Feelin' Good

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life- and it’s a new year! And I AM feelin’ good!

So much to celebrate, so much to be grateful for.

My new year always starts off on January 9. January 8 is my birthday and, for me, the culmination of the holiday season. My final sweet treat- always the best carrot cake I can find- which for the past two years has been my own- far healthier than whatever I can get “out there” and absolutely killer! This year I didn’t have my cake until January 10th because my actual birthday was so full. and I didn’t have time to bake it until the next evening- by which time it was too late to eat it! On the day of, I did a sound journey via Zoom which was attended by about 35 people- what a wonderful way to celebrate! Not my plan- it was hosted by my friend Rose Russo who runs a yoga group for cancer survivors. It just “happened” to land on my birthday. Friends from near and far- even one whom I had not seen since I was 17! What a treat- so wonderful.

Meanwhile I AM doing my best to get down to business, to think about what I want to create and what I want to regenerate in this bright new year. My intention is to set reasonable goals- enlightenment can wait… but occasionally withdrawing my attention from the objects of my experience and relaxing gently into the awareness of I AM no longer seems impossible.

I am reading Rupert Spira’s book Being Myself and feel like I am beginning to understand (which reminds me of another song). A water molecule cannot separate itself from the water and look at the ocean. It can only relax into the experience of being the ocean. It can look at the little fishes and the big fishes and the coral and the plankton and the sunlight coming through the water and all of the wonders that present themselves but it is one with the water. It cannot actually look back at its Self- it can only rest in the fullness of the experience of Being. And so it is.

I am posting another video here- the Moody Blues Melancholy Man- which sounds like it might be gloomy - but in fact I feel like it is so full of hope. This is a great live version of the song. I believe it was from a concert on the Isle of Wight.
“All the world astounds me and I think I understand
That we’re going to keep growing, wait and see.”

I AM... Happy New Year

I can’t believe I haven’t written a blog post since August! Well, it’s a new year and here I am again. My son Benjamin and I had a sort of brainstorming session today to see how we could inspire and and motivate each other to move forward on some things we both want to accomplish. We have started a group called I AM- Inspiration, Aspirations, and Motivation. We each committed to a 30-day trial period and we will check in with each other once a week via Zoom to see how the other is progressing. My main focus is to work on a book on sound healing I started writing years ago and his is to get a couple of papers completed that he has been working on for a very long time.

One of the other things I wanted to do was to get back to my blog. We are going to read Seth Godin’s book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work together and I am committed to writing a blog post once a day.

I’m done for today. It’s a start.

I AM grateful.

Outsider Art and Music- Adolf Wölfli

“Outsider art, synonymous until the 1980s with art brut, any work of art produced by an untrained idiosyncratic artist who is typically unconnected to the conventional art world—not by choice but by circumstance. The “classic” figures of outsider art were socially or culturally marginal figures. They were usually undereducated; they almost invariably embraced unconventional views of the world, sometimes alien to the prevailing dominant culture; and many had been diagnosed as mentally ill. These people nevertheless produced—out of adversity and with no eye on fame or fortune—substantial high-quality artistic oeuvres.” ~www.britannica.com~

I have spent most of the day reading about and poring over the life and work of Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930)- an artist who just came to my attention this morning. Initially it was the musical notation embedded in the artwork that grabbed me- the particular image that I first saw was so intricate that I thought it must be a fresco on the ceiling of a huge building. No, he would not have had access to a ceiling as it turns out- just paper and colored pencils. He was so prolific that by the time of his death the volumes filled with his autobiographical writings and artwork stacked one atop the other stood almost 6 feet high.

My friend who had posted the original drawing that had so enthralled me did not know the location of the particular piece of art and thus began my journey. I was soon in tears seeing the genius come to life- his early life was plagued by misery with the death of his parents, followed by abuse in foster homes, time spent in prison as he grew more violent and ultimately the last half of his life spent in an institution.

How could it be that I had never seen his work? In his lifetime, the last 35 of which were spent in a mental asylum as a patient suffering from schizophrenia and severe hallucinations, he composed an imaginary autobiography of over 25,000 pages of art, poetry and musical notation in which he is the sole traveler, transforming a childhood of misery into one of magic and adventure.

The musical notation in his artwork initially appeared to be decorative but was in fact playable. Apparently he would sometimes play it himself with a paper trumpet he had made. You can listen here to his musical cryptograms analyzed and played on the violin by Baudouin de Jaer. They are lyrical, mysterious and beautiful: Analysis of the Musical Cryptograms of Adolf Wölfli.

I am also posting a fascinating article of a summary of the life of Adolf Wölfli with many more pictures of his art included. Adolf Wölfli by Paul Greer, originally posted on March 25, 2014.

Die Skt-Wandanna-Kathedrale in Band-Wand, 1910

Musiknotation, 1930

General View of the Island Neveranger, 1911

Ah, synchronicity is a beautiful thing! My friend Keith Bernard, who posted the original picture this morning that led me down this path of discovery, just sent me the photo as I was about to publish this page!

Circumscribe… (unable to find a date for this work)

Are You Awake?

Hello my friends. Today is Day 9 of my Restorative Retreat. I am so happy and grateful that I can stay here for a while and not feel like I have to get up and go anywhere else for the time being. When it feels right and I feel ready and well rested I will take a ride up to RI and get some more of my stuff out of storage but I am not making a plan other than to pay attention and follow my guidance on that.

I have been absorbed in sound and music in various forms. I’ve spent quite a bit of time practicing the piano and playing the guitar, trying to break out and explore new possibilities rather than just sticking with what I know- which Is easy to do on the piano because I don’t know much at all other than the notes and basic scales. I do understand the basics of creating chords also so I have a little bit of very basic foundational material to work with.

… And… some time has elapsed since I wrote the above- I am now on day 13 of my stay-at-home retreat! I have completed a painting (see below!), created several very simple short riffs on the piano, painted a couple of stools for the breakfast bar in my kitchen, made homemade pizza (and had Mahesh & Mukta over to help me eat them), explored double drop D tuning on the guitar, taken a two-hour online yoga class on the day of the most recent full moon and been working on whitening the bones of a turtle skeleton and shell found down by the pond on the property where I live. I’ve also made a few short meditation videos intended basically to help my friends end their evening on a good note. I spent hours one day going through pictures from the Sound Body Wholistic Health Center- my old sound healing center in St. Pete- just to pick out a new cover photo for the Facebook page for the center. And I’ve watched a whole bunch of episodes of “Doctor, Doctor” on Amazon Prime- AKA “The Heart Guy”!

I have several plants that Mahesh and Mukta gave me waiting to be planted. Cannas and kalanchoe… and a rosemary plant that I bought at the market. My yard is very drab. Needs some new life for sure. It’s small but there’s plenty of room for some herbs and flowers to brighten things up. The truth is I’ve been nervous about digging around too much in the yard because the one day I did in the spring I was introduced to chiggers- not fun!

Last night before bed I had a teaspoon of honey with cannabis extract in it. It is supposed to help with sleep. It didn’t- in fact it had the opposite effect. I was up til somewhere around 5 a.m. At a certain point it occurred to me that perhaps I should focus on “waking up” rather than going to sleep. I am fascinated by my dream state… isn’t my “waking state” equally as important, if not more so? And what does it mean to be awake? So I picked up Francis Lucille’s book, The Perfume of Silence.

I have only just started it but I can pretty comfortably say that it is on the nature of consciousness and non-dual reality. In response to a question in the beginning of the book he uses the sound of birds and ambient outdoor sounds as a reference point. He says, “Ask yourself, ‘Where do they appear?’ If the answer is that the bird is singing 50 feet from here, see that this is not actually your experience, that it is a concept. The actual experience of the sound is happening at a zero distance from you, not 50 feet away. It is not happening there but rather here, always. Everything is always happening here and now.”

Immediately I tuned into the sound of the crickets “outside” and suddenly felt that i was floating in a sea of consciousness. Everything that “seems” to be happening to me and around me is happening within the consciousness of I AM. I picked up my journal long enough to write “There is no separation between ‘I’ and my experience of the world around me- around the body I seem to inhabit. I am in fact inhabiting everything I seem to come into contact with.” And then drifted back out into the sea of consciousness…

Meditation, Inspiration, Restoration

It’s Sunday. Supposed to be a day of rest- which it was. But it also was a day of creative ideas and the inspiration to start something new. It’s easy to mark the time when I begin anew on a Sunday. I received the inspiration in my meditation yesterday to begin a self-guided restorative retreat today. Minimum 28 days but may go to 40 days. What I’m getting is that the retreat itself will be 28 days but I am going to do a 40-day yoga practice. I have been around people almost constantly for the past 3 months and have hardly been at home at all. In the past few days I am beginning to get reacclimated to being in my own space… by myself. The first two days I was totally exhausted from all I have been doing over the past 3 months and didn’t feel like doing anything, plus there was some personal family stuff going on that was taking quite a bit of my time and attention.

I made some good soups a couple of days ago because I had been traveling and there are so many cases of breakthrough Covid. I wanted to be ready in case I got it so I bought some chicken and made a beautiful batch of bone broth yesterday as well as some delicious cauliflower vichyssoise.

And now it’s Monday… I am looking back at yesterday- my inspiration and activity. It felt like I did so much stuff on Day One of my Restorative Retreat! Here are some of the things that are to be included in my retreat and the forms they have taken thus far. A creative activity- yesterday it was painting. Plus playing guitar, piano and drumming- all of which also fall into the soundwork category which is to be included each day. Healthy food, cleanse, diet plan… am presently preparing to do a liver flush in a few days so eating lightly- although meals are always a creative endeavor for me to some degree- and drinking a quart of organic apple juice each day for a minimum of 6 days to prepare for flush. (I will probably do 9 days.) I also made two short videos- one of me playing the piano which was just for my brother who gave me his old keyboard and a two minute video of me playing the Himalayan singing bowls just before bed- a little kiss goodnight to my friends.

I spent hours looking at some old videos from the Sound Body Center last night and posted one on YouTube, which isn’t really ready for viewing til I put the follow-up ones on there- they’re basically a sort of triptych. They’ll go together in 3 parts. I did about 45 minutes of kundalini yoga and some meditation and photographed butterflies. One of my sons gave me a beautiful digital Nikon camera a few years ago and I have had major trouble getting the settings right. I gave up on it for a long time but I’m back, slowly figuring out how to get the best out of it- another project which I am determined to succeed at.

Today I created a designated workspace for myself, did some more photography, am in the midst of uploading another video to YouTube, played the piano and have been writing. I intend by the end of the day to also have done my yoga practice and worked on my painting.

I also received the inspiration of a body prayer yesterday- combining sound and movement. Once I have completed the video of it I will share it here. It is called The Embodiment of Sound.

Meanwhile, while I have been sitting here writing I have uploaded the other two videos I mentioned from the days of the Sound Body Center. As I said before there are 3 parts to it. I didn’t post the very first one but you can find it on my YouTube channel- the caveat is that the first three minutes are a lot of talk and not much drumming so you may want to skip over some of it! I find it entertaining but you might not! The first one posted here has some great drumming with Fred Johnson and Jay Klein and the second one is Fred and I jamming together. They’re fun. So nice to revisit the sonic space of love and connection that was created there!

Is It Raining With You?

It’s Tuesday morning. I’ve been awake since about 4 a.m. after a pretty intense week and a half- two of my sons in the hospital, one after the other- which has definitely thrown my sleep cycle way off. One of them has a bone disease and had some complications due to that. And the other has Crohn’s disease and had an intestinal blockage which thank goodness has passed without him having to have surgical intervention. It’s now about 6:30 a.m. and I am sitting in bed drinking very bulletproof coffee, listening to the rain come down outside my window. There is something that feels so healing about the sound of the rain- and even though it’s early and I am awake I feel like I could stay in bed all day and just bathe in the sound- soothing, cleansing and purifying. I have written a card to one of my cousins and read some lessons from A Course In Miracles.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how I am going to restructure my business, mostly working on getting the sound worked out to be able to do more events on Zoom. I hope to have this done by the end of the week- in fact am thinking about doing a crystal bowl meditation on Zoom for the solstice as part of the Circle of Sound Global Harmonization Ceremony. I am doing a test later this morning with my sister. If all goes well I will follow up with invitations to the event.

Oooh- hear comes the thunder! This is the first thunderstorm I have experienced since moving to the mountains of North Carolina. It is a different sound than when I lived in RI at basically sea level. I am living in a hollow in the mountains at an elevation of about 2000 feet. The sound seems more contained and in some way more resonant as it seems to be sort of held in the hollow where I am living rather than having an open space to spread out- as if it’s in sort of a container. Very interesting…

Input vs Output (Too Much Information!)

Oh dear- where have I been? Clearly not here. Not for lack of wanting to be here and post- literally every day I think of it and of all the things I want to share… But lord how fast the day gets away from me! Something hit me between last night and this morning having to do with the awareness of what happens when I get on the computer even with the best of intentions. I plan to write- a blog post, an email, a letter, a class description, whatever- but I get so quickly distracted by all the information coming at me that I lose focus almost immediately. And what I am realizing is that currently the information I am taking in is totally overwhelming that which I am putting out. I am drowning in information! I don’t think it is very different than the concept of “calories in, calories out.” If you want to lose weight you need to expend at least as many calories as you are taking in. If I want to be productive I have to limit the amount of information I am taking in and balance it with an output of energy and creativity.

There are other things I want to do with my day as well in terms of creativity- writing, painting, making jewelry- and always the everpresent sound work. I have instruments I love to play and practice including (but not limited to!) harmonium, banjo, guitar, and all of my sound journey instruments- Himalayan bowls, gongs, etc. I have also been in the midst of figuring out how to translate some of my work to Zoom which has been an interesting challenge that I think I have almost figured out. I just need to do a few more tests.

I have just become a member of a new holistic wellness group online that I am excited about and which looks like it can lead to some great possibilities for expanding my reach. I am still excited about the new opportunities and awarenesses that have come about due to Covid, for example teaching classes online- something I had never considered until very recently. It has led to a new level of creative thinking that I feel is a real gift among the challenges that have been put before us all in so many ways. I recently bought several mics, a mixer and two new sets of headphones- one wired and one wireless- which is a whole new level of working with technology for me. I am looking forward to seeing what comes out of all this!

I had the thought of The Police song “Too Much Information” from their album Ghost In The Machine in my mind but when I revisited it the original version it felt way too abrasive (maybe it’s just too early in the morning). Then I found this great live version which starts off with “Lazarus Heart” and then morphs into “Too Much Information”- well done!

SMiLE!

This morning someone sent me a wonderful song (Vege-tables) by Brian Wilson which led right into this incredible brilliant joyful and heartwarming full live performance of his 2004 album release, SMiLE (begun in 1967). I had no intention of watching a music video first thing in the morning but with the opening notes I was hooked. I went into my kitchen, turned my Bose Bluetooth speaker up high, cleaned my kitchen and danced and sang- and decided I should start every day dancing! But seriously, this is brilliant- complex beautiful arrangements that could only come from the musical genius of Brian Wilson. Turn up your speakers and SMiLE!

Ring The Bells

Today is a great day in America. We can breathe again. No words are needed. I offer you this.

Magical Maestro Istvan Sky

One simple share tonight. Two days ago I was decluttering my house as part of the personal retreat I am attending by myself in my home and I let this track play over and over.

If you want to know more about this extraordinary being watch this film. It is well worth the time.

Time and Time Again

The first thing I thought about this morning was time. Again! Specifically more songs about time. I thought I would post them right away and get my blog out of the way first thing. But before I got to them this beautiful ancient healing mantra came up on my Facebook feed. Years ago my Sanskrit teacher, the late and beloved Swami Shivananda- affectionately known to his students as Swami Bob- told me that it is the oldest healing mantra on the planet. I decided to check it out as I was curious how they chanted it, whether it was melodic or more straightforward traditional chanting.

It turned out it is beautifully sung by Shankar Sahney in responsive form and I was pulled right in. For the next 45 minutes I chanted along with it. It did wonders for me on so many levels including opening up my voice. By the end, all the cells in my body were vibrating and felt somehow perfectly aligned as if I had had a cellular repatterning. When I got up I felt clear, balanced and grounded.

When I finally got to my blog the webpage was totally uncooperative so I’m just getting to it now! Enjoy the music.

Time For Healing

Cleansing, clearing , cleaning.
Cleansing, clearing, cleaning
On the inside and on the outside.
Watching how I feed my body
Watching how I feed my mind.
Stuff to be healed surfacing
On the inside and on the outside.
Cleansing tears
Cleansing fears
Cleansing laughter
What are the words I use?
How do I talk to myself?
How do I think of others?
Now is the time.
Noticing
Even the occasional guilt around
Taking so much
Time
For me
And remembering
I am not guilty.
I have been given this
Time

The Power of Intention

Whoops- I missed two days! I didn’t even think about writing a post yesterday or the day before which is kind of weird but so be it. I took on a series of challenges to start off the new year- which basically for me starts after January 8, since that is my birthday. I’m still in holiday festivity mode til it’s over.

That being said, on January 4 I started a 40-Day Kundalini Yoga Challenge through the Life-Force Academy. I also started a 5-day fast on January 9 which gently came to a close today with a bowl of wonderful sweet potato and beet soup I made. On January 7 I made a commitment to start a 3-week cleanse beginning January 11 offered by lovely wonderful bright spirit Sacha Jones of Stiggly Holistics- although waiting to begin til I finished my fast.

Now comes the interesting part- the third challenge. About four or five days ago I was missing my Course In Miracles connection and a video came up on my Facebook page of a woman named Cyndi Krupp doing a short live feed on A Course in Miracles. There are very few teachers of the Course that I listen to because I feel like everything is said in the book and what better teacher than Jesus? But for whatever reason I was drawn to it and I listened to her and absolutely loved her presentation. I heard her say something about something you could sign up for which I ignored - just listened to the video and really connected with her message. She said one thing so succinctly and perfectly that I wrote it down, “All pain is nothing other than being disconnected from the Truth.” Later the same day I was in my living room doing my Kundalini practice and sometime during my meditation I had the thought, “I want to do a 40-day retreat. Here, now, in my home. I have the time and I need to make good use of the opportunity.” It was just a thought that came and went but it stayed to some degree quietly in the background.

The next day I decided to see if Cyndi had another video up, which she did. And this time I heard her clearly say that a program was beginning the next day, January 11, called The 40 Day Program to Transformation with another Course in Miracles teacher, Lisa Natoli. She said it had changed her life, that she began to have a real understanding and direct experience of the teachings of the Course when she did the 40-Day Program the first time.

So on January 11 I started both the Stiggly cleanse and Lisa’s program. I’ve only been in for 3 days but they have been an amazing powerful 3 days. The second day, January 12 I had a bizarre healing event occur which I will not describe because it wasn’t pretty. I will simply say that it is an issue that has been with me for years and years and I have been actively addressing it for the past few months. I am sure that the combination of internal fasting and cleansing combined with the kundalini practice brought it to the surface to finally be healed.

I have a lot of things right now to attend to throughout my day, videos to listen to, stuff to read, journaling, meditation but it’s the perfect time to do it all and the 3 programs weave together absolutely perfectly. Example- part one of preparation for both the Stiggly cleanse and the 40-day transformational work involve cleaning and clearing one’s space- decluttering. And watching what I put into my body and what I put into my mind will be a constant for the next few weeks and hopefully will be a practice which becomes a habit. The yogis say it takes 40 days to break a habit and 40 days to create a new habit.

Also an interesting side note on fasting that came up. I had chosen to fast before I started Sacha’s cleansing program and actually continued it for a couple of days into the program. Lisa talks about fasting essentially from our old ways, our stories and our mistaken beliefs about ourselves ("I’m not good enough” etc.) and one of the things that stood out to me that I had never thought of before was the two meanings of the word “fast”. One is to abstain and the other is quick-moving or hurried and I suddenly realized that fasting gets you there quicker. I love words.

Sound Images... Or Imaginings!

I just spent an hour trying to upload a bunch more images. I have thousands of digital photos of sound journeys. instruments, workshops and people receiving sound healing sessions. Unfortunately tonight my computer would not cooperate and these were all I could get for now. But if you click on the pictures at the top there is a carousel of at least a few you can enjoy- and imagine the sounds that come forth! Here is a short video of a sound spiral I created with Himalayan singing bowls.

Thank You Mr. Byrne and Mr. Bowie

I missed a few things I intended to do yesterday- like write a blog post. And do my yoga practice. But I didn’t forget my birthday! It was one of the best ever and I spent much of the day by myself. I had made a carrot cake the night before and yesterday went about making the frosting and decorating it, all to the tune- and visuals- of David Byrne’s amazing musical “American Utopia” which is now on film- and SO worth watching!

I saw it live when it came out in September of 2019 and was absolutely wild about it. I turned the volume way up and danced and sang and stirred butter and cream cheese and confectioner’s sugar and licked the spoon a whole lot- and had the best afternoon. In the eighties and the early nineties one of my birthday rituals was to watch the Jonathan Demme concert film of the Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense”. sometime during the day. I have always loved their music and David Byrne in all his interesting iterations since he has been on his own. I find him and his music fascinating and brilliant. I briefly considered revisiting the past yesterday but then realized I could watch “American Utopia” and it was absolutely the perfect choice. It was almost as exhilarating as seeing it live and the filmwork was fabulous- credit to Spike Lee for that!

This was after I had run downtown to pick up flowers. Right around noon I was just about to start making the frosting when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I almost didn’t answer because I have been getting so many calls in the last few weeks about refinancing my vehicle (thanks to an online search which I didn’t realize would lead to a zillion phone calls). Fortunately, I guess because I was in a celebratory mood, I answered. Turned out it was a FedEx guy. He told me he had a delivery of flowers for me but the weather was supposed to get bad and they had been told to stop deliveries except emergencies like medicine. He said. “I could wait til Monday… but it’s flowers and they won’t last!” He was so sweet and said he would meet me downtown if I wanted to pick them up. I told him it was my birthday and maybe one of my sons had sent me flowers? And yes! I would love to pick them up and was so grateful to him for making the effort to call me. He wished me happy birthday about 3 times before I got off the phone and then I headed out to meet him. I really was so touched by his thoughtfulness. It turned out they were a gorgeous bouquet of lilies and roses that my son Nic, his girlfriend Elizabeth and my grandson Jonah had sent me. I adore fresh flowers and between the kindness of the FedEx guy and the thoughtfulness of my son and his family and the most perfect flowers the whole thing got my day off to a great start.

Once my frosting and dancing were done I cleaned myself up and went up to my friends Mahesh and Mukta’s house, up the hill behind where I live, cake in hand. They had cooked a wonderful dinner of dal, sweet potatoes and pasta with kale and shitake mushrooms and then we had the birthday cake.- completely organic and totally delicous- and another very powerful musical experience!

David Bowie’s musical “Lazarus”, which opened on Broadway just a month before he died, was livestreaming last night in the US as a tribute to his passing five years ago- on January 10, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday on January 8 and the release of his 25th studio album, Blackstar. The event will also livestream between tonight and tomorrow night in various locations and at different times across the globe. If you are a Bowie fan it is so well worth seeing. I don’t want to get into the story or a critique or review of it but I will tell you it’s phenomenal- every performance is brilliant- and if you missed it then I would say to pray that it is eventually released on Netflix, Amazon Prime or becomes available as a DVD. You can read about it HERE.

Since I share my birthday with him (yes, I know- Elvis too) and I consider him one of the greatest musical geniuses of my generation, I could not have been more thrilled than to finish off my evening watching this brilliant musical with my two very dear friends. All in all it was a great day and a very memorable birthday. And I am happy to be alive.

“Lazarus” on pause in the background!

Photo of David Bowie by Adam Bielawski, 2008.

The Power of Mantra, The Science of Sound

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, was not a good day in the history of America- the culmination of four years of narcissism, arrogance, intolerance and self-righteousness by a disgruntled employee of the people.

I made a commitment to myself a few days ago- that I would put something out there every day on this blog. I missed yesterday because I was beside myself as the events of the day unfolded. I actually went into escape mode for a while- took a drive so I could listen to the news and not be sitting in my house watching it all on the TV or computer. I needed a change of scenery. When I got back I went up to Mahesh and Mukta’s, my neighbor/friends in the other house on the property where I live, and had pizza and a glass of wine. I was going to stay up there and blow off Day 6 of the 7-day mantra practice I have been doing with Jai Uttal but somehow, after eating way too much pizza, I felt somewhat emotionally revived and decided to go back up to my house and chant. I knew it would be the best thing for me and that I would be really disappointed in myself if I missed it.

Chanting in the time of Covid… I swore I would never do webinars- now I am so grateful for them. Thank you Jai and beautiful Nubia for bringing yourselves to our living rooms!

And of course I was so grateful that I listened to my heart rather than my mind as I knew I would be. As always the chant was perfect for the day - a devotional prayer to Hanuman, the monkey-god whose heart is so big and so full that it overflows with ardent love and devotion for Lord Ram and his beloved Sita. The perfect chant when the heart is feeling wounded.

On another note which isn’t exactly a change of topic- it relates- I am fascinated by the way significant dates repeat themselves. Exactly 15 years ago yesterday, on January 6, 2006 I sustained a fairly serious head injury. I was hit in the temple on the right side of my head by a large speaker. I got a concussion but the miracle was that the flat side of the speaker hit me square in my temple. I am convinced if it had been at the slightest angle the damage would have been far worse. Anyway, that is another whole story but what I want to get to here is how nāda yoga, the yoga- or science- of sound, which Sadhguru talks about in the above video, saved me or at least got me on a faster track to recovery.

About a month and a half after the injury- I hadn’t yet started driving again and could still barely talk, had a fair amount of swelling and pain- my nāda yoga teacher Shyam Bhatnagar offered a 7-day sound meditation retreat in Fort Meyers, FL. We sat with Shyamji and chanted for several hours every day, along with doing a dietary cleanse. Shyamji is a nāda yoga master and uses the voice, mantra and tamboura. After about 3 days I started noticing distinct changes. My mind started getting clearer and there were differences in my energy level. When I arrived at the retreat I already could see considerable improvement compared to the acute stage but with the mantra and meditation practices I could distinctly sense that my nervous system was receiving benefits on a subtle yet very deep level. I also had a lot of emotional clearing during the process and became aware of the deep level of trauma that I had undergone as a result of the injury.

The healing process was long- a good year- but the improvement in the beginning with a week of mantra practice with someone who really understood the science of sound was profound. I had many other helpers during this time who I am deeply indebted to, but the mantra and purification practice with Shyamji certainly helped get the ball rolling.

Chill Out With Some Ice Music

A friend sent me a link today about ice music in Lapland. I posted about the Ice Music Festival in Norway a few years ago when I first came across it. The visuals and the music are both stunning. There’s not much I can say- it’s all here.

I don’t think that it is true that there is nothing new under the sun- or in this case, under the ice! Every moment is new and so whatever appears in the now is new. And there seems to be no end to the creative spirit and inspiration that continually uncovers, explores and creates new technologies and methodologies which give us a whole new way to experience that which is known or familiar to us in other ways.

Check out this link to the Ice Music Festival in Norway- click here.

Dancing With the Goddess

In 2015 I accepted Seth Godin’s challenge to “ship” every day for 30 days- which meant writing a blog post. I did it for almost that whole year I think. I definitely did it for many months- and I had a sense of commitment every day, a sense of satisfaction, and a sense of completion. My commitment to myself as of January 1 is to post something- or ship- every day for 30 days.

It’s late. I wake up in the morning thinking about this- this blog- observing sound throughout the day, listening deeply at times, enjoying music on a more external level at other times and sometimes just being busy… doing stuff, making lunch, doing laundry, going to the grocery store, catching up with people on the phone- all the stuff of life. Today several hours were spent in mantra practice. Tonight I spent an hour chanting this beautiful mantra to Ma Durga during a webinar with Jai Uttal. Feel your breath, let yourself drop in and enjoy that quiet place inside for a little while…

A Groovy Sunday Groove

Morning has flowed into the afternoon as I have been immersed in Sunday morning music. Started off with Traffic “Low Spark of High heeled Boys” and I was actually able to play a little of the main piano groove along with it- which was very exciting!

That led me to a bunch of Traffic, Blind Faith and Steve Winwood classics- including these…

Somehow that all led into Van Morrison’s song “Into the Mystic” from his beautiful Astral Weeks album…

and finally, that led me to one of my favorite of all-time Van Morrison albums- Poetic Champions Compose- which I have been dancing, singing and playing the flute with for the past hour. I love Sunday mornings! Enjoy the music, and tell me “Did ye get healed?”