My album Medicine Songs Wins TWO AWARDS in the 2020 Just Plain Folks Music Awards!

Posted on January 24, 2021 by Kathleen Dunbar

My ambient, trance, journey music project—my CD entitled Medicine Songs by my shaman-singer pseudonym Blue Lilah has won TWO awards in the 2020 Just Plain Folks Music Awards!

Brian Whitney, CEO and Founder of Just Plain Folks, writes of the nomination, “It’s a big deal: 17K albums and 240K songs were entered for the current awards, which cover the expanse of time since the last awards in 2009.”

3rd Place for Best World Music Album is Blue Lilah’s album Medicine Songs by Kathleen Dunbar and Gawain Mathews. TO LISTEN TO THE MEDICINE SONGS ALBUM and BUY IT click: https://bluelilah.com/store
2nd Place for Best World Music Song is the song Bleyso from Blue Lilah’s album Medicine Songs by Kathleen Dunbar and Gawain Mathews. To LISTEN TO AND BUY BLEYSO click: Listen to Bleyso

Blue Lilah’s music is my offering to you to celebrate yourself in the dance that is the connection of all life. It is a gifting of my music, voice, energy, and sounds for your pleasure. It is my invitation to you, my listeners, to dive into a healing journey. Please use it in whatever forms “move” you!—Dance, meditation, journeying, relaxation, movement exploration, yoga, birthing, healing! Who is Blue Lilah? Imagine being taken on a journey in the dream language of a medicine woman, with luscious percussion, backwards guitar, a whale’s voice, a thunderstorm . . . and that’s just the first song!

Blue Lilah’s website is bluelilah.com

Photos by Tamarind Free Jones

Gratefulness Reset Button Exercise for Calm

Posted on April 4, 2020 by Kathleen Dunbar

You can do this anywhere, anytime. Gratefulness and appreciation of things like beauty, nature and witnessed or received acts of kindness switch our neural circuits. It’s like changing the channel on the radio from a dire news story to a meditative talk or music channel. This simple exercise flushes out the stress hormones and chemicals produced from fight-fight-freeze responses, and engages our parasympathetic nervous system to produce feel-good hormones and chemicals that help regulate us. A few moments of doing this exercise can really facilitate a shift. Making it a regular practice helps it be an important tool in your toolkit of wellbeing.

Stretch your hands over your head and yawn and sigh aloud—this primes the pump of the right brain.
Feel the little flow-and-glow of the stretch and yawn.
Sit comfortably, neither slouching nor trying to sit up straight: find your sitsbones, let your spine rise from your pelvic bowl, allow your head to float on top of your spine. It’s okay to use the back of the chair to lean on, (just don’t slouch as slouching compresses your chest cavity and breath, which makes your brain start to be fearful as it isn’t getting enough oxygen).
Breathe in your nose and out your mouth three times. On the outbreath make an audible sigh (ie, make a sound)—Ahhh. Making a sound when you sigh automatically signals your parasympathetic (calm down) nervous system that you are safe and allows it to produce the feel-good chemicals.
Now bring to mind any of the following: a scene of beauty; an act of kindness you witnessed or received; the face of someone who cares about you (an easy person, not one you are having any difficulty with—the easier, the better), something lovely in nature.
Let yourself feel appreciation for this scene or person.
“Take the elevator down”—bring the beautiful sunset, the caring face, down into your chest and notice the sensations in your chest that accompany the sunset, the care, the kindness. Pay especial attention to any of the following: softening, spaciousness, slowing, flow.
If you want, you can put your hand on your heart and feel what happens with that.
Notice who is feeling grateful—this is your True Self.
Thank whatever is beautiful and kind; thank yourself for participating. Notice what this thanking brings.

If you’d like to hear some calming and inspiring music, please check out my original trance-ambient-world music album that is up for an award. This is my Blue Lilah project and the album is Medicine Songs, find it here:

On Bandcamp
At bluelilah.com

Take-Anywhere, Awesome Reset Practice

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Kathleen Dunbar

The Body says:
I am a fiesta.
-Eduardo Galeano

Here’s an easy practice to press your reset button. It quickly gets your brain and body producing harmony-hormones instead of stress-hormones.

Take-Anywhere, Awesome Reset Practice:
Big stretch
Yawn
Sigh out loud with a sound, Ahhh
Follow the warmth, release, flow
Three breaths, in nose, out mouth with a sigh.
Enjoy the stillness.

Say you’ve been slumped over looking at your computer for several hours. Did you know that the brain reads posture like opening a software program!

When you are slumped or hunched over, you literally can’t get a full breath: your lungs can’t fully expand because your ribs are contracted. The result is that blood flow—and thus the amount of oxygen delivered to your brain—is noticeably less. Here comes the software program part:

Because there is less blood delivered to the brain, and thus less oxygen to the brain, the brain reads “less oxygen” as “threat.” The brain doesn’t know you are just sitting too long staring at a screen. Instead, it reads the less oxygen as threat and signals your organs to produce hormones that deal with threat, and you start to feel a vague background sense of unease.

In order to wash the stress hormones out of your system and bring a brighter view of life back online try the following. You can do this seated at your desk:

Stretch your arms up and arch your back
Yawn—a big one—show your fillings!
Make an audible sigh while you sigh, a sound, ahhhhhh. Making this kind of actual sound signals to your nervous system the you are safe.
Follow the warmth, flow, release from the stretch and yawn. Savor these feelings, like you’d savor a bit of biscotti dipped in a latte. Sit with the pleasure a few moments.
Now slowly breathe in your nose and out your mouth three times with an audible sigh on the out breath.
Lengthen yourself by “finding your sits bones”— wiggle your sits bones a few times, then let your spine rise from your pelvis, and sense your head floating naturally on top of your spine. It’s fine to use the back of the chair for light support. Don’t “sit up straight” as that is effortful. Instead find your sits bones and your body will naturally find peace with gravity.
Finally, visualize something beautiful or remember a kind act you witnessed.
Then “take the elevator down” into your chest and let the felt sense of this fill you for a moment.

If you’d like some relaxing music, please check out my award-nominated Blue Lilah trance-ambient-worldmusic album Medicine Songs

My ambient-trance album Medicine Songs is NOMINATED FOR AN AWARD!

Posted on September 21, 2017 by Kathleen Dunbar

My ambient, trance, journey music project—my CD entitled Medicine Songs by my shaman-singer pseudonym Blue Lilah has been nominated in TWO categories for the upcoming Just Plain Folks Music Awards!

Nominated for Best World Music Album is Blue Lilah’s album Medicine Songs by Kathleen Dunbar and Gawain Mathews. TO LISTEN TO THE MEDICINE SONGS ALBUM and BUY IT click: https://bluelilah.com/store
Nominated for Best World Music Song is the song Bleyso from Blue Lilah’s album Medicine Songs by Kathleen Dunbar and Gawain Mathews. To LISTEN TO AND BUY BLEYSO click: Listen to Bleyso

Blue Lilah’s website is bluelilah.com

Photos by Tamarind Free Jones

I am nominated in THREE categories for the Just Plain Folks Music Awards

Posted on April 8, 2017 by Kathleen Dunbar

I am excited and delighted to announce that I am nominated in THREE categories for the Just Plain Folks Music Awards, (exact date to be announced soon! I will be attending and can’t wait!) It’s a big deal: 17K albums and 240K songs were entered for the current awards, which cover the expanse of time since their last awards in 2009.

Nominated for Best World Music Album is my Blue Lilah album Medicine Songs by myself/Kathleen Dunbar and Gawain Mathews. To hear it click: LISTEN TO THE MEDICINE SONGS ALBUM
Nominated for Best World Music Song is my song Bleyso from my Blue Lilah album Medicine Songs by myself/Kathleen Dunbar and Gawain Mathews. To hear the song click: LISTEN TO BLEYSO
Nominated for Best Spoken Word Song from my Kathleen Dunbar americana-rootsy original album The Storm In Our Head is my track Snakecharmer. To hear it click: LISTEN TO SNAKECHARMER

To view the Just Plain Folks website: Just Plain Folks

Let Me Take You On A Journey!

Posted on October 8, 2013 by Kathleen Dunbar

Who is Blue Lilah?

Imagine being taken on a journey in the dream language of a medicine woman, with luscious percussion, backwards guitar, a whale’s voice, a thunderstorm . . . and that’s just the first song!

Let Blue Lilah take you with her through sea deeps, windy deserts and wild jungles. She casts her enchanting spell for you from the healing dreamtime! Her magical vocals ride on the rhythms of ancestral drums, gorgeous guitar tendrils and big-heart-beat bass.   Your invitation is awaiting . . . join her in an adventure in her wild world! Blue Lilah—enchanting, entrancing: new age-ambient-trance-journey music.

Bio

The inspiration for Blue Lilah arises out of my many years of exploration in healing work as both practitioner and recipient, as well as being a recording and performing musical artist. By healing, I mean those practices that transform us through awareness into more whole beings. Healing, for me, is the idiosyncratic and courageous willingness to entertain with as much compassion as we can muster all the guests that visit us daily: joy, fear, pain, love, boredom, anger. We heal when we are able to sit at the banquet and honor it all: Savor what is wonderful, weep for what is sad, laugh with delight and then clean up the plates and glasses and get up in the morning and do it all over again: cook, wash the dishes, play, create, work, dream, love—experiencing all of this makes us alive!

To fully participate in one’s lived life, I believe that consciousness asks us to simultaneously open heart-and-mind to wider perceptions while at the same time grounding the wide-flung doors to the awesome in divinely practical and magnificently ordinary acts of our bodies: being with the sensations of our bodies, using our hands to help and hold and express, using our legs, arms, muscles and hearts to dance, work, laugh, kiss, and joyously sing.

Some of the ways I’ve personally explored healing and transformation as a recipient and as a guide are: shamanic practices, biodynamic cranial-sacral work, Jungian and archetypal exploration, energy work, dance, experiential psychotherapy, trauma work, Mind-Body Integration, sand tray, wilderness quests, Continuum movement practices, and lots and lots of Music! I honor the riches I’ve received from all my teachers and all my lineages. They are present in the music I make and I thank them!

A “word” about my language in the songs you hear! I am a storyteller. I’ve made poems since I could speak—please check out my blog at kathleendunbarblog.com. In the Blue Lilah project, instead of telling a story with English words, I was drawn to listen in to what tones, vibrations, emotions, and expressions wanted to be sung, and to channel the Sounds themselves into the story they wanted to tell. Using such a “language” you are free to intuit your own meanings and bring your own associations. I want you, my listeners, to make up your own stories to what you hear, so that you are drawn in to your own discoveries and explorations. The songs are deliberately long enough for a hearty journey.

The “songs” came to me in a variety of ways. There were nights at home at 1:00 A.M. pouring out my numerous voices into Garageband as a rough draft, later working it out and practicing with my little Oxygen keyboard, and finally polishing it up in the studio. Other sections are inspired live jams in the studio with my awesome multi-instrumentalist producer and guitarist, Gawain Mathews. His creative hand is, literally, in all the instruments you hear: guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, shakers. In this particular album he makes his debut at professionally whistling into bottles—he enthusiastically granted my whim, filled up a root beer and a fancy water bottle with the right amount of liquid to get two perfectly pitched notes, and “played” the thus-made instrument superbly as accompaniment to my singing. Such inventiveness and humor inform our creative adventures. Being a good sport, before embarking on one new track, Gawain agreed to let me lead him on a guided meditation. He lay comfortably under a soft blanket on the rug in his cozy kitchen as I drummed on my hand drum (which you will hear in the song) and his journey washed him up on a mythical shore where some tribal acoustic folk welcomed him into their musical circle. He was happy to join them, provided they allowed him to play his electric guitar, and do it his way. It is our good fortune that they agreed. At the end of Gawain’s journey we had a proper cup of tea (he is British, and so are my grandparents) and embarked on the song, Medicine Journey. Go spirits! Gawain and I have known one another through many years of musical adventures in another genre. This album is my dive into my inner world to manifest it for you all and take you with me on my musical adventure. Gawain is a prolific producer, multi-instrumentalist, dear friend, amazing musician, and not surprisingly, the current guitarist for the touring Mickey Hart Band.

Another “back story.” The few words I use in “English” that begin Who Holds The Power were given to me in a dream when I was in my mid-twenties—I awoke remembering the words, and also the invitation that came with them—I knew the verses were a riddle and an answer to the riddle, though the meaning was deliciously elusive and has been a guide to me to dive further into myself to understand it. The riddle for me has pointed to a way of life, a work in progress, a trajectory for Kathleen! I invite you to dive into your own riddle and all the wonderful messiness, high artistry, and joy of living that is wonderfully, idiosyncratically you.

who hold the power
to turn the key
that opens the three stones
who holds the power?

standing in the shadow
my cupped hand holds darkness
turning to the east
I bend my shadow low

Why Blue? My ancestors were The Blue People—the Picts and Scots who painted themselves blue. I have been known to be blue from head to toe, inviting my friends to celebrations at Ocean Beach. I did this “back when”—I was blue way before The Blue Man Group and Avatar got popular.

The smile on my mouth right now is the beautiful flower of the feeling I have in gifting you with these songs. It is the expression of my beating heart, my breathing lungs, my outstretched hand. It is strengthened by love, watered by tears, nurtured by touch, deepened with receiving, and widened by giving. Here, my loves, is an offering of my songs for you to journey with into the ever-creative expression of yourself in this wild life!

Links
bluelilah.com
facebook.com/BlueLilah
youtube.com/bluelilahmusic
Kathleen Dunbar’s Blog
Gawain Mathews Music Studio
Cover Photo by Lorene Garrett
Album Photos by Tamarind Free Jones Photography

Big Thanks to the Dinee People!—A Visualization to Blow Your Mind!

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Kathleen Dunbar

Here’s a peek into my “Day Job” (which I love!) as an experiential psychotherapist!

I came upon this extraordinary piece of “medicine” in Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces. This “poem” is an utter gem from a longer healing work and very sacred story of the Dinee (Navajo) People. I began to use it as part of my spiritual practice. I’d do my usual going inside into a meditative state while listening to music (I am, after all, a musician, and music is a main vehicle for me to meditate). And then I’d ever-so-slowly inwardly repeat the medicine poem. From the first time I’ve done this, I’ve always had extraordinary experiences—profound expansion, groundedness, peace, awe at life, delight, love. My body released its aches as I felt nourished by a deep sense of aliveness flowing through me.

I began applying my experience as an offering for the clients in my psychotherapy practice. When a client expresses a longing for a greater experience of Self, a transpersonal thirst, an awakening of personal and universal truth, I suggest an exploration: “I have an idea! How about a visualization! It’s based on a poem from the Dinee people. First I’ll introduce you to one of the words they use, so you can bring your own experience to it. Then I’ll recite the poem several times and you can see where it takes you!”

With the client’s agreement, I ask them to close their eyes and send them inside to their best poem-listening-to place. First I invoke their response to the word “pollen” as the Dinee use it:

I begin, “In this poem the Dinee use the word ‘pollen.’ For them, pollen isn’t the make-you-sneeze stuff. For them, pollen is the life source, and the pollen path is the path to the center. Pollen for them is corn pollen, and it has a very sacred story. . .

“. . . Let yourself imagine a field of corn, tended by the people of the village. When the people see the corn, they see an amazing story, for corn is one plant that needs human hands to help it grow. In fact, corn will die without humans to help it. If a corn cob falls into a field the kernels cannot make it through the tough husk to resprout—they need to be taken by human hands and planted. Long ago corn did not have the shape it does today, it was small and wild, and in order to feed the people, they learned how to bring the corn to the form we know now. The Dinee people see the growing of corn as a pact between the human and the divine. The source of life shows up in the corn, but it must be tended to by human hands in order to be used . . .

“. . . So the people of the village are alive with this amazing gift. In the corn they find the magical bridge between oneness and diversity, between the sublime extraordinary and the magnificent ordinary. It’s the story of the connection of infinite and finite. It’s the sacred dance of oneness and duality. For the Dinee, the life source gives the people the food to feed them, and the people receive it and use their hands and wisdom to plant and harvest. But it’s much more than that—it’s the story of the creation and life, and a way of right relationship with all things. It’s a lived acknowledgement of the kind of partnership that makes a deeply lived life possible. The symbol of this partnership is the pollen of the corn, where it all happens. The Dinee always save the corn pollen and use it in ceremony . . .

“. . . Let yourself see the people of the village gathering the corn pollen, and how in their hands they gather the meeting of the divine and the human. They celebrate a sacred event where life force manifests its connection with the earthly. The divine and the human come together, not only to feed the people of the village, but to nourish their spirits with the great sacred story of life. . .

“. . . So that is a little of what the word pollen signifies in this medicine poem. And now let yourself feel into that word pollen, and feel into the experiences from your own life that resonate—how you are longing for that sacred dance, or the times in your life that you have experienced the meeting of the two, and the sacred story. And like all good stories, let it be beyond your mind to understand, let the understanding come from your heart.”

Then I invite the client to take a few deep breaths, settle into their chair, and give me a nod when they are ready. I then, really slowly, recite the poem several times . . . and wait.

Put your feet down with pollen.
Put your hands down with pollen.
Put your head down with pollen.
Then your feet are pollen;
your hands are pollen;
your body is pollen;
your mind is pollen;
your voice is pollen.
The trail is beautiful.
Be still.

I am always astonished at the response this poem evokes! Clients experience a profound, grounding, uplifting, expanding access to the Self connected to the Web of Life. It is always extraordinary and lasting—something we often refer to in future sessions. For one client it was a deep turning point in the therapy.

As a variation, after I speak about the pollen, I put on some trippy music, let the client listen for a while, and begin to repeat the poem several times while the music is playing, letting the effects of the poem and the music take the listener on a journey.

Of course I am giving only a very abbreviated version of what pollen holds for the Dinee, a little sketch of a great spiritual treasury. I honor their wonderful ways. I thank the Dinee and their medicine people for their wisdom and generosity in gifting us with these sacred words. Here is a good resource to learn more about The Pollen Path: Source of the Sacred: Navajo Corn Pollen

For some trippy music to journey by, please listen to my just released Blue Lilah trance-journey-new age CD Medicine Songs. I’m happy to share my music. Find it at bluelilah.com

Photos by Kathleen Dunbar, Mono Lake Area

Blue Lilah is Here!

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Kathleen Dunbar

The CD art is in the done . . .
The CD is mastered . . .
And the website is up! Find her at www.bluelilah.com

Let Blue Lilah take you on a luscious journey with her new world music CD “Medicine Songs” Here’s a tantalizing dip into one of the songs!

Video by Kathleen Dunbar
Photos by Tamarind Free Jones

Blue Lilah is Here! Join Her On A Magical Musical Journey!

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Kathleen Dunbar

Blue Lilah is Here!
How about a succulent musical dive under the sea with
the wild sea witch inviting you to dance deep with her among the corals
and the fishes and her long armed octopus friends.
And that’s only one song!

Blue Lilah is Here!
Experience the Journey at www.bluelilah.com

Be Beguiled, Bewitched, Becharmed

Let Blue Lilah Take You On A Luscious Musical Journey!

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Kathleen Dunbar

Here’s a tantalizing dip into Blue Lilah’s new world music CD,
Medicine Songs. Find her at www.bluelilah.com

Let Blue Lilah take you on a luscious musical journey! Here’s the sneak preview with a little video! Bring your eyes and ears, let your body move,
let yourself enter the dreaming,

let the journey begin………

Video and Photo by Kathleen Dunbar
Dip into the song Icons of the Doi on Blue Lilah’s new CD: Medicine Songs
Find Us! www.bluelilah.com