The Heart Is the Center of the Universe

Live Looping Improv – Show Opener

I’ve been working on the opening number for one-man show. I happened to record this practice session and was psyched to listen on my earbuds and find a lot of tasty ear candy moments!


If you’re picking up what I’m putting down, please consider supporting me making podcasts, astrology posts, performance art, music, and ultimately a live (in person) immersive trance experience. It’s easy, it’s open-ended, it’s fun and it helps me make more cool experiences to share with you. Click on the picture to check out my Patreon page:

Support DK Brainard on Patreon

 

The War on Children

[Podcast] Libra Full Moon Square Mars & Saturn

In the new podcast I look at the two malefics – Mars and Saturn – conjunct in Capricorn and how we can use the intense energy pattern created by Saturday’s Full Moon. And I explore last weekend’s march on Washington in light of the national War on Children. Plus: the current Mercury Retrograde in Aries and questions of mistaken (self-) identity…and some new music. Check it out!

Libra Full Moon - March 31, 2018, 8:37 a.m. EDT, Washington, DC

Libra Full Moon – March 31, 2018, 8:37 a.m. EDT, Washington, DC

[powerpress]


The Naked Songwriter podcast currently happens twice a month, timed to the new and full moons. I’m listener-supported, just like public radio, so if you enjoy my unique blend of astrology, music, cultural commentary and inspiration for all of us who are creating rather than consuming, please show your love. Share the pod, support me on Patreon — let’s connect and conquer!

Support DK Brainard on Patreon

 

Courageous Empaths: Apply Within

This Could Be Your Missing Puzzle Piece

  • Are you an empath or sensitive?
  • Do you have a persistent dream of what your life is meant to be?
  • Have you been working on yourself for years and years but still feel like something is blocking you from your real life?
  • Are you constantly giving to other people but can’t seem to give to yourself?
  • Do you struggle to set healthy boundaries with others?
  • Do you often feel guilty when you do make time for yourself or spend money on yourself?
  • Do you feel overwhelmed and oppressed by what is going on in the world and wish you could make a real difference?

The time is now for those of us who are sensitive, empathic, creative and kind to stand for who we are and for the world we believe in.

We are called to reclaim our inner authority. This means learning to accept and honor our needs, not continually “working on ourselves” while we settle for scraps.

This means learning to trust and honor our desires rather than suppressing them to avoid conflict.

It means seeing through the stories we were given in childhood, such as that acting on our desires will hurt those who supposedly love us.

Most of the stories we have believed about ourselves and about the world are false. They are merely clever and convenient control mechanisms designed to enable other beings to suck your life energy and use it to further their agenda of misery and suffering for all.

Seeing ‘Reality’ for what it really is means seeing yourself for who you really are. Which is SO much more than who you were made to think you are.

The parasites are clever but their power over you is based on one thing and one thing only: your belief that their lies are actually your thoughts.

Connecting with likeminded people who are committed to seeing through the false ‘reality’ story is KEY. We need each other to help us stay awake.

We start a new six-week Book of Spells webinar on Sunday, March 25. We have six four places left in the group. Sign up here:

Register: The Book of Spells: Who Do You Think You Are?!

book of spells who do you think you are webinar

The Real You, Hiding in the Shadows

Who you think you are is probably not who you really are…

by Safiya

I’ve been crocheting a lot lately. It’s like a meditation, the repetitive back and forth, seemingly never ending rows growing and forming, something taking shape from nothing. It’s a miracle to turn a ball of string into a piece of fabric, a fabric that is basically holes held together with knots of yarn.

I just made a curtain. I’m in love with it! I fall in love with everything I make. I can’t believe I’m able to do it and I fall in love so often that I’m overrun with stuff I’ve made.   This is the making of a great modern fairy tale:  the girl who fell in love with everything she makes and ends up surrounded by her handiwork and unable to leave her home, only to be rescued by a handsome prince who arrives on a white horse clutching  a pair of scissors to cut her out of her predicament.

Continue reading

Why crafting our own narrative matters more now than ever

Social media seduction

I talk about this in my most recent podcast, but this 13-minute Guardian interview is worth watching to understand how unscrupulous marketers are influencing us through Facebook harvesting and micro-targeting.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie claims that Cambridge Analytica used apps developed by a Cambridge University professor that enjoyed “special permissions” from Facebook. Meaning that If one of your friends signed up for one of these apps, the app had permission to harvest data from all of your friends’ friends – including your status updates and even private messages.

I also found it fascinating that Cambridge Analytica employs teams of writers, designers, and other creatives to create entire blogs and websites to lend the appearance of legitimacy to what you are fed on Facebook. Entire fake histories written just for you!

Want to take back your story? Join us now for Who Do You Think You Are?! A mind-expanding exploration into the untapped resources of your multidimensional Self.

 

Dreaming Our World Into Being

The Pisces New Moon Podcast

children power of imaginationSaturday’s New Moon opens an energetic doorway to reclaim the power of our personal – and collective – imagination.

The New Moon happens in conjunction with Chiron, the wounded healer, just as Chiron is about to end his eight-year stay in Pisces.

Chiron in Pisces activates awareness of our collective, societal wounds. Particularly those involving populations that are not included in the Saturnian power structures of society: women, children, minorities, trans- people, and other groups that exist in the shadow of the patriarchy.

The New Moon also makes a positive trine angle to Jupiter, currently retrograde in Scorpio – indicating that a willingness to encounter and integrate our own psychological shadow is necessary in order for us to escape from the collective “story of the world” and dream a better life for ourselves and for Mother Earth and all of her creatures.

We also look at the paradoxical energy signature at the start of the new astrological year, delve deeper into Jupiter Retrograde, and more.

[powerpress]


The Naked Songwriter podcast currently happens twice a month, timed to the new and full moons. I’m listener-supported, just like public radio, so if you enjoy my unique blend of astrology, music, cultural commentary and inspiration for all of us who are creating rather than consuming, please show your love. Share the pod, support me on Patreon — let’s connect and conquer!

Support DK Brainard on Patreon

 

The legend of Jimbo

Tapping into your inner genius

In her What’s In A Name? post Safiya asked, Do you like your given name?

I don’t ever remember liking mine.

My given first name, Daryl, means ‘beloved’ according to the name dictionaries. That’s beautiful, and I am beloved. I like the way my given name looks in print, with its fairly unusual spelling (vs Darrell or Darryl). But it never seemed to fit me.

Maybe it’s because my dad gave it to me. My dad and I have a good relationship now, but things were so rocky between him and my mom, he was gone by the time I turned three years old. Obviously I don’t remember a lot of that time, but I didn’t have many fond associations with him when I was growing up.

Whatever the reasons, I was already trying to change my name by the time I was five or six years old. I had narrowed down my career options to detective, explorer, fighter pilot, or cowboy by then. I was always trying to get my mom to call me Pete or Bob, which I thought were good cowboy names. Continue reading

What’s In A Name?

Exploring yOur (inherited) identity

by Safiya

hello my name is?

Years ago, a girl who worked in my office announced one day that from now on she wanted to be known by a new name. I thought, how strange! It was very confusing and I never quite got used to it. Then a few years later I was given a new name.

The one thing that identifies us most specifically in this world is probably the thing we think the least about: our name.

What’s in a name, anyway?  Continue reading

Ego Trouble: It’s Not What You Think

[Why your bodaciousness is called for now]

DK Brainard driving

The Naked Songwriter Podcast – Episode #21

[podcast]

What the Virgo Full Moon opposition Neptune and Jupiter Retrograde have to say about your ego. Which isn’t what you thought it was. Plus – the USA’s natal chart: more secrets revealed, and why it’s so important not to play small now.

Here’s the excerpt from my newsletter about claiming your greatness.

Here’s a video of us writing a song based on audience suggestions in the middle of Red House (public post on my Patreon blog).

Me and Lupo playing my award-winning song “the blue line” on acoustic guitars under the Full Moon on March 1. (Thanks to Natalie Lupo for the great iPhone video!)

 

Claim Your Greatness

Beyond the Ego – This Is No Time for Playing Small

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why it’s important for those of us who are on the leading edge of human social evolution to claim our greatness. I think so many of us who are healers and artists have been outcasts from mainstream society for so long that we’ve developed some bad habits.

New webinar starts March 25!

Even as kids, many of us sensed that the others didn’t quite understand us. We often faced outright rejection and abuse from parents, peers, and partners because of our unwillingness (or inability) to be like the others – to be who we were supposed to be.

“When are you going to stop (playing your guitar, drawing, writing stories, doing yoga, talking about that woo-woo shit)?” They’d ask, in a tone that made sure you knew that your passion was not only not going to make you enough money to live, but was also inherently shameful and embarrassing.

“Why do you have to be so weird?” Continue reading