I Want to Live Like Animals

This may sound silly but do you remember the Savage Garden song from quite a few years ago now that said, "I want to live like animals, careless and free." Well, this was a beautiful song and while I was talking to a good friend of mine the other day it occurred to me that there are some fundamental differences in feelings between animals and humans that make us less likely to be "careless and free," so to speak.

While animals feel pain, pleasure, fear and love (some would debate this, but I am sure from my own experiences with my cat that they do feel love), there are two emotions animals lack: guilt, and regret.

It is true that humans are capable of some of the strongest and most beautiful emotions like love and trust, but the flipside is that regret and guilt are both very strong emotions too, and if we do not keep them in check, theye can become hugely self destructive. If only we could learn to have no regrets like the animals. If only somehow we could make our brain understand that at any point in time in our lives we make the best decision we can with the knowledge that was available to us in that situation.

If we only understood that hindsight is useless and self-berrating. We always do whatever we can with the circumstances available to us at our then present time. If we fully understood this, then we wouldn't need to regret because we would know that we did what we could. and nothing less. However, unfortunately we are obsesssed with hindsight. We become obsessed thinking about the past and what we think we should have done, we waste time regretting our actions or worse - feeling guilty about them, which is not only pointless, but also a waste of our precious time and is damaging to our emotional well-being.

When you find yourself regretting something, or feeling guilty - please try to remember: there are no wrong decisions in life - there are just experiences and lessons to be learnt. Please lets all try to live a little "like the animals," and set your soul free.

Paniyiri

This weekend is Paniyiri weekend! For those of you that haven't a clue what I am talking about, Paniyiri is Greek for "festival." So this weekend is Greek Festival weekend in Brisbane!

Ever since I was a kid I've loved, enjoyed and looked forward to Paniyiri. Most years I either dance or sing, many times the same repertoire as the year before.

One of my friends asked me how I can still be enthusiastic after more than 20 years of attending. I thought about this question and I asked myself, "What is is about Paniyiri that year after year makes me excited and happy?" "Is it the food?" Sure the food is great, but its not the drawing point. "Is it the Greek wines?" Hmmm, the Greeks aren't really the best wine makers! Surprise surprise, its actually the music!

At Paniyiri, a live band plays all my favourite Greek songs - new and old, and the atmosphere created by the live band - up there high on that big stage - is incredible. And its not just me that feels it. Every year I watch (and dance with) hundreds of non-greeks on the big grassy dance floor. They haven't got a clue what the song lyrics mean or how the dance is danced, but they feel moved by the music and the atmosphere and they feel compelled to dance. Its a wonderful thing to witness - so many people so happy and feeling so great that they just want to move.

That is what brings me back ever year.

So if you live in Brisbane, and you've got nothing else planned this weekend, head down to the Paniyiri at Musgrave park and have a dance - you'll feel so much better for it!

Singing for the Soul

The band that I sometimes sing with asked me to sing last Friday night at the restaurant at which we often perform. I had had a hectic week from hell and, come Friday afternoon I still had a squillion things to finish before I could call it a week.

Yes, I was tired, in fact, that's probably an understatement: I was exhausted. However, eventually I went home and started getting ready for the gig at the restaurant.

My husband came home and saw me getting ready, despite my fatigue and weariness, and he asked me why I bother going to sing at the restaurant. He said, "You are hardly paid anything for it, and its not like you need the work." All of what he said is true.

However, if I were singing merely for the money - well, I would probably never sing! I explained to him that he had missed the point entirely. I dont sing because I'm paid to: I sing because it makes me feel wonderful.

Have you ever noticed that when you are particularly happy that you whistle, hum or sing a tune? It is no coincidence: happiness and singing are interrelated. Singing can lift your spirits. It is liberating and satisfying as you are using your very own unique instrument to make your very own music. If you have a voice, then you have the potential to be a musician! What a gift!

But apart from making you feel better, Doctors have also advocated singing for health, saying that it encourages good posture and deep breathing. So really, its almost a form of meditation. If you have ever been in your car, or in the shower or in your room and you have played and/or sung the same song over and over again, you will understand just how meditative music can be. When you are listening to, and singing a song that you love, you are thinking about nothing else but the lyrics and the sound that you are producing. Two of the purposes of meditation are to establish a good breathing pattern and to make the mind focus on one thing only, at the exclusion of everything else. This is an exact description of me when I'm singing - and for many of you too, I imagine.

To read about the benefits of singing for mental health, check out this article by Wendy Moore published in The Observer. And finally: just keep on singing your way to good mental health!

Making Music

A psychiatrist that I was once talking to said to me,

"Tina, do you ever wonder why none of my clients are ever musicians?"

"No, why?" I thought to myself, and the answer was really a simple one. Making music is really creative therapy, so musicians basically receive therapy as a full time job! How wonderful is that!

But thats not to say that no one else can benefit from such therapy as well. Everyone has the ability to make music. A good friend of mine who was very shy, decided he wanted to have singing lessons, and his confidence changed dramatically just after a few lessons. My mother, has no background in music but she loves to sing and to listen to music.

A few weeks ago I was really in a rut. The office was bringing me down - long hours at work and not much fun. Then a friend of mine invited me to watch his band play in the evening. I was reluctant at first because it was far away and on work night, but I decided to go. And WOW... I had forgotten just how uplifting it is to watch live music! By halfway through the act I was clapping and singing along and I felt energised and rejuvenated. Why had I let myself go so long without live music!

I've made a rule to go every Thursday night - That should kick start the weekend nicely!

Do something you're NOT good at - live outside your comfort zone

I have this bumper sticker on my car, it says... "Do something you are not good at - live outside your comfort zone."

I had to remind myself this morning why I originally purchased this sticker. Far too often in life we find things that we are really good at and stick to doing just them. Most of us fall into this trap. I so frequently hear people say, "Oh no, I don't dance, I'm not good at dancing." I often am guilty of the same... especially when it comes to group sport!

Whoever said life was limited to things that we are good at? That could make for a very boring existence! Surely life isn't just about doing things that we are good at over and over again? Its about enjoyment and trying new things, gaining new experiences.

I was forced to take some of my own advice this morning. I had become quite apprehensive about the course I had enrolled in to do this week. Its a ballet summer school which will concentrate largely on intesive technical study, something I have not undertaken for quite some time and was never extremely good at (although I always enjoyed it). Given the nature of this course, I will no doubt be the eldest by far (at least by 10 years) and the largest in the class. I will also most likely be the least experienced as it has been sometime that I've focused on my ballet technique.

I was having second thoughts about it this morning before I hopped in my car to go to work, and then I saw my bumper sticker and thought, "You love these classes!" Remember last time you did it how much fun it was and how invigorating it was to be around young people. It doesn't matter if you're not as good as the others. If you were perfect you wouldn't need to go anyway and it wouldn't be any fun because you would have nothing to learn!"

I'm starting to think my $3.00 bumper sticker was a good investment!

Dance like no one is Watching!

Last night I danced as if no one was watching! Yesterday was a particularly low day for me. Nothing in particular had triggered my low feeling...it was just one of those days: end of the week; fatigue; energy low; too much time in front of the computer; some of my projects not moving as fast as I'd like; not enough time spent with loved ones... I was down.

I arrived home with the energy of a stick of glue! Fortunately for me, my husband shares my love of spanish music and had a new flamenco CD playing. It was a CD that mixed old and traditional sounding flamenco songs into new style dances and it immediately made me want to move.

However we live in a small apartment with very little space once the lounge and TV were placed. I stepped tentatively onto the balcony (which faces a very busy main road) and I thought, "what the heck" - I flung my arms into the air and stomped around my little balcony as if I were dancing the streets of seville! And boy did it feel great!

We've all heard the saying: "Work as if you have no money, love as if you've never been hurt, dance like no one is watching, sing like no one is listening, and live each day as if its your last..." well I'm dancing like no one is watching...and I'm working on the rest!

Enjoy!

Despite the fact that I advocate Dance as an artistic form of expression above and beyond anything else, the fact is, I am a trained dancer as well which means that I have gone through years of formal, technical training (especially in ballet). Anyone who has undergone such training will understand the importance of perfecting technique above anything else - the training is rigid, tough and inflexible: but is a vital part of a dancer's journey. (And we all love it)

Last night I attended the last part of a 3 night course of Flamenco dancing in which we were privileged enough to have a flamenco artist from spain instruct us. Admittedly I struggled with the bulerias and the timing and I'm sure I had a puzzled look on my face for most of the time as I tried to make my feet move quickly enough to the fast and syncopated rhythm and I was constantly frustrated with my inability to perform the steps perfectly.

It was at one of these points that the teacher turned to face us and said, "I had hoped by now you would be enjoying the dancing, but you are not. You are all worried about the steps and thinking what is coming next and you are not enjoying it. Remember, dancing is about enjoying and feeling the movement - just move and feel beautiful - the steps will come - this is flamenco!"

I breathed a sigh of reflief. This is what I always say, and yet in the heat of the moment, in the class, I had once again become a young perfectionist, caught up in technique, but lost all feeling. I remembered quickly why I had come to the workshops and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the class: despite my completely messed up footwork!