Finding the Center

The meme the other day got me thinking about centering.

Yes, I mean the new-agey type of centering. Returning your being to a place that is known so you can expand from there.

My first exposure to this was from a wonderful workshop that I went to back in music school. It was called A Soprano on Her Head (also a book) and this tiny little woman Eloise Ristaad ran it. Anyway, the seminar hit on quite a bit of stuff but what I got out of it is the fact that we know how to do much of what we want to do, we just get in our own way. Some of the results she got from us were nothing short of remarkable. I ascribe the results more to psychological phenomena rather than spiritual but I expanded my reading list quite a bit.

The Centered Skier
Inner Game of Tennis
Tao of Pooh
Inner Game of Music

I find these books inspiring to this day.

Anyway, back to centering. The meme got me thinking of what I use to re-find the calm in my life. What simple things make me smile and just say "Wow, the world is okay."

It's a pretty straightforward list.

Improvising on the piano (I am not much of a keyboard player).
Walking at night under a clear starry sky. The constellations - Wow.
Trumpet Concerto - Artunian.
Firebird Suite - Stravinski.
Cooking a meal with my family (a cool kind of chaos).
Getting away from it all. Hiking away from civilization.
The books of my youth.

How about any of y'all?