The Mantra Experiments CD: AVAILABLE TO PRE- ORDER

I am very excited to let you know that my new CD The Mantra Experiments 

is now AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER

After the success last year of apples in the rain, I have been working on a second, beautiful fundraising CD for my heart project: Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio Station. www.soundmemoriesradio.com 

It is really very lovely meditation CD with inclusive design considerations. The Mantra Experiments took place and were recorded in the lounge of our stone weaver’s cottage over the winter months with Gareth Davies on Sitar, Tim Shaw on Didgeridoo, Shey Edlington on Handpan and Susan Berry on Welsh Harp. 

The CD is a cross cultural experiment where I have channelled chants and improvised with my musician friends over afternoon tea, using my Sound Healing instruments from around the world, ocarina, bamboo flute, shaman drums, Gong, shakers, Tibetan singing bowls … letting the mantra lead me & us. Such a powerful way to create, letting go of the 'rules' and letting the sound take me on a meditative journey that I can share with you.

The tracks include 3 Ancient Mantra that you may recognise:-

 Jai Ma with Sitar, an honouring of Mother Earth to invoke her energy within us

Jai Ambe with Didgeridoo:  a chakra call to Mother Earth, the Divine Feminine as the creator of all things.

On Dum Durgayei with Welsh Harp to help us see in ourselves the space to deal with all things.

And one written by me called: Somakanta which is a call to our connection with the Moon and the tide she pulls in and out of us all.

The tracks are wonderful for meditation both in your own practice and sharing with others.

We decided to record our lovely afternoons of music and release a Limited Edition CD to raise funds for my work with Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio. www.soundmemoriesradio.com

It really has been a wonderfully collaborative project, made completely from love by me and my friends.

Jeff Beer kindly engineered, Tina Wills helped behind the scenes, Elizabeth Mc Avoy designed the label and Ian Mc Avoy took the vocal mantra diagram at the Wyrd and Wonderful Festival. The Volunteers at Sound Memories are hand stamping the covers and you, my lovely friends, we are hoping will purchase the CD’s.

If you would like to pre-order please use paypal. The cost is £10 per CD and we will cover the p&p within this for you. Please paypal as ‘friends and family’ and be sure to leave your address.

Then as soon as they arrive in the coming fortnight, they will be sent out to you with loving light and joy.

Namaste, dear friends

Performance & the Global Society

Really excited to be invited back to the University of South Wales, The Atrium, Cardiff, next week to give a Guest lecture to the Drama Undergraduates.

As part of the research for the lecture, I put a shout out on my facebook page to the Fabulously Over Fifty and was completely overwhelmed at the response. I have made a digital short to show to the students in the lecture theatre. Having just been through all my notes I think it is quite a powerful piece in the context of the whole power point presentation.

I did a lecture on the same subject last year but I am approaching it very differently this year, perhaps a little more confident to trust myself. 

Certainly I could talk about Sound Memories Radio until the cow come home but truth is, I want to make the students really think about ageism, particularly in the Arts. 

After all, the people sat in that lecture theatre next week, could well be the decision makers of the future and if I any of my work stays with them throughout their career, then I am happy  to share and pass on knowledge.

Their lecturer is the brilliant Mártha Minier who was also my lecturer during my MA Drama. 

It will be an absolute treat to go back to The Atrium. I doubt the undergraduates realise just how incredibly lucky they are to have such a wonderful opportunity to absorb creativity in such a supportive and intellectually stimulating environment, but doubtless they will look back one day, just as I am, and feel very blessed indeed.

www.soundmemoriesradio.com

Sound & Well Being Garden

Very excited to preparing a Power point Presentation today for my talk with the teaching staff at Pen Pych Community Primary School next week regarding our new Sound & Well Being Adventure ... 

NEW WEBSITE

For a few months now I have been designing and re-designing my new website. I found it hard to objectively represent all of who I am without sounding like I was trumpet blowing ...  so when I went home last week, I decided to hand it over to the folk who know and love me the best and asked them to re-jig and re-write some stuff for me.

I got it back today and I'm quite chuffed with it ... 

www.cherylbeermusic.com

Be great if you can pop along, 
have a read & see what you think. 

Thanks, friends

In Pursuit of Authentic Self

Friends, after an intensely personal & deeply spiritual journey throughout the last 18 months, I have discovered the most beautiful thing and I feel compelled to share it with you.

With the menopause gripping at me harder, I found that I was at a stage in my life where I had started to seriously wonder 'Actually, who am I?' 

In pursuit of answers, I embarked on a deeply personal journey of mindful meditation, mantra and music, to find ultimately, that I know exactly who I am.

I am ME.

And who is ME: A strong, creative, caring, independent, passionate, hard working, open- hearted, loving and giving woman with a strong sense of fair play and equality.

And this, my friends, is enough.

It is joyous to have remembered ME and found the very essence of self that had gotten a little lost through the knocks and blows of life. 

Understanding the concept of ME is so utterly simple and yet has been the most complex journey I have ever made.

And so now, I can re-adjust my compass, harness myself back into my Star-ship and get on with the joy of 'being' without needing to ask anything more of myself other that what I am.

  

Mantra Voice

How beautiful to literally see the colour, texture and vibration of my Mantra Voice.

This collection of graphs were recorded for me by Ian Mc Avoy, who was the wonderful and very kind Sound Engineer whilst I was performing Ceremonial Mantra to open the Sunday Festival at Wyrd & Wonderful Festival earlier this year.

It is particularly poignant for me to witness my voice in this way given the healing process I have been through to bring me to this point.

These beautiful graphs are an affirmation of the loving vibration that I can still bring to the world through my voice and I will treasure them dearly.

And so I have decided to use them as the design artwork for my new CD The Mantra Experiments.

Yes, that's right folks!! All the recording and mixing is complete and as I type this, kind friends are working on our design brief to bring a dementia friendly meditation CD into fruition.

All funds raised from the CD will be donated to Sound Memories Radio for the continuation of my work in developing a hands on, dementia friendly online sound resource with older people. Full details are here: www.soundmemoriesradio.com

Respect, Gratitude, LOVE

I am writing to you today with an overwhelming sense of respect and gratitude created by the humans who have just left my little cottage in West Wales, where I hold my Mantra Meditation Fund Raising Events, so that I can continue my work with Sound Memories Dementia Friendly Radio.

    You can find out about sound memories here if you would like.

www.soundmemoriesradio.com 

This blog is not about the radio station directly. It's about humanity, the power of friendship, the nature of giving, the cycle of love, the absolute wonder, the depth and beauty that human beings hold within them; the way they hold each other, offering love, nurture, faith, belief, and give value to one other.

The overwhelming nature of human love has taken my breath away today, it sort of snook up on me sideways.

I was so focused on giving love through Goddess Mantra & Meditation Music, raising funds for the project to survive, on sharing loving light through my practice ...  that I had somewhat overlooked the magnitude and reciprocity of love. I had not been ready for the overwhelming sense of love coming back to me.

And I share the story of today with you, my friends, in the hope that it helps you in the way it has helped me, in terms of opening up any energy blocks in relation to receiving.

In my last blog, I described the amazing time I had at Wyrd and Wonderful Festival at the weekend. The core values of Wyrd are beautiful; raising funds for local projects and charities. 

I had absolutely no idea whatsoever, that Sound Memories Radio would be one of the projects that Wyrd would support with funds raised. 

When Sheila came today, I was so happy in my heart that I could give back to her, love and nurture through meditation, so as to thank her for the wonder of wyrd, and then BOOM! She handed me a surprise envelope with £100 donation to Sound Memories! Honestly, I thought I would crumble then and there. 

We are desperate for funds. This contribution could not have come at a more appropriate time.

And I found that what I was most overwhelmed by, was not the sense of the funds, though off course, that is amazing, it was an overwhelming sense of being valued, Wyrd giving worth to my work, to the project, to all the folk who have told their story and shared their memories. We are important. We are enough.

I suppose what I am trying to say is, I felt connected to something bigger. I felt held by the loving embrace of other humans.

And then Elizabeth gave me the funds that her Tina and Ian had raised at Wyrd on the stall for Sound Memories £75!! The funds are again, amazing but it is the love that I am overwhelmed by.

Tina drove all the way to my house the week before the festival (with a really bad hand, I might add) to pick up the items for the stall and Liz literally was on the stall all weekend. The 3 of them set it all up. How utterly kind and loving is that! I can't get over it really. 

And In addition to this, we raised £152.00 from loving donations in exchange for the mediation and kind sales of my items from my kitchen fundraising stand.

And it has made me think about how the older people in the care home feel about my visits and the work we do and it has made me feel ... I can't think of a word ... truth; human; real. 

You see, Love, it is a cycle. 

And Sheila really brought that home to me today.

I was struggling to receive these wonderful gifts because they were in the form of money. 

But Sheila said we need to take the negativity out of money and learn to receive it in the love with which it is given. That is true. Why make money ugly when it is given and received in love.

Receiving is a learning curve for me. A beautiful learning curve to which I am opening my petals. A sunlight of love.

I gave my open heart, shared my loving practice of mantra & meditation music, sung sacred songs, connected to chakra sound, gave shells I have collected by the beach, candles scented with the ocean, mala beads made from the very seeds of the lotus flower. This was my love.

In return, my dear friends gave me the value, respect and energy with which to continue the Sound Memories Radio Project.

In this exchange we gave each other faith in humanity, in a different way of being, in respect, gratitude and in LOVE.

Gratitude is a river that just keeps flowing ... 

Thank you for my beautiful scarf Liz. It is so 'me'. 

Thank you for my bubbles, Shey. I will enjoy watching them drift out of my mantra shack. And off course, for your beautiful handpan pieces: magical.

Thank you for my stunning book Sheila. It is beautiful. I will keep it in my sacred sound studio.

Thank you for re-stocking my Kitchen fund raising stall, Tina, you're a diamond for rallying the troops.

Thank you for coming Jan and Vanessa, and supporting the project.

Thank you Ian for waiting for Liz outside in the car for 2 and half hours.

Thank you Jeff for hiding up in your studio with Maisy while I chanted with Goddesses in your lounge.

Thank you Universe for these amazing connections and for giving me the space to learn how to receive, as well as give love ...