I started meditating a few years ago. Recently, I discovered this really cool app that includes a bunch of different guided meditations and ambient music tracks. It has a nice timer where you can choose your favorite starting yoga bell-sounds and even pic different nature soundscapes to play in the background while you do your thing. During the winter I chose the sound of a burning campfire to meditate to and I have to say it really helped soften the edges of serious winter depression. But recently, I caught myself, on an early summer morning, in front of a closed window in my temperature controlled home, meditating to a loop of light, outdoor sounds with birds chirping in the distance and a soft summer breeze blowing through trees. Soon after I finished, I realized that I could have just opened a window or stepped out on to the porch and experienced a very similar “real life” version of what I had just created with my smartphone, app, and blue tooth speaker. It’s like I had to have control over my little moment so that I could meditate to it and allow myself to get over having to have control of everything in my life. Sounds a little crazy… but it’s not hard to see how the tools in our lives can easily slip into becoming just more obstacles that, eventually, need to be managed and controlled right along with all of the other things that the tools were originally supposed to help us with. It can really start to feel like a vicious circle sometimes. Hopefully, the tunes in this month’s playlist will help you take a step back and discover the cool stuff in your own backyard.

June’s playlist includes songs by The Quiet Temple, Toby Goodshank, The Flaming Lips, Robyn Hitchcock, Deco Auto, Spencer Radcliffe, The Police, The Fall, Bhagavan Das, Grouper, Sonic Youth, Charles Bradley, Frank Black and more…

(Subscribe to get a new playlist every 1st Monday of the month. Click on my user link or search: Major Matt’s 1st Monday on Spotify to cruise past playlists and discover more music.)