FLOWER POWER MOUTH: JOURNEYING INTO AUTHENTICALLY SAYING WHAT I WANT !

FLOWER POWER MOUTH (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah FELLOW PILGRIMS! Hallelujah for our INDIVIDUALITY and SAYING what we BELIEVE! Is that an easy process--SPEAKING HEART? HA-HA-HO-HO-HO (see more about Laughter Yoga)! I belly laugh, not mockingly, but with an appreciation for the challenge of speaking authentically. I am especially interested in what occurs in the JOURNEY of SPOKEN HEART--how one step leads to another step, and all of those steps accumulate into a distance deeper into SELF and an outward communication of that SELF to the WORLD!

COMMUNICATING SELF. Speaking from my belly--MIND and SOUL united!

In order to CREATE a pathway for my FLOWER POWER MOUTH JOURNEY, I have created a goal with the aide of my dear friend and creativity coach, Lesly Fredman. My chosen goal for myself right now is SOFTENING. In my quest to establish my own unique voice, I have long been curious about how to cultivate a deeper voice, a belly voice, one that resonates with ALL MY BEING! Years of recording my voice as an interviewer and then language instructor has made me very well aware of my high pitch strained voice. 


Along with Lesly's guidance I am having fun SOFTENING my shoulders, letting them fall down gracefully, departing from the heights where they are well acquainted with my ears! Breathing from the belly challenges all manner of my BEING! I want to lift my shoulders--instead, I am coached to hold my stomach and to let the gentler rise and fall of my abdomen BE the LIFE FORCE that informs my voice. Simultaneously, I am lengthening my body horizontally, with my shoulders expanding. It is there at my CENTER, that I have succeeded in creating a WELCOMING SPACE from which my deeper more AUTHENTIC voice can be generated!

IN MY BELLY. As I soften, relaxing into my being, I find a CREATIVE SPIRIT, both familiar and unknown.

So dear SOJOURNER, I am reorganizing my body and becoming more aware how my body communicates. I love that my SOUL "work" is to relax, soften, and stretch! I am expecting a SOUL SHIFT and then other exciting events and exchanges to occur! One step, leads to another, and the JOURNEY of the SOUL is so exciting! 


SOUL BLOG with me Hallelujah Truth, and tell me about your VOICE! Where are you on your journey of speaking authentically and from your belly? 

COURAGING: SPEAKING HEART

Hallelujah for COURAGE! After completing just 2 weeks of teaching creative writing to my international class at the Language Institute at Georgia Tech, I am resurrecting the respect I have for the BRAVERY that it takes to SPEAK one’s HEART (see an early blog titled, I Speak Heart).

A loose theme for my course is “Identity and Sense of Place.” WHO ARE YOU?, I ask my students? Are you the same person in American culture and using English as you are in your culture and using your native language? Does the place where you live change who you are? Do you think differently when expressing your ideas in another language?

Right now, to develop my own ideas about “who I am”, I’m reading Brene Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.  Brown proposes that COURAGE (see her blog), compassion, and connection are three basic components of “embracing who you are.”  She defines the word COURAGE, first by looking at its Latin roots: COR=HEART! COURAGE, she explains, initially meant “speaking one’s mind by telling all of one’s HEART.” Less about being heroic!

Most of my class has demonstrated this COURAGE! They have pleased me with their willingness to EXPLORE their HEARTS using English. They have started their “public" blogs with imaginative names discovered while doing free writing exercises (Natalie Goldberg-style) in their “private” journals. Take a look at the glorious beginnings of some of these blogs: THE FOOTPRINT OF WATER, BUTTERFLYING TO INFINITY, BLUEBERRY CELLOPHANE, and THE WEALTHY GUARDIAN.

“You learn COURAGE, by COURAGING,” Brene Brown quotes theologian Mary Daly. How simple, and yet, how daunting! As an ESL teacher for 20 years, I have urged my students to learn to SPEAK English, by SPEAKING it, and subsequently observed their lack of COURAGE to do so! It is much easier to become grammar experts doing rote exercises and writing repetitive academic papers then to SAY SOMETHING MEANINGFUL in this “other” language!

In my creative writing class, I am asking my students to connect their heads—and HEARTS—to English by using it COURAGEOUSLY and imaginatively. To gain COURAGE, by COURAGING!

As a visual artist, I move forward in drawing and painting, by accessing my COURAGE. Yet, I have simplified the process. I start with the familiar. I open my hand to the ordinary in my life and psyche. I become ACTION in MOTION. I draw by drawing and paint by painting. Not good. Not bad. Just is.

The painting I am posting on my blog today borrows images primarily from two previous images (see 2011: Say Yes and 1^st Anniversary of Coffee with Hallelujah). What shall I call it? Let me try on some possibilities:

Saying Yes to the Great Mystery

Welcoming Myself

Active Beautiful Mind

Hallelujah Couraging Everyday

Celebrating Companionship

Speaking Heart Today

PILGRIMS! We have endless opportunities to create! Each moment offers the sparkling and amazing chance to think a new thought, to speak in a different way, to draw something unique, to move your body in a refreshing way…! SOUL BLOG with Hallelujah what you are COURAGING today. SPEAK HEART across the INTERNET!