bardospace

I haven’t posted here in FOREVER, so I thought I’d make a short post (or maybe a couple) to start to catch up.  All I’m going to do for now is make a quick list of some of the things that I’ve been up to or interested in lately.  This will hopefully act as more of a reminder to myself to expand on all of these topics in the coming days as I try to start to write more regularly again.  Here’s a quick rundown :

Xaphoon
Bet you’ve never heard of one of these before! I hadn’t either until someone in my 2-year shamanic studies group mentioned it to me.  It’s more fully known as the Maui Xaphoon and was created by a guy in Hawaii.  It’s nickname is the “pocket sax” and it actually does sound surprisingly like a sax.  More like a cross between a clarinet and a sax, but the sound is amazing for such a tiny instrument.  I’ll have to post some samples of my playing once I get a little better.

Other new instruments
In addition to the xaphoon, I’m still continuing my quest to collect many different musical instruments.  Not too long ago I got a 2nd native american flute, and I try to practice on the flutes occasionally.  They are such great wind instruments because they are very easy to play.  I also got this bell tree, which is a nice addition to the collection.  I had been wanting to have more bells to represent the direction of the east (not sure if I’ve made a post yet about the shamanic meaning of relating sounds to directions, but I will soon). Oh, and one more instrument that I’ve actually had for a while but should include here since I’ve never written about it is my Slide Didge. Its a light-weight, collapsible, portable didgeridoo! It’s absolutely fantastic to travel with. And the fact that it slides is not only great for portability, but you can also get some amazing sounds other didges can’t create by sliding it while playing.

Shamanic studies
The shamanic studies program that I am participating in, which was the original inspiration to start this site, is still going on.  I can’t believe we’ve now finished 7 out of our 10 meetings.  There is so much that has happened that I have not yet tried to capture in writing here, but I do still intend to.  Just last night I had someone point out to me that it would be a good exercise to try and articulate through writing all that I have been learning lately.  Writing doesn’t always come easy to me though, as is obvious from the infrequent posts to this site. 

Vedic Astrology
This is a topic I may be writing more about soon.  Interestingly, it was through someone I met in the shamanic group that I even learned about vedic astrology.  I’ve always known some basics about western astrology (like the fact that my sun sign is gemini), but the more examples I see of the amazing predictive power of the vedic system, the more fascinated I am to learn more.  My friend even told me she thought I would make a good astrologer.  We’ll see on that one, but plan to see me write more about this line of research soon.

Qi Gong
I’m getting ready to start back into my Qi Gong class.  You may recall this post, in which I mentioned starting the study of Qi Gong energy work based on teachings that I have received from my shamanic teachers.  Well, I don’t think I ever followed that post up, but I did participate in that class for a few months and get some great results from it, but then of course the twins were born and I got so busy that I decided to stop for a while.  Now that the boys are 1 year old though (can you believe it?), I find that time is starting to open back up to go to classes again.  Maybe I’ll actually start to write about those experiences too if I stick with it this time.

Twins!
And speaking of babies, I don’t mention them much on this site, but I hope to start writing more about the experience of being a father to twin boys.  I will hopefully be doing that writing over at Dawn’s the Joys of Twins site once we give it an overhaul and set it up to have multiple authors.

I guess thats good for now.  I have some other topics I can think of, but I think they might belong in a different post.