Around 3 weeks ago, I went to one of my Pilates instructor friends' placePilates Room tone to take a Silk Suspension lesson.
What we did was to do Pilates on silk slings suspended from a beam by sitting on them, lie on our stomachs, and lie down on our backs on the floor and put our heels on them, etc etc .
It clearly shows your weak point by making unintentional rotation and jolting.
Sitting on the silk sling absolutely still is the most difficult challenge already.
I'm not interested in training one particular muscle at all. I prefer training my sense to coordinate every muscle of my body, so I like this kind of tool.
It was extremely fun to me and I tried many things on it.
It's a great tool to strengthen your weak point and also for a Pilates beginner to feel "the core".
Of course for a rehab, I understand it's very useful.
If you are interested in taking a lesson, please visit Pilates Room tone.
There are still not many places you can take this lesson in Osaka.
I'm going to do Ayurveda workshop at the same studio soon after the New Year.
I'm going to talk about digestive power and quality of our minds.
Oriental medicine tea and cakes are going to be served.
I'm looking forward to seeing you who can come to my workshop.
To train your body is easy if you have a will.
You can also train your mind through life experience.
Hard thing is to train your soul.
I met a person who's willing to dive into a hardest way to live.
I think this one is a fighter and I almost can see the one as a king.
It's so inspiring to meet someone like this.
Actor NOY successfully finished his first performance HAGUREGUMO in Serbia and back in Tokyo.
He's going to share his creative method with you at his workshop.
【The way to the performance in Serbia】 Noy, who graduated from Acting School L’EDA in Toulouse, France, has kept touch with a professor. He proposed a project to the professor that they would create a stage together in his country, Serbia. He plunged into Serbia, facing the problem of Syrian refugees, and began the project from scratch. In the multilingual situation, such as English, Hungarian, French, Serbian, and so on, he completed the stage, inspired by “The spider’s string” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and “Wandering Cloud” by George Akiyama and directed by the professor. The performance was given in the Serbia’s theater. A press conference and TV interview were held and it created a big sensation.
【What NOY wants to convey through this workshop 】 The creative processes built up through a body interwoven with creativity and communication under the circumstance not depending on language, which is what he felt in his bone. He wants participants to experience it, deeply listening to your own body and letting their feeling express along to their sensation. In this workshop, a text or script won’t be used. Participants themselves create a physical expression impromptu. The goal of this workshop is that they will make a performance in the end.
【A message from NOY】
When I performed abroad, I have been thinking “Is it possible to create a stage without depending on lines?”. And then, I just made it. I’d love to explorer together how to make up physical expressions and what essence we can use. And also I’d love to share our experiences through physical expressions.
5th December, 2015
11:00 - 14:30
at Wako City Kinrou Seisyounen Hall 3F
Appling Method
3,000 yen (including tax)
Please send an email including your name, age, e-mail address,
and any experiences in acting or dancing, to skysoartwings@yahoo.co.jp
Ms. Yoriko Yoda(Left) & Mr. Taizo Kobayashi (Right)
I had a chance to meet Mr. Taizou Kobayashi, a digital art restorer.
It was a meeting for holding a series of lectures of Showdo (pronounce as Shōdō ). Showdo is a word Mr. Kobayashi created. It is a way of appreciate Japanese traditional art.
Just like Sadō, the way of tea, Kadō, the way of flowers, and Kōdō, the way of fragrance. Showdo is the way of art appreciation to make you feel like you are so glad to be born as Japanese!
Yu, my Pilates instructor friend brought us together.
Yu is an aroma therapist and also a Pilates trainer. We've been talking about this project since we visited a Mount Koya together this summer.
I could feel my blood running through my veins and it's been a long time since I felt like this.
After the meeting, Mr. Kobayashi said he's going to see one of his friends and he was looking for an exhibition of Yoriko Youda.
To our great surprise, I picked up a flyer of her exhibition few days ago and I was going to go to the exhibition too. So we went together and Yoriko was staying in the gallery. I was so lucky to be able to talk with her. She generously told me about her paints and art concept and she even let me take a photo with her. Same as Mr. Kobayashi, both of them are so openhearted and beautiful.
The flyer of Yoriko's exhibition
I've wrote about my state of feeling on this blog before, but gradually I've becoming to feel better.
My work, Pilates is a work to make other people happy, so I can't be like this forever anyways.
However, after a lesson, most of the time it's me to feel better as my customer gives me a great energy.
Good movies and delicious meals, appreciating beautiful things help me go step forward.
And I believe in our power.
This world can be more beautiful.
About Paris attack...
One of my precious friends lost her dear friends and I feel like they were my friends as they were my friend's friends.
As I think this way, the whole worlds is a one big family. We all are related and connected to somebody and none of us are truly strangers.
I know this is hard, but if you are attacked by hatred and fight back with hatred, nothing will change.
If we want to change this world better, somebody has to stop this chain reaction of hatred by love.
Forgiveness is a most powerful attack to the forgiven.
Yet I have no confidence in me if I can forgive the terrorist who killed one of my families or friends...
In this chaotic world, I still want to believe in our power of love and forgiveness.
Death is not fearful. I'm afraid of the fact dignity of one soul is violated and not respected.
I've been down for a whole since, but thanks to my kindest friends and beautiful things, I've calmed down and I'm feeling better little by little.
Thank you so much.
The show was hosted by Blancpain at Daimaru Shinsaibashi in Osaka, and it was held as a part of Brancpain's Ocean Commitment activities. The show was only about 20 minutes, and I could go in between works.
Ai Futaki
(A photo is from Internet)
Just before the show starts, when I was waiting around the special site, Ai, herself was casually walking around with few staffs and talking with her friends who came to see her show.
She was wearing heels, but she was a lot tinier than I thought she would be... though I might be big.
During the show, Ai was showing her photos and videos and talked about the underwater world and possibility of human-nature. She talked slowly and clearly for everyone to be able to follow her.
There were several photos and videos I've seen before on TV, but watching them again, hearing Ai's voice was a totally different experience. Those visual arts were so beautiful and tender and I was almost cried.
Of course, I couldn't allow myself to sob at a blight place like that, so I held my tears. However, Ai's love to ocean and all the living things were so pure and beautiful. I was so blessed to be able to come.
Under the water, sound travels four times faster than it is on the ground. So, Ai who tries not to scare the creatures living in the ocean as much as she can, decided to leave oxygen tanks behind and chose to do breath-hold diving.
The creatures under the water not only sense sounds quickly, but emotions of the other creatures in the water. And they take alarm, swim away, or attack the stranger.
So when Ai "visits their home", she pretends she sets her thoughts on the side and pretends as if she's been there with them for a long time.
Human uses 20 to 30 percents of oxygen for our brains, so she saves extra oxygen by taking her own thoughts as a background music and never illuminate them a spotlight.
I was so convinced and it made a lot of sense to me. I thought I could use this method when I try meditation next time...
Ai does many different things to spread her ideas of connection between ocean and human to as many people as she can. By using different expressions, more people can have chances to know her idea and activity and realize something through her.
I completely agree with her style.
When I saw a documentary of a dancer Koharu Sugawara before, she was sharing the same idea with Ai. Koharu is a dancer, and she claims that she is not a shadow dancer. She sometimes work as a model and does TV commercials. That is because she wants more people to be curious about dance through her.
I want more people to be interested in doing Pilates, so recently I did lesson as a part of my spice witch activity. I've been thinking about how to spread my Pilates world a lot.
Ai has a Guiness World Record, but she says she's not born with a special physical ability to be able to achieve that record. She says anyone can be in the part of underwater world.
If you limit yourself by believing "I can't", that's the end of your possibility, she says.
This philosophy is for everything, I think.
After the show, Ai left the podium, and I was thinking only if I could take a photo with her would be wonderful like a proper lowbrow. Then I found her behind the special site, talking with her friends.
So I pulled myself together and encouraged myself to ask her to take a photo with me.
I was so happy that my face went all red. And also I was too shy to get closer to her, so the photo turned out to be in a strange composition...
So I asked another one, but this one was out of focus.
Anyways, the first take shows my excitement to Ai a lot.
Ai does Yoga and meditation, and she can contorol her diaphragm a lot by abdominal breathing. when I do Pilates, I do costal lateral breathing. I practice abdominal breathing, but I'm no way near to Ai's breathing skill. So I asked about breathing, she gave me a small advice and I was so touched by her kindness.
She held out her hand by herself to shake hands with me. Her hand was cool and it made me think as if she was just came out of water...
"Just because you can't see it, doesn't meant it doesn't exist. " Ai's words were so strong.
Ai is a mysterious being.
Her blight smile was in my mind and I could work energetically in the afternoon.
Thank you so much Ai, and the event team!
I went to a medical cooking place I'd been wanted to go.
菊花の薬膳酒（chrysanthemum liquor）
I have a great interest in cooking and eating since I was little. My mother, tried to feed her three kids, who have a sound appetite, with good and safe food as economical as she could. So naturally, I became to like cooking and especially baking.
Probably I'm constitutionally sensitive on chemical additive and artificial seasoning, but more I cook by myself, less I can't cope with those manipulated tastes. So I've been trying to find the taste my body and soul feel fine on. It's totally my personal opinion and I never wish to be critical on the artificially processed food.
There is no answer for a thought on eating.
So many diets in this world today, but I have nothing I believe in or religiously stick to. I just try to eat food in season as much as possible, and choose ingredients brought from the place as closest as I live now. And I try not to eat when I'm not hungry. Those three things are the rules I try to follow.
Of course the third one is the most difficult I know...
I find art in everyday life and I was attracted by a philosophy of Pilates, a control of body and mind, so I learnt Pilates and became a Pilates instructor. As I wish to teach how to find a balance between our body and mind by using a holistic point of view, I've been studying Oriental medicine and Ayurveda.
I've been interested in medical cooking for a long time.
My great-aunt who has her own tea ceremony class does Shojin ryori (a vegetarian dish served in Japanese Zen temples), so I read few books about medical cooking, but the time wasn't so health conscious compare to today and there was no internet. I was only relying on books I could find. The herbal medicines are so hard to get and also my basic knowledge to understand the methods of medical cooking was so weak at that time. The herbal medicines, I couldn't imagine how they look nor taste from the names and also they were very expensive. And of course even if I collected all those medicines, I had no confident to make the most of them. So I was hesitated to put myself into the huge ocean of medical cooking.
Now the time is heavily health-conscious and even beauty industry has started to recommend herbal medicines as one of the skincare methods. Japanese ladies love going to Korea and Taiwan to try medical cooking dishes.
It was a total coincidence I passed by the place Naoko runs with her mom, SHOUHOU.
陳皮茶（Chenpi tea）
I had few hours I could spent for tea, so I went in.
The place was blight with sunlight and clean. Windowsills and walls were filled with bottles of medical herbs and liquors. I was instantly attracted by the place.
Cakes were all tempting, but I chose rose chiffon which I was curious the most, and cinnamon and ginger tea.
I asked Naoko if I could take photos, and she smiled and said it's totally fine. I took few photos and flicked through the books of Oriental medicine and medical cooking on the table. I was so excited.
Morning rice porridge with medical herbs.
After a while, the cake and tea were served.
The rose chiffon was beautiful. It was fluffy and soft, but the rose scents properly filled me up. Gelee sauce wasn't too sweet. A bite after bite, my soul was filled up with happiness.
Cinnamon and ginger tea was rightly sweetened with Sudakitou, which is a type of cane sugar. So I could taste spiciness of the spices (or should I be saying medical herbs?), but no bitterness at all and the tea warmed up my body.
Naoko is a beautiful girl with fair and fine porcelain skin.
Normally I'm afraid of talking to a stranger, but when I'm interested in something, I can. So even though we met for the first time, I made so many questions to her.
I completely agreed with Naoko's idea that even if the herbal medicine is good for your health, you shouldn't take more than you need.
As I'm a Pilates trainer, many customers ask me about diet. As soon as I decided to become a trainer, I started to learn about food and diet, which I'd been always interested in, from a holistic point of view. So I could know more about diet and nutrition not only as my interest, but also as a part of my skills for my work.
In my Pilates personal session, I see my customer's complexion （both face and body）, breathing and condition and decide what is the best for him/her to do during the session. What I suggest changes each time based on my customer's body and mind condition.
I'm often asked by my customers if they can fix certain parts of their body pains or if they could loose weights by doing Pilates. I won't say NO, but those things are mare results and there are far more great things during the process to get that results. However, most of the customers don't care about the process. I'm not denying this fact, but I'm just saying they are like that.
Medical cooking method pound cake.
The customers who come to Naoko's cafe, most of them believe that Chinese herb medicine are "medicine". So they ask Naoko what to drink when they make their orders. "I have this pain or symptom at the moment, so tell me which herbal medicine will cure my condition?"
Neither exercise nor food are absolute cure, and neither a Pilates trainer nor a medical cooking chef are doctors at all.
The best way to solve your pain-in-the-neck is to find what agrees with your life style and carry on with it.
Our body changes very slowly...little by little, so we have to be patient.
We have to feel a tiny change and decide by ourselves.
Other people's opinions are important evaluation criteria, but never the principal.
I was so happy as Naoko and I share the same opinion about body and mind even though we met for each other for the first time.
She is also interested in Pilates.
I'd love to do something with her in future...
I couldn't go to last year's Halloween event in Osaka because of my work schedule.
I wrote little about Halloween history and reasons behind the dressing up custom on The Three Flying Witches page. (In Japanese, sorry about that.) I'm not a specialist of Halloween history, so please read it as one of the references.
This year, 31st of October was Saturday, so I went to an event after work.
Hair and makeup was done by reliable team Lot.
A REAL officer and a FAKE one...
When I was thinking what should I do for this year's Halloween, one of my friends asked me if I wanted to do a Cat Woman with her. So I forgot a vampire idea and went for a Cat Woman.
However, my friends had makeup of "CATS" and I was trying to be like Michelle Pfeiffer... Though I had no fair skin or long blond hair like her, I did my version of Cat Woman.
My hair is short and strong, but my amazing stylist did a great job and gave me cat ears.
It was the first time in 2 year, I enjoyed Halloween in Osaka a lot.
Thanks to my friends and stylists!
