A friend forwarded me this speech about art as survival, which I though was quite amazing.  I found a link to it online so you can read it:

Karl Paulnack giving a freshman address at Boston Conservatory

Download it:

Rejuvenation

Since I’m a single parent, I thought it was fitting that one of the first recordings I put up is called “Rejuvenation”. Something I often need because I rarely get the normal amount of sleep. (I honestly don’t think I would have survived the first three years of my child’s life without energy work!)

I started out with this toning intending on filling myself up and anyone who listens to the recording. Early on, I got that getting enough minerals is very important to feeling energetic — mainly because dehydration is a main cause of fatigue. Water = Life. I also got the idea that when we spend time in nature there is an exchange of elements there — so for instance at the beach we literally pick up and internalize minerals that help rejuvenate us. Being by the sea and eating sea plants and animals provide us with nutrients that restore, revitalize and balance our systems. So I tried to put some work in there to enhance the body’s ability to absorb and retain minerals.

Then the question moved on to ‘what needs to happen to hold on to this filled up place, this sense of rejuvenation?’ One of the keys is spending most your time doing stuff you like. And intertwined with doing that are the ideas ‘everything is really okay‘ and ‘I have the right to be myself‘. Feeling that you have the right to be yourself and do what you feel like doing essentially means your system has permission to follow it’s own impulses, which keeps it naturally regenerated.

The next section was entrenching this concept that we can have access to a constant stream of energy, and that we don’t have to ever feel tired or fatigued. Our bodies can switch over to a place where we have an always available and abundant source of vitality, but we have to believe that is an option.

When I looked at what the structure of that ever-abundant energy flow appears like in a person running it, I got the picture of someone who is sustained by a divine energy tap in such a way that they are constantly giving out energy, and when that energy touches others, they are also able to tap into that rejuvenating stream. There is something self-sustaining in the process of giving that energy out to others and rejuvenating them. I recalled that biblical phrase “He who refreshes others, is he himself refreshed.”

At the conclusion and deepest layer, I saw that the rejuvenation process comes from the remembering and acceptance of ourselves as divine beings. We are part and parcel of energy that is from beyond the realm of fill up/run down. It always is and it always was, without beginning and without end — it’s sustenance is in it’s eternal Beingness.

(By the way, I’m pretty sure that repeat listenings of this one is a good idea: not just to refresh you when you need it, but I think that each listen would improve your ability to live in that ‘never get tired’ zone.)