Journal: rug hooking as a meditation

The thing is when I am hooking spring in the winter I get so focused on it that I almost believe it is spring. I know it is not but it feels like it. I try to get to that place where I am actually feeling the landscape I am hooking more than what is around me. 

I cannot really teach anyone how to get to that place because I am not sure how it happens. It just does because I sit still and do the same motion over and over again. It becomes like a meditation where you get to another place. A prayer maybe, though honestly when I say my prayers I have a hard time getting out of myself and on to another plain. It is easier for me to do when I hook. It happens naturally. I can only hope that my work will be received as a prayer for it is one of the times I leave my conscious mind and am at one with the world around me, yet unaware of it. 

That is one of the beauties of art, of handwork, it gives you a tool to let your thoughts come and go freely, with out having to push them off like I would if I was trying to sit and meditate. I have never been great at that. I need the handwork to free my mind from the thoughts of everyday.

It does not happen immediately. As an early starter you might be too focused on the technical aspects but as you get along in your Rug hooking you will notice that it will start to happen more and more often. Sometimes it takes a while when you sit at the frame to get to that place of flow. The truth is unless I get there I am ussually back up and onto something else. For me it as become a natural part of tug hooking to lose myself. It is part of what makes me love it. On the days that does not happen I wil often go do something else and come back to the frame when I am able to let go and just let the rug hooking happen.