Customer Favorites

Nature Meditation by a Window

With many people home-bound, we may need to get creative in seeking ways to connect with the natural world.  Sitting by an open window is one excellent practice for connecting with the outdoors, and it can be a powerful form of nature meditation as well.

“What is life?  It is the flash of a firefly in the night.  It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.  It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”

Crowfoot, Orator of the Blackfoot Confederacy

  1. Find a comfortable seat by an open window that looks outdoors.  
  2. Morning, during the dawn chorus when birds are most active, can be a perfect time to enjoy your morning coffee or tea as you observe a new day emerge.
  3. Set an intention to stay present, letting go of thoughts or stories in your mind as they arise, and instead focusing your attention on whatever is fascinating in your environment.
  4. Sit for at least 15-30 minutes if you can.  Practice regularly to help alleviate stress, increase your sense of connection with your local environment, and awaken your senses.

Micah Mortali Facebook Live clickable image for guided meditation earthday

 

Find more practices for connecting to nature in Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature by Micah Mortali.

Read Rewilding today!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes&Noble | Bookshop

The Freedom to Choose Something Different with Pema Ch...

Ever feel triggered and stuck in a reactive tailspin despite all your efforts? It is from this place — this hooked feeling — that we find ourselves responding in less than ideal ways. These are the moments when we may speak with venom, act out, or completely shut down when faced with challenging situations.

It is only later, when we’ve had the opportunity to calm down and reflect on our actions, that we wonder where we went wrong and how we could have chosen a more grounded response.

In The Freedom to Choose Something Different, Pema Chödrön examines and illuminates this nebulous process, clearly identifying where and when you have the opportunity to change your habitual response patterns. . . to choose something different. In this eight-part video course, Pema personally walks you through the landscape of these internal thunderstorms and guides you through the tools to cultivate inner freedom.

Discover more in the FREE introduction to the Online Course.

Jeff Strong: Drum Healing

Jeff Strong is a sound researcher and percussionist whose rhythm-based therapeutic music has been used in clinical settings worldwide. With Sounds True, Jeff has created several albums of rhythmic entrainment music, including The Better Sleep Program and The Focus and Attention Program. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Jeff about the concept of brain entrainment through rhythm and how it has deep roots in tribal ceremony. They talk about the therapeutic application of this music for anxiety, ADHD, autism, and mood disorders, and explain the difference between rhythmic entrainment and “neuro beat” recordings. Finally, Jeff offers two excerpts from The Brain Shift Collection for calming and the exploration of deep meditative states. (66 minutes)

Reginald A. Ray: The Awakened State

Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Reginald A. Ray, gifted teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for 40 years in the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Reggie is the founder of Dharma Ocean and author of the book Touching Enlightenment. His most recent program with Sounds True is a historic 37-hour audio training course on the pinnacle teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, titled Mahamudra for the Modern World. In this episode, Tami speaks with Reggie about the possibility of using modern methods for capturing the essence of student-to-teacher transmission, how glimpsing the awakened state fits in with Mahamudra training, and the “three teachers”—a human teacher, the natural state, and life itself. (65 minutes)

Karen Brody: Daring to Rest

Karen Brody is the founder of the Daring to Rest™ Program for Women, which promotes women’s empowerment and increased health through yoga nidra meditation. With Sounds True, Karen has published Daring to Rest: Reclaim Your Power with Yoga Nidra Rest Meditation. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Karen and Tami Simon have a serious discussion about the epidemic of burnout and exhaustion in modern culture. This is especially true for women, who are often held to the societal expectation that they serve the needs of those around them before they ever consider taking even the most necessary rest. Karen offers yoga nidra as a one part of the solution to this wave of fatigue, describing how her own practice and the cultivation of turiya—”the sleep of the yogis”—helped her move past a period of intense, chronic sleeplessness. Finally, Karen and Tami speak on the liberation in abandoning perfectionism and how yoga nidra can be folded into the course of our daily lives. (64 minutes)

Shining Bright Without Burning Out

Mara Bishop is a shamanic practitioner, intuitive consultant, teacher, author, and artist. In private practice, she uses her Personal Evolution Counseling™ method to provide an integrated approach to spiritual healing, personal growth, and emotional well-being. She is the author of the books Shamanism for Every Day: 365 Journeys and Inner Divinity: Crafting Your Life with Sacred Intelligence, and, with Sounds True, she is the author of the audio learning program Shining Bright Without Burning Out: Spiritual Tools for Creating Healthy Energetic Boundaries in an Overconnected World

In this podcast, Mara speaks with Sounds True’s founder, Tami Simon, about how in today’s world we can learn to value our sensitivity instead of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Mara and Tami also discuss shamanism as a path of direct revelation, accessing non-ordinary consciousness for insight and healing, the three phases of creating healthy energetic boundaries, the difference between “just plain stress” and burnout, discovering your energy personality archetypes, understanding your energy ecosystems and how they interact, working on yourself and bringing light to the shadow aspects of your personality, the difference between compassion and empathy, energetic cleansing methods, the paradox of “one and all one,” Mara’s concept of “powering on” to amplify and shine our inner light, how our world has become “overconnected” and how to avoid the burnout this can create, the shamanic practitioner as someone who can “see through the eyes of the heart,” and more.

>
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap