Blog, Teachings & Resources

"I was told I was tone-deaf."

A few people in the workshop shared this.

"I was thrown out of the choir."

Lots of nodding heads to this.

“I get very nervous when I know people can hear me.”

Everyone in agreement here.

“I’ve always wanted to sing with others, but I freeze...

"Stop singing!" we yelled but we were laughing.

Dad chimed in, "It's awful!"

My mom used to sing a comical song to tease us: "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along" by Doris Day.

The family would laugh and shout, and eventually she would stop singing. It was all rather jolly and...

"Children should be seen and not heard".

You might think it's a cliché, but when I'm working with blocked voices, these words come out all the time.

"My parents discouraged my emotions. I quickly learned that they disapproved if I was angry or emotional".

And so a child little by little...

Yesterday I was running before dawn, with my head torch bobbling out a thin arc of white light. As I huffed and puffed in the freezing darkness, I remembered something awkward and painful from when I was 20 years old.

I remembered being in a club called The Playground, filled with cool kids...

“Inside of me is a powerful human being, who can’t quite release the words she wants to release”.

I hear this a lot.

Frustration, a sense of being blocked, “my thoughts won’t exit my mouth in an eloquent kind of way!”

I ask her about how she feels BEFORE going...

“I kept comparing myself to people that had really good voices. I wanted to sing better so badly.”

Liesl is a profound South African spiritual guide and medicine woman, well known for her work leading plant medicine journeys, sweat lodges, vision quests and more. But the way she felt...

I stumble into them, the ultimate hipster couple. He's a legendary DJ and she does super cool live visuals for his shows.

He is already looking at me VERY strangely as I’m shaking his girlfriend's hand - awestruck. I'm shaking her hand and shaking her hand and still shaking her hand. Some...

Here's a picture from when I was 20 years old. Aside from looking desperately undead, I was having a really rough time.

Beneath that cool, frozen zombie exterior I was battling with depression. I was in the second year of a commerce degree that I hated, barely attending classes and was failing...

Social media is such a conundrum. Or is it, “social media are such a conundrum’? See?!?! Questions everywhere.

Is spending lots of time online healthy or unhealthy? Do we need it for our work? Does it make us unconscious and waste our time? Or could we be one of those people that...

I walked onto the stage with my body vibrating with fear.

Bright spotlights on me, I could barely see the audience.

I sat down at the huge, shiny black Bosendorpher grand piano.

Took a long, deep breath.

I was shaking.

I was about to play the first song from my then new solo piano album,...

Abedah and I met for the first time and recorded this conversation about her work as a yogi, meditation teacher and death doulah. In my culture we don't talk much about dying, and Abedah's work shows us how.

Watch this wonderful interview with choirmaster, academic and and author Ludumo Magangane, who describes singing in Black South African culture, where singing and movement are woven into daily life from birth. As he says, "we are born INTO rhythm"... and song!