There is magic in the air here as I sit and write to you from one of my favorite places on the planet, Maui, Hawaii. I was first drawn to this island several years ago when one of my mentors and teachers, Dr. Wayne Dyer first started doing weekend workshops here. I was fortunate to spend time studying with this man on topics including the Tao Te Ching, The Power of Intention and Unconditional Love. Wayne had an incredible way of making spirituality accessible to everyone. He always seemed to know exactly what to say at the right time and it always felt as if he was speaking directly to me. I find myself tonight on Maui reminiscing about this great soul that graced the planet and left too soon at the age of 75. Wayne left his body on August 29, 2015. Wayne often referenced his mentors being Ram Dass and Abraham Maslow and although he never knew them very well, he still credits them as playing a significant role in his life. I feel this way about Wayne. One could perhaps say he...

This is the time of year when we start seeing more people going to the gym, lots of new years resolutions being made and many new beginnings taking place. It is also a time of year when we reflect back on the year that has just past and begin to take stock on what we have gained and what we have lost. As 2015 comes to an end I am filled with gratitude for the incredible gift of this life. I feel extremely blessed to be here and conscious of this life taking place within me and around me. I look around and realize that there is so much to celebrate. I want to celebrate the life of Dr. Wayne Dyer and the profound impact he had on our planet. I want to celebrate my family and friends who continue to grow and inspire me everyday. I want to celebrate the new connections I made this year including my new Naturopathic doctor, Dr. Lisa Graham. I also want to celebrate the new I AM festival that my friends, Maurice and Tracy and I have started dreaming up for August...

When I was a kid one of my favourite things to do was pretend I was Fred Penner. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Fred Penner is a legendary Family and Children’s Entertainer who may be best known for his album, The Cat Came Back. At the age of five I would stand on the living room couch with a plunger stick as my microphone and a Fisher Price guitar and pretend I was Fred in concert. I remember going to watch Fred perform at my parent’s company Christmas party and then would go and see him at The Children’s Festival. This man has a magic about him and at the time I couldn’t really name it but I sure could feel it. Years later in grade seven, once again, Fred had a major impact on my life. I was asked to perform a song in front of my school in the gymnasium and decided to perform “The Cat Came Back”. I remember looking out at all the students singing along and thinking, ‘this is what I want to do for the rest of my life”. I...

I fell into the practice of yoga several years ago when a coupe of friends of mine had invited me to attend a Moksha Hot yoga class. I remember walking into the studio and feeling like I stepped into another planet. The culture was so different compared to what I had known outside the walls of that building. A calm came over me as I placed my mat down in the sweaty hot room and waited for class to begin. I remember feeling very self conscious as the instructor entered the room and started referencing words I had never heard of. “Savassana this and Udyana that”. My mind raced into overdrive as I didn’t want anyone to look over and see me in the corner trying to keep up with the next to impossible stretches the people around me seemed to be so easily doing and yet somehow after the experience, I couldn’t stop thinking about how good I felt. I left the studio that day feeling so light, open and completely present. Everything seemed clearer and made more sense....

This week's blog post is an open letter and challenge that I recently sent to Apple's CEO, Tim Cook. It was really scary to push the "send" button and email this to him and it also feels very edgy for me to post this blog here on this topic. It is always edgy to write and express publicly what you believe because there is the fear of being judged. With that being said, I am sharing this in hopes to have an open discussion on this topic and am really looking forward to hearing your creative thoughts on how we can rejuvenate the current music industry for the artist.  

Tim, 
I want to share this short message with you along with a challenge for Apple Music- in the hopes that you will continue being a leader in rejuvenating our music industry and the artistic creative process. Thank you in advance for considering my challenge and I look forward hearing your thoughts on making the creative process worthwhile for all artists in the...

Let’s face it- life can be really demanding of our time. It seems like there is never enough time to get everything done that we want to. Whether it is at work or in our our personal life- demands creep up and we tend to give over our control to the outside pressures. Do you ever find yourself like me rushing from one task to the next and not taking the time to stop and smell the roses?

Over this past week I have been forced to take a hard look at my current lifestyle. Over the past year I have been suffering from a weak voice. As most of you know I am a singer and a professional speaker and I use my voice a lot during the day. It has become a very common occurrence that at the end of a singing or speaking event, I will lose my voice for an extended period of time (that can sometimes last up to a week). It is as if I am in a constant state of laryngitis. I have been to several doctors to try and get to the bottom of this issue and finally this week I was diagnosed with a...

This weekend I was blessed with the opportunity to collaborate with 24 high school students from across the city of Winnipeg at a leadership conference called Manitoba Alive. I attended this program when I was in high school myself and have gone back every year since as a councillor, guest speaker and now the program director. It is one of my favourite three days of the year. Imagine three days of your life where you experience no judgement, no competition, no self-doubt and a complete invitation to just be yourself completely. Manitoba Alive is exactly this. It is what I would compare to heaven on Earth for three days. During the weekend we support each other in developing our dreams and visions. We work on our life purpose. We gain knowledge and the tools to help us get to where we desire to go. This year in particular brought together a profound group of students that truly had vision, leadership and an authentic dynamic that made everyone feel included in the group. So often in...

Slowing down is not a sign of weakness or failure. It is not an offset of being un-productive. In fact it seems that the most successful people on the planet have mastered the art of doing less and accomplishing more. How do they do it? How do they find that work/life balance? I sat with this question in meditation this week and this is the answer that came to me…

 When your life is filled with urgency notice that you completely cut off the creativity energy that you originated from. Whether you realize it or not, all form in the physical world including yourself originated from a source of non-doing, “no-thing”. You came from a natural place of being. Being-ness is your origin. When you practice slowing down to the point that anxiety, panic, urgency and stress are no longer rushing you into action you will experience a natural, peaceful invitation to move forward in your life with deeper awareness and clarity. Most of us are afraid that if we slow down we...

This past weekend I was having dinner with some friends and we started talking about astronomy. I have always been interested in this topic as it always amazes me when I look up to the sky on a clear evening and see billions of sparkling stars shining down above my head along with beams of white light streaming down from the moon and lighting up the silhouettes of trees and neighbouring houses in my neighbourhood. What is it that makes up our cosmos? Where do science and spirituality intersect? How is it that we can be in space and actually loose years of our life while it is simply the equivalent to a day experienced on Earth? How is it that we are conscious and experiencing all of these natural miracles unfolding around us? Since having dinner with my friends and talking about the multitude of possibilities that make up our reality, my mind has been filled with amazement. I was reminded of a quote by Rumi that states “sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment”.
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In a world that is driven by work, productivity, success and results it can be very difficult to slow down from the rush of it all and ask ourselves one of the most important questions of all questions- WHY? Why am I doing what I do? 
What is the driving force behind all of the actions I am taking on a daily basis? The question of why is a rarity in the rat-race and yet it is one of the most powerful questions to lead us deeper into what our true life purpose really is. For a number of years I wrote government grants for musicians. I would spend hours and hours of my time filling out forms, making phone calls and writing proposals on behalf of artists, to convince a jury of professionals that they should fund my client’s upcoming sound recording project. (Yes, in Canada our government is an incredible supporter of the arts and culture and actually offers government grants to musicians and artists). While working as a grant writer, I quickly realized that these skills were...