Musical Reflections

I was recently on a Zoom call and someone asked the question, “What are the blessings you’ve received from the coronavirus?” Honestly, the question took me aback, because there’s been so much focus on the negative. Even though I don’t feel like I’ve personally lived in the negativity, I wasn’t prepared to list my blessings. After taking some time to reflect, here’s a few things I’m grateful for:

• Playing my pedal harp to “send out” peace and calm energetically every day.
• A deeper connection/relationship with my friends and support system.
• Easing up on Mother Earth (reduced pollution, cleaner waters, less frenetic busy-ness, etc.)
• Daily walks in nature and breathing in fresh air. (I’m also so glad the pandemic “hit” in mid-March vs. mid-January in Minnesota!)
• Connecting daily with people I had lost touch with or hadn’t connected with for a long time.
• Meditating daily to help fill “the field” with love and peace.
• Cleaning. Cleaning. Cleaning. My house feels lighter and more organized, and I love this feeling!
• Working with my harp therapy students. As we have connected each week, we spend the first few minutes of each lesson processing our CoVid experiences, as well as mutually supporting each other.
• Working on a couple exciting, new creative projects!
• Time to enhance and deepen my self-care practice.

I could go on … I’m amazed at how long the list already is! What’s on your list of CoVid blessings? As we “hold space” for the struggles and pain of CoVid, we can also be grateful. I invite you to reflect on your CoVid blessings (if you haven’t already done so)…

Have you heard the spiritual terms 3D and 5D? “D” stands for dimension and as a planet, we are upleveling our vibration from the third dimension (3D) to the fifth dimension (5D). So, let’s explain:

• 3D is about separation which means us vs. them, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad “guys,” and also who is to blame, who can we invade/which countries can we take over, etc. You can probably see this is where we have been as a culture and world for a very long time!
• 4D is the awareness we are more than just our physical body; we claim our soul. The spiritual component is “I create/co-create my reality.” This stage in the Ascension energy progression is taking actions such as saying mantras, affirmations, paying attention to our positive/negative language, etc. It is also about setting intentions and manifesting.
• 5D is unity consciousness. In other words, we are all connected. The world is a mirror and we change the mirror by changing ourselves. 5D is also about deleting any limits on joy, peace, love, possibilities, etc. which ultimately increases our vibration. We can say, “Wouldn’t it be nice to feel/experience XXX?” and then, we watch it happen!!

Hopefully these explanations are helpful and you can see where you personally are at on the 3D/5D continuum. While this can be a challenging time, it is also quite exciting! We wish you expanded peace and blessings at this time on your journey…

The new “Sounds of Healing for Wellness Professionals” on-line course is now available for $58. A brief description is healing music can play a unique role, augmenting one’s self-care methods and contributing richness to one’s personal healing journey. This experiential course will explore how music nurtures you, the healer/wellness professional, and those you serve. Tami Briggs, therapeutic harpist, weaves together practical tips, powerful stories and plays musical examples, demonstrating music’s role in wellness—for yourself and those you serve.

The course objectives include:

• Explore musical applications that support your wellness practice, and optimize you and your clients’ well-being.
• Discuss the benefits of incorporating sound healing in your wellness practice.
• Experience a musical journey where you can reflect, relax, and renew, with specific applications to the healer’s personal journey and self-care.

Go to this link to learn more:  https://courses.centerwithin.com/p/sounds-of-healing-for-wellness-professionals.

Two continuing education units (CEUs) are available for many healers, so you get the benefits of learning + obtaining your needed credits.

Feel free to reach out if you have questions or need additional information. I look forward to connecting!

So, what does this mean?!!

A Coherence Hotspot is a commUnity to learn about and practice personal coherence and apply this to global coherence. (Coherence is the healthy state when our heart, mind and emotions are in energetic alignment.)

Coherence is “achieved” by the Heart Lock-In Technique created by Heart Math. Here’s the steps … and we encourage you to try this:

• Focus on your heart by placing your hands over your heart.
• Imagine your breath flows in and out of your heart/chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.
• Inhale five slow counts; exhale five slow counts.
• Once a steady, even rhythm is established, focus on a feeling of love, appreciation, gratitude, kindness, compassion, joy, peace, balance, bliss, elation, etc. (You can also focus on a person, pet, special place, accomplishment, thing/object, etc.)
• This is coherent breathing.

This is powerful when done personally and the energy gets even more “amped up” when done in meditation groups. As meditation groups are forming all over the world vis-à-vis Coherence Hotspots, this is creating global collective coherence to effect social change. This is an opportunity to positively impact humanity, our future and the Earth. For example, when a group of people become coherent, the structure of the plasma and electromagnetic field of the Earth beneath them changes!

I am a Coherence Hotspot facilitator and the co-founders (Dirk Terpstra and Hilary Davies) are looking for at least 350,000 facilitators worldwide. If this resonates with you, learn more at www.CoherenceHotspot.com.

I posted about harp therapy lessons a couple months ago. After playing at the hospital and hospice bedside for the past 24 years, I feel called to share what I have learned and experienced via these therapeutic harp lessons. It is my passion to teach harpists who want to learn more about playing the harp in the healthcare setting. These lessons can be preparatory to study in a certified harp therapy program or as a “stand alone” to begin offering harp therapy services.

I’m happy to share my first three students have completed the eight-week course. They were a joy to teach and each of them will do great work with the harp at the hospital and hospice bedside. I use the Zoom videoconferencing platform so I can work with anyone, anywhere in the world! In fact, my students were located in Minneapolis, Michigan and the Netherlands. If you are interested in learning more, let’s connect!

When CoVid-19 first hit, one of my fellow harp therapists in Italy (Marianne Gubri) started a Facebook group called #MusicHealsTheWorld. What a great idea! And the posts have been so inspirational … truly, amazing to see how the global music community is helping the world heal at this very important time. This community currently has 1.3 million members and it continues to grow!

If you are interested in getting inspired and joining the conversation, look up #MusicHealsTheWorld on Facebook. Welcome to musicians doing their part to contribute to hope and healing.

Seems like this post is more important than ever … I recently heard a story about Irving Berlin and the beautiful patriotic song, “God Bless America!”

Irving Berlin had a “reject trunk” where he stored songs that weren’t worthy of continuing to work on and/or produce. He placed “God Bless America” in there around 1918. Then, 20 years later, Kate Smith came to Mr. Berlin in need of a song for her radio show. He pulled out “God Bless America,” finished it and it was first introduced on Armistice Day in 1938.

If you would like to download this beautiful song on the harp, click here.

I have been passionate about and working towards world peace for much of my life. It all started in 1982 when I returned to the U.S. after living in Switzerland for six months on the International Four-H Youth Exchange (IFYE) program.

The IFYE program has been uninterrupted for 72 years … until the coronavirus. This year, the program is suspended to keep everyone involved as safe as possible. Personally, I know this is the right decision but it is still hard to “wrap my mind around” not having exchanges in both directions (going to international destinations and coming to America). The communication I received letting me know of this suspended decision made it very clear that “the show will go on” next year!

On a different note, but still related to world peace – have you noticed how we now care about Italians and Spaniards and Koreans and someone in Boise, ID and Miami, FL? Never before has every person in the world cared about one issue – the coronavirus. Isn’t that incredible?! Talk about the world coming together … for peace and harmony. We truly are all connected now! It’s been a long time coming … it is certainly feeling like we have arrived and world peace is possible!

You have likely seen the book or heard the expression, “All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.” Well, recently on Facebook, I saw a post (and I don’t know who posted it – otherwise, I would give you credit), “All I Need to Know About Life, I Learned from a Harp.” (I am also not sure who the author of the sayings is – again, I’m happy to give credit once I learn who wrote it.)

Some of these are quite applicable to our times:

• Take it one note at a time.
• Never stop playing.
• When in doubt, gliss. (For non-harpists “gliss” means glissando – what the harp is best known for!)
• Hug your harp and you will vibrate.
• Some days it’s OK to be out of tune.
• Life is not a dress rehearsal … harp on it!
• Heaven can wait – harpists are pre-registered.
• Buzzing is a sound in nature.
• Touch someone’s harp – go to jail. That’s the law!

We love the harp and hope you do, too. Enjoy … in joy!

In the last blog post, I talked about I’m a musician who also loves sports!

And interestingly, I had an intense dream as the economy was collapsing connected to the coronavirus. Here’s the dream…

I was in a parking lot and I was talking with several professional sports players. They were lamenting they couldn’t play and consequently, make their huge salaries. I said, “Maybe it’s time for our culture/world to ‘get’ that we need harp therapy and music, and not sports to help us heal.”

I awoke with hope! Perhaps music and musical groups can finally become valued, well paid(!), as well as model teamwork and cooperation. With sports, it is always about competition as someone wins and the other loses. A music concert/event leaves everyone feeling a winner! I believe this dream/vision also includes artists and the entire healing community.

Was my dream a part of the new paradigm that is being created? We’ll see … we can hope, right?!