From Tulsa to Kathmandu

 

I left for my “Year as a Gypsy” on September 2, 2011.  As that year comes to a close my life has opened.  By shedding my beliefs about what I “thought” might make me happy in life and asking a new question about “what would bring me joy”, I made some bold new moves.  After selling most of my belongings, letting go of my house, my man, my dog and my attachment to any outcome, I packed my car and drove off.  First stop, Asheville, North Carolina.

My blog, www.the-gypsy-life.com has chronicled what can only be described as a “surprising” year.  I had thoughts of writing full time, landed a screenplay writing job, re-invented myself with a new website www.mayalunachristobel.com and felt the stars aligning in what I believed was my destiny.  And then I learned a very important saying first hand and right between the eyes:  “How do you make the Gods laugh?  By telling them your plans”.  It was simply a few weeks into my adventure that I threw the blueprints out and adopted the only thing I knew to do:  Navigate by intuition …one day at a time.

So, here I am, many stories later, still no driver’s license, but well traveled, well cared for, well fed, well loved and inspired beyond anything I could imagine.  And after just one short year I have found that my heart is happiest singing, participating in a music company that has children at the center of everything, and creating opportunity for myself and as many others as possible to live their dreams.  How could I have known any of this before taking the leap?

Today, August 18th, one of those dreams is being realized for a group of young people who just landed in Kathmandu, Nepal.  I took a leap of faith and decided to produce a short film of recording children in Chitwan, Nepal, singing songs composed by my partner, Richard Gannaway and AOMUSIC. By reaching for my dream as a filmmaker, four amazing young people are reaching for theirs.  Paying it forward is not just about money, or gifting someone, but is also about what happens when I say yes to a vision from the heart…it expands to include so many other people who get a chance to do the same.  Physics of the Heart.

It is the height of the monsoon season in Nepal.  This “Dream Team” is made up of my daughter Jessie, who with her Canon 5D will be interviewing the village, the children and the team as, come rain and more rain, the children learn to sing.  Her photography will be part of a campaign for a documentary series.  Then there is Rob who is from Asheville and a yoga/slack line teacher as well as musician par-excellence who will be recording the children.  Josh is the “Yoda” of this entourage.  Josh has been living in India and has a story to share that will both curl your hair and make you stand up an applaud the tenacity of spirit in this young man.  Josh is a musician and teacher of music to children all over the globe.  And lastly is Karan, from Mumbai, India who is going to film the entire journey of AO in Nepal.  He has filmed numerous documentaries and brings so much to this unfolding story of AOMUSIC as we trek to where children are in need and hear the songs of their undaunted hearts.

So in these next ten days I will post a short story every day from Nepal to give you a window into the courage, the creativity and the spirit of those on this trip, the people of Nepal, my own unfolding in this process that has not been without obstacles, all in the hope that just one person might find their own heart on fire for change, for reaching for your dream and for helping those who need you most when you do.

As for me and coming to the close of a year on the road?  The Gypsy Life has become the life I choose from this moment forward. There is no other way to live for me.

 

AOMUSIC Meets Hollywood

Nepal Monastery

AOMUSIC had gotten the attention of Hollywood. The story of this is amazing. As many of you know, we were invited to trek to Nepal and record some children for our new album to be released Feb. 2013. And word spread in Nepal that we were coming, people heard the beauty of the music and the message of love that is AO and suddenly we got an invitation to come to visit the sacred Caves of Maratika and record. This is an arduous trip, yet this ancient site houses a majority of sacred Buddhist teachings.

This pilgrimage to the holy Caves of Maratika is in Halesi.  Maratika Cave and Monastery is located south east of Mount Everest and was the retreat of Mahadeva while he was in hiding.  For both Hindus and Buddhists it is one of their most famous pilgrimage centers.  Here is a note we received from the Monastery:

Regarding Maratika:  We have now a project to reconstruct our Maratika Monastery as it is falling a part also this year’s earthquake has made little problem. For this project many buddhist high masters including H.H. Dalai Lama has written the supporting letter for this project.”

So, now we can help give back to them through the sale of the album and help their project because of their generous invitation. So our trip expanded and we were planning to go in the monsoon season, with swollen rivers and nighttime hikes for hours.

Suddenly another email. We were invited for an unprecedented trek to Solukhumbu Monastery.  A rugged overland passage.  Here is the proposal from our contact there, and their historical invitation. It reads,

O yes i have some new idea for you or AO music, since you are in Nepal.
When you are in Nepal you can take your crew to my teacher’s monastery in Solukhumbu, which is the most beautiful place, it is like Tibet,  where now more than six hundred monks and nuns doing prayer every day, i think that make a great experience for AO.  My Guru His Holiness Trulshik Rinpoche who is also the main guru of HH Dalai lama has recently passed away, after many months praying here in Nepal, his precious Kudung, which is his enlighten body, is now in his Monastery Solukhumbu. If you are planning than i can organize a trip and  guide to accompany with you i really think it will be good for AO music since we see that AO will be beneficial for so many people. For that sense that place HH Monastery is the most powerful place, if you are targeting music and chanting with visual beauty.

So as you can see there is not only a story about the dedication of AO to bring World Music a new voice for change, involving children all over the globe, but our reach now can be educational and inspiring with this trek to Nepal and beyond.

AO trains and records children, most of whom are living in extraordinary circumstances. These children have never been in choirs before and are from the poorest of the surrounding villages.  They will be singing about love, light and our world for the first time, in a harmonically creative language.  This is a signature for AO, that the language cuts across all boundaries and languages and creates a universal, harmonically pure vibration.  You will see the effects of this on the faces of all the children of AO.

AO have been astonished at how these requests open new doors for changing the hearts of people. “But how could we fund this in such a short time?” we asked. Then a phone call.

“This should be a documentary” he said. And before we knew it a dozen interested film people, PBS producers, Independent directors, videographers and Bollywood interest just flooded in. Without effort. An amazing gift for the simple act of holding the vision. One song at a time, one child at a time and one dollar at a time.  One person said that this is a “Dream’Gig” and AOMUSIC has a big dream: To allow for the change needed on the planet to be both initiated by the light of children and the musical purity that is AO. Then to give back to as many children in need as is possible. Why? Because the children hold our future in their hands.

We are now going to Nepal in August to complete our original vision of recording the children of Chitwon and finishing the album and we have given the month of November over to returning to Nepal for all three treks, this time with a film crew and substantial funding.

And what I can say about living in the flow is that the Universe knows when Spirit is at the heart of life and gives such abundant support and love that it takes my breath away.
The project is cooking, growing sea legs, gaining funding and can be the single greatest help to advancing the causes of these children by creating both life changing music AND now creating a visual reference for spirit at work on a suffering planet.

We still need your help to get to the children in Nepal in August and want to have everyone who can give a tax deductible donation to make this trip a reality, become part of our team as we make this documentary. We will be looking for those who want to participate as associate producers or even carry our bags. As I will continue to say, It Takes a Village to Create Change. And Richard Gannaway and I have been the first to “move our feet” to fund the vision. We have used our own resources to make it thus far and I have given up coffee, time to even take a shower and Richard has given up vacations and sleep.  But we cannot move to the next level of the vision alone.

Please visit us at our Kickstarter page   http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/933732314/ao-music?ref=live.   For only $10 you can receive our Last Album,” And Love Rages On” which was shortlisted for the Grammys this past year. This trip takes $10,000 in support.  We are nearly one third there and have less than two weeks left to generate the funds or if we are short our goal even $10, we lose all our dedicated funding.

You can Donate tax deductible contributions on our AO website at  http://www.aomusic.com/ao/blog/wordpress/   and join us on the adventure. Please see the gifts we will give back to you for helping us get this first leg of the trip to Nepal accomplished.

And if you simply cannot push a button and donate $10, $50, $100 then do us the next best favor please.  Send an email to 5 friends.  Tell someone how interesting this project is and point them to all our YouTube videos or my website.  Your spreading the word and sending an email to friends is worth it’s weight in gold.

And get to know each of us at AO on my website at:   http://www.mayalunachristobel.com/heartbeat/

Blessings and thank you, Maya

The Whole Nine Yards

Ah, once again it is Mother’s day.  A day that we do one of a few things.  We love our mother down to our toes and thank her for life!  Or, we reluctantly send a card or flowers out of obligation or guilt  because we are still hurt that she has disappointed us as our mother.

But for many we don’t do anything.  An action sometimes born out of the wounds of childhood and an act of resentment.  But, none the less, this time every year we make a choice on how we approach Mother’s day. Each year we have one Hallmark moment to do it differently.  To change course and create what it is we truly want.

I am approaching the year anniversary of my Mother dying.  The anniversary of my leaving Oklahoma after years of being a caretaker for my mother.  Those years changed me.  Changed my resentment to joy  and in the end was a singular time of coming to terms with who my mother really is , which has everything to do with who I am today.  My mother  is me.  I am my mother and in loving her I love myself.  Not an easy task for many of us. Certainly not for me.

And I found a piece of writing I want to share with you about my struggle toward forgiving her and allowing myself to be human in the process of my life with her and in the time of her dying. I look back on those days before she died and am grateful for the painful, agonizing, heart wrenching, lovely, sweet time I had with her.  I hope you find this writing a catalyst to seeing your own mother more clearly and embracing a path of forgiveness and love. But most of all that you will do something different this Mother’s Day…something truer to your own nature of love, more giving, more spacious, and more of exactly what you have always wanted from your mother.

“I hold my breath with my mother. I remember not breathing in her presence as a child. Waiting to be criticized in all the details of life and not seen in any of the large ways I occupy myself. These patterns persist as I live in her presence and she perpetuates all the old ways I was with her as my mother. Being in a caretaker role is very confusing for the child in me and the adult in her who is feeling much more like a child these days. I cannot see her as this child for how strong her controlling and fearful personality is in every moment. I cannot find the child in me that is not wounded either. And yet in my spiritual journey this is what I called for in being her daughter and she my mother. I called for a time when I would reverse roles and I would behave toward her as she behaved toward me when I was young. I detest my own behavior because I am being just like she was with me. If I persist in this role with her I will no longer be able to stay here and I will need to deal with the guilt of failing myself and her in this endeavor.

That is one story. The other story is that she is simply a soul searching for herself and unable to find her own connection to spirit and is in a panic that time is running out. She has looked to me for that guidance and I refuse to give that to her out of anger and resentment. She is disappointed in the fact that I have not helped her in this way. This is a past life story between us when I were once her priest and did not give her a time of confession before she died, letting her die feeling alienated from God. The pain of that was unbearable for her and as her priest in this other life I carried the guilt of failing her. This karmic story is trying to be healed in this arrangement as I live with her. I cannot be her priest but I do have the power to extend forgiveness to her in this life from my own heart, releasing her to go on and in doing so end the karmic nature of our relationship and alleviating the guilt I have for not having “saved” her in this other life.

This is a very difficult confluence of energies trying to iron themselves out and I struggle with the depth of this problem. But I must understand that in this arrangement that I chose and she chose, that there is grace for the asking. That I can simply not expect myself to be her savior, but I can release myself and forgive myself for being human, for letting her down, for letting myself down and I do not have to do this perfectly. Can I give myself that? The right to be imperfect? The right for my mother to be imperfect? Can I just let go of my ancient need to be loved by my mother and simply learn to love myself?  Even if I do not do this commitment as well as I had expected? I can walk away. I can choose myself. I can also finish this time with grace and with a kind of simplicity, treating her as I would a lost child that cannot find her way…just like me. Pointing her back to herself by being myself fully. That is all this is really about. Not about caretaking at all but about being myself. Fully flawed and imperfect and joyful and loving and angry and sad. All of it …all the messy whole nine yards of being human. The real story is about the humility of being human and in that realization I am truly divine and my mother is the divine. Ahhh the paradox of it all!

A Change of Heart

Finally I bought the book, HeartMath.  I have known about this amazing institute that has studied the energetic effects, the health changing experiences and the power of the heart.  You have heard me say over and over that one of the most untapped resources for changing our lives and our world is the energy of the heart.  That the electromagnetic field of the heart is far larger than our mind.  And we walk around every day holding this energy in the center of our being.  This one organ is responsible if we live or die.  And yet most of us do not take any time to even consider the heart unless we have heartburn or a heart attack or our heart is breaking.  Cultivating a deep awareness of the heart energy we possess and then responsibly building that energy with our children, our lovers, our friends and with ourselves could be the one way we could make our biggest contribution to changing our world. This is a wonderful article.  I don’t usually reprint other writing but why reinvent the wheel?  Enjoy, learn and then practice.  And the amazing drawing below if one my daughter Jessie Felix did.  Amazing! Blessings, Maya

A change of heart changes everything

A California institute demonstrates how people can actually make their heart beat in a healthier way. Through its research, the Institute of HeartMath proves that health starts with love, and that love can reduce stress. It is a method that is used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and more than 100 organizations–from global corporations to hospitals to government agencies and schools. This simple method is changing the world. A report from Boulder Creek, California. Jurriaan Kamp | June 2005 issue All you need is love, sang John Lennon. True, according to most people. The only challenge: how do you create love? A quite startlingly simple answer was found to that question in the redwood forests of Boulder Creek, California, south of San Francisco. Since 1991, the Institute of HeartMath has generated a large body of convincing scientific evidence that it is indeed possible to create love. HeartMath’s research shows that emotions work much faster, and are more powerful, than thoughts. And that—when it comes to the human body—the heart is much more important than the brain to overall health and well-being—even cognitive function—than anyone but poets believed. Its dominance inside the body is now clearly demonstrated. Thinking clearly with your brain is useful. But feeling positively from your heart provides an amazing boost to health and creativity.
Briefly re-experiencing a cherished memory creates synchronization in your heart rhythm in mere seconds. This increases the release of healthy, energizing hormones, while at the same time decreasing levels of damaging stress hormones, at the same time your immune system is strengthened, blood pressure decreases … and health and focus increase. Using a simple prescription that consists of a number of exercises that anyone can do anywhere in a few minutes—the details are coming shortly—HeartMath is successfully battling the greatest threat to health, happiness and peace in this world: stress. Stress is the plague of our time, an epidemic that is spreading rapidly. The World Health Organization (WHO) raised the alarm 20 years ago, but things have only gotten worse. Every day some one million Americans fail to come to work due to stress. The European Union estimated in 2000 that the annual price tag of stress, in the form of healthcare costs and lost productivity, amounts to some three to four percent of the EU’s gross domestic product. Stress is one of the most important causes of high blood pressure, which afflicts one in three adults in Europe and North America and is the cause of many serious illnesses such as heart disease and stroke. Stress also lies at the basis of depression and burnout. “The good news is that the negative effects of stress can be effectively countered more easily than people might imagine. This leads to better performance in every aspect of life. It is therefore a smart strategy for every organization to tackle this source of excessive costs and human strain,” according to HeartMath’s president and CEO Bruce Cryer. That insight has now permeated many companies and institutions. Managers are sent to stress seminars. Yoga lessons are offered at company headquarters. And there are even companies that encourage their employees to take vacations. But these measures aren’t very effective as long as stress continues to permeate the corporate culture. The sense of relief from a yoga lesson or a weekend at the beach is often lost during the first chat with a frustrated colleague at the coffee machine. A successful anti-stress strategy provides results precisely at the moment the stress is experienced. This is what HeartMath does, which is why its client list now includes such leading companies as Hewlett Packard, Shell, Unilever, Cisco Systems, and Boeing. HeartMath was established in 1991 by Doc Lew Childre. Childre had made a name for himself as a researcher and advisor to companies and scientific institutions. With the founding of HeartMath, he embarked on his mission to demonstrate that the heart was central to human health, success and fulfillment. While HeartMath’s techniques emphasize the importance of emotional self-management, HeartMath is no new age phenomenon.
It is a research institute that in the space of nearly 15 years has published a large body of scientific research in established and respected publications such as the Harvard Business Review and the American Journal of Cardiology. Those publications support HeartMath’s central aim of presenting revolutionary scientific discoveries in a solid, “bullet proof” way. It has demonstrated significant cost savings for healthcare organizations struggling with staff turnover, and has shown significant health benefits in an array of studies covering congestive heart failure, diabetes, asthma, and hypertension. As Cryer says, “HeartMath is not based simply on belief. There are proven physiological reactions in how emotion, heart and brain interact.” In other words: HeartMath’s work is kept scrupulously free of the obvious potential for opportunism. Which is admirable given that financing and survival issues have presented tricky challenges for the organization through the years. HeartMath’s location reflects this cautious strategy. The institute is located in a group of buildings on a lovely retreat-like setting in Boulder Creek, a town that is nearly impossible to find among the tall trees of the ancient Californian forests. Stress and Boulder Creek have little to do with one another, I realize, following a drive through the pouring rain. And yet the decision to locate HeartMath here was not so odd. Forty-five minutes down the road is a well-known hotbed of this “modern plague:” Silicon Valley. Research director Rollin McCraty is in his office—a simple study with a huge window looking out over a wooded slope—working on one of HeartMath’s latest initiatives: a computer-driven experiment that shows how the heart reacts more quickly to external stimuli than the brain (see box). HeartMath programs utilize an innovative biofeedback system—developed by founder Doc Childre—whereby your finger or ear is hooked up to a sensor that shows the heart’s activity on a computer screen. The feedback is not a precondition for the result of the HeartMath exercises, but seeing your heart rhythms live on a computer screen makes it easier to convince critics of the favourable effect of positive feelings. Measuring internal feelings using modern instruments is not new in itself. For example, with the help of the electroencephalogram (EEG), it has been proven that meditating yogis produce completely different brain waves than—say—stock traders on Wall Street. But HeartMath’s heart-driven method extends much further than relaxation through meditation. McCraty notes, “Meditation is mainly geared towards consciously separating yourself from the reality around you.
That has totally different physical consequences than our approach, which is geared towards actively adding positive energy to a particular situation.” To measure the heart’s reaction to particular events, HeartMath uses a relatively new concept—one that is currently a hot item in mainstream medicine—as an indicator of a healthily functioning body: heart rate variability (HRV). Research conducted 10 years ago by Dr Andrew Armour of Dalhouse University in Halifax, Canada showed that the heart has its own neural network–in essence, a little brain. HRV—the rhythm of the time period between two heartbeats—plays a key role in that network. It has now been demonstrated that the heart sends signals to the brain and the hormonal system via nerves which carry the heart rhythm patterns. It doesn’t matter so much how many times a heart beats per minute; it’s the rhythm of the heartbeat that counts. Childre, McCraty and HeartMath’s research team have discovered that certain patterns in the heart rhythm correspond to a particular emotional state. McCraty explains, “With every heartbeat, information is supplied that affects our emotions, our physical health and the quality of our lives.” This means that feelings of compassion, love, care and appreciation produce a smoothly rolling—HeartMath calls it “coherent”—heart rhythm, while feelings of anger, frustration, fear and danger emit a jagged and capricious—”incoherent”—image. But this is more than a statistical difference. HeartMath’s research shows that a different heart rhythm leads to other chemical and electrical–even neurological–reactions in the body. Simply put: when people experience love, they not only feel happy and joyful, but they also produce, for example, more DHEA, the hormone that prevents aging, and gives us feelings of youthful vitality. Not surprisingly, a synthetic form of the hormone is currently sold in pill form at drugstores and health food stores. At the same time, the production of damaging stress hormones like cortisol is reduced. High levels of cortisol have been associated with Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, depression and fatigue. By contrast, a “loving body” absorbs less cholesterol, thereby preventing arteries from clogging while boosting production of immunoglobulin A, an important biochemical that boosts immune function. In addition, blood pressure stabilizes. McCraty links this effect to problems many organizations face: “There is a clear connection between healthcare costs and blood pressure levels. When your blood pressure falls, so do visits to the doctor…” And so HeartMath concludes that love is both an emotional and a physical state: positive feelings—like love—generate health. The reverse is also true. Someone who is angry produces less DHEA and more cortisol. And so on. HeartMath’s slogan—a change of heart changes everything—pretty much sums it up. But how do you “change your heart?”
According to HeartMath research, it is much simpler than it looks. McCraty says, “If you consciously shift your attention to a positive emotion, like appreciation or care, or if you allow your thoughts to return to the feeling of a cherished memory, your heart rhythm changes immediately.” This phenomenon continues to astonish the some 25,000 people who attend HeartMath courses each year. Initially, HeartMath utilized expensive medical equipment to measure and display the heart rhythm. But since 2000 HeartMath has offered a “do-it-yourself” equivalent: the Freeze-Framer, an award-winning computer program with an innovative sensor that anyone can install in their computer at home or at work. So far, HeartMath has sold more than 30,000 of these systems. The first time I start up the Freeze-Framer at home and attach the sensor to my finger, a freakish pattern appears on my computer screen (see image). My heart rhythm is all wild peaks and valleys or—in HeartMath jargon—an “incoherent pattern.” I then perform my prescribed exercise. I shift my thoughts to the area around my heart, I visualize that I’m breathing in through my heart and out through my solar plexus (the energy point under the breastbone, above the belly button). I remember a sweet memory with my daughter. I feel the warmth of our contact at that moment… and I see the graph on the computer screen change. The exercise, which I’ve only been doing for a couple of minutes, is quick and effective. The volatile peaks change into rolling hills on my screen. My incoherent heart rhythm has synchronized into a coherent rhythm. And what I can’t see on the line of the graph, but know—from HeartMath research—is that my body is now functioning in a more healthy and wholesome way. The research is convincing. A group of managers from Motorola attended a HeartMath workshop and were tested six months later on the results of their daily exercises. One-quarter of the managers had high blood pressure at the start of the project. After six months, they all had normal blood pressure levels. In another study with Hewlett-Packard managers, the average blood pressure fell from 138/86 to 128/80. This large an improvement is comparable to the effect of losing nearly 20 kilos (44 pounds). A recent study of employees at the food and household products multinational Unilever shows that the production of the favourable hormone DHEA increased by an average of 50 percent after six months of HeartMath exercises and rose to 90 percent after nine months.
The exercises also work for people with chronic diseases. For example, diabetes patients who performed a total of one hour of HeartMath exercises every week for six months scored significantly better on a number of health aspects crucial to them. Another HeartMath study indicates that the savings on health care costs and absenteeism can run up to $ 700 U.S. (540 euros) per employee a year. For a company with 1,000 employees, that would mean a savings of $ 700,000 U.S. (540,000 euros) a year. The fact the exercises are so easy may well be the most promising aspect of the HeartMath system. Bruce Cryer notes, “Time pressure is continually increasing. No matter how good a program might be for them, many people simply don’t take the time to invest in their emotional and physical health every day. People want exercises to take virtually no time, but to yield results. That’s the strength of our approach. You can learn the techniques in five minutes and get positive results if you do them a few times a day for 30 seconds. When you’re on your way to your next meeting, for example. Or when you start up your computer. Or sitting at a stoplight. Or waiting to make a phone call. Or before starting to check your e-mails. By making the techniques simple and quick, you can integrate them into your daily schedule without having to drastically change your life.” Regularly using the Freeze-Framer is particularly helpful in recognizing stress patterns. You gain insight into your own behaviour and the effect of that behaviour on your health. In that respect, the Freeze-Framer works like a thermometer: you get to the point where you don’t need to take your temperature any more to know you have a fever. As a result, it becomes ever easier to quickly correct the experience of stress. Cryer says, “HeartMath’s aim is to eliminate stress. Of course we can’t eliminate stressful events from our lives, but we can change our physiological and emotional response to them. The goal is to teach you to recognize which circumstances create stress so you can change your reaction to those situations. For example, practising a HeartMath technique helps you not to curse if someone cuts you off on the highway, but to react differently. And the most important result is that no damaging stress hormones are released in your body and no damaging comments come out of your mouth that could make the situation much worse.” Is HeartMath the only effective answer to stress? Clearly not. Every walk on the beach is beneficial. The same goes for an enjoyable concert. And for experiences of friendship and love. There are also other promising initiatives with a comparable focus. Ode previously reported on the work of the Italian Amedeo Maffei (see Ode, June 2002) as well as the computer game Wild Divine (see Ode, April 2004). And there are other projects geared towards synchronising the heart and brain rhythms to stimulate favourable biochemical and electrical processes in our bodies. But the strength of HeartMath lies in the convincing evidence of the effectiveness of the exercises and their simplicity. And its approach takes into account the sense of time pressure continually experienced by the stressed target group. Less stress and more health is, of course, enough of a recommendation for following HeartMath’s system. But there’s more: studies show that the electromagnetic field of the heart (which is created by the heart’s electrical system, or electrocardiogram) can be measured from between two and three metres from the body. HeartMath has discovered that if someone has a coherent heart rhythm, it has a demonstrably positive effect on other people in close proximity to him or her (and the reverse is also true). Just think about how you feel in the presence of someone who is appreciative or caring, compared to being close to someone angry or frustrated. That is: if your own heart rhythm is coherent, there is a greater chance that your environment will also behave coherently. That is: the health of your environment starts with your own health. That is: changing the world starts with you. Cryer notes how, “A lot of people feel powerless. Climate change. Poverty. War. Terrorism. There are so many things we could fear in the world.
So where do you start as an individual, when the size of the problems seem so daunting? It is important to know that you can have a demonstrably positive effect on the world. We can change the world, starting with ourselves.” That enthusiasm is behind all the solid research done by HeartMath. This vision also explains why the Institute never opted for quick fixes, but instead preferred building steady proof of concept. Cryer concludes, “It is our mission to help the world change, by helping people change. The root of most of our world’s problems is a lack of emotional management, a lack of understanding, care, respect and compassion. Most organizations and governments are fairly dysfunctional, because their leaders lack skills to manage themselves emotionally, let alone be an example for others to follow. That dysfunction damages the planet every day. We offer tools that are needed to eradicate major challenges and problems and to prevent wrongs.” Those tools help the heart to make love. All you need is love, John Lennon sang. It’s as simple as that.

Mr. Happy Man

While in Film School I learned a lot about the power of the documentary and the short film.  That feature films are simply one powerful way to communicate.  And then I stumbled on this little 10 min. film about a man named Johnny Barnes, Mr. Happy.  He lives in Bermuda and every day at 2 am he gets up and prepares for his day, packs a rolling cooler with food and water, grabs clothes for bad weather, dons a hat and walks out the door to stand at a busy intersection of traffic for most of the day.  His reason for being there?  To throw a smile, a kiss to every passerby and tell every person on foot and in a car…. that he loves them.  He is in his 80’s.

I want to share this video with you not only so that you can experience the infectious quality of his smile and his loving heart but to pose the question:  What simple act of love and kindness can we EACH do, simply for the joy of doing it?  How can each of us make love and happiness the reason for getting up in the morning and going to bed at night?

Please simply click on the Karma Tube link below to watch.

This is a tribute to our humanity.  Enjoy!  Maya

Video from KarmaTube

Surprised by Life

I have been on the road for six months now.  And most of those Road Trips taken were without being able to drive my car.  My legal rights to a driver’s license buried in some endless bureaucracy.  At first, I felt like the inability to legally drive would become a boulder sitting right in the middle of my life and block my deep intentions to follow the flow of where the river would take me.  For a month or more I reacted and resisted this interruption in my perceived plan.  Once the likelihood of driving wherever my heart led, was challenged, I relaxed into the “interruption” and began to relate to it as a gift.  “What might this unwanted experience provide for me that I could not have known or perceived without it?”  And the answer was: “Surprise?”  The answer was,”The unexpected”.

What I am coming to understand is that MY “plans” are only one possible future.  And my attachment to the outcome of those plans can limit my life.  If I could have driven, my two week stay with my daughter with an intention to drive North to Maine would have me leaving Asheville.  But, because I had to pause for a moment, breath, let go of my attachment to any outcome, I stumbled into my own desire to create a website while waiting for what I thought would be a few weeks before the debacle of my driver’s license was behind me.

I interviewed two people for the job and hired one.   Mary Long brought love, joy and creativity to my creating a clearer identity and I hired her.  Richard Gannaway was equally as gifted, but somehow in our interview we never truly discussed my budding website, but fell into a mutual love for music, for his work as a composer, singer and musician with AO Music.  Richard sent me home that day with his newest album and my life changed forever.

The music did what music only can.  It opened a part of me long-buried and reminded me of a part of myself that had forgotten a core inspiration in my life which lead me to aligning my self with AO Music and it’s care for changing hearts and helping children.  My life ignited. If I had driven away as planned I would have missed Joy breaking into my life.

 “The Law of Attraction is responding to your thought, not to your current reality. When you change the thought, your reality must follow suit. If things are going well for you, then focusing upon what is happening now will cause the well-being to continue, but if there are things happening now that are not pleasing, you must find a way of taking your attention away from those unwanted things. You have the ability to quickly change your patterns of thought, and eventually… your life experience.”  Abraham

I stayed much longer in Asheville than had been planned.  I had time to sit inside of my own dreaming, my own inspiration and my deepest wants and desires and could not “drive away from them”.  The minute I claimed these hopes and dreams my energy changed, my happiness increased and as the law of attraction is trying to teach us, suddenly and immediately people, ideas, opportunities and gifts that MATCHED those dreams and inspirations began to flood into my life. I was offered the chance to write a screenplay and then to attend The Film School in Seattle.

Tom Skerritt, The Film School

I did not chase my dreams in my car. I couldn’t.  I did not make a ten point list of goals for the year to tick off one by one. I waited, I practiced deep self inquiry and I listened to promptings that had been drowned out by my assumptions about my life and what I should be doing.  And in return, the Universe was given room and space to spill into my life with opportunity that I could not have seen.

Since “having my wings clipped”, so to speak by unforeseen circumstances, I have found that in fact, I do not need a car.  That I do not need to spend all that money and gas for something that I have done just fine without.  I can stop polluting the planet.  I can create a slower pace instead of knowing that my car is right outside my front door so I can dash anywhere.  That has been another surprise.  The cost of a periodic taxi, taking the bus when I am in an urban area, being a passenger with a friend who I get a chance to chat with, and generally limiting how many places I need to be in a day has slowed me down to a rhythm that I am liking. That is healthier and more centering.

I have spent time on the ocean in Washington with Icelandic Ponies, I have lived in a hotel for a month while going to The Film School here is Seattle, I have aligned my life and heart with a cause to open the heart through music. I am nearly done with the first draft of the screenplay I have been asked to write.  And my website reflects the constant unfolding of me as I move toward being the most authentic expression of myself.  And come the end of May, one year after the death of my mother, my daughter, who I have been staying with in Asheville will be moving.  The lease is up.  And the question that comes back round is:  What’s next.  Where will my next stop be?  I cannot wait to be surprised!

I was directed in a scene by Tom Skerritt as the infamous “Mrs. Robinson” from the movie The Graduate.  Acting is NOT my forte so I will stick to being a writer!

Letter on Life

My family consists of three women.  My two daughters and myself.  We have faced some extraordinary challenges this past year that require each of us to learn and open to new ways of thinking about our bodies.  We are inspired to ask new and innovative questions in order to address a deeper understanding of how to achieve vibrant health in life.  What an opportunity to be thankful for.  How amazing to be in this dialogue and life with my own children.

And, as any mother will confess, I wake at night feeling the weight on my shoulders to lead the way, to learn and teach by example and to share every little scrap of what I might know with the two people I love the most.

So, I decided to share a letter I sent to my daughters with you.  This letter, from the heart to what I truly believe is about what I believe is at the heart of all our illnesses in life, addressing what is not only a personal journey, but a global moment in time.  Our society is soul sick and we each feel it in our own ways, from constant stress to life threatening issues.  From a feeling of being lost and overwhelmed to coming to the end of life feeling alone.  Each of these experiences lead the way to answers that are essential to continuing life on this planet.

So, here is what I told my daughters.  Blessings, Maya

Dear Ones,

Everything is Energy.  A scientific fact.  Everything being composed of energy means that the shape and form and function of anything is determined by it’s frequency and vibration.  Energy never dies, it only changes.  It evolves. I remember you once said to me when you were growing up, “ Mom, the one thing you told me that I will never forget is that the only thing that you can count on in life…is change”.  I still believe that.

Our physical bodies are changing.  There are important reasons for this and it starts with understanding the concept of Evolution.  Evolution is any change across successive generation.  Let’s just stay general with the idea that we change, the planet changes, thus our cellular makeup and our DNA is affected by those changes and therefore the rate we vibrate changes too.  We are hugely affected by this fact every day of our lives.

Before your grandmother was born, say a hundred years, energy was different. There was no electricity so to speak, no atom bomb having been dropped, no pollution or planes or cars or the grid of technology that surrounds our planet like plastic wrap.  There were far less people, cleaner water and on it goes.  Now, we live under the weight of all that has been introduced to our natural environment and thus to our bodies.  We then do what all living things do. Our bodies attempt to adapt, even when we are not aware of its struggle to do so until we have some concerning symptom that derails us.

But, adaptation to agents that are not at all “real substances” that the body recognizes, (wheat, genetically modified corn, additives, chemicals, car fumes, food pumped with hormones and a complex new electromagnetic grid in life) and the body cannot assimilate these foreign properties and truly create healthy adaptive responses fast enough.

The body sends out a red alert and then an inflammatory response in the form of anger and frustration or allergies and tumors.  Thus, our cells spin differently, the electromagnetic fabric of the heart and the brain is compromised and put under rigorous pressure.  This is called Stress. Our world presents us too much stress to assimilate from the outside and we then generate an inner stressful response of our own. But in the end no one can keep up with the imbalance without acute awareness of how to combat the problem

The stress we subject ourselves to, for many of us who are more sensitive to energy than other people, can create what we call dis-ease, maladaptation, cellular anomalies, and energetic flow issues ( like in acupuncture). The way to handle this inevitability is to reduce, as much as possible, being subjected to these invaders our body does not recognize, giving our bodies more time to truly create a healthier response and have time to recover from all the other stressors.

This downtime that our body needs can be provided through more sleep, more rest, meditation, walking in nature, hugging, kissing and laughing.  But we feel time speeding up and most of the above list of healthful responses are not part of our daily life.  We need to begin to view these measures of self-care as essential as the air we breath.

We feel most of this if we are awake and aware.  Yet, there are two other factors we do not know as much about or take into account in our lives.  First, is the profound effect “place”  and “people” have on our health or lack of it, energetically.  The easier way to say this is that if we are truly all connected, then we ARE ALL CONNECTED to each other’s health or ill-health, positive emotions or negative ones and so on.

We exchange with every person we meet…energy. So, it is safe to say that who you touch, who you live with, have sex with, the emotions that surround you, the positive or negative flow of energy all around you on the streets and in restaurants, has either a positive effect on you or a negative one.  We feed on this energy 24/7, ingest it, become toxic from it and then over time, show physical and emotional imbalances and symptoms.

We in fact may not be the source of the depression or anxiety at all.  We may CARRY that emotion or toxic energy for another person,  like having become a sponge without knowing it.  We must wake up to this reality if we are going to be responsible for our lives, our health and the health of our loved ones.

If we are around positive heart energy with good feelings, our energy will resonate with that energy, we raise our vibrational frequency and we will increase the available energy for happiness and healing in ourselves and for the people and animals around us.

If we are around negative emotions, then the contrast of that energy requires the body and the heart to adjust and if it cannot adjust, then a kind of energetic toxicity builds in the body which over time can be illness and even death.

“Places” have as much toxic energy as people do. Cities have a much more difficult frequency than a country cabin.  The closer to nature the more balance there is.   The question is, are we listening to our body’s feedback on how we feel with any give person or in any given place?  Do we act on that pit in the stomach or that sixth sense that we should not go down a street or take an apartment that simply just does not feel right?

And I hear you say, “impossible to not be around toxic situations”.  True.  But you can choose to minimize those situations and not participate and you can take the time to learn how to both protect yourself from energy that you do not want and to clear it when you have been around it. It is a kind of Good Hygiene that is far more important than taking showers or using soap and water to reduce germs.  Time consuming?  Yes it is.  But, so is all the effort to combat illness, migraine headaches, exhaustion, cancer, or failing relationships. Right?

Secondly, we must as humans take into account that we live in a larger Universe on a planet in crisis filled with fear and collapsing structures. Change of a magnitude we have never experienced is under way and inevitable.  Our planet spins inside of other Cosmic energies and is moving to position itself in the Cosmos where it has never been before.  Earth has compromised protective shields much like our own immune system, and is affected by the energies that every other planet in our solar system emanates. We are not simply connected to one another we are connected to everything, big and small.

Chaos of energy abounds. It clear to most of us that something is radically changing as our planet evolves to higher consciousness:  From hate to love, from exclusion to inclusion from fear to joy.  This is an EVOLUTIONARY leap.  Our cells are trying to keep up with this energetic change and many sensitive people are finding that their bodies are not able to and are producing a myriad of symptoms that our traditional medical system would just like to give you a new drug for.  It is easier to do that than to wake up isn’t it? Do you find yourself more tired, or depressed, having headaches or anxiety for no apparent reason?  Do you forget things or get dizzy and disoriented? These are not necessarily issues of aging or hormones.  These are some of the symptoms that our bodies are out of synch with the changing energies around us.

So, as you look at this historical evolutionary leap that involves changes in our cellular nature and our DNA and if you look at the changed electromagnetic field around us from technology or global warming, you might stop and hit the pause button on life.  If you factor in the unprecedented pollution we absorb through our very food, air and water but then still go along with the status quo to hang out at the bar, to eat junk food, to have your home positioned next to electrical transformers or sit in front of a computer monitor or TV with countless other electromagnetic technology you might ask yourself why?   Do you think there will not be physical and emotional fall out?  We are in denial to the nth degree as a specie.  We are clearly not connected or listening to our body’s language and intuition. Re-establishing this primal and essential connection to our own body language and to our intuition and feelings, is part of the leap we are making right now in 2012.

Our wake up call is to wisely take in the facts and realize that our bodies are an electrical grid which absorbs all the energy we are exposed to.  Then we must responsibly position ourselves in places, with people, eating food and feeling emotions that are congruent with the higher vibrational frequencies of love, joy and compassion. We must learn to get rid of the excess energy as well as stay connected to the only place that grounds all our circuitry:  The Earth.

We can change two things.  We can construct our lives around health and good energy and clear out of what is not.  And we can change from the inside out. This is the key to everything.

The heart is the largest electromagnetic field in the body.  It emits a field outside our bodies, just like the Earth does.   If our hearts are closed out of fear or hurt, then the available energy is limited and our positive protective field around us is small.  If we focus on amplifying our heart energy instead of the energy of our thoughts, we then raise our vibrational frequency to a place where healing can happen, miracles occur, and where we can protect ourselves against negative energy and increase our life span, our joy and our aliveness. By doing this one thing for ourselves we affect every person around us.  This is how one person changes the world.

It is the inside-out process that is necessary to heal from any condition, as well as constructing a life that reflects smart thinking and care for our bodies, without whom we would not be here. It is this inside-outside process of accessing our unlimited energy of the heart that is the Warrior’s Path for this year of 2012.  It takes immense courage and faith and trust to do this in the world we have created.

Cultivating a practice of increasing heart energy is a commitment I am making to create health and longevity in my life, and most of all, to combat the negative effects of a planet in fear.  Fear is illness.  Fear is not a vibrational match to what it is to be a loving human being.  Our fearful thoughts, our images of fear on the TV or in Movies and that unnamable fear and anxiety that just seems to follow most of us like a cloud, can be neutralized with opening the channel to the heart and raising the vibrational frequency of our emotions, our thoughts and our actions. Then we will change our cellular nature and move in congruence with the evolution that is taking each of us onto a new path.

Our health requires that we make this leap.  Our very survival as a planet depends on it.

With Great Love.

Waking Up

I woke up this morning , cats perched on my chest purring so loudly who needs an alarm clock.  I had great plans for my day.  The sun was finally out after a few days of torrential rain and I had plotted out my next installment of writing to be done on the screenplay I am involved in, a screenplay that tests my very metal.  I would get up and then reward myself with watching the Golden Globes. So, I got up and did the usual.  Brushed my teeth, fed the now yowling cats, poured a cup of Masala tea and headed to my desk.  But I got waylaid.  Something tugged on my heart from the inner realms and stopped my trajectory toward the computer.

It was a large purple and white orchid I had sitting in the window.  The sun was streaming in behind the  spider veined  petals and they seemed to be lit from the inside out.  Suddenly, nothing seemed relevant at all except to drink in the beauty of the petals and the cosmic design of it’s very unique personality.  No orchid is the same.  No petal the exact mirror or design.  Humans are just like that even if they are twins there is one mole or a different shape to the smile that makes them one of a kind.

Already my day was traveling down a different road.  In the past, I had my list, my “to do’s” numbered one through infinity and would start the day by reminding myself what I was up against and then like my exercise regime, I would just do one rep at a time till I was done.  Sometimes that would take me till after midnight.  But, my life has changed since those days. Living in the flow of life makes living by lists a bit obsolete.  And you may ask, ” If you live in the flow how do you get anything done”.  Well that is truly a mystery.

Somehow, even when distracted from an original intent to sit at my computer and answer emails, and instead sitting with the orchid as it vibrates its neon colors, as the sun pours in the window one minute, illuminating shapes and hues that I have no name for and then a cloud mutes it all into an impressionistic painting, my vibrational frequency rises to the experience.  My field of the heart opens, I am more in a feeling state, feeling my life, I am more joyful and happy.  I am changed for those moments I INTENTIONALLY allow myself to “wake up” to what is right in front of me. To slow down to notice life.  My heart is met with a kind of energetic communication that changes how I hum through the day.  And subsequently, how I hum through my to do list.

I know you.  You and I are very similar.  We each have a habit of thinking just the opposite:  “If I get everything else I need to do today out of the way I will feel satisfied, less stressed, more productive and then I will have the time to sit and really look at the flowers in front of me, the ones that have been there all the time.”  And I am here to tell you that this is an illusion.  When was the last time that really did happen in just that way?  What really happens is we believe the illusion, start ticking away at a list that is filled with not terribly inspiring things like calling the insurance company, taking out the trash, answering emails, vacuuming, that oil change etc etc etc.   And before we know it we have little time left for anything creative, joy filled or contemplative.  Right?  We are simply too busy to be happy.

Well here is the truth.  Somehow, very much a mystery to me  (and the mystery is what makes my life worth living), somehow when I am awake enough in my own body and my own intentional life, and I make the room to let myself be surprised by joy, interrupted by the unknown and the unplanned, then my to do list gets done and then some.  Because you see, when I vibrate at the level of love and joy, I hum along in an open posture to life, not reactive to it and I draw in a total experience of every thing else humming along and vibrating at the same rate I am:  Faster.

Everything is done with efficiency, every call to people who I usually have to struggle with like a credit card person or a tech person for my computer are all in good moods and get the job done for me in a blink.  And I just find myself un-flustered, and just a more pleasant person all the way around.  Then what happens is I draw in more very pleasant people, more inspired experiences, more surprises to throw me off my game on getting things done and I “flow” toward those new and wonderful interruptions to my day….and it still all gets done because I am feeling happy and creative.

“If you want to make god laugh…tell him your plans.”

And there is a caveat to this truth.   Sometimes those interruptions are hard, sad, filled with crisis and a demand to do something that feels entirely unpleasant or unwanted.  A car accident, a friend suddenly dies, a husband cheats with his secretary, a foreclosure, lost job, illness.  These harder aspects to living still require the very same posture.  Move with the flow, feel it all, see the opportunity to be a bigger, better, less reactive you.

And in the contrast of this difficult moment is its opposite:  In the pain there is the joy you would rather feel, in the shock is a calm place inside of you that you can reside, in the anger is a compassion available at all times.  The bumps and bruising of life is only a contrasting experience that reminds us of what we truly do want,  what we are capable of and what we desire.  It is our business and our choice to decide where we focus.  Do we want the pain or the place of relief.

We are in total control of our experience.  If we panic and rush headlong into finding a solution to the crisis we will certainly be met with the same energy; chaos, reactivity and confusion.  If we can take a breath and step out of the crisis for one split second and see the other side, see the beauty of our lives, the design, the people who love us and will give a hug freely, the dog still centered and waiting for you, the opportunity to be a stronger version of yourself, then you will find quickly, the appreciation you have for the crisis and the pain.  It is a choice.  And what’s the worst thing that can happen?  Really?   You die.  Isn’t that liberating.

So. I have yet to do my exercises this morning, make my breakfast and sit to write the next scene.  I am a few of hours behind schedule.  And that’s ok.  I have had such a lovely experience communing with my orchid and my cats and now with you, that my writing will be the better for it.  And about those flowers right in front of us.  Look around.  There are “flowers” blooming everywhere.  Those little faces of the people we love, with children inside of them, that just simply want someone to say, “come out and play”.  Then there are our dogs who need that brushing we have been putting off or that walk with you, without you being on the cell phone, but paying total attention to this being who is the most unconditional love you will ever experience.  Or that clerk at the coffee shop that you have meant to speak to and thank for helping you every day, but you are in too much of a hurry.  The trees blowing in a rhythmic dance outside your window, decorated with singing birds that are there for you to notice and appreciate, the feel the water pouring over of you in the shower, the smell of the roasted coffee in the kitchen, it is endless.

Wake up!  Are you paying attention to everything around you so that you can then FEEL everything inside of you?    The universe supplies you with endless opportunity to stop and smell the roses, hug the loved ones, see, and I mean truly see the sky and breath in this new day you have been given a chance to truly live.  This is the only day you have right now.  The to do list will wait and in fact it will all get done.  I promise.

 

My Prayer for All of Us

This wonderful Blessing is being passed on to you…to pass on to someone else you love, who is in trouble, crisis, or just as a wonderful reminder of the truth that happiness is, ” ALL a matter of where we focus.”

 

The Power of Words

Naomi Shihab is one of our greatest poets.  She has married words to her heart. We would all live so much more richly if we would recognize that words have power.  We would do so much less harm and so much more good if what we said and what we wrote, if what we whispered on the phone or text to a friend understood the power of words.

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,

stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

“Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye, from Red Suitcase.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o said, “In writing, one should hear all the whisperings, all the shouting, all the crying, all the loving and all the hating of the many voices in the past. Those voices will never speak to a writer in a foreign language.”