As the school year winds down and we transition into the summer, I feel freed up to pursue 3 things that’s been shelved until now:

  1. Binaural beats with visualization
  2. The Artist’s Way – the book that launched a thousand+ artists
  3. The Science of Well-Being, offered at Yale University via Coursera

Binaural Beats with Visualization

I have been doing this for about 2-3 years now: Waking up at 5am in a stupor because my spouse needs to get to work and I’m a light sleeper. Solution: embrace the semi-wake state with binaural beats. It’s too early to function but I can’t go back to sleep. I play binaural beats for an hour. I listen to water sounds and let my thought run through my head and let them go. In quarantine? I do the same thing but a couple of hours later, since my spouse is no longer needing to wake up that early.

But still, binaural beats calls. I don’t have to get out of bed yet and I can lay in bed for another hour and just focus on my breathing. Amplified meditation set to a one-hour timer, I would call it.

Brain Beats in Different Flavors
There are many uses for binaural beats: relaxation, focus and productivity. Brain entrainment involves stimulating the brain waves at two different frequencies so your brain averages out the two. Depending on the brainwave stimulated, you can achieve different results. As Bill Harris, contributor to The Secret, calls it, the two halves of the brain are talking to each other or the prefrontal lobe (which controls executive function) takes control over the limbic system (instinctive fight or flight responses).

In either case, it’s been an overall euphoric, calming experience, and I feel like I’ve evolved out of the fear and anxiety I used to wake up to.

To this I’m adding creative visualization with recording affirmations of goals I am recording subliminally. This would be a nice bedtime ritual to listen to the ambient sounds before bed.

The Artist’s Way

sculpture by Ken Shutt, Maui

I had Julia Cameron’s book in high school but was sidetracked from completing it. Now in mid life, with the completion of my semester of grading just around the corner, I’m ready to take it on.

The goal: to be more creative and start a sustainable artistic process or practice through this spiritual approach, as she terms it. I started it on my last trip in 2020 in Maui and am ready to dedicate time to it.

Some daily practices I picked up so far in my first week (of this 12-week course):

  • Journal writing 3 pages every morning (as well as in chapter writing prompts), stream of consciousness, free associative writing
  • Giving yourself a designated time once a week of having fun and creative play

I really appreciate her perspective that in teaching, she found her art and in making her art, she found how to teach. As a teacher, I really relate to this symbiotic relationship and hope to apply this in sharing my experience in wellness and creativity.

Science of Well-being

This is a free course on happiness taught by Laurie Santos at Yale University! As a self-help enthusiast, it solidifies some of the practices I picked up through the usual pop psychology avenues available to the public. But this time it’s systematized and validated through scientific research, so I’m on board!

Again, I started this during President’s Week break and now hope to pick it up and sustain it. One of the gems I discovered from the course is this free VIA character survey that helps you figure out your top 4 strengths. The school of thought is that you achieve flow or a sense of having found your true calling when you employ your top 4 strengths, or core virtues. For example, mine are: love of learning, a sense of justice and equity, appreciation of beauty and excellence, and integrity (authenticity, honesty). If I employ these strengths, or native interests/motivating drives, I will feel a sense of accomplishment, flow, using my potential to the fullest, etc.

Try the VIA Survey and share your discoveries. Are you surprised by the results?