Healing the body and mind with natural art, seeing oneself, singing and walking, connecting with all things in symbiosis, and inhabiting poetically. Nature and art bring unexpected and evocative surprises.
Swipe left or right to see more
This article was published in the magazine China Women
Large and small stones rearranged, painted with branches on the desert, or just a few dead leaves, can be placed on the grass according to some rules, constituting the art of the land... In the eyes of Qingdou, this process of handmade art creation simulates the continuous state of the cycle of all things in the world, which not only relaxes the body and mind with repeated movements, finds peace, produces rhythm, and has a sense of ceremony, which can achieve a healing effect.
Heal the body and mind with natural beauty
Qingdou, whose real name is Zhang Ying, graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the founder of Hui Ming She Living Room, the co-founder of the Delicious Natural Food Education School, the German forest and nature education instructor, the person in charge of the four seasons aesthetics course of Gaia Nature School, and the lecturer of public welfare drama
Qingdou said, "Land art, locally sourced ready-made natural objects, improvisation on the spot, ordinary people only need three or five minutes, can complete a simple visual art work." Not only outdoors, during the epidemic, many people used melon seed peels, pomegranate seeds, orange petals, large and small cherries at home... Without leaving the house, you can also pose a variety of mandala patterns. ”
For example, the "spiral breakwater" is an American artist Robert, who used a bulldozer to build a 500-meter breakwater from the coast to the center of the lake on the large salt lake in Utah. When the level rises, the work was submerged, and during the drought period, the work surfaced again, amazing everyone - taking from nature and returning to nature.
Every time you hike and walk in the park, Qingdou often picks up the natural objects of his choice. For example, a long, narrow magpie feather, a shuttle-shaped rama, a pine cone under a tree, a gradient yellow chestnut leaf... Not much, do not pick, when you arrive at the top of the mountain to rest, just taste tea, chat, these treasures along the way, according to the situation at that time, the angle of the sun shine or the degree of wetness of the rain, the scene to create a "gift of the day".
Qingdou said, "You will feel that the fatigue along the way and the haze of the day can be swept away, and the surprises that nature and art give you are always unexpected and evocative." ”
The branches in the family tree are connected
"There are no two leaves in the world that are exactly the same, people are the same, living in the city for a long time, independent for a long time, I look like just a leaf, but when I try to pose my family tree pattern with natural objects, I find that I am also a leaf with roots and stems." 」
The roots of the tree symbolize the ancestors and lie on the ground, while the large trees are upwards, and the branches have ancestors, parents, brothers and sisters.
Aodou embarks on a journey of self-healing, which began in 2012, when his father, who had been divorced from his mother for 3 years, suddenly died of illness. "I was 24 years old at the time, my mother and I were informed that it was a scam, and we and my father had been missing for 3 years. That day outside the ICU intensive care unit, I grew up almost overnight. From the funeral to the purchase of the cemetery, all important decisions must be made by my only daughter, I have signed countless words, and in my busyness, I can't care about surprise, sadness, and collapse...".
Qingdou's childhood has few memories of her father, from the age of 6 to 16, her father worked in the United States for 10 years. "After returning home, my father often quarreled with his mother, had cold wars, and when the relationship between husband and wife fell to a freezing point, they divorced. And my relationship with my father has always carried a sense of unfinished business. The father didn't know how to get along with his daughter, and I didn't know how to look at the father. "However, all the heartbreak, the body knows, Qingdou suddenly suffered from breast fibroma.
"The first wave of exodus, I chose to quit my job, eat vegetarian, get married, travel, make a tea room, strip away from everything in the past, all kinds of escapes, rough calculations, I walked through more than 150 cities in 28 provinces across the country. But it wasn't until the second wave of inventory, 2017, that I settled down, saw a doctor, faced the scars, faced the pain, and accepted my dark side. Over the years, through nature education and art healing, Qingdou has gradually opened his own knots.
Aodou saw the family tree he had put up. The father is an adopted child, and compared to the blank of the father's branch, the mother's branch has deep roots and leaves. The mother has a total of four brothers and sisters, she has played the role of the pillar of the pillar in her mother's family, carrying big and small things, there is a lot of imbalance in the middle, but she is trying to support her grandmother, and she also loves and hates. "I understood the difficulty of my parents, the differences in my parents' growing backgrounds, and gradually reconciled with my father and myself, and I inherited my father's love of freedom that he liked to play around, and also inherited my mother's ability and independence."
In this way, Qingdou slowly accepted the overwhelmed me, accepted the me who could not do everything, and accepted "I am who I am".
Live your ideal life
Two people in one room, three meals and four seasons, is the most beautiful love
Qingdou seems to have bred his own new life from the death of his father. "One of my mentors said that the real farewell ceremony is not to deliberately forget something, but to remember it, but put it in a drawer, you can open the drawer at any time, but when you push it back, the heart is no longer stirring, even if the healing is successful." 」
Qingdou also participated in the spiritual painting workshop, mastered a variety of dimensions of understanding people, things and things, rearranged his own ins and outs, and recounted a love story. "It turns out that I was also loved, although I was taunted by my classmates from my classmates that my father didn't want me, although my grandmother was half-dead for many years, but like my mother, they actually loved me." 」
In 2008, 20-year-old Qingdou was deeply shocked after seeing the news of the Wenchuan earthquake. The following year, she chose to go to Dujiangyan to teach. "The awakening of self-consciousness begins with 'disobedience'. I worked as an art teacher at the makeshift Banfang Elementary School, talking about education, life and self with a group of idealistic young people, and everyone was trying to help others, and they also gave me a lot of inner strength. Qingdou clearly remembers that he wrote a motto on the big cloth in the classroom, the ideal of life is to live an ideal life.
When the "leaf vein" of his own leaf became clear, the green beans seemed to suddenly open up the body and mind. She and her friends started an institution for sustainable food systems, promoted nature education, taught healing courses on nature arts, and made friends with 100 tea guests.
She began to grow her long hair and felt that she was getting better and better. Even when she goes to the market, she is willing to wear beautiful clothes. "When you're not dressed beautifully enough, it's easy to treat yourself badly, and it's better to let yourself not wear old T-shirts and torn pajamas all day long. Even if you stay at home, don't be careless with yourself. ”
Departure is more important than arrival
Through deep value building, the couple gained back-to-back trust
Long-distance self-driving off-road travel is a common hobby of the Qingdou couple. It was also during the journey that the couple had the deepest emotional construction. "He drives, I navigate, and although sometimes the hotel is remote or can't find the way, I complain to each other, but more is considerate of each other. Two people together around the clock, and each person's workload is visible to the naked eye. ”
Qingdou also exchanged the wisdom of getting along with a couple who had been married for 10 years. That couple, often the husband does not speak, the wife has been talking. "The husband's experience is: In fact, every time a husband and wife quarrel, it is like a ship on the waves encountering a storm, and the best way at this time is not to jump out and ride the wind and waves, but to quickly hide in the cabin and wait for the storm to pass, and then come out."
And Qingdou's husband will always help her to analyze the quarrel thoroughly, and finally she always finds that as long as a person can meet his own needs and does not expect others to meet all your needs, there will be no pain and less complaints.
She also often does "value co-construction" with her husband, and the long journey is suitable for in-depth chat. "For example, we will talk about the meaning of off-roading, the reason why we love off-road, in fact, is to deal with the relationship between man and machine, nature, is to learn trust, practice the feeling of love." 」
In Qingdou's view, the destination is not important, as long as you start, every scenery on the road is worth admiring, you don't have to go to the big attractions to punch in, chat with the locals you meet, visit the local market, and have an emotional connection with the local... It's been the most abundant journey.