She has talent sprouting out of every limb...and German-born Ina Rolshoven has exceptionally long limbs!
     At 6ft 1 1/2'' the thirty-three old is a natural model, and in fact worked in the modeling profession in New York and Paris. But she is also a professional painter, and a designer of garments and accessories.
     Her life reads like the kind of success story every young girl dreams of - and not just because of the travel and the glamour it involves. Starting from a love of creativity as far back as she can remember, Ina has pursued her passion in its various manifestations, and in doing so found a way of living that is personally fulfilling and financially rewarding.

     She explains...

     "It was always very clear to be that I would be an artist. At school I always chose to do courses in painting, ceramics and photography. Later I learned oil painting and very fine, detailed drawing from nature. I also love to write poetry – to play with words.
     "I did have some other, excellent art teachers who encouraged me to look through my own eyes. But generally, when you study art you're told the whole history painting – of people who have done fantastic things, so I felt I was full of other people's ideas. At some point I had to push them away and just trust my own intuition ... the beauty of my own vision and my own sense of what art means to me."

     Ina attained her Master's of Fine Art at Hunter College New York; and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts, NYC. In addition, she studied industrial design at Ecole Nationale Superieure de Creation Industrielle, France.

     Then she took a break during that course to go to NYC's Arts Students League, studying sculpting in stone and marble, and doing a lot of ceramics. Started in the sixties, the place is famous for its non-academic approach.      Following that, she was employed as a professional model with "Company," in NYC and Paris. Of this latter experience she says...

     "People always responded to my image, to the "package" they saw me as – extremely tall (even for modeling), smart (which actually wasn't really relevant for modeling!) unusual-looking, and versatile.
     "Simultaneously I was painting, and one of my teachers was a curator, Nancy Spector, at the Guggenheim Museum. She loved my work and she wanted to support me, so she invited me to work for her as an assistant. Later on I was the director's assistant at the John Webber Gallery in NY."

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     After several operations in France, Ina returned to New York and started therapy and meditation, the latter at the Shambala Center, based on the teachings of the Tibetan master Chogyal Trungpa Rinpoche.
     A dose of yoga, macrobiotics, Mantak Chias microcosmic orbit meditations, and psychoanalysis later, she found herself traveling in India.

     "I was always searching and I was always in pain, that's how I remember it, and when I came to the to the Osho Meditation Resort I was very much a big mess. But immediately I felt very much at home there. It was as if I had come home, and I never wanted to leave again.

Asked if she meditates every day, Ina responds...      "I do a morning meditation of sitting in silence; this gives a center and focus to my day. Listening to an Osho discourse at the end of each day closes or rounds off everything that has happened through the day.      "The whole meditation has so many different spaces in it. First the dancing phase at the start: sometimes I become disconnected from myself during the day and through dancing, I feel I am coming back to myself. I begin to notice exactly how I am feeling: sometimes suddenly I am crying or I notice I am very happy and laughing.      "Then the phase of sitting down, and listening to the music interspersed with silence is very beautiful. When Osho starts talking – sometimes I follow what he is saying but also I tune into the gaps between the words.

     "When I first started meditating I began to learn that whatever you have – silence or peace, for example – if you give some space around it, it grows. This is how I work in my art. I have to do that; otherwise I can't really see what I'm trying to.
     "It's like: when you want to make space in your room, most of the things you don't need and they get in the way of the roominess. Get rid of them and you see and feel the spaciousness better.
     "So with my inner space I am learning to let thoughts and feelings go.
     "As I listen to the discourse I am trying to receive ... not just words, the content, the story ... I am not trying to intellectually understand but to trust an inner space: who I am, without all the conditioning, all this other 'stuff,' but to contact who I am in a more naked way, in a more natural, innocent space.

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"At the end Osho always reminds us to be the buddha within us. For a moment we don't have all the 'stuff.' The space inside feels like something holy...something sacred, intimate. I feel the silence as a precious thing that is there inside me: if I don't sit each evening to consciously access this space, I might not pay attention to it. But by allowing it every night I don't forget it so easily. It's not possible to forget it.

"I know if I didn't do this meditation regularly I would be a lot more crazy! By that I mean: when I am stressed, I can't breathe properly; there is so much to do that feels important. I feel I am not good enough as I am, that I can't be what others want me to be.      "But in meditation I am me – and that's enough." Copyright© activemeditation.com

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