MAY 10th – 7-9pm

Awakenings Wellness Center: 1016 SE 12th Avenue, Portland, OR 97214

$40

All levels, instruments, voices and backgrounds are welcome to this workshop designed to help deepen our inner experience of creating music. We will engage in some meditative and creative practices tailored to calm and regulate our nervous systems while playing – especially in front of others. Are you wanting to feel more relaxed, confident and embodied when you sing or play songs? Are your nerves a bit frayed from the slog and distractions of daily life? We will ground into easeful rhythms and spaciousness and explore simple tools at the intersection of meditation and music so that your creativity can become more relaxing, healing and fun! 

In this 2 hour session we will: 

1. Begin from silence with a short guided group meditation on deeper listening. Drop into the most important instrument you will ever own: your body.

2. Explore some simple, rhythmic warmups to get grounded. This is one of my favorite parts of my daily creative practice.

3. Delve deeper into the tactile experience of your instrument and explore tools to cultivate more physical and mental clarity, sensitivity and subtlety when we play. 

4. Work with a more detailed feel for dynamics, intensity and emphasis through embodiment practices and deeper listening. 

5. Play with expanding the rests and spaces in your music – to both regulate your nervous system and inspire your next ideas from a place of silence and deep listening. 

6. Play some fun and lightly-guided music together, then close with a final short meditation.