What do I mean….?

I am feeling really excited to write my blog post today because so many insightful thoughts have come to me these last few days. I have spent several hours over the last ten days listening to some fabulous interviews with really inspirational people via the HayHouse Summit 2014, plus I’ve had some personal decisions to make too. So to avoid you having a brain meltdown I will summarise briefly what I have learnt this week in the hope that it may help someone else reflect on their own circumstances with fresh eyes.

Understanding how focused deep breathing can slow down the noise in our head and relax the body is in itself not new, and as a musician I am very practised at controlling my diaphragm muscle and breath. But what I have not fully appreciated is just why playing a musical instrument is so good for us physically, as well as mentally. The development of cognitive and motor skills is something most music teachers are aware of (and if not, they should be! 🙂 ) but the deep breathing required to master control of blowing your instrument is also therapeutic. It helps the body to relax, the brain to focus and our mind to open to creativity and expression.

A little breathing exercise I’ve started doing each morning while taking my shower is to just sit for a few minutes and enjoy the feeling of warm water trickling over my head, and just focus on a colour. For example, if I want to feel creative and invigorated I imagine breathing in gorgeous, bright sparkling yellow vapour or smoke, and breathing out black stale air. I continue this exercise and see in my minds eye my ‘breath out’ gradually changes from black to grey to pale yellow to bright sparkling yellow. When the colour of my ‘in’ and ‘out’ breath is the same colour I finish my shower and continue with my day. I don’t understand much about Chakra colours but I do know it has helped me feel refreshed, calm and more focused.

During this mornings breathing exercise thoughts of the various things that have happened this week floated by and the picture of a snakes and ladders board came to my mind. As I wondered what this was all about it dawned on me that life is just like a huge game of ‘Snakes and Ladders’. We are all on a path or journey, moving through our lives, all heading in the same direction. At various times in our lives we meet different challenges that affect how we move forward. If we choose to serve our physical human self then we can either stay where we are for a little longer (maybe this is why we say we feel stuck sometimes!), or even cause ourselves to slip back a little; however, we are still always heading in the same direction to the same destination. If we learn from our mistakes and make wiser, kinder choices, that serve our Higher Spiritual Self and/or others then we free ourselves to continue or even move further up the path with a new level of understanding about ourselves and life, with a kinder, healthier perspective. It is such a simple child’s game, but the analogy made so much sense to me this morning.

This week I know I have set myself free from a self imposed ’emotional prison’ and can now move to a place of emotional freedom. I feel healthier, calmer, happier, wiser and braver. Life is a series of choices. When we make selfish, ego based choices we struggle and when we make kind, spiritual self choices we flourish.

Something else that was particularly poignant for me this week was listening to an interview with Dr Joe Dispenza about the ‘Placebo Effect’ and ‘Auto Suggestion’. But I think I’ll save that for another blog post!………… Keep learning, trust your own heart and keep moving forward in kindness and love, and allow the Universe to take care of the rest. Sometimes it is not until we leave the wood that we can see the beauty of the trees.

Life’s a game…… laugh at yourself, be kind and play fair.