We’ve all experienced the effects of listening to music: a soothing symphony, an energetic jazz number or the cringeing effects of a youngster banging with abandon on a piano.
Music changes us. But singing can heal us.
The Benefits of Singing
The benefits of singing, ie. making sound with our voice to different notes in succession, are significant and many. As the singer, the vibrations coursing through the body elevates the chi, our life force energy.
The result? You may experience one or more of the following:
Increased energy
mood boost
greater sense of lightness
deeper breathing
lowered blood pressure and heart rate
Each of these effects have been measured in scientific studies. And all of them are realized through raising our voice in song!
It’s Not About Perfect!
Notice that there is no mention of singing on perfect pitch, in tune or with a precise rhythm to receive these wonderful benefits. Sing how you sing whenever you can, wherever you can.
The body loves it when we sing and responds accordingly, so gift yourself with this treasure that is available to you 24/7/365.
I promise you, you will be changed.
What is one new location you have been, or will be, singing in after reading this?
Please tell us in the Comments below. You just might inspire someone else to sing more often and further their health and healing.
I love how chantras just come to me, little gifts from the heavens. These simple melodies and lyrics (think chant + mantra), express how I’m feeling or would like to feel, brought on by a single word or concept as I walk in my neighborhood or hike in the woods.
Gratitude, rain, tree pitch and water are some examples that have resulted in chantras.
The basis for this one emanates from an incantation in a recent book I was reading. I tweaked the lyrics just a tad, yet kept the essence of the original words.
“I Am the Light” is the result: a chantra reminding us we are love & light, and the power we hold individually and collectively to influence the world.
(Read here the 4 quick steps to maximize your benefits from singing chantras.)
I invite you to sing this chantra often and everywhere to ramp up the love and light in your life and the Universe.
These chantras are from me (and the heavens!) to you to use as grounding and re-centering tools. Listen to them all on my YouTube channel .
Still Water at Oaks Bottom. Photo by Heather Michet
Our minds race. The to-do list is too long. Demands from life and those outside ourselves pull us to be busy. Time each day to quiet the external noise, stop our doing-ness and still our mind is a precious resource: it helps promote peace and well-being for our body and soul.
When did you last sit in silence, simply being and listening? Was it difficult to slow down and get quiet?
Help is Here
Here’s a wellness tool that slows us down and helps carve out a pod of restorative stillness.
To Be Quiet, a slow and easy chantra, reminds and invites us to take this time for ourselves.
Sing along with it and allow yourself to enter into a place of stillness. You can also follow the 4 easy steps to shift your mindset and/or energy using a chantra to deepen the experience.
However you choose to slow down and BE with yourself without life’s noise and bustle, you will benefit. The gifts you receive can be many.
What Happened for You?
After singing the chantra and entering the still place, what came to you? Where did you go to do this practice – outside under a tree? In a tucked away spot in your home?
I’d love to hear about your experience using chantras for rebalancing and centering yourself. Please share in the Comments below.
As so often happens when we’re fully present and open, the first blessing that presented itself was Blessing for My First Day as a Widow. I knew immediately that I wanted to share this with Barb, an offering of precious words penned by a widow. What better way to share this with my friend than creating a video of me reading it against a backdrop of fall light and foliage, with intermittent birdsong scattered here and there! You can hear me read this blessing below.
After reading the blessing, I felt a song was asking to be included to close this offering to my friend’s grieving heart and spirit. “May We All Fly Like Eagles” was the perfect blend of message and melody to wrap up this gift.
To J, pillar of courage, strength, humor and love to so many: Fly on, dear one. The heavens have opened their arms to you to enter the angelic realm. I trust you will continue to love and guide your beloved Barb from beyond the veil of this physical world.
The Dash, a poem by Linda Ellis, is a familiar reading in memorial ceremonies.
I love how it calls those present at a memorial ceremony to remember: We’re all going to run out of time. What we choose to do, how we live, how we love and treat one another is what really counts. This is what creates the world we live in.
Here’s the poem:
THE DASH
the poem by Linda Ellis
I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning…to the end.
He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time they spent alive on earth and now only those who loved them know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own, the cars… the house… the cash. What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard; are there things you’d like to change? For you never know how much time is left that still can be rearranged.
To be less quick to anger and show appreciation more and love the people in our lives like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile… remembering that this special dash might only last a little while.
So when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash, would you be proud of the things they say about how you lived your dash?
It was a snowy Sunday morning – slow and peaceful. Capt. Jack, No Sparrows and I are both stationed on the multi-use table in our home: he’s watching bird tv out the bay window and I’m happily planted with my calculator and two tax prep organizers, mine and dad’s. I am feeling great about getting all of the tax stuff to my CPA before February’s end!
As I cruise through my form’s queries, checking boxes and filling in figures, the next line is Date of Death.
Boom! My eyes erupt with tears. Once again, that sneaky bugger grief has surprised me with an unannounced heart ripping. Thank you very much.
Did I mention that I was working on my tax organizer, not dad’s? His organizer was next in the queue. The organizer for his last tax return, ever. Another part of his life was closing.
You never know when a grief sneaker wave will strike. Unlike the beachside rule to always face the ocean and never turn your back on it to avoid being pulled under, there is no version of this for grief.
Are we doomed, then, to always hold grief in the forefront of our awareness, keeping watch for its next surprise attack? To walk around warily, wondering when we’ll get caught in its clutches again? Is that the secret to keeping us from being broadsided and sucked under from out of the blue?
I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s any preparation to avert one of grief’s heart ripping sneaker waves. And yet, what if seeing Date of Death on my form was grief’s warning of what I soon would feel? Maybe there was a wee bit of grace being offered in that moment after all.
My advice when you get rolled over by one of these waves? Just let it take hold of you. Cry the tears. Let go the scream. Write the blog. Breathe. Roll around in its wake.
I know there will be more sneaker waves as I swim in this ocean of grief, doing “lasts” and experiencing “firsts”: birthdays, holidays, vacations, dinners…all without him.
I also know that with each swim in grief, my inner grief pool is lightened just a little bit more.
Have you experienced grief sneaker waves? How did you navigate through them? I would love to hear about them.
The number of ways we can celebrate, honor and remember our loved ones who have died is unlimited.
Time of Remembering in Meinig Park is an annual event created by Mt. Hood Hospice in Sandy OR. As a free, drop in event spanning 2 early evening hours, it is a unique and beautiful way to remember our departed, both individually and collectively.
While strolling the parks’ pathways weaving through tall Douglas Fir trees, photos of beloveds and luminaria draw you in to remember your own loved ones and others in this community event. This short video of the 2021 event will give you the respectful and grace-filled sense of the walk.
This year, live music will enhance and deepen the reflective mood along the event’s path.
Everyone is welcome to participate in this event! You can do so by:
1) submitting names and photos of loved ones you would like to honor in advance of the event; they will be placed along the walk (see details below) and/or,
2) come stroll through the trees as you remember and acknowledge the departed.
Here are the details of the event, including name and photo submission info:
May you find, create and participate in unique and meaning-filled ways to honor and remember your beloveds.
Please join us at the Time of Remembering in Meinig Park event on August 25th. Let us remember together.
Once upon a time not that long ago, the end of October brought celebrations of gratitude, reverence and honoring: the harvest was in, plants and planets that sustained life were thanked, and people readied themselves for the coming darkness and quiet of winter while acknowledging the dead and their part in the natural order of things.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Now this time of year in the US means more plastic junk, too much sugar, ghoulish décor and wacky outfits.
How Did We Get Here?
What began as a ceremonial, earth-based, spiritual time with bonfires, harvest foods, and communing with the dead, has become a ghoulish, commercialized observance.
Here’s what happened (in a very simplified form):
· Ancient Celts celebrated the end of summer, the harvest, and the threshold between light (summer) and dark (winter) with their Samhain fire festival. Happening over 3 days – October 31st–Nov 2nd – spirits of the dead were believed to be more visible and approachable during this liminal time.
· Catholic popes attempted to “Christianize” Samhain. This was done in an attempt to spread their religion and wipe out pagan traditions. Nov. 1st became All Saints Day, aka All Hallows Day, making October 31st All Hallows Eve. Nov. 2nd became All Souls Day. Note that the word pagan comes from the Latin ‘paganus’ which means villager or rustic, ie. a country dweller. The Church moved the meaning to heathen.
· Romans had their own fall festival which included honoring Pomona, the goddess of fruit and trees. There’s where our bobbing for apples at Hallowe’en parties came from!
· Irish immigrants in mid-19thcentury left the potato famine to come to the US, bringing many of the familiar Hallowe’en traditions that we see today, including Jack-o-lanterns. The early carvings, however, were out of beets, turnips and potatoes.
From Bonfires to Billions
Trick or Treating was popularized in the States in the 1950’s, beginning the rise to the celebration’s big revenue producer that it is today: More than 179 million people celebrate Hallowe’en in the US, spending $10.6 BILLION. Yes, billion with a B.
Photo by Lucas Ludwig on Unsplash
What Happened to Remembering the Dead?
As a culture, people in the US don’t want to talk about death: they recoil from it, avoid it, and change the subject quickly or go quiet when it comes up. Yet they readily – as the $10.6 Billion figure points out – invest in gruesome caricatures and figurines that they feel represent death.
“Our contemporary celebrations forget the dead altogether…We are, after all, a society that has done all it can to erase death…the idea that we might be intimate with death is now some kind of a gothic joke. Today’s Hallowe’en simply reflects what we secretly think – that death is a surrender to decay that makes us monsters.”
Who Wouldn’t Be Afraid of Death?
By disrespecting our dead and death itself with our Hallowe’en traditions, we have fueled our fear of death. With the dead portrayed as gruesome, gory monsters and zombies, who wouldn’t be scared of talking about death and dying?
Photo by Heather Michet
Mexico Saves the Day
Thankfully, one culture’s practice of celebrating and honoring the dead is thriving: Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos. It is colorful, respectful, bright and meaning-filled, taking place on November 1st and 2nd.
I love this holiday!
Photo by Heather Michet
The best way to learn more about this festival is to attend a celebration in your community.
If that’s not an option, watch the film Coco, one of my absolute favorite movies. The story portrays the practices and meaning of this holiday beautifully.
You can also read about the rituals I include at this time of year here.
You Can Be a Meaning Maker
Talk with your children, grandchildren and other adults about the true meaning behind Hallowe’en.
It will make a difference in their lives and in our world.
