life a new way of being would be born.
Enter lockdown -Covid 19 pandemic. March 2020
There is a Zen saying, “do nothing and all things will be done”. Her longing is being fulfilled – to realise her TRUE SELF; her inner teacher is alive and kicking, being of service to her highest heart desire; her voice and music is temporarily on hold, whilst dealing with immune system anomaly; her music, songs and new albums await her comeback; her art is thriving; she has a wonderful miracle of Gaia House, which has always been her “2nd home” since the early 80s, is now in her home, on-line, meditating every day; the opportunity to actually sit with amazing Insight teachers, whom, otherwise, she may never have met, who are inspiring, heartfelt and genuine. She is awed by the radiance of the endless possibilities of this period. For her it is right and fitting. She is a yogi, her modus operandi is one of internalisation, when not out in the world.
She has let go of SO much; www.heartspaceyoga.com (hy.com – now a static website) wesbite around for 19 or so years has been retired; she wanted to be able to fuse all her gifts, talents and arts into one website : www.mohinichatlani.com which has been running parallel to hy.com. Updating 2 websites on an outdated platform would not longer do. She felt a disparity, and now feels a a wholeness, a coming together, with different offerings, a new view, a new paradigm.
Do nothing and all things are being done : the current website platform itself, is also being retired! Enter the new currently, being professionally redesigned, www.mohinichatlani.com website. It may be a few weeks before she is up and running – exciting to feel the newness of MOHINI MUSIC ART MOVEMENT coming into being. The old site will go offline on 30 June 2020. The other will emerge and birth soon after.
As for her teaching, this too has been released. Over time, the need to teach in order to learn, felt more and more redundant. Had she learnt all she could? Slowly, and clearly, the work bean to slough away. The deep, inner voice once told her, when she was exhausted with so many weekly classes “you teach until you don’t need to teach anymore, until you have learnt what you need to learn”. She had learned what she needed to. However, we humans, for the most part, are heavily identified with name, form, work, career, achievements. A desire to practice more for herself. To take responsibility for her own healing, growth and ongoing evolution. How would she let go. Saddled on her inner work, this majestic beast began to rear upwards, charge, then slowly canter, to a halt. She had arrived. There was an inner hankering, a push towards the edge, to let go.That heartfelt longing, strangely aligned itself with the pandemic, and hand-in-hand with her highest desire and compounded by the non-suitability of the venues, halls, yoga centres, leisure centres, who, in her view, are unable to provide a safe, clean and hygienic space to continue to teach, she has let teaching go. It was time.
Although, in the interim, left with no regular income, the on-line zoom classes are not for her. Her nervous system needs the rest of her life to recuperate, restore, regenerate and renew. Done! No regrets. It is time.
Her on-line network marketing business has also ceased – good for a while, yet too time and energy consuming, very externalized, and often too materialistic. Some good eggs there though, who have become lovely friends. Done! No regrets. It was time.
Time now for her heart to find a right balance, to re-calibrate. Having lent too far over in one direction for too long, like a pendulum stuck on one side, she now leans back to the place of balance. Leaning back into herself, feeling the ancestors behind her, the light in front.
She does not feel loss of those aspects, expressions and elements of the first half of her life – as Jung so aptly coined it- the external expression of her creativity and assets and talents in the world, because – it is time. She feels relief, excitement of what is now birthing in the fertile void, of this very welcome, worldly, imposed, inner retreat. She feels more the energy of welcoming, and of entering into the second half of her life, where the inner life is of supreme and utter importance : the on-line dharma hall of www.gaiahouse.co.uk , her yoga classes with fellow sister and yogini, her painting and the spontaneous release of the inner free hand, brush,palette knife and fingers to have a play; creating at long last the audios of her meditations and relaxations from her Yogaflows™ book; clearing out the loft and the unnecessary items; discovering a decade of poetry and writing from the 80’s and 90’s – and publishers interested in her new books; picking up her Qi Gong instructor training modules, finding new and creative ways of bringing in the scheckels.
All products available to view, purchase or enquire about on www.mohinichatlani.com
Her “Yogaflows™” book although now out of print is still available from her.
Her Heartspace Music audio CDs are available for sale. All four of them, so far!
Mohini’s HeARTspace Artwork is For Sale.
Here are a few latest paintings during lockdown:
“Blow Me A Kiss” oil on board 40x30cm
“Scherarzade”oil on canvas 40x40cm
“A La Flamenco” oil on deep canvas 50x43cm SOLD
“Abhayam – No Fear” – oil on deep canvas 60x43cm
Mohini offers all her original canvas or board oil paintings, canvas prints, or repainted canvas print and giclée prints for sale . Below are two examples of a repainted canvas print and a Giclée print :
“I See Me” (March 2020) : SOLD to the left the original canvas painting oil 60x40cm, framed; to the right the slightly larger canvas print 62x42cm, unframed on deep canvas, ready to hang, repainted for the customer.
”Radha” (2019) original oil on canvas 45x35cm SOLD
“Radha” Giclée print total size with charcoal border, teal outline, printed on Hahnemuhle Rag Paper (grainy quality for oil reproductions) 50 x 41cm, for customer (6.2020) SOLD
ALL IN ONE
