Hi there, and welcome to Improvisational Pathways to Inner Peace. I am pleased to invite you into this rather unorthodox introduction to music, indigenous knowledge, meditation, mindfulness, and improvisation. This course is designed for teachers to use as a supplemental classroom resource to help improve the social and emotional health of their students. But, for anyone interested in finding new strategies for discovering a sense of creativity and expanded consciousness, this course can be seen as a way to help you explore your own spiritual identity through listening to musical melodies and considering how indigenous knowledge can lead to an enhanced sense of spiritual identity. When you are able to create for yourself this inner experience of connection through a musical voice, you have the opportunity to be transformed into a calming and reflective state of mind.

The videos and examples are strategies to help you experience new pathways to creativity through simple listening and play along exercises. My hope is that if you take the time to watch the videos, listen to the backing tracks, and play some notes with an inexpensive Recorder or Native American style flute, so that you will be able to arrive at an elevated sense of well being, relaxation, and connection to a larger world of ideas.

This course is not about trying to convert you to a certain religion or belief system, but it does use examples that speak to universal ideas of creation, ancestors, and our connection to the earth.

The music you will be playing in this course is strictly for beginners. Teachers are not expected to have any musical training and students only need to have a desire to open themselves to new possibilities, and be willing to search for their inner sense of peace through the physical playing of a recorder or Native American style flute in any key. 

So, you need to have access to a musical instrument. A recorder will work, and if not already available in your school, they can be purchased online for ten dollars or less. A Native American style flute is preferable, and they can be purchased for between twenty and fifty dollars each. Any key will work, but be warned, if you get the bug, you will want more flutes.

But, the way this course is organized, the first couple of modules are more for mental preparation.