Creating From the Inside Out

Well, it's taken me over a year but I have finally learned how to use iMovie and upload videos from there to Youtube! I feel so accomplished every time I make it over another techno hump! That being said, here is a video of a sound healing session I gave my dear friend Paul Goudsmit during our sound healing workshop last year in Utrecht, Netherlands. Really his smile at the end of the session is absolutely worth the price of admission.

What else is happening? So much stuff! Had a wonderful evening at Doris Duke's house ("mansion" would not be inaccurate) presenting a mini-workshop on Mantra Therapy and leading a short kirtan a couple of weeks ago. It is said that there are 330,000,000 mantras- no, that is not a typo. Three hundred thirty MILLION. That's crazy!  There are 87,000 mantras just based on the seed sound "Ah". Where do you begin? Ommmmmm... Ommmmmm... Ommmmmm... 

Anyway, as you might be able to tell from the pictures below it was a huge beautiful room with incredible acoustics. A lot of times I feel like I really have to push to be heard over the harmonium but not this time.  It was just lovely and very well received. Plus I saw some people I hadn't seen in many years and that was pretty sweet too.  So I am reconnecting with old friends and making lots of new friends and wonderful connections lately.

I know I already wrote about the wonderful weekend in the Catskills with John Beaulieau and Silvia Nakkach (remember to smile when you say her name- "Seeeeelvia"- so you pronounce it correctly!) I have been reading her book "Free Your Voice" and working with the downloads that come with it as musical lessons- FUN musical lessons and also recorded some of the lessons we had in the Catskills so I have been singing a lot! That has been wonderful.  I sometimes wake up in the morning singing, as per Tina Turner's instruction on her beautiful CD "Beyond."

 

Finally seem to be getting a groove going on here in Newport. We had a great turnout at Jesse Harding's martial arts studio about two weeks ago which has led to more openings as well.

Am also taking an Expressive Arts Intensive at Salve Regina University which has been absolutely amazing. I had no idea what I would do with it- how I would utilize and incorporate it into my practice but I trusted that it would reveal itself. Now I am definitely getting ideas about I might integrate some of the practices into sound healing workshops with groups.  I definitely see it as being particularly beneficial for the oncology groups I am starting to work with. I have started a monthly Community Sound Healing Group for oncology patients through Women & Infants Hospital Integrative Care Program which is really exciting.

There is something about processing using visual art that is very exciting to me.  It feels like the missing piece in all of the art, music and healing work I have been doing for so many years. It is like creating art from the inside out, which is exactly how I do my sound healing and the energywork and bodywork I do. I don't know why I never got this before- it's sort of astonishing to me and it just makes so much sense. As much as I loved doing art it was never satisfying to me because I was always looking on the outside for my inspiration.  It never occurred to me to try to put on paper how a tree budding in the springtime makes me feel, rather than just trying to draw or paint the tree.

Our Expressive Art group meets 3 times over the course of 5 months. Our last module we spent some time working on mandalas and I have fallen in love with them!  Again, I have always loved mandalas and looked at pictures of them, studied them, had coloring books of them but somehow it just never occurred to me to make my own. I am so happy! Today I made one on the beach as part of my Mandala Project.

 Beach Plaid Prayer Flag Mandala with Tobacco Offering
(cigar holder in center on rock is the tobacco)

Observing Gratitude

The other day I was driving down the road and started thinking about something stressful- no idea what it was. I just remember that my whole body began to feel uncomfortable and constricted so I said, "Thank you for this moment" and immediately I took a deep breath.

Try it. Just say, "Thank you" quietly to yourself- you can even whisper it. And see what happens.  It was so obvious, that deepening of the breath, that I have been practicing this whenever I feel any tension- physical, mental or emotional- ever since.  I don't always remember right away- in fact I rarely do.  But the moment I do I just say "Thank you" and everything shifts. I have been amazed by how powerful it is- and how simple and natural.

I have had a practice of gratitude for quite a few years but it's been more like a prayer or a meditation- a deliberate time to remember all the things I have to be grateful for- which ultimately always come back to my breath.  This, however, is very spontaneous and in the moment and it is changing things for me in a profound way.  Maybe it is an offshoot of my practice- that there is a trigger and a resonance in those two words for me now that has developed over time but really I don't think so. I think there is something inherent in the simple remembrance and expression of gratitude that brings us back to our life force, back to the breath. Our whole being is grateful for the experience of gratitude and we breathe into it deeply and naturally. 

    Thank you for this moment.
   
        Thank you for this breath. 
       
            Thank you for this life.
       
                Thank you.