Greetings! This is my space
– and you are invited to share it with me. I’m thrilled you chose to contribute your vibe to this little thing we’re doing called One Mind Live. If you’re interested in some background details about me and how I arrived here, click below!
I started playing the piano when I was about 3 mainly to get my fingers working. I had Rheumatoid Arthritis, was pretty much debilitated, and my fingers were fused just like the rest of my body. Back in the early 60’s this condition didn’t get a very good prognosis from the medics…and then my parents just happened to move next door to an old lady who had
all the answers.
I called her Nana Orr and she was in her 70’s then. A nurse in the first and the second world wars, she had an extensive herb garden where she’d be forever making concoctions and infusions which she gave me much to my distaste. Part of my regime was also a massage in the morning under a UV lamp and then in the evening another massage under an infra red lamp. She also played a strident honky tonk piano with a smashing left hand doing octaves, ripping off tunes with a theatrical vibrato and getting everyone singing. Thus I learnt the piano. The day I managed to stretch an octave was near the end of my healing. I was beginning to walk again.I was 4 and a half. In 6 months time I was ready for my first day of school and I could run around like the other kids ….and also play the piano. Something that took me a while to comprehend was that not everyone saw shapes and colours when they listened to music…and visa versa. I have always experienced a rich world when I close my eyes and listen to music : the dark space behind my eyes explodes with colour and 3 dimensional shapes…and when I focus my attention on pictures there can be sounds in my head and when I concentrate on these sounds they begin to shape and start to harmonise like voices singing.
Making music and making pictures is my fastest path to my joy. Both seem to come from the same environment- kind of the same thing, crossing over, merging. I later found that this was called synesthesia , but thankfully I only have it mildly. Some people actually taste colour or smell sound, their senses merging so intensely that life gets way too noisy
and intense. I think I’ve got just the right blend !
Meditation : I don’t really know how to meditate.
In my search for the right way to do it (and I have studied many techniques) I have found after 42 years, there’s a multiplicity of ways to experience inwardness. That’s because inwardness is our natural state. Calm, clarity, peace. I call it ‘still lake’. It’s a place that is silent and also awake.It feels like home. This is our true ground. if you endeavour to remember this natural state, it will become easier and easier.
To meditate is to consciously change your state. To meditate is to place yourself in a place that feels like knowing. To remember that you are OK on every level. To remember you are divine without exception. To be aware. Alert. At peace. In Love.
Visit me again and use the comments section below to ask me questions or share your thoughts about my music, meditation or anything at all that’s on your mind. Namaste.
Great to see you yesterday. Good to hear of all your activities. You are gathering no moss!
Belinda
Just listened to cherry blossom, nana use to call me that! Such a lovely memory! ??
thankyou lainie ~ it means alot to get feedback about the music . There are many, many layers going on and a big part of it Im sure comes from years of meditation and being able to stay in that place for hours and hours in a very calm and awake brain wave pattern building those sonic spaces – I usually go for 6 hour blocks without interruption – a bit like a long car drive – except afterwards I feel refreshed. I first started meditation when i was 13, as a way of dealing with asthma , which helped a huge amount but i didnt expect an onflow of other benefits such as school and exams became a snack as well as lucid dreaming ~ which I still do today 🙂 Now i realise , having said all this , I must write a blog about the wider experiences meditation has given me !
with love ~ steve
Hey Steve. I’m just listening to your beautiful music, what a treasure you are! I loved Beloved it was a beautiful journey of the heart. Connecting me with sadness and joy like the Phoenix who rises from the ashes. Thank you.
I love Releasing also, that is soooo beautiful. I could say so much about it. So many layers. I was floating on a rock just flying through the universe. I thought I heard a few sounds like throat singing. Lots of Love. X
I could just sit in meditation listening to your music all day long! Thank you so much.
Dear One Mind Live-ees
What does the song “ Amazing Grace”, the big ET music scene from Close Encounters , Ancient Celtic folk music and the chanting “OM” Chakra scale have in common? They are all expressions and variations of the Pentatonic musical scale.
The pentatonic scale is perhaps the most ancient and universal scale we know of :
It’s based on 5 notes ( pent = ancient greek for 5 and tonic= tone ). Its use in music is wide ranging from ancient to modern times. Heres a quote from wiki :
Pentatonic scales occur in Celtic folk music, German folk music, Nordic folk music, Hungarian folk music, West African music, African-American spirituals, Gospel music, Bluegrass music, American folk music, Jazz, American blues music, rock music, Sami joik singing, children’s song, the music of ancient Greece and the Greek traditional music and songs from Epirus, Northwest Greece, music of Southern Albania, folk songs of peoples of the Middle Volga area (such as the Mari, the Chuvash and Tatars), the tuning of the Ethiopian krar and the Indonesian gamelan, Philippine kulintang, Native American music, melodies of China, Korea, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, and Vietnam (including the folk music of these countries), the Andean music, the Afro-Caribbean tradition, Polish highlanders from the Tatra Mountains, and Western Impressionistic composers such as French composer Claude Debussy. Examples of its use include Chopin’s Etude in G-flat major, op. 10, no. 5, the “Black Key” etude, in the major pentatonic.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale )
As you can see it’s all pervasive…and thats for a lot of very good reasons : Its a set of harmonic vibrations that are conducive for human wellbeing, rituals, rites of passage, prayer, shamanic initiation, dance and ascension practises. As i see it, the pentatonic scale rises up from the very roots of the world tree.
At One Mind Live we share a deep connection with ancient and universal wisdom cultures.
When it comes to making music for Naomi Janzen’s tapping process and Naomi Carlings guided meditations its my job to create spacious, evocative and authentic harmonic vibrations that are in accord with tried and true human universalities. I am also partly Synesthetic – which means I see music , and hear colour, just to mention a couple of combinations. I also feel musical notes affecting parts of my body. I also see shapes and colours when tuning into the spoken word. So when it comes to the preparation of sonic journeys for the healing guidance of the “ Two Naomi’s “
I am literally pulling from a range of intuitive, ancient and technical source points.
Not all the music composed for One Mind Live is Pentatonic. I also use Pythagorean tuning as well as ancient Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian tetrachordal modes…but thats for another time…
Stephen Fearnley
Hi Stephen,
I love your musical compositions! I’m searching for some Royalty Free Meditation Music to use as background music when I record some of my meditations which will be offered via my website and while coaching. My website and business is: http://www.innerpeacewarriors.com (launching within a week or two). Could we start a conversation about that? angieturk@gmail.com