Uplifted

Life doesn't always align with our dreams. This true story is told in the style of a fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a golden-haired girl who dreamed of becoming a musician. She studied piano as a girl and then switched to composing music as an adult. Her masterwork, Variants for Orchestra, is a stormy, complex piece that has few rivals in scale and scope. Few conductors know it. Interest in the music has come from younger musicians.

Getting a mammogram is an annual exercise in pain - but mammograms have been proven to save lives. In this episode Meg describes the experience and why, despite the pain, they are worth the potential gain.

One of the most popular Aesop's Fables is The Tortoise and the Hare. The hare is fast and confident about winning the race against the tortoise. So she pulls over for a nap while the tortoise plods on and reaches the finish line first. This episodes celebrates the tortoises among us.

Change is hard even when we need or want to live life differently. We are hardwired to fear the unknown. Working through the transition can be difficult but often it is possible.

Sometimes people come together in unexpected and helpful ways. Meg set out on a walk one early morning and found meaningful connections with a police officer and an elderly homeless man.

Sometimes spinning our wheels is a good thing - like when we're getting exercise riding a bike. But when the wheels of our mind spin the feeling is the opposite. It feels like we're victims of our thoughts. This episode introduces Tara Brach, the Buddhist teacher and author of the book Radical Acceptance. She talks about how meditation can help us move away from mental spin.

Many of us look outside ourselves to find beauty in the world. We travel to parks or the sea or to far-flung places like the Grand Canyon or the English countryside. John Muir was a naturalist who devoted his life to saving our nation's wilderness. He expressed the concept of embodying nature within. Meditation can help us in this effort.

Bad dreams can pack a powerful punch. They often bring us back to places and situations that caused us stress or unhappiness. But our dreams can also deliver messages that we need to heed. Messages that offer us a way out to something better.

Living and working in a crowded, noisy city can grate on the nerves. But for Uplifted host Meg Lindholm, the noise that bothered her most was her father's repetitive tirades. She felt powerless to prevent them until she brought the image of a TV set to mind. And voila - the chain of negativity was broken.

Sometimes our worries can spin around in our brains like spider webs. Except that spider webs are much more methodically produced by the small creatures who spin them. In this episode you'll hear how meditation can help us transform our anxious thoughts into images of beauty.