Thursday, February 28, 2008

Costa Rica Feb 08

Earlier this month I was in Costa Rica for Ariel and Shya Kane's self-discovery workshop. I never thought of myself as a workshop person, but this stuff is awesome. It's simply about listening from the speakers point of view. The other key is awareness, which is a non-judgmental way of seeing. All you have to do is get interested in what is. That pulls you into the moment and is enough to have your life transform.

It was amazing and simple. It was a 9 day trip, and I wasn't sure I was going to like having no music for 9 whole days. Well, that wasn't the case. We had plenty of time to hang out, go to the beach, shop and hang by the pool. My group had some great musical talent and I certainly didn't feel music-deprived at all. I think we had excellent live music pretty much every night and often during the day. We even had it on the bus back to San Jose!

Our group included 3 musicians who play professionally from time to time. There was also some hidden talent in the group, some more great singers.

One night we had a mandolin solo performance that brought me into another world. There was one tune where every string he hit was filling me with emotion.

For days and nights after that, a guitar player and a singer and whoever else wanted to join in on vocals jammed. They did lots of great covers of awesome classic rock songs and then got into improvising their own tunes about Costa Rica on the spot. I was feeling all of it.

The last night in Manuel Antonio ended with a great concert with everyone. The mandolin definitely added a lot to the already great tunes we were hearing all week.

So, in addition to an awesome workshop, fun in the sun, I had a great week of live music that I wasn't expecting. Here’s a link to the Kane’s website, I highly recommend the Monday Night Alive workshops, which will start up again on 3/10.

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