14 | Jason Malouin | Photographic Inception of Connection and Communication | Just Be You Podcast

A perfect picture is never formulated, it is felt moments before it happens.

Today I have one of the world's best portrait photographers, Jason Malouin and we dive deep into effective communication and impacting the world through the inception of visual connection.

I feel so freaking blessed when it comes to podcasting because I become profoundly wiser - via the wisdom of my guests - after every conversation.

Today some of the mind-blowing points include:

  • Why all connections are not equal and how the level of connection really matters.
  • How to ask the right questions to help the people you are trying to help.
  • How and why assumptions suck.
  • What you think matters is more than likely not what anyone else finds valuable.
  • Divine moments are captured via the intuitive ‘moments before’.
  • How to communicate effectively.
  • How a few quick mini wins can take you through the armour of trying to get it all perfect.
  • Understanding that how we think we are portraying ourselves is not how we are actually seen.
  • It’s the micro details in our expression that hold power.
  • You cannot demand genuine or authentic connection - it must be unveiled through vulnerability.
  • What makes a moment ‘photo worthy’.
  • Just because you cannot see your greatness, is never a true indication of its non-existence.
  • 'Being you' requires us to remove stuff, not add on.
  • How to get us to our core to reveal ourselves to the world.
  • Communication is only effective if you begin with where the level of the listener is at.
  • How the key is always, to give yourself permission.

Direct Download of the episode at Libsyn

 

It's not about the photos

 At the end of the day, it's not about the photos, it's about what we are communicating. Profound portrait photography is about being able to transmit ideas effectively, efficiently and cleanly and through an excellent image, communicating the subject's message to the world.
Find Jason at:

Portait Store

Instagram

 

Don't miss out - subscribe to the Just Be You Podcast for updates on iTunes and Libsyn, yo!

Love

 

 
 


Back to Blog

I post things about life n' stuff here, come check it out!

@amber_hawken
  • It doesn’t take a wizard to figure out that some days the world inside of us changes 1,376 times and if we want to stand in our power then what we require isn’t a stronger grip on control, to push harder or suck it up, but the courage to remain present, breathe and lead your one single moment at a time from a space of connection and inner power. This Saturday I am running a very intimate workshop on The Gold Coast based on the teachings of presence, leading your life from your centre; through being. It includes a two hour workshop with me followed by a Breathwork session and ice bath. Ticket link in bio.. @amber_hawken Be Here Now. Ram Dass - the legend himself reverberates this teaching through all he does. Our situation is our situation, and our emotions are a result of how we choose to see it. Emotions drive actions and our actions, well, they create the reaction that we know as ‘life’. If you want to achieve a goal, it’s not necessarily about changing your actions, it’s about your ability to take a big step back and have a look at what your mind is saying about the situation – the tension that mental attention creates and, most of all, learn to pause in that tension. When emotions rise up, it’s your job to own that, be in it, not run from it. When energy swirls inside, it’s your job to not react to it, but to move with it and shift it with your surrender and presence. Observe the story, be curious about what you’re afraid of or what you are resisting. Notice your urge to react. Most of all, notice how you judge your discomfort. There is warped conditioning in our world that if we are afraid, anxious, sad or stressed, that there is wrongness in this. The things we most fear and resist are the things we most need to face and feel. And most of the things we fear are the things we actually crave at a deep level. Peace, contentment, stillness. Yes, we fear peace; well, our mind does, because it thrives off fear and chaos. It’s happy when it’s busy and if there is peace inside of us, there is no busyness. So part of us craves happiness, peace and fulfilment and another part (mind) craves chaos. Continued in comments..
  • Ever find that you’re resistant to feeling anxiety, stress, sadness, fear etc? Yeah - me too. The relationship we have and what we do with our emotions determines whether they control us or liberate us. I’m doing a series (dunno how many, see how long it takes ;) ) over the next week on what to do when emotions arise - specifically the more uncomfortable ones.
  • Its not the darkness of anxiety, fear, sadness or envy that hurts. Its your idea about what they mean. It’s what you do with the tightness and pain that rises inside that determines whether you become consumed by it or liberated from it. Pause. Breathe. Be curious. Meet it with the kind of loving kindness you’d meet a loved one in pain. See it for what it is; the fear of your very own light showing you where you need to open in order to be free. In these moments, when it feels like you’re being swallowed whole, I want you to close your eyes and find where THAT energy is presently taking up space in your mind/body and take the time to notice the difference between that energy/thought/ego and who you really are. The power lies in seeing that there are the thoughts and energy and then there is you. It might not mean it disappears but it’s really about building this awareness first. It’s always the first step - awareness. Meeting that darkness with curiosity and seeing, “ahh, it’s fear. It sounds and feels like me but I know it’s not. It’s pounding in my body and head but it’s not me”, and that realisation is the beginning of your liberation. Lay down and use your breath to calm the noise and settle and then just notice and keep on noticing some more because your power is in realising that the thoughts and emotions are not who you are. Which means, you don’t need to be afraid of their presence. Fear only controls you when you resist it or listen to it. You don’t need to do anything more than that right now. You don’t need to be afraid of it’s presence or how long it may or may not be around or how bad it might get. You don’t need to resist it. You need to see it and meet it with a gentle hello and gentle kindness. That’s how to defeat fear and darkness; to not give into the desire to push it away. Your darkness doesn’t need to go anywhere until it’s shown you the parts of yourself that require more love. As long as you feel it, you’re able to learn from it. If you didn’t already pick up what I’m putting down. This is called surrender. Beyond surrender, loves, there is bliss. Beyond bliss, is more to surrender to. Repeat infinitely ❤️
  • I want to kick (and then cuddle) my own self righteousness arse for thinking at some point in my life, that there was such thing as a spiritual person and most of all thinking that really just wasn’t me. Bachelor of medical science, no thanks too fluffy yeh nah. Silly bugga’. Working with trauma, shadows, emotions and darkness gives you a pretty decent insights into the darkest of dark places within humans (including self, man I have some jam packed black holes up in ere’). I figured in the end, we are nothing more than potential in a meat bag with the power of choice. A little sad and a little rad all at once. This topic is pretty damn important to me because when I work with someone, I begin within. As in, if you don’t know yourself, truly, at your core, then what the fuck are we doing here? But how can you know something that cannot be understood with our brains? You can’t. Understanding yourself is an embodied experience that you an later on try and mind bang yourself so unpack (done many times and failed), or you can just pause and deepen your relationship with this very moment, your breath, your inner energy and slowly, slowly slowly get to know yourself underneath all that noise. That moment when you feel yourself, its pure fucking magic. Magic I tell you. From there, the rest of the unpacking becomes a lot less resistant. Resistance still exists, but it is far easily moved through after you have a taste of yourself. Lesson for today, spend more time being with yourself if you want to discover why you are alive and what you’re meant to do with this glorious moment. Churrrs to @genghis_tuan for the camera skills and @kateleopoldmusic for the sounds x
  • Dear one. Listen for a moment. We’ve got the wrong idea about this life thing. We came here to fall down and scrape knees. To break hearts and have our heart broken. To see that we are not as kind, nice and gentle as we would always like to be. We came here to discover our nastiness, our fears and our imperfections and sometimes even worry about them so much we make ourselves sick. We came here to learn. To cry ourselves to sleep sometimes. To eat buckets of ice cream and get really drunk. To get lost and then found, over and over again. To learn compassion and kindness, mostly towards ourselves. To feel the richness of life when we give outwardly. And then… we came here to indulge until we are sick and then finally understand that the bright and shiny things in this life are the same things that blind us from the truth. (That our own uncontainable essence is much better and brighter than any ‘thing’). We’re here to be messy, icky, dirty, smelly and shattered. And through the shattering, allow what is not real – the fear that constricts our greatness, and then let it go. We’re here to be us, in all of our destructive human nature and infinitely expansive indestructible glory. We have to allow life to fill us up through stillness and teach us through it’s beautiful chaos. It’s not just one or the other. It’s not all meditation and no thinking. It’s not all analysis and no feeling. It’s not all movement and no pause. It’s not all mindfulness and no ignorant mistakes. It’s not all spiritual and no humility through deep grounding. It’s not all heart and no head. It’s not all juice and no beer. It’s not all truth and no lies. It’s not all kindness and no cruel. It’s absolutely never all success without failure. Live wildly. No rain, no flowers. It takes a lot of fucking courage to be human. It’s energy without effort. Being without forcing. Living without expecting. Working hard and letting go. Determined but detached. Open yet firm. Being respectful but unafraid. It’s calculated risk taking for the sake of living. Loving deeply. Opening when you want to close. Be consciously still in mind and slow in breath, often. Continued in comments...
  • What’s the story you’re telling yourself that’s lighting the fire of your shame (I’m not enough because) or blame (they did this to me/I felt this and that’s why I X) or self sabotage (this is just how it is, “people always screw my over so may as well screw them/keep them out/be prepared”, “everyone tries to manipulate to get what they want”, “I always fuck it up right when I’m at the brink of change/growth”). It all comes back to the collective shadow of unworthiness. We dismiss, disown, abandon, ignore, shut down our worthiness and therefore our power. Oh boy have I done this in my life. I’ve let boundaries be crossed and my heart be broken over and over again. I’ve let people lie, touch, manipulate, project and all because I was ignoring my power and sinking back into the worth I didn’t realise or had forgotten was innate. I disowned the power of my thoughts to direct my life force and world and sank back into what my mind was telling me would be (negative rumination on past or future negativity). And as you would know since you’re human and would have done this too - it’s soul destroying. It’s also the the greatest lesson in life, your power is your power. We’re so damn afraid to use it because well, “how dare I be so powerful and own every mm of my being and life”. Taking responsibility is painful and terrify - for just a moment. Then it’s the most liberating fucking thing in existence. So hear me, love. Hear me loud and clear - the voice you hear running the stories, that shit ain’t true, unsubscribe; let it go, breathe it out, see it for the collective wound story that it is. Breathe in deeply and sigh. Breathe in again and hold yourself. Find yourself in there, stay for a moment. Keep breathing, let it all go. What’s your truth? Yes, that’s right, you’re a powerful, intuitive, innate being with limitless potential. Now first, forgive yourself for all those times you didn’t own it, that you dove into shame, blame, righteousness, victim, proving, insecurity and fear. Now, go and choose to direct that power with love, truth, boundaries and conscious creativity. What exits your mind and life as a result of this ownership is meant to go.
  • If you have time enough to worry for a minute or two about all the shit in you’re life you’d like to make less shit, you have time to pause and go in. Meditation #101 is that it’s not complex. It’s not stopping thinking, it’s not feeling like you are calm, it’s not to rid your life of challenges or discomfort. No. It’s to help you take a step back and watch it like you would a Netflix series or Mario Kart on Nintendo 64. Meditation is not letting thoughts and feelings grab your attention, and instead focusing on absolutely nothing, which seems impossible and obscene since it’s almost impossible and obscene. But something very fucking magical happens when you’re paying attention to your breathe and you let the world be without having to think or get involved with the minds noose about it all, you sink a little deeper into yourself and suddenly it’s not all that painful. Especially the times of emotional stress, when you sit back and watch, you can feel what’s rising up without getting too dramatic and egotistical about it all. You can pay attention without feeding or resisting and all the energy of the emotions begin to dissolve and clarity comes. That’s it reality, meditation helps you see what’s bullshit and what’s not: and fortunately for us, we end up realising most of our worries and suffering come from bullshit. I’m laughing a free little “learn to meditate in 3 minutes” series. DM me your email and I’ll pop you in the FREE list to be a part of it when I launch this sucker next week. @m.boyce you’re welcome. Video by @genghis_tuan music by @kateleopoldmusic
  • Contrary to almost everything I teach about the necessity for the embracing of discomfort in order to evolve and experience deep scrumptious joy in our being, I don’t believe life needs to be painful. In fact, I think its a big fucking red flag that we are simply, out of alignment. Here is what I reckon. There is a fine but very important difference between what is making us grow and what is telling us to STOP - for fucks sakes. The growth discomfort is just that, discomfort. A butterfly melting from a caterpillar in order to reform and grow wings in it’s chrysalis. The bones in our shins expanding as they strengthen and lengthen to bear our increasing mass. The micro tear of our muscles on our final rep, sitting still with the feelings of sadness, anger, insecurity, fear or heartache while you drop into the body and allow them to melt away. Discomfort. Pretty self explanatory. The fucks sake communicates the voice in which i think the tone, if it had a voice, the universe would speak to me in. Like, “Fucks-sake, Ambz what even are you doing?”. What i am saying is, intuition alignment will feel uncomfortable. Being a somewhat silly billy/ignorant dick and ignoring it will hurt on a scale of 1-fuck this shit life hurts a lot let me drink/spend/work/bang/eat/intoxicate myself so I don’t have to feel this. Note, many of us (self included) numb the expansive discomfort also, which sucks for our soul since its our compass for moving in the direction of inner freedom and the numbing blinds the way. Im writing about this because I think we get a little over zealous and tend to glorify pain and forget that maybe, its not us growing, its our soul telling us to hit the damn breaks and step back, reassess and ask, am I in alignment? In summary: Discomfort - normal. Pain - self deception. How do you tell which is uncomfortable growth and painful misalignment? Well, the question reveals the answer, doesn’t it? What do you feel, is my point. Without a thought, without analysis, what do you FEEL in your being. The shadows, dark, discomfort are simply opportunist for light, love and evolution. Pain is an opportunity to asses you’re alignment with your truth.
  • I woke up today with a sense of deep happiness and remembered, ahhh, this is what alignment feels like. The cycles of tough to bliss are standard, but alignment can still be maintained and this is what it feels like. Light. The last few days have felt like the sun shot a ray into my heart and it trickle through every fibre of my being. And I remembered - We’ve got to continually teach our cells and minds what home feels like by opening more, opening more, opening more and reminding them - this is your nature, let’s never forget it. That way, they have a compass for home. You can’t get lost. Not now, not in the dark, not ever when home is in. You’re writing it with your presence. Lets aways return to it. Its always possible. You are always possible. NB. The sun is only millions of miles away, not billions. I’ve been informed 😂😂😂
  • “When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, whilst not being attached to the outcome. So that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back into the fray. That, to use a loaded term, is what I call enlightened self-interest.” Reading the words of Sam Harris as I prep for next week's Gold Coast RISE workshop (happening on May 29th - if you have kiddies aged 6 weeks - school age, check @risesurfersparadise to register) and think of everything I will be teaching the parents about emotional resilience and intelligence, this stuff isn't just powerful for them, it's for all human beings. Since we are all lovers of pleasure and resistors of pain, we can only ever really hope to become truly content when we see this weakness of ours as something simply coming along for the ride of our life, and not letting it run our every action. In a nutshell, mindfulness is the ability to recognise what is happening in your mind right now—anger, jealousy, sadness, the pain of a stubbed toe, whatever—without getting carried away by it. According to the Buddha, we have three habitual responses to everything we experience. We want it, reject it, or we zone out. Cookies: I want. Mosquitoes: I reject. The safety instructions the flight attendants read aloud on an airplane: I zone out. Mindfulness is a fourth option, a way to view the contents of our mind with judgement removed. Imagine a moment in your life where you want to reject something, but instead, you don't, and you lean in with curiosity, investigate it, sit with it, allow it to teach you, and as a result, you grow. Because when we grow, we feel fulfillment - something we shut down to when we give into that desire to avoid pain. And imagining further, what would happen if you resisted the urge to move towards pleasure alone, and had the self control to not reach for the phone, but let that unsettled irritation for a hit of dopamine rise up within you, and then simply fall away. Continued in comments ⤵️⤵️⤵️ 📸 @roshimccartin
  • Do much more majestic words strung together exist? Thank you @elizabeth_gilbert_writer for reminding us of our very honest nature.
  • What’s ready to die and what do you need to keep fighting (as in, sitting in discomfort when we want to run. I don’t believe fight/hustle will ever get us anything worth keeping) for? The art of a full life lead from the heart and founded in strength, lies in knowing when to push through and when to pause and surrender with ease. Its grounded in a compassion that’s so subtle it’s almost silent. So subtle that it can only be heard when you’re very, very still. Humble, still, open and willing to admit you truly know absolutely nothing except that this moment right now, is it. And what you do right here with your thoughts and dreams and actions and fears will determine the next. Surrender to what’s right here, now. Sit. Breathe. Drop in. Listen. And then, have the courage to let go of what you fight and grasp onto because of fear and what you know you need to actually follow from a place of power. It’s determining the difference that’s a skill, developed over time and fine tuned from fucking up and learning from your mistakes. Soft in heart, sharp in mind and actions built from love. Our success is dependent on our ability to flow because, fighting, well it’s fucking exhausting and only brings us so far. Until of course we shatter and are forced to either give up (don’t do this) or rebuild from scratch. Life’s a balance of learning when to fight for those flash moments that require primal instinct, and learning when to strengthen through our softness of intuition. It’s our senses beyond our senses and our potential beyond our belief. It’s possibility of a fullness we can’t yet imagine but simultaneously know exists. We have to remember that we don’t know what we don’t know so remaining open is the remedy for sabotage. A self-screw-over you didn’t even see unfolding. Let yourself look a little closer. Let yourself get a little more uncomfortable. Let yourself open and wonder. It’s a magnificent thing, life; we get lost often. But it’s love that’ll always bring us home. Stillness, humility and the courage to practice both are the essentials. Ain’t that a beautiful fucking recipe? This is my recipient. What’s yours? @roshimccartin

Get In Touch

Enquiry
Privacy Policy | Amber Hawken © 2019
Powered by WishList Member - Membership Software