love this! I was just asking myself this morning - how can I be soft today - and I love hearing this question reflected in song :)

how have i not heard this yet? gonna be listening on repeat!!!

Thank you for this beautiful song and recording.

So lovely. Have heard this today at the perfect time. I wassitting amongst the rosemary and the sweetpeas growing and this song just came on. Thank you

Breathe breathe breathe in 
Breathe breathe out

Let it go, let it go, let it go

Trust in what's coming
Trust in your knowing
It's deeper and wider and holy


special thanks to Jess & Dan Pelberg Berlin for lighting the spark to find this song in me

Breathe

Round House Song Sessions
July 23rd, 2016
Millerton, NY

recorded by: Aly Halpert, Shelby Handler, Beck Gross, Batya Levine & Margot Seigle

lyrics:
I am grateful for the unknown blessings already on their way 
I am grateful for the unknown blessings already on their way 

I will not 
Look back in anger
Or forward in fear
But around in awareness

The Haudenosaunee believe that words of gratitude come before all else that should be said in a conversation, and the initial words of this song are credited to them.  Sarah Thompson learned this song, which expands on that concept, while doing ecological social justice work with Joanna Macy. Batya heard it from Sarah while they sat in the red tent during Passover in the Desert with Wilderness Torah.  The version recorded here is Batya's crafting.

original words:
We give thanks 
for the unknown blessings
already on their way (2x)

We will not
look back in anger
or forward in fear
but around in awareness...

We give thanks

AV - I Am Grateful

Inspired by nomadic years, the wisdom of the body and nervous system, change, Somatic Reality: Bodily Experience and Emotional Truth by Stanley Kelemen, the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess community, and the Judaism of my ancestors. Received to the tune of Avinu Malkeinu, a traditional Jewish High Holidays prayer.

Deep gratitude to my teachers, community and bright and well ancestors: Taya Shere, Rabbi Jill Hammer, Ibrahim Baba, my parents, Zaide, Grandpa, the Romanian women, Kohenet and so many more. Thank you.

Lyrics:
Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and listen to the wind
All comes together; all falls apart
Forming anew your beating heart

Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and draw yourself near
The rocks are your keepers
Tell them your stories
Now it is safe to be here

A river flows from within you to where you will go
The current carries you home
Let your life unfold

Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and you will receive
Life wants to meet you where you are
Not where you think you should be

A river flows from within you to where you will go
The current carries you home
Let your life unfold

Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and you will be shown
The love that was always lifting you up
You are never alone

A river flows from within you to where you will go
The current carries you home
Let your life unfold

Slow down child, slow down (x4)

Slow down, child, slow down
Slow down and listen to the wind
All comes together; all falls apart
Forming anew your beating heart

Slow Down / The Mother's Response (Preview)

Song/prayer/meditation to heal personal and societal grief. For ordinary grief, extraordinary grief, the unbearable kind and the unseen kind and the enduring kind, in service of exhales and letting go of what is ours and not ours, of compassion, lightness, & becoming who we are after and through it all.

Aly Halpert's Album

Loosen Loosen

A slow song brought to you by the waters of the Webatuck swamp - Schagticoke / Mahican land. 

Water provides life. From the rain, the dew, the ocean, water heals and holds, and sings so many songs through us. I am grateful to the waters for being such a teacher, and invite you to honor them with this song.

The hebrew at the end is the traditional prayer said for a Mikveh, ritual immersion or bath:

Barukh atah Adonay Eloheynu ruach ha-olam, asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu al ha-t'vilah.

Blessed are you, source of creation,  of the universe, who sanctifies us through mitzvot and has shown us immersion.

lizard popping bubbles

Great Waters

Artist: Kate Sutherland

I learned this song at Let My People Sing 2019.

Sung at a song circle on September 15, 2019 on Chinook land/Portland, OR.

Part 1:
When I am waiting out a storm
I come back to my breath
When I am waiting out a storm
I come back to my heartbeat

Part 2:
Mmm, madeo, madeo
Mmm, madeo, madeo-o

**Photo credit: Sarah Snyder!

Waiting Out A Storm (Kate Sutherland)

how can I ...

be a little more soft today
feel a little more connected today
get a little more grounded today
be a little more free today 
___ a little more ____ today

A part of the melody inspired by and based on "Faith's Hymn" by Beautiful Chorus

How Can I

recorded by Aly Halpert, Sol Weiss & Margot Seigle

I believed in solid ground until I saw the earth in motion,
in the winds of steady change and in the ever-rolling ocean.

All moves on in perfect, perfect motion.
All is change and ever-rolling ocean.

from Annie: 
Blessed Motion is a 4-part acknowledgement of the nature of Life as an unpredictable, ever-changing movement toward itself. The melody came squatting on a rock next to a fast moving fork in the Trinity River, where salmon were in their first week of journeying to their spawning sites in northern California. Martin Prechtel said after surviving the Guatemala earthquake of 1976, during which he witnessed the ground beneath him rising up and swallowing people and villages whole, that solid ground is a myth believed by people who live on the earth rather than in it. This idea has stayed with me through the years and provided partial inspiration for this song. This is a big song! It travels through two dimensions, the first, a three or four part set of repeating lines, the second, a layered riff topped with a solo section.

Blessed Motion - Annie Zylstra

Vocal accompaniment and production by Baci Weiler

I will carry you through these changes
V'ad seva ani esbol
(When you turn grey, I'll still carry you/be patient with you/bear you) 
- Isaiah 46:4

(((It's odd to do this as a duet because to me, it's about learning to hold myself and have my own back, and sometimes feeling like the universe is holding me too.)))

I Will Carry You/V'ad Seva — Inspired by Isaiah 46:4

I wrote this song in the midst of shock and grief at the murder and loss of Gabrielle Gottlieb from the Romemu community and the world. She was a fan of my music and was kind whenever I saw her, asking my family about me, and watching. 

Gabrielle was a healer, an energy worker, a woman deeply aware of the power that lies in the body. She wasn’t just gentle, just kind— she was a warrior. Gabrielle was running in the last moments of her life, trusting her guts, trusting her body, and trying with all she had to find safety and freedom. Her loss remains a gaping hole in the world, and justice has still not been served. 

In this song, I keep in mind those in abusive relationships, those in unsafe homes, those parenting themselves in treacherous environments, and those whose traumas of abuse and sexual assault are bubbling to the surface in this time. I commit to working to create systems to address harm and create circles of love and care wherever I dwell. 

A word about trusting the body— as someone with a chronic disability, trusting my body completely is no simple task. My body needs a lot of help to keep working! If you’re singing this song and find that these words don’t sit right in the moment, I hope they might serve in other moments. And if not, I love you and see that pain. I wrote these words in deep gratitude to that thing that sits deep, deep within my body, under even the parts of my body that need help to function— that gut instinct that keeps me safe with all its might. 

Thank you to my partner Noam Lerman for joining me in song and strength!

Lyrics:

Days when I don’t trust my family
Days when I don’t trust my friends
I trust my body, deep down in my core 

Days when I don’t trust my leaders
Days when I don’t trust my teachers 
I trust my body, deep down in my core 

Days when I don’t trust my lover
Days when I don’t trust my God
I trust my body, deep down in my core

Oh my body, oy oy oy oy 
Oh my body oy oy oy oy
I trust my body, my shaking body
I trust my body, deep down in my core

Oh my body, oy oy oy oy 
Oh my body oy oy oy oy
I trust my body, my brilliant body 
I trust my body, deep down in my core 

Oh my body, oy oy oy oy 
Oh my body oy oy oy oy
I trust my body, down in my kishkes 
I trust my body, deep down in my core

I Trust My Body

sung with sol yael weiss & ash berman

keep me, in the arms
of my beloved, oh g!d

planted where i stand
grounded by the land
carry me back to the sea
from dust to the dust again

perfect as i am
grounded by the land
carry me back to the sea
from dust to dust again

no matter where i go,
always keep me close
no matter where i go,
always keep me close

<3

How Can I

Batya Levine

Recent comments

Abbie Barash

River of Fire

alison ayelet

Alma

Related tracks