Do you ever feel trapped into doing things? Stuck fulfilling the same obligations all the time? Prisoner to the never-changing dynamics of work, family, or romantic relationships? Confined by the expectations others place on you? Maybe it’s your own critical inner dialogue that’s keeping you from moving forward and making progress. We all feel that […]
Do you ever stop to listen to the self-talk going on in your mind? I mean, besides the constant reminders of taking out the trash or remembering to call your mother about holiday plans or the last minute addition to the shopping list. How does your inner dialogue sound? Your boss stops you at 10am […]
We’re all afraid of something– spiders, heights, snakes, horror movies, dogs. There are certainly some genuine, serious phobias– but that’s not what this post is about today. Today’s blog is about fears that run emotionally deeper than worrying whether or not I’ll find a spider in the neglected pile of cardboard boxes in my garage. […]
I had a whole other blog post planned for today, but it will have to wait until next week. Sometimes that happens, right? You make a plan, and then something else comes up that’s more compelling. Notice I said ‘compelling’– not distracting or disturbing or irritating. Compelling, which (I think anyway) means it’s something that […]
On most days I’m a fairly well-organized person– got my to do list, created my agenda for the day, have a general plan for my schedule and all its’ moving parts. And then there are other days. Those days when my mind simply refuses to pay attention to the to do list…. or the agenda… […]
In November, I’ll be co-presenting a continuing education course for other music therapists at our national conference. One of the main components of the course is mindfulness, and it’s a topic that I’ve felt is increasingly important in our daily lives. In the past few years, mindfulness and meditation have become more popular—trendy even. Research […]
A few years ago as part of my GIM training program, our class participated in a sweat lodge. Since another woman and I would not be going into the actual lodge during the sweat, we had a bench placed several yards away. It was on the edge of a pond where we could pray and […]
“Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” ~Anne Herbert The other day when I was out running errands, I stopped at the Starbucks drive-thru for my usual coffee drink. When I got up to the window, I told the barista that I also wanted to pay for the order of the car […]
I forget exactly how I was introduced to the writings of Brother Lawrence. My inclination is that it was either by a spiritual/mystic GIM friend of mine at a training weekend or by complete accident browsing through my church’s library. However, it happened– I’m glad it did. His writings have become influential in my meditation […]
This is a quirky little book– but amazing. Written by Joshua Kadison (who also happens to be a musician of moderate fame in the early 1990’s), the book is in the form of a “discovered journal” about the experience of a young man sent to scout an island for a canning company. Once there, the […]
