Wednesday 23 September 2009

the woman made unconscious by thought

Here’s a story I heard from a friend. One of his co-workers was babysitting her grandchild. She dozed off for a few minutes while looking after the baby and when she woke up the child was nowhere to be seen. She was understandably worried. Luckily she found the child in the house by the front door.


Her son (or daughter, I’m not sure) came by to collect the baby and everyone was safe and well.


However, at this point the grandmother began to think ‘what if?’.
She looked at her front door, it was unlocked.
She looked at her garden gate. It was open, and led onto a busy road.
She realized that the child could have crawled out of the house onto the road. She began to panic.


The child was safe, none of the above had happened, but the lady kept asking herself ‘what if?’.
She began hyperventilating, and passed out. She awoke and managed to see her doctor. She is fine and well.


The point, of course, is that the thoughts of ‘what if’ became too much for the grandmother. And yet these thoughts are not even as real as an image projected onto smoke.


Imagine the everyday harm we do ourselves through worry and anxiety over similar but smaller thoughts. Thoughts which are not even as substantial as light on smoke.


We need to take control of our thoughts. We need to get quiet.


www.gettingquiet.com

gwynfyd

Picture 1is Welsh for bliss, nirvana, enlightenment. The state of mind which comes when your mind is silent.

Hence www.gwynfyd.co.uk, a companion site to www.gettingquiet.com, but yn Gymraeg. More news there, soon.

Monday 21 September 2009

jumping for joy

colblog2Thanks to everyone who sponsored my parachute jump on Sunday. The weather was great, the people were fabulous and the jump was an experience I'll never forget.

After a short flight in what I can only describe as a dodgy shoebox I had one of the most surreal experiences of my life. The hardened parachutists jumped out of the door without so much as a geronimo.

colblog1

As I perched out of the aircraft looking down I realised that this was without a doubt the stupidest thing I'd ever done, but also one of the most fun too. I'd recommend it.

If you'd like to give some money to cancer charity Tenovus you can still do so by following this link.

Wednesday 16 September 2009

Newyddion Pwysig - Important News

It's been nearly 10 years since Cadw Swn was formed. In fact next year will see the dengmlwyddiant - tenth anniversary of the course.
As you might expect from the title of this blog entry, Cadw Swn will be undergoing radical changes between now and next year. I've been working hard on them, and feel that it's only fair to let people know what we're planning.

For a number of reasons we've always been tied to selling the course as a 10-CD unit. That will change.

I'm currently in the studio re-recording sections of the course over some new classical music. No great changes in the stories, but the new music license will allow us to sell CDs individually. I hope that a lot more people will feel able to 'dip their toe' in the water when they only need the course book and one CD.

We'll also make the audio available as downloads. I have no doubt that this is the future of music. It's green, instant, and will allow us to make the recordings available very reasonably worldwide. We're working with a great company to handle the downloads simply and easily, more news on that soon.

Finally, to tie in with these changes, the course will be retitled 'Learn Welsh Fast with Cadw Swn'. This should help with catalogue searches and search engines.

I hope to have the first of the new CDs and downloads available next month, along with the rebranded course book. Then I'll make individual CDs available as and when they're finished.