What's Essential
b"Episode 5: What's Essential\\nWelcome to 5 \\u201cWhat\\u2019s Essential. I\\u2019m Sissy Siero your curator, your host for an audio story- wheel that\\u2019s stopping for a brief moment to check in with how we\\u2019re doing. We\\u2019ll hear stories about shifting priorities to find the what\\u2019s essential right now. Doing, having, perhaps being less, but better; a different gauge of time and energy spent. Also balancing personal relationships and purpose - not just how we work, where we live, and why we do what we do, but teasing, out of the tangle, the new essential - a closer look into the origins of patterns, and habitual thinking and life choices. Permission and room for the voice of innate, essential wisdom to have it\\u2019s say. Cracking open secret vaults, and daring to ask uncomfortable questions- how staying with them actually gifts us with a broader capacity for more grace, love, and confidence. The chance to lean into who we are now, and becoming. What a strange buffet this moment in our collective lives. The pandemic has been slowly deleting the noise obscuring, and distorting, the music I\\u2019d been trying to dance [to] my life to for years. \\n\\nFirst we\\u2019ll hear from Meme \\u2013 what became essential in her life during the pandemic and into the uncertainty of now\\u2026\\n====================================================\\nNext up a conversation with Melissa Grogran - a Voice and Movement Expert - she\\u2019s worked with yogis, Somatic Therapists, yoga and voice teachers, and business professionals - most notably as the Dialect Coach for the AMC series The Son, starring Pierce Brosnan. \\n=============================\\n\\nWe\\u2019ll be right back with more of episode 5 after this\\u2026\\n Follow us on Instagram, and Facebook, at #LoveinthetimeofCOVID-19podcast, or at sissysierosvoiceatx, to get the latest episodes. You can also find us on my website - sissysiero.com, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. \\n====================================================\\nNow a reflection on what\\u2019s essential from acclaimed Austin-based Jazz musician Dan Redner. As an active Music director, pianist, songwriter, and educator, Dan\\u2019s incredible, generous heart, talent and music continues to touch so many lives; especially during the pandemic. \\n\\n=====================================================\\nNext is an introspective share from a longtime friend and hotelier who speaks to us from her home in Uruguay. Throughout the pandemic, Laura has been a captive audience to nature\\u2019s play of seasons \\u2013 I\\u2019ve lived vicariously through her brilliant daily photo journal \\u2013 curating nature, and the 2 and four legged fellow travelers - enshrined in verdant landscapes. daily bike treks in the surrounding area became the through-line of her life in the off season. Opening the hotel back up brings surprising questions and insights\\u2026Here\\u2019s Laura: \\n=====================================================\\n\\nI wish to thank my listeners, and story-tellers. I hope this episode inspires you to become a contributor on this podcast. Send your voice, your story because it matters, and you need to be heard.\\nThis podcast moves in my life as a constant challenge to go deeper, look more closely \\u2013 Episode 5\\u2019s theme, in particular, has sent me careening into more questions than ever. It started with the question: \\u201cDoes it matter?\\u201d Does my work matter to anyone other than me, and a few close people. Is what I do and how I do it Essential? What\\u2019s my creative work\\u2019s tangible value? I know every artist has these seasons of doubt, but\\u2026. this is different. The next part of this wave of painful questions came when I began reading : \\u201cSo you want to talk about Race\\u201d by \\nIeoma Oluo. It\\u2019s demanding that I pay a deeper kind of attention; turn toward and into the ache of uncomfortable, and sometimes painful new questions, new spaces. If I haven\\u2019t been consciously part of the solution, haven\\u2019t I been unconsciously part of the problem? That has to be true, and it\\u2019s awful."