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A Practice to Energize You

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Drum! if you don’t have a drum get a wooden spoon and cooking pot lid, an old wooden box, a metal wastebasket…

You don’t need to be a student of percussion, you don’t need to have any practice or expertise, you don’t need to be good at it, you don’t need to perform for an audience.

Now begin! Match the rhythm of your heart as you beat your homemade drum. Now add your feet and get moving. Let your body sway and express what you are feeling. Let your whole self dance and move and twirl and stretch and twist and flow with the beat. You need this!

Try new patterns with your makeshift drum. Go slow then speed up, start with a simple pattern, moving into more tricky rhythms. Try multiple noise making objects that you can beat on shake or rattle without breaking or damaging them.

Now as you drum and move, let yourself vocalize and sing. Make beautiful sounds and not-so-beautiful sounds, let them express what you are feeling- joy, freedom, frustration, anger, fear, worry… happiness…

Try growling like a tiger, singing like an angel whooshing like the wind through an evergreen tree. Make up new words, create personal lyrics, specific to your life, or have no words, just the sounds of your voice.

Go high, go low, spin your voice like sugar, let it slide and play. Cut loose and let yourself be one with the sound that originates deep within you and continues outward into the web of life.

Celebrate your life with sound and drumming. Get your heart and body and voice activated. Energize yourself!

Raise up your deepest requests and desires on this wave of heartfelt sound and rhythm. Ask for the world you wish to see and for the life you wish to live. Ask for all the inhabitants of our dear planet, animal vegetable and mineral to prosper with full and robust health, for the web of life to be repaired.

Red winged blackbird

When you drum and sing with focus and heart and sincerity, the spirits cannot fail to hear you and be moved by your requests.

Come out and play!

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Have you kept yourself in the glow of your computer screen too long this year? Are you glued to the couch, too comfy in your recliner?

We the nature spirits of your land, invite you out to play! Let our shifting and dappled midsummer shade mesmerize you and bring you into the present moment and release your worries. Let the sailing clouds on a deep blue sky enchant you.

Tree swing

Let the flowing and sparkling water of a nearby stream fire your imagination and light up your childlike enjoyment of the simple things in life. Sail a paper boat, watch a large leaf float downstream, skip stones, drop rocks in the water and watch & listen for the splash…

Go to the playground and swing, climb a tree & observe everything above & below you, create a bouquet of wildflowers some might call weeds. Go barefoot. Twirl around until you get dizzy and then rest on the grass. Smell the clover. Watch for lightning bugs after dark. Take a moonlit walk.

Pure joy!

You are too serious! Leave your cares and worries behind and come out to play!

Tune into your body

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Do you resist the messages of your body?

Do you suppress tears that want to flow, stay in your chair when your body screams “Get up and move!”? Do you force yourself to stay awake when you need rest? Do you stay in bed when you know your body need to be upright and moving? Do you stifle creative expression, hold back healing sounds and movements your body wants and needs to make? Do you continue eating when you are full? Do you live in your head?

Do you feel that your physical being is the enemy? If so, you have been trained to ignore and suppress your lifelong best friend and messenger, your body.

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Happy kid!

When you slowly learn to pay attention to your body again like you did as a young child… you will become aware of the signals as your body alerts you to danger. You will become aware of your own inner “radar” system that will help you navigate through life more smoothly. You will understand through your body’s feelings, emotions, pain, hunger, thirst and subtle sensations that you need to know in the moment for your well-being.

As you become more aware of your body and its needs its rhythms, you can learn to loosen up little by little to free flow, spontaneous expression, full experience. You will feel lighter, freer, happier.

If you’ve been taught to deny yourself full experience of living in your body and feeling what you feel, your energy flow can be re-established. 

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Playful kid!

Then, once again, like your younger child self, you can live fully happily and harmoniously in your magnificent and joyful body.

Delight and feeling

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Life is a delight for the senses.

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Playing with bubbles

Feel the flow of the life force in your bodies, your roots your leaves and stems, and in each cell that dances the dance of life with every other cell of your being.

To be in a body of any kind is to be one with all that is, to accept your reserved and special place in the tapestry of life on this earth.

You are meant to feel!!!  You are meant to adjust your actions thoughts and words when your feelings don’t feel good, until they feel better. Yes, read that again. Adjust actions, thoughts and words until you feel better! You are meant to feel good! Delight is the free flow of life-force through you.

Do you feel depressed and wish to feel happier? What words do you speak to yourself in the silence of your own mind? Words that soothe, or words that inflame? Do your thoughts match your desires? Do they match your dreams? Your incongruent energy sends a weak signal, diffuse and faltering to the web of all things. When thought, word, action, and desire align, you create your life without effort with a light a happy heart!

Let yourself feel. Let yourself enjoy.  Let yourself have. Let yourself be. Let yourself play with nothing to fuel you but pure feeling, and pure fun! If you resist your fun, your play, you resist life itself! Let your feeling delight and inspire you.

Loosen up!

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Tree swing

Why are you so careful all the time? Are you afraid of a misstep, a mistake, getting dirty? I tell you you must sink your toes into the mud and let it ooze. Hear the squelching noise as you lift your foot. Admire your perfect footprint! It is proof that you too can loosen up and go barefoot once and awhile.

No matter your age there is still a playful child inside of you, wanting to escape the tight clothes, the stupid meetings, wanting to play and be free!

Skip stones across a little steam, climb a friendly tree, swing on a rope swing above the fragrant lawn, make a sand castle, spin with your grandchildren in a made up dance. Laugh at the funny noises you invent. Play here under my branches. Make a little play house, create a shelter to call your own.

Pretend.  As you pretend you dream.  As you dream you create your world.