music – Grow Mindfulness

On Being Deaf

Jessica Kirkness in her memoir, The House With All the Lights On, lets us see and hear what it is like to live with grandparents who are Deaf. Her story covers her experience of living under the one roof with her parents and grandparents and coming to understand the “language of light”. In the process, Jessica enlightens us about what it means to be deaf and how to interact with adults who are deaf.

Jessica’s grandfather spent a lot of time in and out of hospital. She highlighted the problem of a lack of understanding on the part of hospital staff despite being told of her grandfather’s deafness. She maintained that his hospital care was often compromised because “staff had no clue how to interact with him”. This was despite explicit instructions to get his attention before speaking to him, use pen and pad to enable him to understand their message and respond and ensure they actually looked at him when talking.

Jessica herself had studied Auslan (Australian Sign Language) to communicate with her grandparents, particularly with her Grandfather who refused to learn how to speak. She even had to use sign language to communicate to him in hospital that he was dying after a cardiac arrest. Jessica provides an enlightening insight into sign language and its accompanying “visual and spatial tactics” generated by the hands and body movement. She explains that movement serves to direct the viewer’s attention.

Being deaf

Jessica makes the point that, contrary to the general opinion in the community, her grandparents viewed their deafness as a “way of being in the world”, not a deficit (the focus on something missing). They were able to recognise nuances in facial expressions and insisted that everyone faced them directly when they talked to them. This enabled them to expertly read faces and attempt to lip read.

Jessica points out at one stage in her book about the lipreading traps inherent in the English language. She explains that this is the result of what is called “homophemes” – “words that sound different but involve identical movements of the speaker’s lips”. The words themselves have different meanings, leading to confusion and stress for the lip reader.

Discrimination

Jessica quotes Rachel Kolb’s TED Talk, Navigating Deafness in a Hearing World, when she discusses the “primacy of voice” in our hearing world and the fact that “mouths are not a prerequisite for speech”. Rachel makes the salient point that if you can’t hear, how can you learn to speak? She was born profoundly deaf and has become a Rhodes Scholar, writer and disability advocate.

Rachel knew that her speech was defective and had to come to terms with her difference. She spent 18 years in speech therapy to be able to talk, spending a lot of time learning speech through feeling the vibrations in the throat of her speech therapist. Still people thought that her difference in speech was due to a foreign accent.

Jessica highlights the discrimination experienced by her grandparents in what is a “hearing world”. People expect to be understood when they speak (“being heard”, “being listened to”). The distortions in the speech of many deaf people lead to misunderstandings and assumptions about “lack of intelligence” or dumbness. Jessica states that “deafness is the thing that we cannot look away from but cannot bear to face”.

The disruption and disorientation of deafness in a hearing world is not understood and sometimes feared. People lack an appreciation that a deaf person can have a heightened sense of sight and an enhanced peripheral vision (so that actions “behind their back” can sometimes be detected and seen as derogatory). People who are deaf often have a strong sense of touch and vibration. As Jessica remarks, “sound is received in the body in all sorts of ways” and people who are deaf can “hear” music through vibrations in the floor. I had personal experience of this in Melbourne when a group of us visited a school for deaf children and watched them dancing enthusiastically to music by sensing floor vibrations.

The language of light

Jessica’s Grandmother insisted that ‘the entire self is required for conversation”. She could not tolerate people turning away from her when listening to what she had to say. Jessica does point out, however, that the exception to this “whole-self rule” was when she was driving. She notes too that “touch and sight were always interwoven” for her grandparents. The world for them was “experienced through the interplay of the eyes and body”.

Consciousness of light was important because being in front of windows when communicating could create shadows that distort the images of hands and faces. The world of deaf people is “driven by sight” where looking is equivalent to knowing. Gerald Shea titled his book The Language of Light to express the role of light in sign language and the centrality of the visual for the deaf. When the lights go out there is no dialogue.

Reflection

Jesscia’s book helped me to understand how easy it is to unconsciously exclude a person who is fully or partially deaf. It reminded me that I have a friend in her eighties who is hard of hearing and I often overlook the need to face her when I talk. She points out that being able to speak multiple languages, she has developed a propensity for lipreading – something I deprive her of when I am not facing her. She often notes too that I “mumble”, failing to properly articulate my words which increases her sense of isolation.

By gaining an understanding of what it is like being deaf, we can learn to better include deaf people by more conscious speech and actions. As we grow in mindfulness, we can increase our awareness of people’s differences, our own limitations and biases and be more compassionate in our interactions with others.

Having been considerably moved by Jessica’s book, I wrote the following poem from the perspective of someone who is deaf:

Being Deaf

Being deaf is not a deficit
It’s a way of being in the world.
With refined senses of sight and touch
A reliance on light for meaning.

Face me so I can read your lips
Be in the light so I see the nuances in your facial expressions.
I am not dumb, I am deaf
I sense sound through vibrations.

While I can’t hear
I can see and feel things that you don’t notice.
My vision is not narrow
I can see my periphery clearly.

Don’t avoid me out of fear
Approach me out of curiosity.
Don’t judge me for my voice distortions
Listen intently for my message.

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Image by Ivana Tomášková from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Tina Turner’s Approach to Mindfulness

Allyson Pimentel, psychologist and meditation practitioner/teacher, fittingly provides a meditation podcast titled, The Mindfulness Teachings of Tina Turner. Allyson describes mindfulness as “a way of attending to your life as it unfolds” while bringing to this awareness an attitude of “openness, friendliness, and kindness” without judgment. Associated with this, is a willingness “to be with things as they are”.

She maintains that the goal in practising meditation is not to master the art of meditation itself but to lead better lives day-to-day though our groundedness, compassion and wisdom. We do this so that we can become “a force for good” in our family, in our work, in our community and in our daily interactions. Allyson maintains that Tina Turner, who died at the age of 83 in May 2023, exemplified this broader goal and drew on mindfulness practices to be a positive influence in people’s lives. Allyson viewed Tina as a personal hero who, in her view, embodied kindness, love, wisdom, resilience and creative talent.

Tina’s approach to personal transformation

In her book, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, Tina explains her Buddhist approach and how she turned her life around after multiple “lifequakes” that threatened to derail her singing career and harm her mental wellbeing. She explains in-depth that chanting enabled her to overcome adversity, develop resilience and realise happiness in her life. Her ability to commune with nature from an early age enabled her to find her true home within, despite the turbulence and torment of her outer world. Besides the vibrational energy and groundedness of chanting, Tina drew on the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism to transform and reframe her life.

Tina explains that this Buddhist approach, that places emphasis on engagement and social activism helped her to move beyond her comfort zone, to appreciate the connectedness of everything, to value diversity in nature and cultures and participate actively in the Beyond Music Project designed to use music as a way to respect and celebrate cultural diversity.

Tina saw experiencing adversity as a way to shape ourselves and build our resilience – in her words, adversity is not a bad thing in itself, it is how we use it that really matters. She contended that adversity could build character, self-awareness, insight and a stronger sense of connection. This perception aligns with the tenets of mindfulness that reinforce the view that while we have little in our life that we can control, we can control our response to what happens to us as well as around us. Mitra Manesh in her podcast on responsibility contends that mindfulness builds our ability to respond to adversity and setbacks – she describes this outcome of mindfulness practice as developing our “response-ability”.

Tina explained in her book that all of life shapes us – the good, the bad and the ugly. We become our transformed selves through the richness and diversity of our life experiences and by developing a constructive, creative and energetic response to whatever occurs. She maintained in her eighties that she had no regrets – she had lived her life to the full, positively impacted numerous people all over the world and experienced deep happiness.

Reflection

Tina demonstrated in her life, music and her writing that as we grow in mindfulness we can overcome adversity, develop resilience, enrich our creativity and build the courage and sense of connectedness to take compassionate action. Her life and music provide an invaluable legacy and a “ripple effect” that has the power to inspire others to work to create a better world.

In her guided meditation podcast, Allyson draws on Tina’s core teachings to help us explore our connection with nature, the influence of our ancestors, our own legacy, and our present moment awareness.

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Image by Kanenori from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Pathways to Gratitude and Joy

Neuroscience research has demonstrated that gratitude is a source of wellness and joy if we choose to practise it on a regular basis. Louie Schwartzberg in his latest film, Gratitude Revealed, identifies a number of pathways that can develop gratitude and appreciation in our lives and lead to health, happiness and lasting joy. Louie – time-lapse photographer, director and producer – takes us on a journey through nature, the eyes of children and lives of insightful people. He comments in a subsequent panel Q & A video that the Gratitude Revealed film contains many wise “one-liners” from inspiring people as well as some stunning cinematography. The music for the film is provided by Lisbeth Scott – singer, songwriter and composer – who Louie interviewed as part of his podcast series.

Pathways to gratitude

Throughout Gratitude Revealed Louie explores different pathways to gratitude with his guests and provides illuminating comments about each pathway, some of which I explore in the following:

Curiosity – is a basic human attribute that leads us to explore the world around us, the people in our lives and the concepts we encounter in our reading, discussions and games. How often have we seen a toddler pick up a leaf or a stone and examine it, look underneath some branches to see what lies beneath, gaze into pools of water at the seaside to see if there are any living creatures there, or feel the texture of the grass or the ground to judge its softness or hardness? Unfortunately, as we grow older we can lose the art of being inquisitive and curious about things. However, if we can cultivate curiosity, we open ourselves to marvel at the intricacies of things in our environment, the power of our subconscious, the expansiveness of knowledge and the inexhaustible complexity of the human body (including the emerging understanding of the “brain-gut connection” and the heart’s intelligence). Curiosity leads us to explore the ineffable, to seek to understand the mystery of life and to explore relationships with people we encounter. Ultimately, curiosity leads us to appreciate what is and to be grateful for our discoveries as well as our capacity for exploration. Albert Einstein was a strong advocate for curiosity and acknowledged that it lay at the root of his knowledge and wisdom – “The important thing is to never stop questioning. Never lose a holy curiosity”.
Nature – is a source of wonder and awe which leads us to be grateful that we can perceive its beauty, complexity and interconnectedness through our five senses – what Jon Kabat-Zinn describes in his book, Coming to Our Senses, as our sightscape, soundscape, touchscape, smellscape, and tastescape. Louie encourages us to develop an intimate relationship with nature because nature, and nature imagery, can be incredibly healing and can develop a deep appreciation and gratitude for our interconnectedness and interdependence. Louie’s Wonder and Awe Podcastexplores the intersection of science and art (the “why” of art and the ”how” of science). There are multiple ways to engage with nature including gardening, walking in a rainforest or on a beach and mindful photography – we just have to form the intention to make the most of our natural environment that surrounds us daily.
Music – cultivates wonder and awe, healing and creativity. Louie highlighted the power of music to transport us beyond the present moment concerns and anxieties and to still the mind. Music taps into our positive emotions and stimulates gratitude for the beauty, variety and nuances of sound. Sound therapy can heal us from trauma and depression and help us to appreciate what we have that is positive in our lives. Mantra meditations can promote calm, peace and stillness of mind and, in the process, open our hearts and minds to the power and energy of the present moment. Music deepens our spirit and helps us to value our lives while expressing gratitude for all that we have.
Mindfulness – by definition, it involves being fully in the present moment and paying attention to something or someone with openness, curiosity and acceptance of what is. Michael Beckwith reminds us in the movie that we should be “grateful for the challenges in our life” because they help us to realise our potential and develop resilience. Louie suggests that mindfulness “is being present like the film itself” – open to wonder and able to “relish the mysteries of life” that are revealed by paying focused attention in the “now”.

Reflection

None of the pathways I discussed above are discrete – they are overlapping, reinforcing and compounding in nature. Together, these pathways engender appreciation and gratitude and stimulate happiness and joy. Louie and his presenters on Gratitude Revealed highlight the fact that “busyness” in our lives can create a block to gratitude and blind us to what is happening within and around us. In contrast, gratitude blocks out envy and self-absorption. As Louie comments, “Focusing on what we do have, leaves little in your heart for what we don’t have”.

In the film, Brother David Steindl-Rast, developer of gratefulness.org, distinguishes between appreciation and gratitude. He states that appreciation is an in-the-moment experience while gratitude is “what we remember that opens our hearts”. Interestingly, when I am playing tennis, I often internally express appreciation for being able to participate and play a good shot or two. However, after watching Gratitude Revealed, I experienced a real sense of gratitude based on my memory of all the events and experiences that enable me to play social tennis at the age of 76.

In particular, I am grateful for:

the opportunity to be coached in my teens by a tennis player who had been selected for the Australian Davis Cup Team
having practised tennis drills and played games of tennis with my brothers and my niece
having played competitive tennis over 5 years with a team drawn from members of my extended family
being trained as a sprinter in a GPS school (improved my capacity to move around the tennis court)
the opportunity to play tennis for my school, for Brisbane ((against Gympie) and for the Queensland Tax Office (in the annual Taxation Intestate Tennis Carnivals)
being able to play social tennis with a closed group of six quality players over a period in excess of 10 years
the opportunity to play tennis on different surfaces including bitumen, ant-bed, grass, clay and flexipave
being able to play socially in Port Moresby, Auckland, Lake Annecy (France) and Boroughbridge (Yorkshire, UK)
developing a wide range of shots through tennis coaching, practice and competitions, e.g., slice, topspin, back spin, under spin, side spin (out-swinger & in-swinger), volley, one-handed and two-handed backhand, half volley, drive volley, drop shot, lob, smash and, recently, half-volley drop shot
being able to play social tennis with an open group in my 50’s, 60’s and 70’s (now)
discovering the benefits of Tai Chi and how it improves my tennis game.

As we grow in mindfulness and gratitude, we enrich our lives, deepen our happiness and joy and build our resilience and capacity for creative endeavour. Music and nature can inspire us if we are fully present to experiencing them and our natural curiosity can open our hearts to appreciating whatever we experience.

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Image by allPhoto Bangkok from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Savouring Your Subconscious Mind

Paul McCartney in an interview for BBC Radio stated that the melody for the Beatles famous song Yesterday” came to him in a dream. He literally heard the melody while asleep and when he woke he could not work out where the tune had come from. He checked with his contacts and friends who had a comprehensive knowledge of songs that had been published and none of them recognised it. While he had the tune in his head he made up some lyrics so he would not lose the song. He indicated it was rare for him to use nonsense lyrics to memorise a song but on this occasion, he used the words, “Scrambled eggs, oh my baby….”

It was a short time later after the dream that he was in Portugal on a car trip which took about three hours that the lyrics started to come to him, “Yesterday, suddenly…” By the time he had finished the car trip, he had the complete song in terms of melody and lyrics.

This story of Paul’s experience highlights the power of the subconscious mind, working away below consciousness to solve a problem, complete a song or piece of music, finish an unfinished manuscript or locate a missing object.

How often have we given up looking for something and found some time later that the item “turns up” when we were not consciously looking for it but doing something else. Meanwhile, the subconscious mind has created a new significance and a heightened level of awareness for the item so that when you accidently come into contact with the item, you become suddenly, consciously aware that “this is what I was looking for!” – all very amazing.

Reflection

I had been working on my PhD for about five years mentoring a change team in the University of Queensland and co-facilitating an action learning change program, when I got stuck trying to write up the mountains of data I had gathered through workshop processes, observations, submissions and multiple interviews. At this time, we had planned a family holiday on Stradbroke Island. It was while we were enjoying a day at Brown Lake on North Stradbroke Island that I had a breakthrough for my thesis, I was sitting on the shore watching our children play in the shallow part of the lake when a model “came into my head” that integrated my research and insights.

I had not taken any of my research material with me and was not consciously seeking to solve my writer’s block. Yet an organisational change model “came to me” that integrated my data, a model for individual motivation at work and the nature of innovation. I immediately recorded the model using charcoal sticks from a barbecue and pieces of butcher’s paper that I had in my car. It was only later that I was able to articulate the full meaning of the model and complete my PhD thesis.

There are times when we need to use sleep, peace and quiet, or stillness and silence to honour our unconscious mind and let it do its work. I found on another occasion that I had difficulty writing the conclusion to a PhD chapter. However, like Paul McCartney, it was during a long car trip (again about three hours) that the conclusion “fell out” and I was able to write it down when I reached my destination which was Lismore at the time.

In writing this blog, I will often listen to a podcast, undertake a meditation and/or read an article and make notes. I will then “sleep on it” and when I wake up the following morning, the structure of a blog post, carved out of my notes, will “come to me”. Again, it is the subconscious mind at work.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, connecting with nature, experiencing stillness or silence, listening to music, chanting or participating in mantra meditations, we can gain greater access to our subconscious mind and the integrative power and creativity that lies within. We can continuously savour our subconscious mind through mindfulness practices.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Mindfulness and Positive Mental Health in the Digital Age

In the previous post I focused on the challenge of the digital age with respect to developing mindfulness. This earlier post was stimulated by a presentation of Jon Kabat-Zinn during the Mindfulness & Compassion Week (June 6- 13, 2021). In his workshop, Jon also mentioned the benefits of the digital age for developing mindfulness and positive mental health, particularly during the time of the pandemic when people were becoming isolated through lockdowns and border closures.

There are many facets of the digital age that facilitate the development of mindfulness and positive mental health – the growth of global online, mindfulness conferences and seminars, access to online meditations, digital music and nature imagery, e-groups, and podcasts. Many of these aspects have been enhanced by the emergence of streaming platforms and flexible technologies such as Google Chromecast and Bose portable speakers.

Global online mindfulness conferences

The emergence of sophisticated web conferencing has enabled the growth in global, online mindfulness conferences, and the Nature Summit is just one example of this. In this web conference, conducted from May 11-17 2021, more than 30 world experts discussed ways to connect with nature, access its wonder and wisdom and develop improved mental health and mindfulness. The Science & Wisdom of Emotions Summit highlighted ways to cultivate mindfulness to gain an understanding of our emotions, deal with emotions in daily living and develop self-regulation to effectively channel our emotional energy.

Online Meditations

During the pandemic, we saw increased access to online meditations, often conducted on a global basis. The Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), for example, converted their weekly, face-to-face guided meditations to the Zoom platform to enable global online participation. Often, lifetime access to digital meditations were also provided for paid subscribers of web conference resources which included videos, audios, and transcripts. Many organisations now provide online meditations and some, such as Headspace, provide guided meditations via an app.

Emergence of e-groups

Some organisations providing mental health services via face-to-face meetings had to develop e-groups – moving their group support services online via platforms such as Zoom. One such organisation is GROW which provides supported, peer-led groups for people experiencing mental illness (Growers). This organisation was able to transition their face-to-face meetings to eGROW Groups enabling online access nationally as well as on a State/regional basis.

Access to digital music and nature imagery

Developing mindfulness and healing through music and nature imagery has been facilitated by the emergence of online media such as that provided by Louie Schwartzberg’s Moving Art website. His films and photography are enhanced by his Wonder and Awe podcast series. Digital music platforms such as Spotify have provided ready access to a world of different genres of music and podcasts, some incorporating guided meditations and mantra meditations. YouTube enhances access to mantra meditations by enabling visual imagery to support the meditative singing as in Lulu & Mischka’s Stillness in Motion video.

Another aspect of connection through music in the digital age is the growth of virtual choirs and the associated logistical, singing, and instrumental collaboration on a global and local scale. On a global level, for example, 300 people from 15 countries participated in the singing/ orchestration of the highly pertinent song You’ll Never Walk Alone. In another example, people from 50 countries combined to sing Amazing Grace in their own language. On a local level, the Morningsong community choir was able to provide warm-ups, practice pieces and group online singing during pandemic lockdowns. YouTube provides access to multiple virtual choirs.

Reflection

Digital media has provided the means to connect with each other and with nature at a time when people are physically isolated. The spin-off from the periods of lockdowns and border closures is that many people have come to appreciate more what they have in life, to savour their access to nature and increase their motivation to improve their physical and mental health.

There are now increased mechanisms and avenues available to develop our mindfulness practice through the growth in digital media and flexibility of access. It is important to savour and utilise these facilities to enrich our mindfulness practice and enhance positive mental health.

As we grow in mindfulness with the aid of digital media, we can increase our self-awareness and connection with others, develop gratitude and creativity and build the resilience and compassion we need to manage effectively in difficult times.

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Image by Inga Klas from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Being Mindful of Breathing

The upgrade version of the Nature Summit provides a number of meditation podcasts that offer a range of guided meditations. In one of these, Mark Coleman – meditation teacher, coach, and therapist – leads a guided meditation on the Mindfulness of Breathing. This is one of three meditations that he offers as an upgrade bonus that normally make up his CD meditation series, The Art of Mindfulness: Meditations for Awareness, Insight, Relaxation and Peace. Mark is a co-founder of The Mindfulness Training Institute and the Nature Summit.

A guided meditation on the mindfulness of breathing

Mark’s meditation on breathing begins with encouraging you to adopt a comfortable position and become conscious of the pressure of your feet on the floor.

He then provides a series of mindfulness activities designed to heighten awareness of breathing and its beneficial effects on mind and body. His instructions for this mindful breathing practice are below:

Begin with a light body scan checking for, and releasing, any point of tension. You can scan the more common places of tension – your shoulders, neck muscles, face and eye muscles, feet and ankles. I find that typically my shoulders are raised and tense, so I have to learn to let go at this stage of the meditation.
You can now focus on an area of your body where you can sense your breathing – it could be the flow of air in and out of your nose, the undulation of your chest or the rise and fall of your abdomen. Try to pay attention to your breath and how you are experiencing it – fast or slow, deep or shallow, long or short. The idea is not to try to control your breath but just observe how it is for you.
Mark suggests that once you have been able to focus on a location of your experience of breathing that you take time to pay full attention to the in-breath and then the out-breath – just focusing on how they are occurring.
You can then move on to observing the gap or silence between your in-breath and your out-breath – lengthening the gap if you desire. Mark notes that during this stage of the breathing meditation (or one of the earlier stages) it is normal to be beset with distractions from your focus on breathing – images, emotions, planning, questioning, going over the past or thinking about the future. He suggests that when you notice a distraction, name it for what it is without self-criticism and return to your focus. He maintains that noticing the distraction and its nature in the moment is actually an act of mindfulness (paying attention on purpose in the present moment and doing so non-judgmentally). By naming the type of distraction, you may actually observe a pattern in your distracted thinking (mine is typically “planning”).
If strong bodily sensations arise, you can put attention on breath in the background while you deal with the sensation such as pain, tingling or soreness. Similarly, if a strong emotion occurs, you can temporarily focus on it, name the emotion, and explore its bodily manifestation. Mark suggests that you avoid letting your thinking about the emotion take over but stick with its actual physical manifestation. Thoughts can reinforce an emotion, embed it more deeply and make it difficult to return to your focus on breathing.

Variations on the theme of mindfulness of breathing

Richard Wolf, author of In Tune: Music as the Bridge to Mindfulness, discusses the practice of “rhythmic breathing” when exploring the interplay between music and mindfulness. He also offers several breathing practices that involve breathing in-time to music beats such as 4/4 or ¾ time. He suggests that you can develop this further by adopting what he calls the “four-bar sequence” – basically alternating inhalation and exhalation with holding your breath and doing each aspect for the equivalent of four bars.

Richard encourages us to not only observe our breathing closely but notice its sonic qualities as well. He maintains that the process of conscious breathing is a meditative practice that builds mindfulness. He argues that regular practice of breathing meditation linked to music can help us to develop “deep listening”, a skill that underpins quality relationships.

Reflection

Our breath is with us in every moment and by paying attention to our breathing in the ways suggested, we can become more grounded in the present and less disturbed by ups and downs of life. As we grow in self-awareness through breathing meditations, we can deepen our self-awareness and emotional regulation and being more fully present to others through improved concentration and deep listening.

Mark extends the practice of mindful breathing and deep listening beyond our room to outside in nature and the wild. He offers free daily nature meditations as well as Awake in the Wild Teacher Training. He is the author of A Walk in the Wild: A Buddhist Walk through Nature – Meditations, Reflections and Practices.

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Exploring Healing and Creativity through Music and Nature Imagery

Louie Schwartzberg, time-lapse photographer and filmmaker, in a recent Wonder and Awe podcast, interviewed Lindsey Stirling, internationally famous songwriter, violinist and dancer. They explored the role of music and nature imagery in self-healing and in stimulating energy and creativity. Louie and Lindsey have collaborated on a number of projects, including The Big Sur – shown during the podcast interview and featured in Louie’s Moving Art video on Netflix. They identified one key aspect that their individual artistry has in common – Lindsey’s classical music and videos and Louie’s nature photography and videos – both have no words. They pointed out that in a world of information overload they offer inspiration, a personal emotional journey, self-awareness, and self-healing. Lyrics, in contrast, can take us down the track of the thoughts and emotions portrayed by the creator.

Healing from grief through music

Lindsey spoke of her grief with the loss of her father and her best friend in the one year, and how she turned to music as a form of self-therapy to deal with her sense of loss and associated grief. Her album, Brave Enough, enabled her to pour out her grief and to be “brave enough” to feel the intensity of her difficult emotions. She said that every song on the album was inspired by her feelings of grief and loss. In her reflection on the loss through Lymphoma, of her keyboard player and best friend, Jason Gaviati, she indicated that the true path to success is being able to “rise from failure”, time and time again. She stated that her album and related Brave enough tour were about “the courage to feel, to feel everything”.

She wrote the instrumental song Guardian which highlights the way her own grief became transformed into connection. Working with Mako, she was able to hear the words that expressed her grief in a song called, Lose You Now. She wanted this music to be light and conducive to reminiscing (e.g., the Monarch butterfly represented her friend Jason) while building hope for the future, despite the sadness of the past. Louie commended her for her inner strength and ability to manage the challenges of “the journey of life” with all its waves and vicissitudes.

Bouncing back from setbacks and failure

Lindsey Stirling was buzzed off by Piers Morgan during the quarter-finals of America’s Got Talent and was rejected by the judges who variously said she was “not good enough”, “would not fill a concert hall in Las Vegas” and was “not a world-class violinist”. All of which made her work harder at both her music and her dancing. Lindsey’s accomplishments since then are mind-boggling. By 2017, she had 600 Million views of her music/dance videos on her YouTube Channel and, at time of writing, this number has grown to 3 Billion views of her 100 videos. She made history with her 5 top-selling albums and filled concert halls everywhere (her “Brave Enough tour” involved 83 concerts in 20 countries). Also, Lindsey and her dancing partner were second on Season 25 (2017) of Dancing With The Stars (DWTS). As she has proven in her own life, “bouncing back” from setbacks is an essential element in her success.

Parents as models and inspiration

When asked by Louie how she had developed her passion for music, dance and storytelling in song, Lindsey maintained that her earliest influences were her parents who exposed her to the arts, especially classical music. Her mother was creative in her sewing endeavours, a skill that Lindsey also shared, while her father’s creativity was expressed through writing stories that he often read to her. Lindsey identified her storytelling as her “greatest gift”.

Gratitude in the midst of loss and pain

Lindsey tells the story of how painful it was to be at the bedside as she and her sister watched her father die of cancer. In those moments of extreme sadness, they found the inspiration and energy to tell each other stories of their childhood memories of being with their father. Amidst the tears and pain, she felt an intense sense of gratitude for having had such a life together and a rich store of wonderful memories.

This experience was replicated when she took on the challenging task of dancing and playing the violin while hanging from her hair to create the video for the song, Crystallize. The excruciatingly painful training over three months for this achievement has been recorded in her Hair Hanging Vlog. Despite the pain, Lindsey was able to feel gratitude for the feelings of beauty and power that the final performance engendered in her. Her basic message is that we are all capable of what at first seems impossible because we have achieved hard things before. She reiterated that “courage and faith can be found through the fear” and that “gratitude can be discovered by our losses”.

Developing resilience through gratitude

Louie observed that research has demonstrated that gratitude develops resilience. He maintained that if your mind is filled with thoughts of gratitude, there is no room for negative thoughts. Both Lindsey and Louie agreed that if you focus on what you have, rather than what you do not have, you are healing yourself, building your energy and opening yourself to creativity. As Louie stated, “If every experience is a gift, then your only attitude is gratitude”. As Jon Kabat-Zinn points out, “we become what we focus on”. Lindsey illustrates this idea through her practice of writing in a gratitude journal each morning and night. She maintained that this practice that started as a chore is now something she looks forward to and enables her to frequently be grateful in the moment.

Lindsey noted that while being able to play the violin, write songs and dance are gifts in themselves, her special gift that she realizes when performing is an “intense connection” with people in her audience as she looks into their eyes while performing. For her, this is a special place where she sees the beauty in everyone and is consumed with love.

Lindsey has established the Upside Fund to provide financial assistance to people experiencing financial difficulties as a result of the pandemic. She started this fund, which accepts donations, after her father died in hospital and she began each Christmas to pay the hospital medical bills of 10 people. The name of the fund is based on the idea that we can each “lift where stand” – we are each in a unique position to contribute to the welfare of others based on our life circumstances, location, and the gifts that we are grateful for. Lindsey particularly works through her fan base to build the fund and support people in need.

Mindfulness, music, nature, and dance

I have previously explored the relationship between mindfulness and playing a musical instrument. Lindsey stated that when she plays the violin for herself (not for her work) she finds it meditative. She is completely in the moment when she dances and particularly when she is doing so in nature.

Louie as an “action man” is not a practitioner of formal meditation – he experiences his mindfulness through immersion in nature which he contends increases his capacity for “courage, creativity, kindness and compassion”.

Both Louie and Lindsey suggest that to be more mindful and focused on the moment that we should not be obsessed with the end goal but experience the process fully, whether it is playing an instrument, learning a dance, taking time-lapse photography, or developing a video. Louie stated that after 40 years of time-lapse photography, he has only a total of 16 hours of high-quality film – he indicated that a day’s work would typically produce 2 seconds of useful film. To him the process of observing and photographing the beauty of nature is what brings him joy, healing, and happiness. He can walk in nature when not filming and notice the quality of light and how it reflects on plants and flowers. He can walk mindfully in nature, engaging all his senses.

Louie articulated his belief that nature cultivates gratitude and mindfulness when he presented a Ted Talk on the theme, Nature, Beauty, and Gratitude, which featured his movie titled Gratitude that incorporated his time-lapse photography and his fundamental belief about the need to be grateful for everything in life.

Reflection

Nature stimulates reflection, healing, energy, gratitude, and creativity. Music and dance, in their many forms, can have similar outcomes. We have a choice in terms of how we spend our time and what we consume mentally and emotionally. We can grow in mindfulness and enjoy all its benefits through exposure to nature, music and dance or we can become overwhelmed by information and the news and the negativity that they often engender.

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Image by sun liming from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Inner Silence through Sound Meditations and Music

Christine Jackman describes silence as the space in which one was “free to breathe and simply be”. It is a space without speaking or being spoken to. In the context of mindfulness, silence does not mean the absence of sound, just the absence of unwanted inner and outer noise – freedom from the noise pollution of our minds and of a busy world. It is a refuge – a place of retreat from inner chatter and outer noise. In stillness and silence, we can find inner peace and tranquility.

Sound and mindfulness

Many mindfulness practices involve being still and listening to sounds, either the room tone or external sounds from wind, rain, birds, or other sounds. The aim of these practices is to maintain focus on sound and keep our minds free from other distractions. Sound meditations can strengthen our concentration and listening skills and contribute to our overall well-being. Sound can also be provided as an anchor for people involved in trauma-sensitive mindfulness.

What we are aiming to achieve in sound-based mindfulness practices is an inner silence and harmony – turning off self-stories, negative thoughts, interpretations, or projections. Basically, it involves tuning out of the inner dialogue by tuning into sound. We strengthen our awareness muscle when we are able to return to our inner silence and focus whenever distracting thoughts occur.

Music as a pathway to inner silence

Christine Jackman, in her book Turning Down the Noise, describes her search for “the quiet power of silence” in her busy world. She found inner silence in a number of places, including while participating in Vespers in a Benedictine Monastery – an evening prayer that is recited or sung.

Another form of ecclesiastical music, Gregorian Chant, has developed over many years by monastic orders dedicated to prayer and silence as a way to develop inner silence – the focus on singing meaningful phrases to the sound of monotonal music serves to shut out distractions and build inner peace and harmony.

Mantra meditations often employ a musical instrument (e.g., a drum or guitar) together with chanting long-established phrases that evoke positive emotions such as peace, harmony, relationships, or connectedness to nature or a higher being. Repetition of the lyrics enables a deeper penetration into the meaning of the words that are sung mindfully and facilitates a deepening inner silence and tranquility.

The silence between the notes

Richard Wolf, author of In Tune: Music as the Bridge to Mindfulness, identified what he called “12 bridges to mindfulness” created by music. These include deep listening and “sympathetic vibrations”. Richard argues that music is a key to inner silence, one of the bridges to mindfulness. He makes the point that silence is embedded in music – music notations for the duration of a note are matched by “an equal notation for the duration of silence” between the notes. He mentions Miles Davis’ emphasis on the “connection between the role of silence in music and in life”.

Some music composers pay particular attention to silence within their compositions. Richard refers, for example, to the work of John Cage and his important piece of music, 4’33”, in which the pianist begins by not playing but sitting still for 4 minutes 33 seconds as a way of “drawing the audience’s attention to the process of listening itself”. This engenders a particular form of participation whereby the audience through their silence become part of the performance.

Reflection

This blog post was stimulated by a conversation I had with a musician friend of mine who played the guitar professionally, both as an individual and as a member of a band. We had been discussing music and mindfulness when he mentioned a story about how he had become distracted during a performance. He was playing guitar with his group on a footpath outside a building when a car pulled up and two men hopped out of the car and headed towards the musicians. My friend immediately began to think, “Are they going to disturb us?” or “Are they interested in the music?”

As he thought about the possibilities, he became mentally distracted, lost his place in the music, and played some wrong notes. Up until the distraction, his band was exhibiting some of the characteristics identified by Richard Wolf as bridges to mindfulness , e.g., concentration, harmony, and sympathetic vibration. However, as a result of regular music practice, my friend was able to restore his focus and catch up with the music and his other band members very quickly.

The positive influence between mindfulness and music is bi-directional – it operates in both directions. As we grow in mindfulness, our capacity to play music, sing and listen deeply, develops; as we play music, practise playing and sing, we can grow in mindfulness because music can provide the bridge to inner silence. Mindfulness practice and music practice both build our power of concentration, our awareness muscle, our ability to achieve resonance with others, and our overall well-being. Richard highlights the positive impact of inner silence on our relationships when he writes, The ability to silence the inner voice creates the conditions for truly hearing the voices of others.

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Image by SplitShire from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mantra Meditations for Calm, Peace and Energy

Mantra meditation involves the repetition of a sound, word or phrase during meditation. The mantra can be repeated silently, spoken or chanted, sometimes accompanied by music. The singing of mantras can provide variation through intonation, pace, pitch, and volume. The content can be rich in meaning drawing on ancient traditions or simply a single word. Instrumentation can be added and often involves guitar, harmonium and/or flute.

Famous yogi-musician, Girish, combines neuroscience and the art of singing mantras in his book, Music and Mantras: The Yoga of Mindful Singing for Health, Happiness, Peace and Prosperity. Girish maintains that “Mantra is a sound vibration through which we mindfully focus our thoughts, our feelings, and our highest intention”. In this statement he captures not only the power of focus inherent in chanted mantra meditations but also the energetic effect of the vibrations of music and singing.

Singing of mantras has gained a resurgence through the development of the relatively new discipline of music therapy and the advent of neuroscience along with the understanding of the vibrational energy of sound and voice.

The benefits of mantra meditations

Like any meditation, mantras build attention and capacity to focus which in itself has a beneficial effect. Typically practitioners return to their focus whenever a distracting thought interferes with their concentration on the mantra. Neuroscience has highlighted this benefit and explained how meditation positively impacts the mind, emotions and the body.

Susan Moran focuses on the distinctive nature of mantra meditations and summarises the science that supports this approach to meditation. In her article, she identifies several research-based benefits:

Reduces distractions generated by the default-mode network of our brains (with its inherent negative bias)
Minimises negative self-talk that leads to depression
Activates the “relaxation response” and builds resilience in the face of stress.

Turning depression into a deep well of calm, peace and centredness through mantra meditation

The beneficial effects of mantra meditations were clearly articulated by Tina Malia in her interview with Kara Johnstad. Tina Malia is globally famous for her song writing, singing, instrumentation and integration of different mantra traditions, and at the time of the interview, was working on her seventh album.

Tina told the story of her very deep depression in her twenties and her experience of the “dark night of the soul”. She indicated that she had all the trappings of external success but experienced despair and a “deep, deep aching loneliness” that would not go away – she lost her meaning in life and considered ending her life through suicide. At the time, she was a backing singer for world music singer/songwriter Jai Uttal and his band. Jai suggested that she start a daily practice of Japa – silently singing the Ram mantra meditation while passing beads through her fingers.

Tina reports that this practice which she undertook conscientiously every day, although having little effect in the first few weeks, enabled her to find peace, harmony and an inner well of calm and creative energy. She explained that it “completely lifted me out of despair” and she still continued the practice daily at the time of the interview. She finds chanting mantra meditations a tool for helping her when she feels frazzled at busy times while touring the world. She describes her silent mantra meditations as a well – an internal source of pure water that brings the experience of visiting a calming, familiar room.

Kara Johnstad, who is herself a visionary singer-songwriter, describes chanting mantra meditations as creating “a higher vibrational field” that protects us against the turbulence of daily life and its many challenges.

Reflection

I have found just listening to the chanting of mantra meditations very calming, particularly those of Lulu & Mischka and the many mantra meditations of Deva Premal & Miten. From my reading and listening to Tina’s story, it is clear that the real benefit of chanting mantra meditations comes not only from repetition of the mantra but from daily practice over an extended period (in Tina’s case over many months and years).

It takes time to absorb the positive messages of a mantra into our consciousness so that over time it displaces our negative self-thoughts. Tina suggests that mantra meditations are like a tool to explore our inner reality, “a shovel to go inside and dig”. In this way we can develop a deep level of self-intimacy.

As we grow in mindfulness through chanting mantra meditations, we can unearth our disturbing negative thoughts and difficult emotions and replace them with a deep well of calm, peace and energy. Tina has demonstrated yet again that discipline creates freedom and success. Her latest album, Anahata (Heart Wide Open) can be obtained through Sounds True.

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Image by enriquelopezgarre from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Release Pain and Reduce Difficult Emotions

Deepak Chopra on discussing how to release pain and difficult emotions stressed the connection between our physical bodies and our emotions and also the interconnectedness of all living things. He maintained that “there is no mental event that doesn’t have a biological correlate” – that is to say, that our every thought and related emotion finds expression in some form in our body. He stressed that our brain serves to integrate everything we experience – our thoughts, feelings, emotions, social interactions and the ecosystems that surround us. Deepak talked too of our entanglement with each other – how we influence each other energetically and emotionally through “limbic resonance”.

In speaking of ways to reduce physical pain in another video presentation, Deepak strongly supported the idea of regular exercise to release endorphins, meditation to take us beyond our limiting perceptions, music to reduce stress and pain and social connection and interactions to provide support. He maintained that, contrary to popular belief, alcohol and smoking increase pain rather than reduce it. He also highlighted the powerful role of biofeedback, employed by various health professionals including the Chopra Center for Wellbeing.

A seven-step process for physical healing and emotional release

In his presentation for the You Can Heal Your Life Summit, Deepak offered a seven-step process for physical healing and emotional wellbeing. The seven steps serve as an integrated approach to individual mindfulness practices that we have previously discussed on this blog.

You begin by reflecting on an interaction that made you upset or left you having to deal with difficult emotions. Then you follow the following seven steps:

Accept responsibility: accept what you are feeling as your own, not blaming others for the way you are feeling. Without accepting responsibility, you cannot gain control over your feelings, nor can you wait for the other person to change so that you can be released from your feelings, because this will not happen.
Feel the feeling in your body: Deepak maintains that any feeling relates to one of the energetic centres of your body, one of the seven Chakras. The location of your pain is an indicator of the Chakra involved and the unfulfilled need finding expression in that Chakra, e.g. pain around the heart region (the Heart Chakra) can signal a need for love and belongingness, while pain in the stomach region (Solar Plexus Chakra) can indicate an unmet need for stability and strength. To feel the feeling you can close your eyes and focus on the area of your body where you feel pain – and bring your awareness to it without doing anything other than being with the pain wherever it is being felt in your body.
Name your feeling: Deepak describes this step as “labelling your feelings”. By naming your feelings accurately, you can learn to tame them. He calls accurate naming “labelling intelligently” – the more specific you can be about what you are feeling, e.g. resentment, anger, shame, the better you are able to deal with it.
Write it down – here the aim is to express what happened from three different perspectives – your own, the other person’s perspective and a third person’s perspective – the independent observer. Deepak maintains that using this 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd person approach reduces the emotional energy you have invested in the conflict, improves your immune system, and lightens your emotional load because “you are not weighed down by the emotion”.
Share it with someone: here you share both the process you used and the outcome for you with someone that you trust. It is important to accurately share the three perspectives that you have developed – avoid excusing your own behaviour and blaming the other person.
Use a ritual release: Deepak suggests that a ritual activity that symbolises “release” reinforces your new state of equilibrium and equanimity. It can take many forms but needs to be a personal way of expressing release, e.g. using a mantra meditation, scrunching up the paper you have written on or throwing it in the river.
Celebrate the release: again using something that is meaningful to you, e.g. a long forest walk, or mindful walking by the bay – some activity that manifests your joy and the realisation that you are moving on, no longer trapped physically or emotionally.

Reflection

The wisdom of this approach is the recognition throughout of the profound mind-body connection – In releasing our emotions, we can release pain in our bodies. It takes time to develop the self-intimacy and honesty required to defuse these emotions and the related physical pain. Persistence brings its own rewards in this endeavour as in many other endeavours. As we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness practices, meditation and reflection, we can achieve a level of consciousness that creates emotional freedom and physical ease. Deepak maintains that “all healing is consciousness”. To deepen our level of consciousness, we can make a habit of self-observation, naming our feelings and related unmet needs, and exploring creative ways to respond.

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Image by Nika Akin from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.