Ashima Shiraishi Instagram – 岩道Iwa-Dō 🌌
🌰a long overdue resurfacing to this digital platform🕳️ at this year’s @arcteryxacademy , I had the pleasure of facilitating a more experimental workshop on an inquiry I’ve personally been exploring/ practicing!
Here’s a snippet:
“IWA-do : In Japanese, “iwa” (岩) means stone, and “dō” (道) means the path. Iwa-dō is a specific path towards climbing, and today’s exploration will be informed by the Zen Buddhist practice zazen and eye rock gazing, followed by a collaborative poetry exercise to give language to the collective embodied sensations that are roused.
This guide is meant to help you engage in the practice of living out the Japanese proverb ichi-go, ichi-e (一期一会), meaning one time, one encounter. We live in the ever-flowing single moment. Each breath is a chance to live anew. Each day spent with rocks will never be the same, given variations in geology, human non-human participants, weather, season in life, and so forth. A deep awareness of the unrepeatable nature of a moment offers insight and discoveries in the seemingly mundane.
We’ll explore perspective shifts; by looking outwards, we can zoom in, see the rock in its myopic granularity, contemplate its expansive geologic history and the billions of years of stories embedded into the stone. The second exploration is inwards, towards what sensations and thoughts the experience of being in dialogue with the stone spurs from the deepest wellsprings of yourself. It’s beautiful that we can play on ancient bits of celestial matter! The outpouring of your poetic words are an offering of reverence for this experience that will never occur in the same way again.”
🍥 was overwhelmed by the vulnerability amongst the participants and the rawness of the collaborative poem that we concluded with as each person read aloud their favorite line they penned in reflection of the day 🍥
If this sparks an urge to sample these perspective shifts with stone, you can peruse the guide via the link in my bio to print it out & to try for yourself ! 🧭
Deep bows to friends for the support 💟 @alexfwebb @cyrenaly @rocks.ca @noahsahady 📸@vic_wells
And many thanks for the trust on this one 🪹 @arcteryx | Posted on 16/Oct/2024 23:44:20
