|
g l o b a l y o g a
a n d o t h e r h e a l i n g
a r t s |
|
|
|
|
May I be at peace.
Namaste. |
My name is
Angela Carole Brown.
And this site is intended as an exploration ground for the healing arts. I
have been involved in various healing arts (yoga, meditation, Eastern
philosophy studies, archetypal symbology, a wonderful intuitive process called
Soul Collage) 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.
This is a small site; it takes no
more than a few minutes to travel the whole thing. Just scroll down, and
you'll find
video meditations,
essays, events (as they happen), quotes, referrals, reading recommendations,
and my yoga-mindfulness CD Global Yoga.
Please drop me a
line to say hello, and let me know what you think of the site!
angela@angelacarolebrown.com
_______________________________________________________________________________________
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, written, 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
_______________________________________________________________________________________
MEDITATIONS
The practice of meditation helps to condition the mind and body to better withstand events that cause stress and increase feelings of well being. And although scientific approaches to the study of meditation have varied, it has become evident and acknowledged by the scientific community that the practice of meditation results in the improvement of one's health and wellness.
I'd like to
offer the following short guided meditations as a way to help start or end
your busy day.
COMPASSION MEDITATION
This 10-minute
guided meditation focuses on cultivating compassion,
kindness, and forgiveness, and is an excerpt from the yoga-mindfulness
cd Global Yoga. Written by Angela Carole Brown and
featuring Ken
Rosser on the Chinese pipa.
GRATITUDE
MEDITATION
This 8-minute listen-and-repeat meditation focuses on cultivating
thankfulness and gratitude. Written by Angela Carole Brown and
featuring the shakuhachi flute of David Zasloff.
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION
This Vipassana-styled meditation, which also has a similar practice
in the Christian tradition called Centering Prayer, focuses on awareness
and non-judgment by cultivating being in the present moment. This
meditation is the length of your choosing, and is also an excerpt
from
the yoga-mindfulness cd Global Yoga.
Featuring Ken Rosser on the Chinese pipa, and the digital art piece
Casting the Wheel, by Angela Carole Brown.
You have the option to close your eyes, or to use the ever-shifting art
as
a focal point to induce trancing.
AFFIRMATION MEDITATION
This 15-minute listen-and-repeat meditation focuses on self-realization
affirmations. Written by Angela Carole Brown and featuring ambient
music
by Ross Wright.
WATER INTO WINE
This 1 1/2-minute mantra-like prayer is meant to be read, so you'll
need to
keep your eyes open. Once you have done this meditation enough times,
you will start to know the mantra by heart, and can repeat it as an
ongoing
chant. Excellent for walking meditations. Written by and featuring
the music
of Angela Carole Brown.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
LIGHT
BULBS!
I am not an essayist in the formal sense of the word. What I am is a diarist or memoirist. If nothing else, the following essays are reflections of my own inner process, and coming to terms with my innate and imperfect humanness. May they have a light bulb or two to offer.
-
Standing Ajar: Notes from a Kidney Donor (published by The National Kidney Foundation)
-
Belligerent Romance: song. heart. bravery. (published by The National Kidney Foundation)
-
At War With My Own: Race, Identity, and the Argument for Otherly
(with bibliography)
Keep coming back. I'm always writing.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
SOUL COLLAGE
Soul Collage 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.
Soul Collage 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 Soul Collage through one of its facilitators here in Los Angeles, folk artist and radiant spirit Margo Gravelle. For close to 4 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 than through this extraordinary and non-judgmental practice.
I invite you to find out more
about it:
www.SoulCollage.com.
And once a month, I will share and feature a different Soul Collage of my own making. Enjoy!
_______________________________________________________________________________________
QUOTES
I have gathered
and collected quotes for years, from some of the sagest thinkers in history. A
single sentence can have the power of a great book. Here are just some
of my favorites. Enjoy!
"The highest form of maturity is self-inquiry."
Martin Luther King
"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek."
Joseph
Campbell
"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes."
Marcel
Proust
"When you
learn, teach. When you get, give."
Maya Angelou
"Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit; sluggish you will never
see the wheel of fate that brushes your heel as it turns going by."
Miguel de
Unamuno
"What I know of the divine I learned in woods and fields, by prayer and
meditation. I have had no other masters than the beeches and oaks."
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
"There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own
heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
H.H. The Dalai Lama
"The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards
the religion of solitude."
Aldous Huxley
"Seek to do brave
and lovely things that are left undone by the majority of people. Give gifts
of love and peace to those whom others pass by."
Paramahansa Yogananda
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion
may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords
of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every
living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better
angels of our nature."
Abraham
Lincoln
"You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than
you think. The lure of the distant and difficult is deceptive. The great
opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour."
John Burroughs
"I close my eyes in order to see."
Paul Gauguin
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know
peace."
Jimi Hendrix
"God is the experience of
looking at a tree and saying, 'Ah'"
Joseph
Campbell
"I must learn to love the fool
in me the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances,
wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and
gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone
protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also
harbor, and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for
my fool."
Theodore I. Rubin, MD
"A man's work is nothing but
this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three
great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
Albert Camus
"Sell your cleverness and buy
bewilderment."
Rumi
"In order to improve the mind,
we ought less to learn than to contemplate."
Rene
Descartes
"The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded
forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage
and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the
light amid the thorns."
George
Santayana
"We invent nothing, truly.
We borrow and re-create. We uncover and discover. All has been
given, as the mystics say. We have only to open our eyes and hearts, to
become one with that which is."
Henry Miller
"There is a great difference
between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control,
stress, and human effort. A successful person has the energy to create
something, to keep control over its development, to make it available in large
quantities, and to woo the masses with all the colored lights. Success brings
many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, are fragile and unique. A child
is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through
shared brokenness, talent is the fruit that nourishes humanity, and intimacy
is the fruit that grows through touching one another's wounds. We have been
called to be fruitfulnot successful, not productive, not accomplished.
Fruitfulness comes from vulnerability and the admission of our own weakness.
Let's remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness
but fruitfulness."
Henri Nouwen
"I took a deep breath and
listened to the old brag of my heart. I am. I am. I am."
Sylvia Plath
_______________________________________________________________________________________
HEALING ARTS
REFERRALS
The following
are the sites of some worthy healing arts organizations that I have had
first-hand dealings with, that you should meet. Please take a moment to check
them out.
The National Kidney Foundation at:
www.kidney.org
Metta Forest Monastery (Buddhist monastery and retreat) at:
www.mettaforest.org
Seena B. Frost's SoulCollage (Intuitive, creative, and therapeutic
process) at:
www.soulcollage.com
Dr. Barbara Wright's METTA (Conflict resolved through compassion) at:
www.metta4all.com
And her book METTA: The Map, The Formula, The Equations: a
handbook for identifying and mapping where you are in your life now and how to
get where you want to be in a skillful manner.
The
Gerson Institute (healing and preventing disease the natural way) at:
www.gerson.org
In the Mudra Yoga & Dance Studio at:
www.inthemudra.com
The Awareness Center (Kundalini yoga) at:
www.awarenesscenteryoga.org
Yoga
At The Village at:
www.yogaatthevillage.com
Lean By Marco (Life-Coaching and Fitness) at:
www.leanbymarco.com
_______________________________________________________________________________________
READING
RECOMMENDATIONS
Sacred Contracts
(archetypal symbology) by Carolyn Myss
Limitless You
(a study of
neuroplasticity) by Lee Gerdes
The Power of Patience
by M.J.Ryan
A Cancer Therapy
by Max Gerson
The Curse of Louis Pasteur
by Nancy Appleton
Seventeen Ways To Eat A Mango
by Joshua Kadison
A Path With Heart
by Jack Kornfield
Essential Buddhism
by Robert Thurman
The Art of Happiness
by H.H. the Dalai Lama
Essential Spirituality
by Robert Walsh
The Shape of Suffering
by Thanissaro Bikkhu
The Art of Being
by Dennis Merritt Jones
The Power of Now
by Eckardt Tolle
A New Earth
by Eckardt Tolle
A New Way of Thinking
by Charles Roth
As well as any great work of literature, which, though fiction, will always
carry TRUTH in its core.
(There is an endless array of great books out there on spiritualism,
self-examination, and healing, but the above are ones that have personally
changed my life.)
_______________________________________________________________________________________
NAMASTE
