Great Music Documentaries

 

There are so many great music documentaries and videos on Amazon and YouTube.
Linking two recent discoveries here.

1. History Of The Eagles. Trailer linked above. Full documentary available via Amazon here.

2. History of The Rascals from Pop Goes The 60s on Youtube. Part 1 above. Part 2 here and Part 3 here. Many other interesting videos on this channel, as well!

 
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New Book About Divorce

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My book ‘The Rice Is Cooked: - Five grains of wisdom to move on from divorce’ is out now!
This book is a tool to get back in touch with your true self after experiencing a separation and divorce.
It’s an interactive workbook that contains both reflections coming from me, and also questions for you, so you can find your own answers, reflections and lessons.
If you’re interested, you can check it out on amazon HERE.

 
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Deep Truths w/ Iain McGilchrist

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I’m currently reading the book The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist.
I really, really recommend it.
McGilchrist’s latest work The Matter With Things is what I’ll be reading next.
Linking two interviews with him here so you can discover why, in case you’re not already familiar with his work.
Enjoy! :)
Seena

 
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Mallorca Sweet Bread

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A long time ago I was the biggest fan of the Mallorca Sweet Bread from Starbucks. Not too sweet, a bit mushy, a bit fluffy…It was just the perfect coffee pastry to me. Fast forward ten years and the Starbucks in my area has long but discontinued their Mallorca Sweet Bread offering. The other day I tried re-creating them at home. I’m not a baker and I usually don’t consume pastries, so I was lacking ingredients like white sugar, and kitchen essentials like parchment paper, a whisk and a food mixer. I was still able to bake pretty good-looking and delicious-tasting Mallorca Sweet Bread rolls! I used this recipe as a base, and then halved it, plus substituted white sugar for coconut sugar. If you plan to bake without a mixer, I would recommend baking a smaller batch like I did with this recipe. You can only mix so much dough by hand.

Seena’s Six Organic Mallorca Sweet Breads

Ingredients:

Use all Organic ingredients

1 stick butter
4 egg yolks
1/3 cup + 2 table spoons coconut sugar
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup water
1/2 pkg dry yeast
3 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
powder sugar
1 tbs butter for greasing the baking pan and 2 tbs butter for brushing the rolls with melted butter

Melt the stick of butter.
Mix the melted butter stick, the 4 egg yolks and the 1/3 cup + 2 table spoons of coconut sugar in a bowl.
Ideally you would have a whisk and whisk it together until smooth.
If you don’t have a whisk, just use a fork like I did.
Mix the 1/4 milk and 3/4 cup water together and heat them until lukewarm.
Put the 1/2 of yeast into the water and milk and let it sit for 30 seconds.
Mix the <milk/water/yeast> with the <egg/sugar/butter>.
Add salt and flour. Ideally you would do this in a kitchen mixer.
If you don’t have a mixer just continue using your fork and your arm.
Add a little bit of flower at a time to make it easier to avoid lumps.
When everything is mixed, go ahead and cover the bowl with a cloth and let the dough rise for 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes, remove the cloth.
Grease a baking pan with butter, or use parchment paper.
Now it’s time to make the rolls.
Take an extra dash of flower and spread it onto your kitchen counter top.
Divide the dough into six equal pieces. Create long spaghetti like shapes of each of them.
Then roll them up into little circles. Tuck the end part of the dough in under the main part.
Put the rolls onto your baking pan and let them rise for another 25 minutes under the same kitchen cloth.


Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Remove the kitchen cloth and brush the rolls with melted butter.
Put the rolls in the oven for 20 -25 minutes.
Let the rolls cool down and cover them with powdered sugar.

Enjoy!

 
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Favorite Hazrat Inayat Khan Quotes

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If you are looking for something to read this summer I warmly recommend The Dance Of The Soul. This is one of my favorite books, if not the favorite. It consists of a collection of profound aphorisms by Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan. I usually read a page or two in this book to get back in touch with what’s truly important. One page is enough, as the sayings are so elegantly simple, yet deep. Here are a few of my favorites:

As the shadow is evident yet non-existent, so is evil

It is easy to become a teacher, but difficult to become a pupil

As fire can cook food or burn it, so also does pain affect the human heart

The secret of life is balance, and the absence of balance is life’s destruction

If you fail yourself, everybody will fail you

One single moment of a sincere life is worth more than a thousand years of a life of falsehood

Before you can know the truth, you must learn to live a true life

 
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Find my book at Local's

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No matter if you are just a visiting kook or a local you can wind down with Rockaway’s best coffee and my poetry book at Local’s Collective (190 Beach 69th St in Rockaway). My faves are their iced latte with almond milk, banana bread and vegan chocolate chip cookie. My book is in their cafe library. It’s also on Amazon if you want to pick up a copy.

It really is the best coffee in Rockaway.

 

Club Quarantine

 

With most of us still stuck at home for the next couple of weeks I thought I’d share some cool content you can watch while waiting for better news from the outside.
The video above is from an interesting series created by The New York Times titled ‘Almost Famous’ by Op-Docs.
There are multiple episodes available on YouTube, and the first one I happened to stumble over was this amazing one (above) about Kim Hill, an original member of The Black Eyed Peas.

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My second recommendation is to catch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel via Amazon Prime.
I’m super late to the party as the show launched in 2017 and is now on season 3, but better late than never!
Incredibly well made show about a housewife that decides to become a stand up comic in the late 1950s.
Shout out to my former classmate Bailey DeYoung who does an amazing job playing Imogene Cleary!

I’ve been dancing along with the Fitness Marshall since last summer when I first discovered his YouTube account.
He has so many amazing dance videos and they all feel good for the body - especially the spine; #bodyrolls! But the best part is his limitless positive energy!

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Hope anyone who reads this is doing well and taking care!

 

I learned transcendental meditation

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I’ve been an avid yoga practitioner for the last decade. Yoga can be a wonderful form of meditation, depending on your intention and awareness of that fact, when practicing.
And when I write and record my best music I also feel like I’m getting into an effortless flow-state, tapping into the subconscious and/or some creative source I can’t explain.

But I had yet to try a “100%” meditation-only technique up until recently when I finally took the time and signed up for a Transcendental Meditation course.

The reason I picked TM as my meditation technique was because I heard Ray Dalio speak so highly of it. 
I also watched an introduction video on TM by Bob Roth before signing up. Both of them left me with the impression that TM is a basic, no-nonsense meditation that works. All that is required is that you do it two times a day for 20 minutes.

There is also research that shows that TM has a positive effect on everything from reducing high blood pressure to minimizing anxiety. I don’t have high blood pressure or anxiety, but I’m curios by nature and I always want to try things that can make me be a better version of myself, so I signed up.

The official TM course is a four day course conducted by The Maharishi Foundation, a non-profit educational organization. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was the person who introduced TM to the US, so this is the reason behind the foundation name.

There are TM centers all over the world, and the one I ended up taking my course at was the Madison Avenue location in Manhattan.

The first of the four days is a one-on-on session with a certified TM teacher, and the three remaining days are group sessions. I enjoyed the experience and I’m so happy I took the time to learn something I can use for the rest of my life. I’d share more of my experience if it weren’t for the fact that when you sign up to learn TM you have to agree not to share too much of how exactly to do the technique. This is in order to avoid misunderstandings, which I can appreciate. If you want to learn TM the only place to do for real is via an official center, which you can locate on tm.org.

XO,

Seena

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2 minutes of inspiration

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Hi guys! I just decided to make a series of short videos where I hope I can add a dash of good energy to your day. I personally love to watch all kinds of motivational videos on YouTube so I decided to make a few of my own. Hope you like it and if you don't at least you didn't waste more than 2 minutes of your time :)

The three first videos are pasted into this post (as you can hopefully see, lol). If you want to check out more of them go to my channel via the videos or click HERE.

Wonderful books

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I’ve read so many wonderful books this summer. My favorites that I really recommend are:

Raising Kanye by Donda West

Principles by Ray Dalio

The Secrets of My Life by Caitlyn Jenner

…and all things Kardashian by Kris Jenner

Tenk Enkelt by Carina Poulsen (Norwegian only)

It’s just so beautiful when these people share from their experience and thoughts on how to do life.

If you want to get inspired pick any one of them and enjoy!

Contact: booking@seenamusic.com