Playfulness

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.

Your sweet spot

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Your sweet spot is found at the intersection of you at your best and brightest and you carrying out your true life’s purpose.

Do you crave the sweetness of being in the flow of your life, feeling on top of the world, and doing your best work, letting it pour effortlessly from you?

Yellow swallowtail butterfly on bee balm

When in your sweet spot you are expanded, focused, in the flow without judgment doubt or fear. You may lose track of time or even forget you have a body momentarily. Time in your sweet spot is satisfying to your soul.

You have felt this, and you can feel this again. If you are doubtful, remember what you felt as a child laying on the Earth watching the clouds float by, playing with your beloved pet, laughing with a friend, finding shells and stones on a beach… A child’s true work is play!

Some call your sweet spot alignment with source, or connecting with divine light while in a body. The light fills you and calls you to your soul’s true purpose

Then life is sweet. It flows with an uncommon ease. All is accomplished with grace, without overthinking, striving, or pushing others out of the way to get ahead.

Unlike a craving for sweet foods like candy or honey, cookies or cake, time in your sweet spot has no side effects, causes no health problems. It’s like a sugar high, only good for you!

When you spend time in your sweet spot you feel wonderful and the Earth prospers! This is the true currency of life.

More on balance between head and heart

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Humans are designed to think, but also feel. Logic without feeling creates a coldness, a lack of human connection, a distance between people. Feeling without logic may ignore some important facts and cause mistakes.

Perhaps you’ve been rewarded for your thinking prowess with fellowships, awards, gold stars, summa cum laude diplomas for your walls. But, dear one, are you balanced between head and heart?

If you need lessons in feeling, you can get them from any healer, counselor, or young child. Lessons in thinking are everywhere in your schools and universities, even preschools, your libraries and courts, your businesses … you are overloaded with them.

Happy kid in fall

Find a balance!

Analyze but also simply allow what is to be without judgment. Take things apart to figure them out, but also see the whole. Seek understanding, but also allow yourself to surrender to the mystery.

If you feel you are unbalanced, you can remedy this by learning to pay attention to the ebb and flow or your thoughts as an observer, not taking them all seriously, and tuning more fully into the sensations of your magnificent body and the wisdom of your heart. Quiet your mind so you can hear the still wisdom of your heart below the attention seeking noise of your thoughts.

Let your mind rest at times, for overthinking and over analyzing can make you anxious, can create worry and fear, can cut you off from your body and suck the joy out of life.

Tune into the wisdom of your heart and let yourself be for an hour or two, a day, a weekend. Be mindful of your body. Feel the stretch of your muscles, follow your breath, your heartbeat, the rhythm of your walk.

No need to name the muscles, understand how the lungs work, break down the mechanics of your walk. Let yourself be free of these concepts for a little while while you enjoy the flow of life in a body on this Earth.

Know that your thoughts are not you. They come and go, they flow through your head, they flow out. New ones come in…. They come and go they flow through your head, they flow out.

You will know you are in balance when you can allow yourself to loosen up, have a little fun, play with the suds in the dishwater, let yourself dream, make a snow angel, climb a tree, wade in the creek, build a sand castle, lay under the stars, skip stones… then sit down and focus on your intellectual puzzles that fuel your passion and make life interesting!

Snow covered weed

To become the most effective human being you can be, learn to find a balance between thinking and feeling, head and heart.

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!

Let your spirit out to play!

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Can you trust in the never ending stream of guidance and loving support that comes from spirit?   It is like a well or spring that will never run dry.  It is constantly refreshed and renewed as your life circumstances change. 

Perhaps you have not personally felt or experienced this flow of guidance in your life.  It is there, beneath the surface of your thoughts.  It takes a bit of tuning in to begin and live by your guidance.

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Let your spirit out to play!

It is the knowing that seems to be there inside that always is on target. It comes from within you in many disguises. Do not seek this power outside of yourself, in gurus, objects of value, money, looks, fame… the impulse, impetus and inspiration from spirit comes through you! And – it feels good!

Little by little learn to discern the voice of spirit from the voice of your logical ego brain that tries to keep you separate from others, that attempts to herd you into a corral, or box of “proper” or conventional and limited ways of being and responding and thinking.  The voice of Spirit will never promote chronic fear in your life.

Maybe you seem drawn to a particular book or website that has exactly the information you need, information you can trust, that touches your heart and rings true.  Trust it!  Perhaps you see a beautiful bird, or animal that lifts your spirit and gives you hope.  Trust it! Perhaps you feel within you a certain knowing of the course of action that you are to take. Trust it!

Even if you can’t explain exactly why, trust it!  If you unsure, trust, and test the waters, trust, test the waters… see if your guidance carries you through.  Let go of judgment  and worry.  The more you trust and act on your true guidance that comes from spirit, the more will be given to you!

When you send your ego to the baby sitter and let spirit come out to play, life can expand into joy!