Oral Stories Archives - Madhu Bazaz Wangu
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Oral Stories

Tuesday, 23 June 2026

Posted on June 22, 2026
in Flourishing, Imagination, Meditation, Nonverbal Activities, Oral Stories, Sharper Brain after Retirement
2 Comments

# 1 We have been told that our brain has “Left” hemisphere and “Right” hemisphere, and each one of us is either dominated by the “Right hemisphere” or the “Left”? However, the recent research using brain scanning technology has revealed that brain’s two hemispheres work together intricately. They are codependent.  It is still true that the right brain is more creative and artistic and the left more technical and logical. But the processing of reading, math and language is understood to take place in both hemispheres. And more importantly for us to know that regular meditation practice connects and coordinates the two hemispheres. And the more they connect the more optimally we perform on any given task. # 2 Oral world existed before writing was invented. Verbal thought lived in the inner contemplation and spoken language. Only...

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Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Posted on June 8, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, #Story Telling, Creativity, Flourishing, Oral Stories, Originality, Writing
0 Comments

Magnolia Blossoms, Ashby Ponds, 2026 Have you been tinkering with the poem you started in the class? Or perhaps wrote another one? Great job! Few facts about poetry: The craft of writing poems is deliberate, attentive, and it requires absolute concentration. It is simultaneously intuitive and inventive. Poetry emerges like the bursting of a bud. It grows and ripens like fruit.Poetry grows on us. It helps refine our thinking and enhances journaling. You may not want to become a poet but you learn to have a grasp on words and how they have power to stir deep feelings and emotions in you that you may not have experienced before. Reading poetry, like writing in a journal is a private, intimate experience. It stirs self-examination. It helps us deal with paradoxical emotions we don’t understand. Poems...

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Thursday, June 4, 2026

Posted on June 3, 2026
in #Reading Poetry, Attention and Awareness, Creativity, Imagination, Oral Stories, Well Being
2 Comments

As a college student, I admired poets and those who enjoyed reading poems, but rarely did I read poetry myself. Later in life, my younger daughter, Zoon gifted me Pablo Neruda’s Odes to Common Things. I read and reread the poems, and loved each one of those jewels, simple yet stunning.  To understand the structure and methods of writing poetry, I read Edward Hirsch’s How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry and Molly Peacock’s How to Read a Poem and Start a Poetry Circle. Several years went by without my reading another poem. Writing one had not even occurred to me. Between 2007-2011 my website blogs were commentaries on several sacred text, all written in verse including Taoist, Tao-te Ching, Buddhist Dhammapada and Hindu Bhagavad Gita. Each week I copied one chapter from one sacred book from...

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Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Posted on August 4, 2025
in Journaling, Nonverbal Activities, Oral Stories, Reading, Travel
4 Comments

For Month 8 “Mindfulness and Travel, I’ll share the story of how the country to which I arrived as an immigrant in 1974 became my home. A trip with my husband tracing the last leg of Lewis and Clark’s Expedition from the east to the west coast was an adventure of a lifetime for both of us, especially for me.  After reading two hefty volumes, Undaunted Courage and Journals of Lewis and Clark I was “called” to go on the same journey. My husband and I took a flight from Pittsburgh, PA to Portland, Oregon. From there we embarked on a boat that carried us upon the waters of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. The third American President, Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) had envisioned an expedition that would boldly navigate the heart and the west of the country,...

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