Welcome to the Monday Muse, a short round up of stuff on my mind and that I found interesting in the last week. If you have comments or ideas you want to share, feel free to drop me a message any time!
1/ What I’ve been up to
Making my heart sing. Every week or so I’ll pop by the local karaoke spot in Shibuya and jam out on my ukulele for an hour. With the thin walls in my apartment and the pricey alternative of renting out a recording room, you can’t beat the daytime price of $8/hour for a karaoke room.
I’m not trying to play at a concert or win any awards here. This is purely for my own enjoyment. No grandiose goal. It’s to be silly and to have fun. After grinding away at a startup for three years and taking myself wayyyy too seriously, I realize that I was missing a big part of life: play. This is why I started to become boring, and why most adults are boring. They forget how to play.
I was taking in-person singing lessons in Amsterdam before with an amazing teacher named Matias. He’s probably one of the most energetic and inspiring teachers I’ve learned from. I knew I’d never find an English-speaking teacher as excellent in Japan, so I recently re-started lessons with him online. It’s obviously not the same, but it still works pretty well. You can check out his site here.
2/ Courses I’m taking
MBSR Online. I’ve been taking a free Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course by Palouse mindfulness. You can check it out here. The online course is pretty comprehensive and good for total beginners to meditation: it covers mindfulness of emotions, body, and thoughts. But it goes into so much more than that, from yoga techniques to conflict resolution, to practicing gratitude and even pain management.
A few of the videos and articles I’ve most enjoyed from the course so far:
The website is a little bit old school but the content is solid. There are dozens of free videos, worksheets and exercises that you can practice over an 8-week period. If you’ve been thinking about starting a meditation practice, here’s your chance!
3/ What I’ve been listening to
What a banger.
4/ What I’ve been reading
True Refuge by Tara Brach.
This is Tara Brach’s (psychologist and meditation teacher) third book and it has a distinctly different flavor than her first two. True Refuge dives deeper into the emotional side of meditation — how do we use meditation to deal with difficult situations, like the loss of someone or a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.
Based on a fresh interpretation of the three classic Buddhist gateways to freedom—truth, love, and awareness— she shares her own experience with debilitating physical issues that left her unable to do what she loved, and how she was able to find freedom despite her disabilities. It’s packed with practical meditations that you can follow and try out and I recommend it for anyone looking for more emotions or heart-centered approach to meditation.
Here’s a quote I enjoyed:
An old grandfather is speaking to his grandson about what causes the violence and cruelty in the world. “In each human heart,” he tells the boy, “there are two wolves battling one another—one is fearful and angry, and the other is understanding and kind.” The young boy looks intently into his grandfather’s eyes and asks, “Which one will win?” His grandfather smiles and quietly says, “Whichever one we choose to feed.”
5/ What I watched
Troll, aka The Norwegian Godzilla. I watched it dubbed. Entertaining enough for a Friday night. Trolls are big in Norse mythology and are said to feed on humans, especially small children, and have a particular affinity for Christian blood.
See you next week!