When I began this lengthy series, I knew from decades of yoga and meditation retreats what I was stepping into.
I was committing to all the challenges of an intensive daily practice — of maintaining attention over time, and of meeting ahimsa not as an idea, but as something alive in my mind, my body, and the world around me.
I wanted to explore it with the depth and nuance laid out by the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation. To question it. To be shaped by it. And however imperfectly, to complete the framework of prompts in a way that felt authentic to my own contemplative and creative practice.
Each post became a doorway to enter that practice more fully through my chosen mediums: origami and writing — to make gentle, respectful contact with lived experience and reflect on it in a way that embodied the values of nonviolence.
For me, origami and writing were never just tools to make art. They were the art itself.
Each fold needed presence.
Each word required honesty.
Together, they became a way of thinking, feeling, and responding — one small, deliberate act at a time.
There is a quote often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”
In the unfolding of this series, I felt the echo of that truth in my own practice.
There was no point at which I would arrive at a perfect origami model or a perfect understanding of ahimsa.
The folding was the understanding.
The writing was the understanding.
Not completely, but sincerely. And that sincerity mattered.
Over these 64 days, I wasn’t just completing posts. I was staying in relationship — with the 64 attributes of nonviolence, with the discipline of daily attention, and with noticing how these qualities live (or don’t yet live) in me and around me.
There were many moments that felt uncannily aligned with my personal life and the wider world. I could have written an entire second journal just tracing those connections!
There is more here, I can feel it — threads worth following, patterns worth gathering, a deeper harvest waiting within the field and fodder of all those images and reflections, and the ones that didn't get picked this time around.
But for now, I want to pause.
To celebrate not just that I completed this series, but how I completed it:
With intention.
With consistency.
With curiosity.
With joyful enthusiasm and a willingness to let the practice itself be both anchor and inquiry.
I set out to explore ahimsa through origami and writing. In doing so, I found myself more fully in resonance with both. Not as a means to an end, but as my own way of being.
Thank you for the framework, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation of Canada. I look forward to returning to this.
For now, I fold this season closed the same way I began it — attentively, curiously, and with deep respect for what can emerge when we meet even the simplest and most common moments and materials with care.
