Five Morning Minutes

Instead of a jump right out of bed in the morning, give yourself an extra five minutes.

Set your alarm or ask Siri to remind you when the time has expired.

Lie in bed for the five minutes in silence. 

Keep your eyes closed and let favorite colors float in.

Listen to your breathing as the only sound. Begin with breathing in four and out five breaths through the nose.

Imagine unfolding like a bud to greet the sun. Take in a favorite scent.

Remind yourself of what creates the most fun in your life or the greatest success. Then think about all that you will accomplish today. 

Focus on a joy or passion. Pick a dream or goal. Let them energize you.

Feel one Gratitude.

Applaud yourself when you have achieved the five minutes of bliss.

Feel the joy if you went over the time limit.

Joys of Song


"If you can walk you can dance, if you can talk you can sing."

- Zimbabwean proverb

Music evolved as a social tool. The pleasure from singing together provides an evolutionary reward for gathering cooperatively, instead of staying isolated in caves. When we sing, the musical vibrations move and energize our body. Sounds fuel and alter our physical and emotional states.

Dr. Julene K. Johnson, a researcher who has focused on older singers, began a five-year study to examine group singing as a method to improve the health and well-being of older adults. He found that group singing becomes both exhilarating and transformative. Songs shared with other individuals return as thrills to all. Harmony adds to the delight.

Graham Welch,  professor of music education at the Institute of Education, spokesperson for the National singing program for school children, Sing Up, commented, “Psychological benefits are also evident when people sing together as well as alone because of the increased sense of community, belonging and shared endeavor.” 


Singing in front of a crowd, like karaoke, also builds confidence and well-being. Tra La La La La.

Researchers have discovered that singing is like a tranquilizer that soothes nerves and elevates spirits. 

Elation arises from endorphins, associated with feelings of pleasure. Singing releases them. 

Oxytocin, another hormone that cycles during singing, alleviates anxiety, stress, and enhances feelings of trust and bonding. 

Studies have found that singing lessens feelings of loneliness and depression.  

Singing also provides some of the same effects as exercise, with the release of endorphins. The singer experiences an overall lifted feeling and stress reduction. 

As an aerobic activity, singing provides more oxygen into the blood for enhanced circulation, to promote a good mood. 

Singing requires deep breathing, another anxiety reducer.

Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D summarizes the beneficial effects of singing alone and in groups:

1. Memorizing the words to songs improves brain function, including the ability to store and retrieve memory.

2. The exercises associated with group singing improve deep breathing and that has the added benefit of adding to relaxation and stress reduction.

3. Performing in front of an audience and as part of a group inspires self-confidence and self-esteem.

4. Group interaction in a singing group ends social isolation and fosters relationships of all kinds.

5. Group participation is fun and allows people to get away from daily stresses and worries.

Energize in song. Sing in the shower. Sing in the car. Sing on and on. 

Moods of the Sea

". . . every day on the balcony of the sea,

wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning."            
". . .and the water is so busy
with all its blue business
that arrivals go unrealized.
The waves keep up their song."
- Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda held a fascination for the sea. It became a metaphor for his emotions and travels. In his Isla Negra, he meditated on the nearness of blue.

During my morning runs, the sea behaves in a stroll of moods. Its animation stretches my senses. Some days the wave action reflects a satin stillness. In a moment, mounds appear as if a cat has arched its back, pushed forward and then returned to horizontal. Other days the spindrift curls off  a wave's crest like cat claws extended and hidden during movement toward the shore.

Water moves in a celadon glaze of Chinese porcelain. It reveals a transparency where orange fish swim.  A change in season promotes rupture and urgency. Aggressive in sapphire, wave action polishes the sandstone. Slush and slap push water in cacophony or symphony. Carried on a mist of salt, scents of cinnamon rolls and coffee mingle on sun-enchanted breezes.

The sea might match my mood or cause me to question my morning's emotions. Imagination tickles each breath untilI notice an elegance of seahorses driven in harness. In an instant they turn into scrambled egg whites.  Breakfast calls.

Take time by the sea to notice the changing colors of blue. Observe the shapes and sizes of waves. Let your fancy wander and write with the flow.

Take a Play Day

 "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

- Plato

Play promotes curiosity, seeks novelty, teaches perseverance and invites creativity. It even nourishes the immune system. Each person has a unique play personality. When one gets in touch with it, the pleasures and fun abound.

Animals teach human beings about play. If you dangle a string in front of a cat or play ball with a dog, you have seen their playful expressions in action.

In his book, The Genesis of Animal Play, Gordon Burghardt, psychology professor at the University of Tennessee, reports playful behavior in lizards, turtles, and birds. Even fish amuse themselves in play.

Stuart Brown, on of the authors of  Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination and Invigorates the Soul, believes in the necessity of play for children and adults. His organization,

The National Institute for Play focuses on making human play, "a credentialed discipline in the scientific community."




Many children today have lost touch with tree climbing and scouting for discoveries in nature. Computer games attract them more than wriggly creatures, bird song or flying clouds. Nagel Jackson writes, "The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who make outrageous connections. Only a mind which knows how to play can do that."

Problems find solutions through activities that have no specific goal. They flow in a fun process.

Become playful. You may have to work at it. Flow in a fun process.

Play in writing. Dangle words and images, make connections and search for nuances and discoveries.

A few play starters:

What would you do with a teapot, maple syrup, a parakeet, and a harmonica?

Go for a walk and choose five items. Touch, smell, listen and notice their charms. Play with them in conversations.

Teach a mockingbird your school's fight song.

Create a sandcastle with a crocodile.

How would you capture the sun for fun?

Invite a cheetah on your morning walk or run.

Ask Questions

"We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do by learning the answer itself."  - Lloyd Alexander

Spend time asking questions.  Let your thoughts latch onto weird and soak up strange and unusual. Absorb the unfamiliar. Explore and expose your mind to patterns and irregularities in nature.  

On a volatile subject, revolve your perspective to the opposite view. Write a response to: what if I believed . . .

Ask a series of questions about a topic that puzzles you. Notice how one question leads into different territory. Avoid answering the question. Keep asking and writing,

Move away from the concern and wander in free flow writing. Look at the photograph above and start writing. Let your mind swim in the sky. Begin with a "what if." Add playfulness and absurdity.  

What if I write about a cloud formation?  Will it wrap itself around me?  Can I outrun a sparrow?  How high could I jump without gravity? 

Notice if writing away from the issue that puzzles you brings insights.

Pine Cone Fun

How many ways could you use a pine cone? Make connections beyond the obvious and pursue innovations. 

In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson documents how pathbreaking innovations derive from inventors’ ability to notice previously unrecognized connections between related fields.

Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press developed from his understanding of the screw press in wine-making and his understanding of metal-typeface design. When he connected the synergies of two fields, he thought of the printing press.  

Creativity reveals the potential to make connections and conversions. Ideas move from abstract to concrete and weave possibilities.

Reconceive a pine cone and innovate beyond the shape and texture. What productive use follows?

Try for five.

Would the cone's scales become replacements for a disabled turtle's shell?

Turn them into nail files for a group of gray squirrels.

Use them above windows to for hummingbird perches.

Tune the scales for a rendition of your favorite song.

Combine them with . . . ?

Play with pine cone reconceptions. Recycle. Reuse. Replenish.

Brighten and Shine

A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day’s work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most.  
- Henry David Thoreau

Time to stop for nature's miracles

without cellphone delays.




When many of us require an audience,

the daisy never requests applause.

It needs to rise from the earth,

to shine with each morning's dew.

Reciprocate with a scent of awakening,

to flare magenta into a twirl.




Soon majesty of the moment will

attract a bee to nuzzle the future.

Find the Shine.

Follow the Brush

“The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.”  Kenko

In the 14th century, a poet and Buddhist monk named Yoshido Kenko wrote thoughts on life, death, nature, manners, humility, and simplicity. He lived in exile at a cottage where he composed his essays.

Kenko believed in 'zuihitsu' - follow the brush - as a method of composition.  He painted thoughts as they came to him on scraps of paper, then attached them to his cottage walls. They survived through the centuries by chance.  A poet friend collected them from the walls. Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) became a part of Japanese literature.

He felt leaving something incomplete gives room for growth. Kenko disliked perfection, believing asymmetry and irregularity became better goals in life. His imagery included moons in the clouds, cherry blossoms strewn and faded on the earth. He admired the uncertainty of a branch about to blossom.

Here are three of Kenko's views:
                 
A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky.

Are we only to look at flowers in full bloom, at the moon when it is clear?

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations—such is a pleasure beyond compare.

How will you follow the brush today and write about them?

A Hummingbird Flight

Writing with the hummingbird mind requires free flight. Words flutter in all directions as possibilities fly. Hummingbird movement employs the ability to make instant choices and changes depending upon curiosity and mind currents.

Intention gains power. It involves filling a page without stopping to edit.

The need to control relents to the flight of writing. Success arrives by the ability to make one word float into another.

The unexpected flutters from twists and turns.

This playful process uncovers the ultimate in self-acceptance.

Play with hummingbird flight and flexibility.

Begin at the top of the page or screen. 

Let the hummingbird spirit range with freedom and fun.

Messages and Myths

The Bini people of West Africa tell of a time when the sky came down so close everyone could reach and touch it. The sky provided food and nobody worked in those days. When hungry, individuals reached upward to break off a piece of the sky.

The sky demanded that the people should only take what they needed for one meal, no more. No one could store food. Everyone obeyed this rule except for one man who broke off a large piece. Unable to finish it, he tried to store it but the food rotted.

This angered the sky because of the waste. It shot up so far away no one could reach it. Since then people have to work to get food.

Recall the first story with a message or moral told to you during childhood. Why does this message stick with you?

Does your family tell a story based on a family happening that has become a myth everyone tells in a variety of versions?

If you cannot recall a story or family myth, create one.

Dwell in Novelty

     I believe that the creative individual not only respects the irrational  in himself, but courts it as the most promising source of novelty in his own thoughts. He rejects the demand of society that he should shun in himself the primitive, the uncultured, the naive, the magical, the nonsensical; that he must be a "civilized" member of the community. Creative individuals reject this demand because they want to own themselves totally and because they perceive a shortsightedness in the claim of society that all its members should adapt themselves to a norm for a given time and place.

   The truly creative individual stands ready to abandon all classifications and to acknowledge that life, particularly his own unique life, is rich with new possibilities. - Frank Barron, research psychologist at UC Berkeley in The Psychology of Imagination.

Take a day to immerse your imagination in novelty.

      Let curiosity pull you in myriad directions.

           Squint and search in the white spaces.

Write your name with water from puddles.

       Converse with sparrows and statues.

          Examine trees and leaves in detail.

Overturn rocks for discoveries.

               Design the food around your plate.

Consider the nonsensical with made up words: treacle, raptle, frodoodle.

        Find yourself in a realm of magic,

Write your discoveries in chartreuse ink.

For One Day . . .

For one day, let catsup
drip in designs on the table.

Start the unraveling into contentment.
First one finger, an ear, or a toe wriggle.

Forget lining up shoes or apples.
Permit towels a twist on their racks.

Smile as the floor sorts laundry.
Notice how socks appreciate solitude.

Watch the leaves bunch outside the window.
Spots on the glass deter bird crashes.

Don't stay within the lines.
Go color the loops of Ps and Os.

Advance into adventures.
Allow fears to melt into Fun.

Words by the Sea

Often I have chased a Black Phoebe or Pelican for a photo or pursued a line for a poem.  If I continue along the path, follow the stairs, the poem will show itself, or the bird will lead me to another discovery.  

Waiting while indulging in other observations often assists.

  

Today the sea reveals ennui.  Yet, it continues, wave after wave, until the energy returns to build it to new heights.

Wild parrots fly over my neighborhood. They perch in palm trees. Petulant for photographs, they relented for my capture even in a blur.









Joseph Campbell said, "If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential." How will you break from the path you usually take to discover other routes?

Look up and out. Discover a mystery.

What eludes you today?

The Question of You

Imagine the dimensions of life beyond our galaxy.

With the immensity of this vision in mind, reflect on your human form and circumstance.


During your life, in what ways have you discovered the pulse of humanness and nature? Is it a scientific or spiritual search for you?

Do you feel a combination of both?


Move from thinking of the immensity to daily life and choices you have made.  What do you need to do to complete your life's work?

Delve into the question of You.

Follow the notions.

Travel and Writing

When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. Things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in. 

 - D.H.  Lawrence

Travel adventures stimulate a trip into discovering more about the self. A mountain path entices with turns to arouse wonder. The way provides challenges of rocks and ruts. A traveler uses all the senses and never forgets to look up beyond leaves and branches.

A voyage into international paths awakens an awareness of the joys and challenges individuals encounter.

At times, we become set in our ways and dwell in automatic when our purpose, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, is "to taste experience to the utmost."

Including a Write Life during a travel adventure energizes experience, wonder and astonishment.

Travel in writing breaks outmoded ways of thinking. 

Write into what you search for. Ask what mystifies and thrills. Let your fingers escort you with a pen or computer keys.

Discover your true self. Delve into the discomfort caused by boredom and boundaries.

Express the textures of language and delights of food.

Wander into the wilderness to connect with your Write Life. Vary your speed and distance covered without a focus on the destination.

Write to escape and let the "unlying life" rush in.

Ponds of Possibility

- Rene Magritte

We need enchantment, fun, and wonder in life and in our poetry. Why not incorporate elements that mix illusion with the every day life? Let unlikely images collide. Weave dreams with logic. We can get our imaginative motors going by reading science fiction or fantasy and observing the elements in surreal painting.

Andre Breton felt dreams can open us to a “superior reality.” His ideas created a definition of surreal. Or what he termed, “psychic automation.” He encouraged free writing to discover the connections.

Rene Magritte created a variety of subjects this way. He painted a rock suspended over the sea, fish people on a rock, a locomotive coming out of the chimney under a clock.

Leap into ponds of possibility by trying out new muscles in your writing. Search for untouched areas you have never explored.  Move beyond the regular, expected and known imagery.  Shift your probabilities.  Color an alternative reality.


The Color Blue

What if
midmorning sky
sneaks into café tableware
tricked by the color blue.
Clouds dance on plates
grazing the toast and jelly
like newborn lovers
whose toes never
touch the earth
until familiarity
vacuums the crumbs
sending clouds back
to where
they are supposed
to belong.
                 - Penny Wilkes

Push logic and reason aside. Let your subconscious mind or dreams provide a playground. Connect objects and notions that you would not expect to see together.

Truest Feeling

Ernest Hemingway’s dictum: When you don’t know what to write, write the truest thing you know.

What subject could you write that involves a "truest feeling"? Write it without using the word, true. Make readers realize your truth with the use of metaphor and sensory imagery. Avoid abstract words. Bring color sensations into your writing about truth.

Consider:

Return to a time as a child when you experienced a truth or situation that involved feeling "true."

Recall a conversation with a friend about a truth.

Write a memory of winning an argument.

How will true speak to you in writing today?