music
Honor Your Most Magnificent Self
Taking time to experience the wonder of the final days of summer truly is medicine for the soul. My favorite summer activities include dipping my toes in a nearby lake or ocean, feeling the healing energy of the natural quartz sand against my skin, and finding renewal in the essence of the season.
Too often we move through our days and weeks completely engulfed in work, and the chatter of the bustling world. Our lives tend to be caught up in the motion of the world, with little time for self-care and centering.
Many of us awake in the mornings to the national news that often leaves us drained even before our day begins. We shower, have breakfast, down a cup of coffee, and anxiously show up for our families and our careers.
Many hours later, we return to our homes, where we are met with even more news via network and cable outlets, competing with their own spin on identical breaking stories. We reach for our smart phones or laptops and headlines scroll across our screens. When is enough truly enough?
In light of the endless social and environmental concerns permeating our planet, our species is globally experiencing stress like never before. But surely the Divine Presence within our amazing Universe would not leave us stranded on Planet Earth without the tools to transcend stress and what seems like utter chaos.
Singing Raises Your Vibration
I recently had a mediumship reading that brought me great comfort and confirmation of Spirit’s presence. Especially at this point in time, getting acknowledgment of my late father being around me was very reassuring. In this particular reading, the medium told me that my father was around me and he was referring to me singing in the car! Well, that is so true. As a youngster, my father and I would sing in the car, and he would initiate the harmonies.
I have a photograph in the lounge of my dad playing the piano, singing into the microphone. It was taken many years ago, when I joined him on a cruise ship he was working on at the time as a musician. I still talk to his photograph frequently and had done so for quite a while on the day before I had the reading. So, being told by the medium of my conversation with him was beautiful confirmation that he must be there around me.
I remember doing some chanting at a psychic development workshop I attended several years ago. My mentor there was explaining the extent to which singing can raise our vibration. No wonder we get goosebumps when we hear an angelic voice on a talent show, or when we become profoundly moved to tears by a beautiful choir.
I can hold a tune, but never really developed my singing voice. I began to learn the piano at about eight years old, but we moved countries so that got shelved. Then I took up guitar lessons, and I would play and sing on the beach with the local youth club members where we lived on the Spanish island of Gran Canaria.
How To Thrive In Challenging Times
The world can be a challenging place, especially nowadays. However, not only can we cope more easily with any personal, national, or global crisis, we can thrive at the same time. Yes, it can be done, and the following spiritual and conscious living suggestions may help you restore balance and personal bliss in these times.
Choose Your Company Carefully
It is essential that, while going through any type of life challenge, you wisely choose whom you interact with. If you were to allow it, certain people will only serve to increase your stress and anxiety, while others might be supportive in a positive way and make you feel uplifted and empowered. So be careful about who you spend your time with, and avoid the energy thieves on social media.
A great way of connecting with the right kind of folk would be to join a support group or like-minded ‘tribe’ consisting of people whose collective objective is to help one another remain positive and maintain a sense of sanity – no matter what might be going on in their personal lives, or in the rest of the world.
Make Time For Daily Meditation
Anyone can meditate, and that includes you! Therefore, if you would like to reduce the harmful effects that stress can bring to bear on your body and mind, particularly during a challenging time, a simple daily meditation practice can be immensely helpful.
Simple Ways To Reduce Your Stress Levels
We all feel the effects of stress in our lives at the moment. This is an especially difficult time in the world, and it is challenging us in ways that we did not expect.
Stress is a feeling of being under way too much pressure. This pressure can come from different aspects of your daily life, such as career challenges, life transitions, relationship conflict, health problems, family issues and financial worries. Whatever the stressors in your life are, they can affect your well-being very negatively.
We all experience stress, but how we handle it affects our lives to various degrees. You might have tried different approaches, but not much has worked. Sometimes the solution is much simpler than one might realize. Here are some positive lifestyle tips to manage your stress levels. Even if you just apply a couple a day, these basic strategies can make a real difference in cultivating a calmer state and greater peace of mind.
Get Enough Sleep
Sleep is so important in so many ways, and so often neglected in our busy lives. Adequate sleep helps us to stay focused, heal is from within, and manage our days so much better.
If you are not sleeping well, or not getting enough sleep, make every effort to resolve this. It is probably the most important thing you can do to reduce your stress levels. I find meditation music or white noise very helpful, and taking short naps during the day are an excellent means to get extra rest.
Love Is All You Need
A popular Beatles song was written circa 1967 by John Lennon, as part of the anti-war movement, with a very simplistic set of lyrics about love. “Love is all you need,” proclaims the song. Simple, yet often so elusive to so many of us.
Love is also a “many-splendored thing,” according to the Andy Williams classic. Yet, it is also complex set of emotions, beliefs, and behaviors that we have learned. Either through witnessing, training and personal experiences, which loop back into our behaviors. It is a dynamic process. These beliefs and emotions are then ‘translated’ into feelings. Feelings of attachment, affection, trust, respect, and commitment.
Love is also a topic of discussion, research and vital part of life dating back through all time. Throughout human history priests, philosophers, poets, artists, musicians, and scientists have all contemplated the mysteries and meaning of love.
And love is more than just a feeling between two people. We can have a love for country, nature, freedom, animals, opera music, or cold beer! And anything else that resonates with our heart.
The challenge for many of us in life is the rollercoaster of chasing love. As humans, we seek companionship, community, a sense of purpose. We seek to love and be loved. And we take many actions and steps towards our own definition of love. Yet, it is a dynamic, elusive, ever-changing target – one influenced and even manipulated by the many facets of human desire and emotions. Also, the sometimes harsh realities of life may take away that which we loved so much.