JoySpring: Musical Gifts, Vol. 2 – Take a Breath and Sing a Song with Peggo

As promised with our first edition on April 2, all of us at the Music School are eager to share musical gifts with you as we weather this crisis separately but together, united in spirit and musical community. Please watch for more each week from our faculty, friends, students, and alumni.

Here is Vol. 2, from longtime faculty member Peggo Horstmann Hodes, director of Songweavers and the Northern Lights Vocal Ensemble at the Music School. So many of us have learned valuable healing techniques, and certainly countless wonderful songs, from Peggo. We hope this brings you comfort, joy, and a smile, as we take a breath and sing a song together.

Thank You...

Faculty, staff, and trustees have been amazing in their dedication to building new pathways to continue to serve you, our musical community. Please add your voice to the chorus of believers in the Music School's future by considering a donation . Your confidence and support will make such a difference in these uncertain times. Thank you!!

Dear Music School Family,

The Music School is my community, my home away from home. Thank you all for being such an enthusiastic, vibrant part of it. Let’s sing together and vibrate love, health, and vitality out to include everyone in this community. I am deeply grateful for all of you.

Peggo

Sound Healing

Singing together creates powerful connections – a synchrony of breath, vibration and energy. This is obvious when we sing together in person. But it also works when we’re apart.

Singing is breath vibrating vocal cords, amplified in resonant spaces above the lungs, pouring out our mouth in sound. Singing is the energy of breath – air waves – transferred to sound waves. When we sing, we light up the parts of our brains wired for melody, harmony and rhythm. Primarily in the right hemisphere, these parts of the brain light up whether we sing out loud or silently. Singing silently still generates electro-magnetic energy, which activates the brain. We can use this principle to sing together while we are actually apart.

Jonathan Goldman, a pioneer in sound healing, uses this simple equation: frequency + intention = healing. In other words, singing plus our intention to sing together equals healing.

Sing a Song

Here are three songs for you—imagine that you are singing with the whole CCMS community. We are all singing together, breathing together, sustaining that breath over time, making a grand chorus, each of us a cell of sound creating a united field of harmonic resonance. Singing, we breathe slower and deeper. Our fears are subsumed by the higher delight of our voice. The heart slows and the mind slows. Just writing this, my whole system has calmed down, making me feel more centered and relaxed.

All you need to do is sing. In tune or out of tune. With gusto or reserve. Confidently or carefully. No judgment. No mental critique. Just be who you are, where you are and SING!

Here’s the first one, called Every Little Cell . It’ s very simple, sending a positive, happy message to our cells to stay healthy and well. I learned this from a video a Songweaver sent me of Australian music therapist Allison Davies. Singing this little happy tune will enliven your whole system. Here are the words:

“Every little cell in my body is happy. Every little cell in my body is well. (2x)

I’m so glad every little cell in my body is happy and well.” (2x)

CLICK HERE for audio file of EVERY LITTLE CELL

The second song, In These Hard Times, is by Linda Hirshhorn. She is happy to share this with everyone. On the recording, I sing the main tune four times. Half-way through, I add a slightly higher harmony. Just sing along. Rewind and sing again. After a bit, you’ll have it memorized and find yourself singing it all day. Here are the words:

“In these hard times there will be singing.

There will be singing in these hard times.” (2x)

CLICK HERE for audio file of IN THESE HARD TIMES

And to close our song session, here is Yemaya – I sang this out at the tip of Seapoint Beach. It turned out to be the last day for walking on the beaches before they were closed. I have started with the tune. If this song is new to you, just sing the tune with me even when I switch to another part. Or sing whatever part you want–free play. The words associated with this song are perfect for this time: "You are beauty, you are bright, you are healing, you are light.”

CLICK HERE for video of YEMAYA (broswer will open in YouTube)

Take a Breath

Here is a simple, calming breath exercise. I have sent this to all my singers. I do it frequently myself. It comes from the Sufi yoga tradition. Here is the sequence.

a) We are going to be inhaling white light through the crown of the head and exhaling blue flame out the soles of our feet. The white light is source, purity, love, compassion, unconditional, whatever it means to you and the blue flame is all the negative, toxic energy that is ready to leave the body and mind right now.

b) Sit comfortably with your spine as long as it naturally is or lie down on something supportive. Take a couple of deep slow breaths in your own rhythm to center. Inhale through your nose and exhale (blow steadily) out your mouth for all of the following steps.

c) Keeping a fairly consistent count in your head, inhale white light for the count of 3.

Exhale blue flame for the count of 4.
Inhale white light for the count of 4, exhale blue flame for 5.
Inhale white light for 5, exhale blue flame for 6.
Inhale for 6, exhale 7.
Inhale 7, exhale 8.
Inhale 8, exhale 9.
Inhale 9, exhale 10.
Inhale 10, exhale normally, letting go of the counts.

d) Sit still for a few moments, breathing into the expanded space inside your body. Smile.

Reflect on our blessings

Every week, I start Songweaver rehearsals with an appropriate reading. A Songweaver sent this to me on March 13, when the reality of this pandemic began to dawn in each of us. No Songweavers spring concerts. No ensemble rehearsals. No performances in the Recital Hall. No in-person lessons. Everyone hunkered at home. What we can do, as Fr. Hendrick says, is sing!

LOCKDOWN

By Fr. Richard Hendrick, OFM

Yes there is fear.

Yes there is isolation.

Yes there is panic buying.

Yes there is sickness.

Yes there is even death.

But,---

They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise

You can hear the birds again.

They say that after just a few weeks of quiet

The sky is no longer thick with fumes

But blue and grey and clear.

They say that in the streets of Assisi

People are singing to each other

across the empty squares,

keeping their windows open

so that those who are alone

may hear the sounds of family around them.

They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland

Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.

Today a young woman I know

is busy spreading fliers with her number

through the neighborhood

So that the elders may have someone to call on.

Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples

are preparing to welcome

and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary

All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting

All over the world people are looking at their neighbors in a new way

All over the world, people are waking up to a new reality

To how big we really are.

To how little control we really have.

To what really matters.

To Love.

So we pray and we remember that

Yes there is fear.

But there does not have to be hate.

Yes there is isolation.

But there does not have to be loneliness.

Yes there is panic buying.

But there does not have to be meanness.

Yes there is sickness.

But there does not have to be a disease of the soul

Yes there is even death.

But there can always be a rebirth of love.

Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.

Today, breathe.

Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic

The birds are singing again

The sky is clearing,

Spring is coming,

And we are always encompassed by Love.

Open the windows of your soul

And though you may not be able

to touch across the empty square,

Sing

By Fr. Richard Hendrick, OFM

March 13th 2020

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