‘In this excerpt, landscape designer Jai Cheswick aims to demonstrate how one can blend the philosophy and lived experience of meditation yoga into one’s work – in this instance, landscape design/landscape architecture.’ – Fiona Hyde : Williamstown Yoga & Meditation.
In landscape design I found myself looking towards the east. I noted that the designers there appeared to offer at least some connection to ancient roots in their design practice.
The Asian designers stood out as acknowledging and giving reverence to the influence of nature on the design of landscapes and gardens while asking such questions as; “What is the nature of Nature?”, and “How should the works of man relate to the works of Nature?”.
I found that the origins of many contemporary landscape design styles commonly used around the world today have their roots in the merging of numerous shamanic / pagan / intuitive practices. (eg. the working with ley lines, stones and earth energy in Europe, the sacred sites and animal spirits of the Americas, song-lines and dreaming within Australia and polytheism and feng shui in the vast continent of Asia.)
If you are an advocate of chance then it was by chance that at 45, yoga meditation entered my life. And it was my good fortune that my teacher recognised something within me, some change that had taken place as I had searched earnestly (for deeper meaning) within my own profession of landscape architecture over the years.
Surprisingly, I discovered that meditation yoga is also at its roots shamanic, just like landscape design. It is a tantric practice, a blend of shamanic practices integrated into everyday life, everyday work, everyday relationships.
The running of a landscape design practice can go well and sometimes not go so well. Yet through yoga meditation I found an approach that came with more a sense of equanimity rather than anxiety and the desire for fame and fortune.
Daily practice with body, with breath and with mantra now help connect me with landscape and hopefully with people. Emerging qualities appear to be more patience, love, emotion, focus and calmness (together with rugged good looks and a vastly improved sense of humour !).
It has been my observation and experience that when yoga meditation begins to develop at home and at work what flavours and frames them both is less ‘visual’ and more ‘emotional’.
Quality replaces quantity, acceptance replaces agitation, enjoyment of inner warmth replaces the cravings for the external ‘wow’. One begins to ‘feel at home’, the intuitive ability of the traditional practices becomes more available and the ‘Master of the (inner) Landscape’ begins to reveal itself.
By Jai Cheswick
Meditation Teacher, Landscape Architect and Horticulturalist.