Music Mindfulness Podcast with Josh Brill
Episode #001 | Intro and Relaunch
Episode Summary
This episode marks the rebirth of this podcast as the Music Mindfulness Podcast with Josh Brill. I share what this podcast is about and what future episodes will be like. I also included a simple yet effective music mindfulness meditation that you can do!
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Music Mindfulness Podcast with Josh Brill
Episode #001 TRANSCRIPT
Hey, my friend, and welcome to the music mindfulness podcast with Josh brill. I am Josh. And this podcast was formerly called the tuning into harmony podcast. But seeing as I haven't released any episodes in about four or five years, it felt like a good time to reestablish this with a name and a concept that feels very, very important. And in is basically where my primary work is today, which is the intersection of music and mindfulness together. So in the music, mindfulness podcast and episodes to come, we are going to explore, as the name says, music as a mindfulness practice. So we are going to explore learning music, from a mindfulness perspective, playing music as a mindfulness practice, listening to music relating to music. Many, many, many different aspects can be covered. And a big part of it is in this big part of my teaching currently, and my the courses that I've developed, are based on this concept, which is that music, in addition to being something that we all love, and a wonderful, entertaining thing that we humans do, and something that really enriches our lives, as listeners, and as participants, you know, for out at a concert dancing, or whatever it is, we know how important music is, in fact, you know, it might be one of the most important things that we humans have, if I really think about it. Music enriches our lives to such a degree, it's almost even higher to begin to understand the depth. But I'm sure we all know. And if you're listening to this right now, my assumption is, is you've had a relationship with music songs have touched you concerts have touched you, artists have touched you, perhaps you play music, and you've had the experience of learning and growing as a musician, or playing an instrument or jamming with friends or playing in front of a campfire. Music enriches our lives so deeply. And it's such a beautiful approach to music to look at it from the mindfulness perspective. I have been playing musics true for about 34 years at this point. I'm just about to turn 42 next month in February, and I began playing guitar when I was eight. And it's been quite a journey. Let's just say that were many, many, many, many journeys. But my current focus is, as I mentioned before, teaching about music as mindfulness. And it works so well. And throughout the further episodes, we're really going to explore all of these different concepts and how to apply them to your life. And really, my hope and my intention, my aim for this podcast is that it's something that is enriching something that that's helpful, something that's useful for you. So in our episodes together, I'll I'll teach and share about different concepts of music, mindfulness, we will have interviews with various people, exploring music and mindfulness together, I'll include some music for you to listen to, that will help you I as a musician, I Create Music intentionally and with through my studies in my practices that help engage the meditative states. And where I am today, and today happens to be January 4 of 2020. To where I am today is I feel committed to helping bring this into the world. We really need this if we think of our selves in our lives, as music as a musical instrument as a musician, but let's actually begin with it as a musical instrument. One of the most important things if not the most important thing of a musical instrument is that it's in tune and out of tune instruments creates challenges and out of tune instruments, playing with an in tune instrument creates dissonance and ultimately, we're looking for harmony, whatever that might mean for you.
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So if we approach our life in ourself and our body and our mind and our emotional state, from the metaphor from the frame of a musical instrument, it brings up the question, are we in tune? You know, are we feeling flat, depressed or lethargic? are we feeling sharp, tense and anxious? Or are we in that sweet spot where things just flow and we can explore our mind like that our body, our feelings. So music, mindfulness, can be looked at as a tuning device, approaching music as a mindfulness practice to tune ourselves and ultimately tuning our attention. Because that that's our awareness is another way to say it. Because that's the primary interface between the external world and the inner world, meaning, the sound vibrations that exists outside of our body, and everything that's going on inside of our body, our cells and our thoughts and our feelings and all of that type of things. So mindful, this music, mindfulness is really bridging the inner world and the outer world together in a symbiotic relationship in a harmonious relationship. So in this podcast, not today, because they I just wanted to chime in and basically mark the new beginning of this podcast. But in the future episodes, we are going to explore all this How does rhythm rhythm affect our life? How does frequency affect our life? How can we approach learning various instruments, as in mindfulness practice, I have personally, a couple courses developed something called the yoga of guitar, something called the yoga of ukulele. Both of those are online courses. And I also offer group courses that are live that meet live something called ukulele mindfulness and something called Guitar mindfulness. And I actually have some other ones coming up. So those are hands on tactile experiencial approaches to music, mindfulness using different instruments. And we'll talk about that in these further episodes future episodes. So for today, I just wanted to quickly chime in, as I mentioned a few seconds ago, and just establish this new beginning of the music, mindfulness podcast. So I look forward to sharing a lot with you moving forward. And before I wrap up today, you know, it would be good just to explore a very, very simple practice with music and mindfulness. And, you know, mindfulness is a term that we hear a lot these days, and you know, for good reason, we need it. We need to incorporate mindfulness in our lives, it makes our life better. If we are more present and aware with ourselves, with our circumstances, with our actions, with our relationships, with everything we do, the more aware we are, the better the experience becomes, you know, just if you think about it, Jever sit down for dinner. And before you know it, you look at the plate, and it's empty. It worried about that food go. So wouldn't you know, that's an example of not necessarily being mindful with our experience. And then before we know it, it's over. And you know, what happened? Versus really enjoying and savoring and, and having an experience with with your meal in this example, enriches the quality of the experience. So why not enrich the quality of the experience of your life, and your relationships? And why not use music to do it because music is so beautiful anyways. So when I talk about mindfulness, and we'll unpack this in future episodes, but just for the time being, mindfulness is a relationship and awareness to our experience. The the instruments of our awareness is our attention. And I'm sure as you notice, attention is in short supply these days. You know, ADHD at the these terms are thrown around a lot. But I think experientially a lot of us can relate to a difficulty with having a sustained and engaged attention.
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When we're overwhelmed, it's hard to maintain attention and focus I think a lot of us are overwhelmed these days, even if we don't even realize it, it's been a hard, challenging time to be a human, with so much coming at us. So. So mindfulness is the is connecting in with our attention, our awareness, and using music as the bridge for that. So here's a quick, you know, practice that that you can do. And it's so simple. But it's something that I think we may have, many of us may maybe have lost connection to, which is actually listening. Now, you're listening right now, perhaps you're doing other things that I know I do other things when I listen to podcasts, or maybe you're washing the dishes, or driving or taking a walk, or, you know, whatever it is, but you are listening. And hopefully you are hearing these words and receiving them and perhaps even enjoying the podcast so far. But listening is one of the forms of our attention, our listening attention, our auditory attention. And in our world, we spend a lot of time a lot of our attention in visual attention. You know, how many hours of the day are we looking at screens and absorbing things through our eyes and that visual attention. And if we're listening to music, while receiving a lot of information with our eyes, it's we're not really absorbing as much of the sound or we're not really absorbing the experience as much. You know, similarly, you know, eating while watching something, which Hey, I do all the time. But you know, we're not really absorbing the food, although it could be a nice experience, sometimes, there's no judgement about it. Anyway, the point being, that, when we actually train our attention to stay in a place of listening, we're going to have a deeper relationship with the sound or whatever that we are listening to. It's somewhat recent, that music has moved beyond just the auditory experience and become a visual experience as well, you know, probably with the advent of MTV and music videos. But before that, and that's in its before my time, I grew up in 80. So I grew up with music videos. But before that, my assumption is my senses and you know, at least judging by watching older movies and and or movies that represents a pre music video time, that people sat and listened to music, just listened to music, maybe looking at a vinyl, you know, at the album cover while listening, but really listening. And I don't know how much we do that these days, that we really, really listen. So this first practice meditation that I would recommend is so simple in concept, yet, I really encourage you to give it a shot and see what happens. And it's simply delete actually listen to a song without doing any thing else. So what I what I recommend that I have some of my own music that I can offer. You can find that on Spotify, under Joshua brill, as an artist, there's music that I've created specifically for meditation and yoga and relaxation. But you really can do this with anything, I would recommend. You don't listen to anything too intense, whatever that means for you, although you could if you feel called, but we want to, we don't want to overstimulate our senses. So something that that is somewhat less intense, whatever that means for you. Maybe it's a song you love, maybe it's something completely, completely new that you've never heard of. But here's what you do, you set aside the time to actually receive the sound. So there's a little bit of preparation one, of course would be choosing what you're going to listen to, I highly recommend that you use headphones. The best quality headphones you have if you just have the you know the air that the earbuds or whatever, that's fine as well. But there's something about headphones that helps us
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really tune into the sound of course because you know, it's a direct input into our ears. So picking the song, putting on your headphones, either sitting up straight in a meditative position that could be on a chair that could be on a floor level hang down, feel free to lay down. There's no rules to this, but just be comfortable. Why I recommend sitting up, if possible, is it allows for our attention to stay a little bit more alert, when we're lying down, it can be easy to possibly drift off into sleep or our thoughts can wander but of course, do whatever you need to do. But what you're going to do is you're going whatever position you're at, you're going to close your eyes. And just begin to bring your awareness inside really, really simply by following your breath. So before you even play the music, you're just observing the inhale as you're breathing, and the exhale as you're breathing out, so you just want to place your attention, simply on the breath, simply on the inhale. And the exhale, and you want to follow the full breath in with your attention. So as you're breathing in, you're aware of the full arc of that breath. And then as you exhale, you're aware of the release of the breath. And just do a few rounds of that until you begin to notice a sense of settling. You know, it's easy to be overstimulated this day. So it takes a little time to settle. And when you feel settled, play the song. And as you play that, as you listen to the song, just do your best to stay primarily in your auditory attention, how deeply Can you listen to the song with your eyes closed, that really helps to keep your eyes closed, of course, turning off any dings from your phone or the computer, hopefully undisturbed by anybody in your house and really take a take the song to absorb as deeply as you can. And I think you might be surprised as to what happens. And after you're done, just after the song is over, just sit for a few minutes and just be with the silence after be with yourself be with the connection. And I think you might find that no matter what the music is, by taking that time to actually deeply listen to even just one song, three minutes, five minutes, seven minutes, depending on the song that you will feel more connected to your inner self made perhaps you'll feel a little bit more internal. That doesn't mean closed off internal, it just means centered inside. Because our world is so demanding from the external world where there's so many things in the external that we can get outside of ourselves are disconnected. So by taking the time to deeply listen, perhaps you might feel yourself more connected afterwards. I'd recommend you do that a couple of days in a row and just just see what happens. Just notice there's no judgment either way, there's no way to do this right or wrong. It's just your experience with listening deeply to sound to music. So give that a shot. Well, my friend, it's been a joy to share just this this bit of an intro for further episodes and for this podcast for this series this this rebrand this rebirth, this this renewal. It truly is an honor and a pleasure to share this with you, I really look forward to sharing more with you. If you feel inclined to listen more, please subscribe. And if there's a Like button, you can hit that like button if there's a review that always helps and share with loved ones and friends who you feel might benefit from this. I look forward to sharing more in the near very near future. And until then, I hope you enjoy this meditation. And I will look forward to sharing some more time and space with you on the next music mindfulness podcast. So lots of love everybody. I hope you have a beautiful beginning for the new year if you're listening to this in January of 2022 If you're in the future
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I hope you're enjoying the future. And I hope you're enjoying your moments and I just hope you and savor your moments and looking forward to explore more with you. So wishing you all the best wishing you harmony and love. Namaste. I'll see you next time.