Find your centre

Created on Canva Pro

I have a round canvas that I have committed to drawing a mandala on. 

‘Mandala’ in Sanskrit means ‘circle’.

I’ve been drawing mandalas for a while, but not on this scale before.

This canvas is much bigger than what I have been used to.

The first thing to do whenever you want to create a mandala is finding the centre point and working your way from there. 

You can guess where this centre point is without assistance, but there are times when you don’t mind seeking help from other things (or people) to get the accuracy. 

This is one of those times. 

More so because of it being out of my comfort zone. 

In this process you realise what your values are with the piece. 

I just mentioned ‘accuracy’. 

This is a value. 

Another is symmetry. 

For me, it’s also the concept of intricacy. 

One takes these values with each step of the process and hopes it’ll reflect in the outcome. 

The outcome is not in my control though. 

Finding the centre in mandala work is similar, I feel, to finding your centre in your yoga practice - both take some work to get there. 

Centering in yoga is important because it encourages you to find your inner self - a place with no distractions, no anxiety and no negativity. 

When I think of the word ‘centre’ a few associations come to mind. 

I consider the word ‘core’, or the word ‘middle’.

I automatically go to an image of a circle. 

‘Centre’, for me, evokes a sense of accuracy and a pointing towards. 

If we look at the etymology of the word ‘centre’, we see a similar path of meaning. 

The term ‘centre’ was actually spelt ‘center’ before Johnson’s dictionary popularised the spelling of ‘centre’. 

Johnson’s Dictionary was first published in 1755. 

Before that, the likes of Shakespeare, Milton and Pope would all spell the word ‘center’ to mean the ‘middle of anything’ from around the 1590s. 

Figuratively, the meaning ‘point of concentration (of power) was evident from around the 1680s, and where people’s views were positioned between the left and right of the political spectrum (originally in France), we see its use from around 1837. 

The term ‘center’ has its root in the Proto-Indo-European term *kent-, meaning ‘to prick’. 

It evolved into the Greek word ‘keintein’, meaning ‘stitch’, which further evolved into the Greek word ‘kentron’, meaning ‘sharp point’, ‘goad’, or ‘sting of a wasp’. 

The term later evolved into the Latin word ‘centrum’, meaning ‘center’, originally referring to the fixed point of the two points of a drafting compass (hence the centre of a circle). 

(We can see where my work to find the centre aligns as I use a compass to assist me in finding the accurate spot). 

The term evolved into the Old French word ‘centre’ in the 14th Century before its arrival in the English language in the late 14th Century. 

It is safe to say my associations with the word ‘centre’ are aligned with the notion of a specificity. 

The word evokes a sense of the specific; of the middle; of the core. 

These associations have kept their relevance right from the root, and all throughout the route to the present day. 

As the centre of my mandala piece has now been found, work has started to create something unique. 

One could argue that aligning with the centre keeps the peace in any work we do, and the path of the word itself has shown how important finding that centre is.