Featured Artist Exhibit Coming Soon
I first met Shiloh in person when she'd organised a local screening of Unrest: an award winning documentary on ME/CFS by Jennifer Brea. Shiloh was part of the interview panel following the screening and I was devastated after hearing she'd lost most of her younger years to this disease.
Since then, Shiloh and I have developed a close friendship and I've found her to be one of the kindest and most compassionate people I know. She is a bright light of energy and joy trapped within the limitations of her body, but this has never stopped her bubbly personality from shining through.Shiloh is a self taught artist and her art is often drawn while lying down as the severity of her illness doesn’t allow her to sit upright for very long. She can only draw for short periods of time and has to carefully ‘pace’ herself to minimise pain.
Below Shiloh will share with you her self portrait and compassion prayer as a little teaser for her upcoming exhibit at www.seemeexpo.com.
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A gift to you this ME Awareness Day – by Shiloh Moore
COMPASSION PRAYER SELF PORTRAIT © 2020 By Shiloh Moore
I would like to teach you my ‘Compassion Prayer Chant’ that is illustrated in my self portrait in the video above. This prayer helps me feel connected through periods of being bedridden with severe pain, exhaustion and anxiety.
Over the three decades that I have been living with severe Fibromyalgia Syndrome and ME/CFS, I have had to develop ways of coping with the illness such as ‘wholehearted rest’ resting with absolutely no stimulus. Even thinking at a normal pace is painful as my head is bombarded with pain and overwhelming stimulus, so to slow... down... my... mind..., I meditate on mantras and chanting in my head. In 2020, my incredible mentors Alexandra Westaway and Rev Simon Ruth De Voil taught me to write my own chants. I was overwhelmed with my own suffering and the suffering of my friends, the disability community, and the world, so I wrote this chant and body prayer that I can do even when bedridden.
For this chant, I hold my forehead with one hand, and sing in my head ‘Power and Strength’, feeling strength enter my body through my hand. Then I rest my other hand on my heart and sing in my mind ‘Hope, Grounded in Reality’, feeling compassion and hope pour into my heart and into the world. Then I repeat chanting over and over in my mind, slowing it down to meditate on it, sometimes for hours.
I drew and lettered this self portrait, brush lettering my prayer on my arms. I learned brush lettering using Procreate on an iPad with Apple Pen by the amazing online teacher Liss Amyah from the Letter Lovers Club. I developed my own rainbow style of portraits. The way I am holding the globe shows Australia (where I live) under my arm in green and gold, the North Island of New Zealand as a red love heart, and you can see my friends in India just under the word ‘Hope’.
It sucks that I can’t be out in the world, involved with friends and doing things I love. This prayer and chanting is something I can do, to feel involved with my friends even from my bed.
– by Shiloh Moore | visit her blog.
Shiloh’s exhibit will be supporting Emerge Australia Inc. by asking visitors to consider donating. Emerge Australia provides information, support, doctor education and advocacy for people living with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. If I hadn’t discovered Emerge’s website when I did, I have no doubt I would have pushed my body into a far worse state than it currently is.
“This is my Compassion Prayer For Humanity:
Power and Strength
Hope Grounded in Reality.”
Over the three decades that I have been living with severe Fibromyalgia Syndrome and ME/CFS, I have had to develop ways of coping with the illness such as ‘wholehearted rest’ resting with absolutely no stimulus. Even thinking at a normal pace is painful as my head is bombarded with pain and overwhelming stimulus, so to slow... down... my... mind..., I meditate on mantras and chanting in my head. In 2020, my incredible mentors Alexandra Westaway and Rev Simon Ruth De Voil taught me to write my own chants. I was overwhelmed with my own suffering and the suffering of my friends, the disability community, and the world, so I wrote this chant and body prayer that I can do even when bedridden.
For this chant, I hold my forehead with one hand, and sing in my head ‘Power and Strength’, feeling strength enter my body through my hand. Then I rest my other hand on my heart and sing in my mind ‘Hope, Grounded in Reality’, feeling compassion and hope pour into my heart and into the world. Then I repeat chanting over and over in my mind, slowing it down to meditate on it, sometimes for hours.
I drew and lettered this self portrait, brush lettering my prayer on my arms. I learned brush lettering using Procreate on an iPad with Apple Pen by the amazing online teacher Liss Amyah from the Letter Lovers Club. I developed my own rainbow style of portraits. The way I am holding the globe shows Australia (where I live) under my arm in green and gold, the North Island of New Zealand as a red love heart, and you can see my friends in India just under the word ‘Hope’.
It sucks that I can’t be out in the world, involved with friends and doing things I love. This prayer and chanting is something I can do, to feel involved with my friends even from my bed.
– by Shiloh Moore | visit her blog.
. . . .
Shiloh’s exhibit will be supporting Emerge Australia Inc. by asking visitors to consider donating. Emerge Australia provides information, support, doctor education and advocacy for people living with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. If I hadn’t discovered Emerge’s website when I did, I have no doubt I would have pushed my body into a far worse state than it currently is.
