Everything i need to know i learned in Concert Choir: Abundance and Scarcity

"now stand up, slowly bringing your spine and neck and head out of the curve. Good. Feel the stretching, now imagine that a string running from your navel through your torso and up through your neck and past the top of your head is being pulled tight. Feel your chin drop, and your head elevate, and your shoulders being tugged backwards. Now breath in." The whole class simultaneously inhaled a deep breath, as if we'd calmly risen out of water after several minutes of holding our breath. "Breath in abundance" sister H would say in the reassuring welsh accent. "Now breath out, and exhale scarcity." Silently, as if any noise would ruin the moment all 100 students exhaled. "One more time, breath in abundance, and exhale scarcity. exhale all the stress of finals. exhale the problems with teachers, and breath in abundance. breath in the abundance." This was how we started class everyday, and everyday there was something new to add to the list of abundance, and everyday there was always something I was glad to exhale.

I'm actually thinking about writing a book with the title from this post because the more I think about it EVERYTHING I needed to learn about life was taught to me during those 5 terribly short hours each week.

The lesson today is abundance and scarcity. all of my anxiety, and stress, and fear comes not from any real problem that exists, rather it stems from my inability to exhale the scarcity and breath in abundance. I have this great gift of being able to analyze EVERYTHING, and the miracle of that gift is trumped by the fact that I can take this analysis and turn it into anxiety, not because there really is a problem but because I fill my mind with the what-ifs.

When I realized and actually thought about all the abundance I have in my life I've noticed that the void I've created by focusing on scarcity is filled immediately.

Why did it take me 4 years of choir, and two years after leaving it to understand the value in this lesson? maybe it had something to do with hearing it with the welsh accent. I don't know about anyone else, but English accents--and I mean any accent which comes from the Island nation of great Britain--carry a validity with them that makes whatever lesson that much more weighty and important.

Well when you all sit down tonight at the end of your day take a minute to try this. sit in a quiet place where you won't be disturbed and with every breath think about how much you have, of everything. There are experiences that no one else has ever gone through, books read, and thoughts developed that no one has ever contemplated, snow that no one has walked on, icicles which no one has touched, that cold part of the pillow on which no one has lain, and relationships which no one else has had.

and each time you breath out forget every time that you've felt insignificant, or not enough, or too short, or too fat, or the haircut that doesn't look good, or the person who dumped you.

I know that this is starting to sound like Maria VonTrapp in the Sound of Music, but I think it is still a valid point (man I love that movie, I think I'm going to watch it tonight.)

I was going to put a song on here from the BYU Concert Choir but I couldn't figure out how to add a media player, anyone know how?