_{August 2024}

Hello Beautiful. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere and experience four seasons then you might be feeling the push to make the most of your last full month of summer.

Do you have a vacation, staycation or long weekend planned?

There is nothing like the loom of the Back to School energy to remind us to take advantage of these remaining longer and warmer days. What daily pleasures can be savored that go together with summer?

How about eating some delicious, juicy cherries, strawberries or nectarines?

Feeling the grass beneath your bare feet? A sultry evening walk on the beach (with or without a partner), taking in the stars? An outdoor concert with girlfriends? A camping getaway?

Even savoring a refreshing cold glass of lemonade (or wine cooler) after gardening? And let’s not forget the guilty pleasure of a mindless summer beach read in your backyard or on a blanket at a nearby park?

I hope that you can give yourself permission to look for ways to delight your five senses on a daily basis this month and really be present in the moment to savor it.

What I did on my summer Vacay

Dancing to the Beat of Your Own Drum

I’m heading out for a long weekend to New Hampshire to attend a “Rhythm & Rejuvenation Retreat” to study with a performer I admire. Her name is Marla Leigh and she plays the frame drum.

I think I became a Fan Girl when I watched her YouTube professional video two years ago (I’ve included the link for below). Marla plays the frame drum like a true Goddess. I was inspired to play and my talented musician friend Cheryl Rebman has been giving me monthly lessons for a couple years now.

The reason I am not progressing is that I don’t take out and actually practice with my drum between lessons. It’s kind of hard to get good at something you only do 60-90 minutes once a month. So, when Marla’s retreat was announced, I felt drawn to sign up. It feels like a jump start to a new commitment to practice daily/weekly.

I won’t know anyone at this retreat. I will meet about 25 ladies who also have a passion for frame drumming and I like the idea of not knowing what to expect…..a clean slate. There will be two practice groups, a beginner and a more experienced group.

At the end of the retreat there is a performance where everyone is encouraged to do a solo. Now that kind of scares me, but it is optional, not mandatory.

The last reatreat I went to in Costa Rica (the naked one), I was stretched past my Comfort Zone, but the positive after-effects still influence me today as I live more authentically and prioritize pleasure.

The frame drum is associated with the Divine Feminine. It has been used in ceremonies and rituals of ancient civilizations (remember learning about Mesopotamia in grade school?) around 4,000 BCE. That’s 6,000 years ago!

Today, drumming still produces positive effects in the body. The typical brain that is stressing about the past and anxious about the future becomes quiet as alpha and theta waves take over (aka: calm and creative). It creates its own kind of present moment awareness and trance state.

Studies of humans (using bloodwork) show that after an hour of drumming participants had lower stress hormones like cortisol and an increase in immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells than before drumming.

The photo above shows me with my frame drum and one of my close friends and fellow Thai Massage Practitioner, Linda Hutcheson. She is holding a type of frame drum called a Native American Buffalo Drum. A frame drum definition is when a drumhead width is wider than the depth. Frame drums can be played with a wooden beater/mallet or your hands/fingers.

The four types of sounds that are arranged in different ways to create songs are Doum, Pah, Ta, & Ka. Some say these sounds correspond to the four elements of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. Marla has some training videos on YouTube and there are other teachers.

If you feel drawn to experience a drum circle, look on meetup.com or Google it in your area. Often the facilitators bring an assortment of percussion instruments for you to try. And the the energy and open-heartedness of the participants of all the circles I have experienced for the past couple decades are very positive.

Now it’s your turn

What is your take away from this issue?

How can you build in a habit to create more daily pleasure in your life?

How can you push yourself to an edge of a comfort zone?

Thanks for reading this week’s edition. I really had a much longer newsletter already written but technical learning curves have erased these earlier versions (like when I add a link to YouTube, it somehow erases all the writing in that section and I can’t retrieve it…Yikes). So, I’m making this version short and sweet.

We would love to hear from you regarding your reactions to this issue, the suggestions or your experience actually trying something new. Just hit reply, and let me know what you think or how you feel. I’m definitely interested 😀 

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