Hello from Moscow! "How to survive everyday russian madness" blog is here %-)

Hello, community!

My name is Katya, I'm 36 and I live in Moscow, Russia.
I'm a tv promo producer and I'm on a maternal leave at the moment.

I decided to join and start this blog because I need to stay determined and patient in my awareness practices.

Thanks to my younger bro Fil @Dunsky I sort of know how to meditate and do easy pranayamas. (It's fun how you change your siblings' diapers and learn them how to read and then they grow up and give you much much more :-))

Its good to stay centered and balanced when you are a mother of four (yes there are more kids on our block)

But sometimes mindfullness requires a little more than just sitting with your eyes closed and breathing. %-))

One technic that I have found really usefull is understanding my emotions during the day.
Getting to know the emotions gives feeling of control under myself so I started to try fixing on what I feel using mobile phone alarm every hour or two. I hear the sound, stop and make photo of what affects moment the most. And at the end of the day I recall all the memories and try to analize all what came through me.

As you might guess, some days end up to be rather frustrating as long as others go smooth and sometimes happily. I now often see that main reasons of frustration for me are mostly physiological: hunger or fatigue. But sometimes I experience emotions that are hard to determine. So I started using Plutchik's wheel of emotions to identify them all.

And with such an instrument - magic happens! When you define good emotion coming from within - you become it. Simply that - you dissolve in it and become it. And when you qualify a bad one - you simply observe it for some time and let go!

To make parting easy I made up this game - I try to get inspired by the same emotion from the outer world. Another day I was taking a walk on Arbat street and saw this picture by Kazemir Malevich in a showcase. It was so alike to an apprehension I was experiencing at the moment that I decided to check how the picture was made.

It turned out that great inventor of suprematizm was dying of cancer in 1933 when he painted "Girl with a comb in her hair" and only had 2 years to go. Besides Soviet authorities have tried to imprison him at least two times by that time (jealous to his success on the West). No wonder that half suprematic girl looks uneasily from the picture. You can't tell for sure what - but bright colours of her outfit made up from geometric figures give us a clue that something troubles her. And "a comb"? Why does she have it up her hair? She's definitely not feeling well!

So here's my inspiration of the day! And here I am with my daily apprehension - was here a moment ago and now it's gone.

What is your inspiration today and how do you feel?