|
|
|
Greetings fellow seekers,
This page reflects a personal passion and deep commitment of mine, and is intended as an exploration ground for the healing arts,
which also includes the ideas of spiritual awakening and self-discovery. I
have been involved in various healing arts (yoga, meditation, Eastern
philosophy studies, archetypal symbology, and a wonderful intuitive process
called
SoulCollage®)
for many years now, and find myself a willing and imperfect student. The path is
always being traversed, with many discoveries along the way, as well as an
ongoing fostering of healing. And periodically I'll try to share the fruits of
those ponderings here.
Scroll down to find meditations, referrals, reading recommendations, the periodic essay, and my yoga-mindfulness CD Global Yoga.
And please consider bookmarking
this page:
http://www.angelacarolebrown.com/globalyoga.htm,
and using it as a way to start or
end your busy day.
_______________________________________________________________________
GLOBAL YOGA
After 25 years as a professional musician, and 17 as a yoga practitioner, I have finally integrated two of my loves and released my first yoga-mindfulness CD, Global Yoga, on Rue de la Harpe Records. On its first week released, it became CDBaby's "Editor's Pick" in the category of New Age: Energy Healing.
It features beautifully improvised music by my alterna-folk group The Global Folk, and is a one-hour-plus class that I've designed and narrate, and which includes relaxation techniques, Sun Salutations, strength asanas, chakra work, and meditation.
The Global Folk are: Ken Rosser on guitar, pipa and sitar. Paul Angers on tribal drums. ACB on e-drone.
I'm excited to put this venture forth, as I believe I have a unique product. Most home-yoga classes are DVD's, where you're obligated to practice in whatever room your television is in. Global Yoga offers the freedom to practice anywhere you can take a boom box.
And in this
world of swiftly accruing noise, industry, machines, and devices which can
"distract humanity from the essence of life," as the painter and poet Jean
Arp once said, who couldn't use a little calming and centering?
Available Now!
"Angela's voice is
transcendental, her words magical, incisive and true.
This is a gorgeous and inspirational CD."
– Lily Knight, yoga instructor, THE AWARENESS CENTER
_______________________________________________________________________
YOGA
AS MUSE: How My Practice Has Informed My Art
Essay Copyright ©
2007 by Angela Carole Brown
I have been a singer/songwriter for over twenty years. I have been a yoga practitioner for seventeen.
When I look back on my body of work, I see an unfocused songsmith, full of agendas. My music has resembled everything from show tunes that I wrote for easy money, to power-pop ballads, hoping to become a star, to straight-ahead jazz, trying desperately to be hip.
It wasn’t until yoga came into my life, and I learned to quiet my world, that my practice reshaped me as an artist and I began to connect with the art of song on a level too organic for agenda.
This wasn’t instantaneous. I persevered through the years of the yoga novice and the machinations of the ego: wanting the practice to give me an awesome body and stupefying flexibility (a leg behind the head is something we’d all like to show off, wouldn’t we?), wanting to wear the badge of New-Age-artsy-liberal-hippy-chic honor, and, perhaps the biggest trap of all, wanting instant enlightenment. I begrudgingly honored patience, and, as will beautifully happen with time and commitment, finally managed to burrow deep.
It was during this shift that I clearly saw my music going through the same stages of maturation. The writing was no longer about acceptance in my industry. It became surprisingly internal.
Today my music is as close to pure as it’s ever been. Can it traverse even further? Of course! But I believe that where it is today owes its great debt to the practice of yoga. Sometimes I even wonder if it might not be the other way around. After all, they both regard the Pursuit of Truth.
Though in the end, as life goes galloping richly by, the richer for all our efforts to be whole, does it really matter?
_______________________________________________________________________
MEDITATIONS
The practice of meditation is a mental discipline that helps to condition the mind and body to better withstand events that cause stress and increase feelings of well being, mindful awareness, and compassion. It is also a practice used to connect with higher consciousness and to spirit. It is another way to pray. And while approaches to the study of meditation vary, it has become evident and acknowledged by the scientific community that this five-thousand-year-old practice does result in the improvement of one's health and wellness. One thing I know for sure: We may not be able to control what happens in the world, but it is absolutely ours to choose how we respond. Meditation can help us to choose more skillfully.
I'd like to offer the following short guided meditations as a way to help start or end your busy day.
c o m p a s s i o n
a f f i r m a t i o n
g r a t i t u d e
m i n d f u l n e s s
. . . and then there's also just . . . silence.
_______________________________________________________________________
THE
MUSIC OF SILENCE: A Rumination on Meditation
Essay Copyright © 2010 by Angela Carole Brown
"Silence is the universal refuge,
the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts,
a balm to our every chagrin,
as welcome after satiety as after disappointment."
––– Henry David Thoreau
“Silence tells me secretly everything.”
––– from “Let the Sunshine In”
I’ve meditated on and off for years now. Every kind under the sun, from mantra meditations, and pranayama-focused meditations to guided meditations and walking meditations. And I recently looked up one day and realized that what had been a daily practice for me, or at least a weekly, had managed to fall by the wayside, in favor of work and stress and recreation. Somewhere in the tapestry, one little textured patch seemed to have torn away.
As I’ve tried to get back in the practice, I’ve begun with many of the guided meditations you see above that I’ve written and put out there to the public for the taking. I've also listened to others' CDs and tapes, and attended sangas (a community of like seekers) where the meditations were guided by Buddhist monks. After a time, I found myself hungry, itchy, antsy, something, and realized that what I really wanted to do was live in silence for a time, not fill my head with more words, more thoughts, more suggestibility. And I realized that (taking nothing away from the value of guided meditations) the reason I wasn’t moving in some kind of forward direction, neither spiritually, nor in terms of my life’s legacy, the planting of seeds, why, instead, I felt that life lately had become simply about surviving, taking the gig that will pay this or that bill, and then counting out my pennies to figure out what I could afford to do for fun till it was time to go to work again, and pay another bill, and every day that kept landlords and repo men away from my door was considered a success, until it was time to go to bed, wake up the next morning, and start the cycle over again – whew! – this is what my brain is like these days! – was because I’ve been busy, in meditation, asking for.
Everything seems to be about wanting something. Even prayer is about asking for something. Please God, let me ace that exam. Please God, let me win the lottery.
I’ve prided myself on this mantra I composed about two years ago, and have been dedicated to chanting on my morning walks. “Love, reign over me..." (notice The Who Reference; and, as well, my penchant for replacing the word god with love….just my thing). "...Make me mindful. Give me grace. Deliver me from need. Fill me with wonder. ake away my fears. Help me to evolve for my sake and no other. And then teach me to let go, and dare to watch my very best life explode before me in a rain of light.” And then repeat. I’m also especially pleased with the seemingly writerly bookends of reign/rain (a geek's excitement).
In my newest head, I think about that mantra, and I sound awfully “gimme gimme” to myself. There’s nothing wrong with asking for guidance, help, strength, clarity. And of course, it is incredibly beneficent to ask for peace and goodwill for others. But it suddenly hit me that while those words, and the meaning behind them, merely serve the bigger picture of digging deeper within the fibers of my being, and compelling me to move, act, charge forward in a very specific way, and therefore IS helpful, IS healing…..there is still something missing. For me. Right now. In this moment. And the something, I have finally realized, is silence. It is about not going into meditation with an agenda on my plate, but going in with a blank canvas.
This is not a revolutionary idea. Vipassana Meditation, for example, at its basest and simplest, is this idea. But for me, it has taken my own very specific journey for the idea to come out of the abstract and into a tangible resonance.
Approaching meditation with a blank canvas is actually quite hard to do, but I am enticed by the challenge. Because I know that what’s on the other side is the open door that welcomes insight and answers and light bulbs galore. In the silence – true silence – not just a cessation of talking – the world opens up. I’ve been there. I’ve experienced it. Only in the briefest of instances. But I have touched it.
The trick is to let whatever your monkey mind has got brewing just come forth. Your grocery list. That doctor’s appointment coming up. Re-envisioning the argument you had with your friend, where, this time, you actually say all the right things. Shedding songs for that upcoming gig. Lusting over the new guy that jogs by your house every morning. Brainstorming on how to get your book published. Bills. Let it all bubble up and spin into a frenzy. Don’t fight it. Don’t try to shoo it away. Because even THAT is agenda. Let it go wherever it will go. Without the fight, and without a what-am-I-trying-to-accomplish-here? lesson plan in place, eventually the monkey matter begins to dissipate, little by little. It takes time. It takes release, and a consciousness about release.
It also takes a certain amount of bravery. Because in this modern, fast-paced, multi-tasking society of swiftly accruing noise, industry, machines, and devices which can "distract humanity from the essence of life," as the painter and poet Jean Arp once said, we’ve learned the brilliant art of tucking, of compartmentalizing the worrisome stuff, so that it doesn’t invade us too often or too harshly, and cocooning and distracting ourselves with the noise. This is incredibly easy for me to do, because I'm a musician for my living, so I am perpetually wrapped in a blanket of pings and strains and twangs and hums and vibrations and cacophonies of toots and screeches and splats. And that existence can equally serve to bless me with a constant, spirit-feeding music (when it's good!) AND keep me in a comforting fog. Inviting the silence means daring to clear the fog, and therefore can mean inviting the worrisome stuff to dance in front of you, to insist that you smell it, touch it, hold it, face it.
The good news is that eventually what begins to happen, by allowing whatever dances in front of you to do so, is that what was important simply becomes less and less so. The mind begins to let go of its burdens. The realities don’t go away. Have a bill to pay? It’s still there. But the mind’s insistence on letting it bog you down suddenly loses its strength. And as the quiet begins to creep in, a true moment of clarity can be experienced. A sense of being able to handle whatever comes with grace. The detritus shows its true colors, and the truly crucial issues begin to find their answers, or at the very least begin to break themselves down in order to be examined more thoroughly.
Li Po speaks of returning to the grove. To the music of the trees, the wind, the birds, and silence.
One thing that seems to be a recurrent theme with me is the desire to be a calmer version of myself. I am hyper. I talk a lot. I can’t even sit in a chair for long without changing to the other butt cheek periodically. I cross one leg over the other, and then for the duration of my sit I constantly switch legs. And I need to watch movies in a movie theatre, and not at home, or I will invariably stop and start the damned thing thirty times to: go wash the dishes, make that phone call I forgot about, check my email one more time, see who’s talking about what on Facebook, the list goes on and on. And what is a two-hour movie becomes a six-hour event for me. I long to be calmer, slower, more thoughtful, more focused, and I pray for it everyday of my life, in my own way. “….give me grace, make me mindful…” Etc.
What I am realizing today is that what I really need, in order to accomplish anything of value, personally, professionally, spiritually, is to stop asking for, and instead simply learn to quiet my mind, to silence the monkey brain, to live in the music of silence, for at least a few golden minutes every day, and dare I even think it....be at peace with being right where I am. I believe it is there and then that I’ll start to understand so much, and will stop being in such a rush to get somewhere else. Evolving is natural. Needing to be any place but here is....itchy at best.
I don’t have to ask for peace of spirit. I only need sit in silence. And let the silence speak to me.
Silence. So simple.
anjali mudra
original glass mosaic
by angela carole brown
_______________________________________________________________________
SOUL COLLAGE
SoulCollage® is the brainchild of artist and psychologist Seena B. Frost, who developed this incredible practice as a way for the artistic and therapeutic layman to participate hands-on in his/her own self-discovery, and to create beautiful works of art in the process.
SoulCollage® is, quite simply, the making of collage art. Beyond that basic modality, however, is a creative and therapeutic process that taps into the subconscious with its vivid mood and collision of imagery, and cultivates the powers of the intuitive. Through the seemingly unrelated images of a collage work, much can be revealed about the deepest parts of who we authentically are. You need not be an artist of any experience. You need only be hungry for a extraordinary journey of self-excavation and growth.
I became a student of SoulCollage® through one of its facilitators here in Los Angeles, folk artist and radiant spirit Margo Gravelle. For many years now I have met with an extraordinary group of people to make collages toward the purpose of ultimately creating a "deck" that might be likened to a Tarot deck, and which reflects and represents the varied and many aspects of my emotional and psychological character. My deck, which continues to grow, offers me insight and illumination on a daily basis.
I have sought many healing modalities, including talk therapy, and I have never felt as clear about who I am (the good, the bad, and the ugly) through any means more portent than through this extraordinary and non-judgmental practice.
I invite you to find out more
about it:
www.soulcollage.com.
(SoulCollage®
is a registered trademark of SoulCollage, Inc.)
Please enjoy this video montage of some of my own cards. Featuring improvised music by The Global Folk, and peppered with quotes from some of my favorite thinkers.
And thank you to all the wonderful photographers and artists whose images have inspired me to recreate and discover my own inner and outer worlds.
