Story + Meditation = Healing. I met Astral Shaman in a meditation and healing workshop more than a decade ago. I immediately fell in love with his Scottish lilt–the way words sound like song, warm and welcoming, literally music to my ears. As a child, I lost my own Jamaican accent after starting first grade …Read More
Category: Storytelling
Meanest Person Ever
“You are the meanest person ever,” her voice laughs playfully even as she loads all the pre-teen seriousness into the sentence. I pass a large family on the beach. Parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins move like ants around a mound of beach umbrellas to and from the sweetness of the sea. I smile inwardly as …Read More
FGCU Storytelling 2022 – 2023: A New Season
I felt as if something woke up inside of me. That first time that I heard someone tell a story, one person in front of an audience, holding our complete attention, I was so fully captivated that I thought to myself, “I want to be able to do that.” For a moment, my mind took …Read More
Pushing a Peanut up a Mountain
Have you ever felt like you are pushing a peanut up a mountain? Bill Williams knows how you feel. In 1929, he pushed a peanut up the 14,000 feet of Colorado’s Pike’s Peak Highway… with his nose. Why? For a bet, of course. It took him 22 days, a bag full of peanuts, knee pads, …Read More
Remembering Vincent Chin ~ Annie Tan
How do you turn tragedy into prayer? … a prayer for a better world … a prayer for justice … a prayer for healing … June 19, 2022, marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Vincent Chin. The Asian American community united in response and worked to expand the protections against hate crimes. Learn …Read More
Neonatal Step-Down Unit
“You seem traumatized,” said my friend the neonatologist–a pediatrician that takes care of newborn babies. I was telling the story of my very first rotation decades earlier as a medical resident fresh from medical school. I was assigned to the neonatal step down unit where I was expected to be the doctor. The unit had …Read More
A Story A Day ~ Tim Lowry
“A story a day keeps the boredom away.” My dear friend and fellow storyteller, Tim Lowry, is posting a story a day on YouTube for school kids throughout the month of May… the final stretch before summer vacation. The video below is recorded with a lively audience of 2nd graders. Ask your local schools to …Read More
Living a Life of Meaning ~ Norman Lear
Norman Lear brought the marginalized voices of America to television starting in the 1970s as a TV producer. His culture-altering sitcom stories included All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, … just to name a few. There was time when 120 million people watched his television content every week! Eric Hirshberg sits down with …Read More
Te Ata: Native American Storyteller
The role of the Storyteller goes beyond entertainment. The Storyteller holds the cultural wisdom of the people and keeps it alive for the next generation. Everyone can tell a story, but few are called to the role of Storyteller. Born in 1895 in Indian Territory, Mary Thompson Fisher grew up when Chickasaw children were not …Read More
Motivating lasting change: Fear vs. Efficacy
About 40 years ago, dentists in Connecticut ran an experiment.1 They wanted to know how to motivate people to brush and floss their teeth. They decided to try the well-known tactic–scare them into doing it. They randomized a large group of subjects into two groups. They gave one group an informational video of why and …Read More