Terry Mack: Breathe With the Trees

Ross Tayler (00:00)

Hello, I'm Ross Tayler, your host and guide for Sacred Sundays, a space to slow down, tune in, and return to what's sacred within and around you. I'm also a life coach for empaths and sensitive souls, walking alongside those who are ready to come home to who they actually are. These conversations are part of fulfilling that purpose, a collective exploration of what it means to live in connection with the sacred. Some weeks you'll hear a sound-based offering to open the space. Other times we'll simply begin in conversation. However it unfolds, this is an invitation into presence, connection, and the beauty of the unseen. If these conversations find you, please subscribe, rate, and share so others can find their way here. Pour a cup of tea, settle in, and let's begin.

Ross Tayler (00:48)

Today on Sacred Sundays, our guest is Terry Mack. Terry is the owner of Peaceful Spirit Flutes. She believes the flute doesn't just make music, it awakens the soul. As the heart behind Peaceful Spirit Flutes in Spruce Grove, Terry carries a deep conviction that the flutes are calling people to come together in song and harmony. Her journey began with a single gift, a Native American flute, that became, in her own words, the key that unlocked a secret dream long held inside. Described as the voice of the wind, Terry guides others not just to play, but to honor their own inner song, learning to sculpt and shape sound that comes from the soul. For Terry, music is a sacred act, a breath of spirit moving through wood, connecting us to nature, to each other, and to ourselves. Welcome, Terry. So happy to have this conversation with you.

Terry Mack (01:45)

Oh, thank you. It's so nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Ross Tayler (01:48)

We have a mutual friend who connected us, and I'm so grateful for that. So Terry, you're going to begin by sharing a poem with us. I'm going to hand it over to you and let you take the mic.

Terry Mack (02:04)

Well, it is a poem that I created to go with my song Breathe With the Trees, and so the name of the poem is Breathe With the Trees.

[Terry reads her poem Breathe With the Trees, about three minutes]

Ross Tayler (05:08)

Thank you, Terry. I really appreciate that poem. That was a really powerful reflection of nature teaching us.

Terry Mack (05:18)

Well, the story of that poem, or the story of the song, because the song came first, is that I worked at a detox centre in Nanaimo. Some days I would take my flute and play for people, because the flutes are very calming. One day we had a really rough day, and this centre was surrounded by these beautiful trees. I went outside and went, man, if we could all just learn to breathe with the trees, our troubles could be less. And the song literally popped into my head, completed. I had a flute with me, I grabbed my phone and recorded it on the flute, and then we turned it into a song for the CD, with the birds and all the extra nice accompaniment that goes with it.

Ross Tayler (05:55)

Amazing. I have a background working at two different treatment centres, so I can relate to the energies you're speaking of and those kinds of days that happen. And it is always nice when there's someone who can bring that kind of energy to shift things, if that makes sense.

Terry Mack (06:12)

Yes, it does. It really happens when you play a flute for people. There are a couple of things that happen. People who are in anger and not ready to let go don't necessarily want to hear the flute. They don't want to go there yet. But the flute is very grounding and very connecting. And when people are troubled, sometimes it just gives you space to breathe, to take that breath and come down and go, okay, it's not so bad.

Ross Tayler (06:35)

I attended a men's group in the Okanagan, and there was a fellow there who would bring his flute quite often. There's something particular about the style of flute that you work with. It's kind of extra special in terms of the sound. And I always appreciated it when he would bring his flute and start the circle that way, because it is very grounding, in a powerful way.

Terry Mack (06:59)

Well, I always tell people, you have the energy of the tree, and then you have the energy of the maker. I only work with flute makers that I know and trust, who aren't bringing conspiracy energy into the tree. And then you, with your good intention, whether you're a stumble-fingered beginner or somebody who's mastered playing the flute, start to put your breath into the wood and sing. The sound is amazing. And the trees love it. I play that song for the trees all the time, and they dance with me.

I've also used the flute in my work. I worked with a colleague of mine, and we did a lot of research in First Nations communities across the interior of BC and up in Nunavut. Because we were sometimes dealing with fairly challenging and traumatic situations, we would go in and start the circles with my flutes. I would start by saying, the Creator has given me this incredible gift with these wonderful flutes that come from the First Nations people, and I would be honored if you would allow me to share a song, only with your permission. And they would allow that. And it would change the atmosphere so much. The tensions would relax a little. They would recognize that we were people coming in, because we were hired by the bands to come in and do these things, so we're not the enemy. It just helped build the connections. It made these town hall meetings and things that we were doing so much better.

Ross Tayler (08:26)

And it seems to me that what you're not saying specifically is that the flute is speaking to that person's unconscious, their unconscious connection to the medicine of the trees, the medicine of the sound. It sort of transcends our conscious experience of what we're going through day to day. It sets aside the noise and allows us to connect. Is that accurate?

Terry Mack (08:53)

That's really accurate. In one of those situations we were in, that particular band had had some major tragedies happening that day. So I went in and asked the administration. I said, look, I've got these beautiful flutes, and I would love to play for you. So I did. And I said, the intention is just that it goes where everybody needs to feel it. And the next day a woman came in, and she said, my God, I almost couldn't come in to work that day, it was just so horrible. She didn't live on the reserve. But she said, when I stepped onto the reserve, I could feel the resonance of your music echoing through, and it just grounded me again. That was incredible.

Ross Tayler (09:29)

And in your bio you said you've been described as the voice of the wind. Say more about that.

Terry Mack (09:37)

Well, people have told me that. They feel like things are flowing through me, just as the wind blows or the river flows. Because I am an intuitive player. I don't read any music. I don't know what notes I'm playing. I don't care what notes I'm playing, because I'm connecting purely to the sound. And I'll fool around and go back and forth with it. You haven't heard that much of my playing, but I play with a lot of flow. And because I have really good breath control and I know the dynamics of sound, which is why I call it sculpting and shaping sound with the flute, it invites people in, and it just feels like you're the voice of the wind. Because wind is never constant. It's there, but it always comes and goes and ebbs and flows.

Ross Tayler (10:23)

I used to live in Squamish for almost half my life, and Squamish actually translates as mother of the wind. There was a lot of wind that blew through the valley. In the days when I was very much in my head, I would go for a walk in the estuary and let the wind just clear out my head. And I still do that. In Nanaimo there's a lot of wind as well. It is a powerful medicine, and I love that it's flowing through you and through the flutes and translating into this musical experience.

Terry Mack (11:00)

Yeah, it's a crazy thing. It just kind of showed up in my life. I had horrible musical education experiences as a kid. I never thought I would make any music. But I always loved the sound of flutes. And the first time I heard the sound of a Native American flute, I said, I'm going to play that thing. I don't know how, but I'm going to.

And you couldn't find them. It was way back before the internet was quite so hot, and there weren't a lot of makers in Canada. My husband kept buying me flutes, because he figured I needed a flute. So he bought me a shakuhachi, which was hard to play. They're end-blown, and they're hard to play. Then he bought me a Chinese [xiao?], which is almost four feet tall, and I'm only five feet tall, so I puzzled about that one for a while, because it was really big. So I said to him, if you're going to get me a flute, the only flute I ever really wanted is a Native American style flute, from the first time I heard one. So if you can find one that fits your budget, that's what you can get me for Christmas. That's all I want. I don't want anything else.

So he found one from a maker in the interior of BC, [Windflower Flutes?, maker's name unclear]. It came into the house, and he had a dream about playing it, because he always had a dream that he'd maybe play a recorder or something. But he had a dream about playing the flute, and he said, no, you have to wait till Terry opens you on Christmas morning and plays the flute. And my gosh, I think it was the best gift I've ever gotten in my life. It totally changed my life. Because all of a sudden, what I could hear in my head and heart and spirit, I could start to connect to in the flute.

And he got me another one for my birthday in February. We went all over the island, playing the flutes in the parks and such, and people kept saying, what is that thing, and where can we get them? About two months into this, he said to me, as a serial entrepreneur, hmm, you should sell these things. And I said, no, are you crazy? I don't know anything about running a business. I barely know how to play these things. And he said, well, I found you two suppliers, and we have a show we could book in June. So from Christmas of 2005 to June of 2006, all of a sudden, Peaceful Spirit came into existence. And the universe will not let me stop connecting people to the flutes, literally. Every time I say I'm done, or I'm having trouble getting the flutes, because I don't make them, something shows up and says, no, you're not done. We need you to keep connecting people to flutes.

Ross Tayler (13:15)

And how many flutes do you have now, in your inventory or that belong to you directly?

Terry Mack (13:21)

Well, in my inventory I usually keep about 40 flutes. And personally, well, you can see some of them in the background. Those two stands hold 40 flutes. I have about 100.

Ross Tayler (13:30)

Okay, wow, amazing.

Terry Mack (13:32)

As a person who's been doing this for 20 years, going to different kinds of markets and events in the States, where most of the makers are, and where I was learning the most about them, because there isn't that much in Canada about them yet, I was able to source and pick up some gorgeous flutes. And you can't let them go once they're getting a good sound. You're going, oh no, that one's staying with me.

Ross Tayler (13:54)

And is there an original source? What is the history of these types of flutes? Where do they originate, or is it hard to really figure that out?

Terry Mack (14:03)

It's not hard to figure it out. There are several influences. In South America, they had rim-blown flutes that they were creating, and those were moving up into the States, because before there were borders, people moved wherever they wanted, and they were defined by their tribes, not by a country or a continent. Then, from the east, as the white settlers came in, they were showing people the silver flutes. And the Native peoples used to make all kinds of things, like cane whistles and whistles out of stalks of wheat. They did all kinds of interesting things. But somehow along the way, in the midst of all of this, they designed a flute that has two chambers. You have a mouthpiece, and the air flows in and is split by a configuration that replaces the need for an embouchure. And that is where the origin came. We figure that started somewhere in the 1800s, around the 1860s. Frances Densmore and a bunch of other people made early recordings of people playing the flutes on those wax phonograph cylinders, and they were vastly different.

They started to come back into the mainstream in the 1960s, when R. Carlos Nakai, a Native musician from the States, started to work them into the music he was playing. And then another man, Michael Graham Allen [?], was trying to echo the sounds of the flutes found in the Canyonlands pictographs. So he started to make those kinds of flutes. And after selling a bunch of them to music teachers and others, he found they couldn't play them the way he could, because they weren't listening. They were trying to play notes. There's a big difference between playing notes and listening while you play. So after listening to the shakuhachi and a couple of other instruments, he decided to put the western scale into the flutes. That's what you hear now in the background of TV shows or movies: a Native American style flute that's been voiced to the western scale.

But it's still a magical instrument, whatever scale it's in. For me, you honor the flute. Whatever the flute wants to play, however it wants to play, you play that. You don't try to make it be a piano. You don't try to make it be a guitar. You listen to the flute and what the flute's capable of. If there's a note that's not quite in tune, don't try to make it in tune. Work with that. Work around that. You honor that instrument.

Ross Tayler (16:30)

And the modification you mentioned, is that an Indigenous modification?

Terry Mack (16:37)

Yes, it is an Indigenous modification, and it is the only two-chambered flute in the world, or at least it was the last time I looked. So it's definitely an Indigenous innovation. And when they made them, we call it grandfather tuning, they would measure it by taking the tip of their index finger to their thumb, and go, it has to be this far, and then measure from the elbow to the wrist. They used body measurements. We call that grandfather tuning. But oddly enough, they were very close to being in F sharp minor. Not necessarily 100% in perfect pitch, but close.

Ross Tayler (17:14)

Right. And you said there was a distinction between playing notes and listening, that you really need to listen to the flute and recognize what it is capable of and what it's not capable of. It seems to me that there's a real metaphor in that about how we move through the world, even without flutes. I'm curious how you see that. You must see the world through the eyes of these metaphors. What do you notice?

Terry Mack (17:39)

I do, I absolutely do. The flutes have literally taught me more about listening than anything else in my entire life. Because to play the flute, I had to stop being in my head. I had to start figuring out what's happening with this sound, what's happening with my breath, what's happening with the space around me, what happens if I crunch up, what happens if I stand up. There's so much you're listening to. It's not just the sound. It's the environment, it's the internal stuff that's happening to you.

And you can use flutes to play through the noise in your head, the pain and the anger. I've had numerous people who've connected to flutes through me come back and tell me, I played through my anger, I played through my sadness. One woman had lost three immediate family members in less than about two years, and all she wanted to do was play through her grief. And so she did that, because there's no judgment. If you forget about right or wrong when it comes to sound, there's no judgment. It just comes out. It might sound squeaky, or you can blow into a flute and make it sound angry, and it will just do what you ask it to do, as much as it's capable of doing it. And then it lets you dump that stuff out and send it away, through the bore of the flute, through your breath. It goes away.

Ross Tayler (19:01)

And is it an art to learn how to play these flutes?

Terry Mack (19:05)

Well, some people can pick up any instrument and kind of get it. It's an art to learn to listen, to learn to slow down so that you can hear. And that's what I have developed over the past 20 years: an approach to teaching my students about just slowing down, learning first what you can do with the sound of the flute, and then starting to find out how to turn that into song. It's a beautiful process.

People would come up to me and say, I want to play like you. And I went, hmm, what the heck does that mean? Do you want the songs to show up in your head? Because I'm not sure you can do that. Do you want to play with flow, or do you want to play in a certain style? I play a lot of Celtic, a lot of medieval, a lot of ballads. So I started to evaluate what it is I do with my playing that people want. I figured it out and started to incorporate it into my lessons, and being even more aware of it improved my ability to capture emotion and expression, so people feel it.

Ross Tayler (20:06)

That whole theme of slowing down comes up consistently with guests on the podcast, and it certainly shows up a lot in the work that I do. I love the way you framed it: slow down so you can hear. Again, I think that's another metaphor. I had a recent guest who said it's like we have this fire hose of information being blasted at us, in terms of social media and all the things we have access to. We're moving so quickly, and slowing down so you can hear is so important on so many levels. I wonder what you would like to say about that.

Terry Mack (20:44)

Well, if you just listen to people talk, they talk so fast that you can almost not make out what they're saying. You don't understand it, because they're going so fast, but they've just got to get it out there. Your brain and your ears are trying to go, what are they saying? So we can't even really hear. We need to get people to slow down to be able to experience things that are happening. It's so sad to watch everybody walking down the street with headphones on all the time, because you're missing all the sounds of the environment around you. You're really closing yourself off from an aspect of the world that is so important in your life. We live in our heads, but we also live in the world, and we have to be able to navigate and embrace all of that.

You hear people say all the time, I get lost in the sound, and that's a good thing. Getting lost when you're listening to music, or watching somebody dance, getting lost in that rhythm and that movement, gives your whole body a chance to let go of things. When I started playing the flutes, I'd play them everywhere. I'd play in waiting rooms, I'd play in stairwells, wherever I could find a place. In Nanaimo, I had a Kia, so I'd take my car to the Kia dealership for service. They had this little built-on waiting room that was almost like a cabin, and it was really comfortable to sit in, and they had cookies and muffins out for people, so I'd play my flute. And one time a staff person came running out and said, keep playing, keep playing, you're bringing my blood pressure down.

Ross Tayler (22:22)

The part where you said people are walking through the world with headphones on, I imagine these sounds are sounds that our soul needs to hear. They're an important part of moving through the world, especially through nature. And if we have headphones on, we're missing the food for our soul, if you like.

Terry Mack (22:45)

Yes. But headphones also do two things. They're a protection against the sounds that bombard us in a negative way, because there is so much of that. But I don't know if you're a Star Trek fan.

Ross Tayler (22:58)

Somewhat.

Terry Mack (22:58)

There was an episode of Star Trek where they were giving people virtual reality glasses, and they were talking about how it was sucking the soul out of people. And this is Star Trek from 50 or 60 years ago. I watched it when I was a kid. And it's so evident right now that this is what's happening. We're so caught up in this internal world and all these connections that you can create. Information is at our fingertips. But we still have to live. And we're not necessarily living our best, living our fullest, experiencing what we need to, when we're connected.

Ross Tayler (23:35)

Yeah, we can survive, but are we thriving if we're not connected to these things that are such a foundational part of who we are, these elemental experiences?

Terry Mack (23:44)

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. But I also think, in a deeper way, maybe it's just an evolution of who we are to become, which is connected in more ways than we understand, and then eventually moving through that technology to be able to let go of it. I hope that's the way it goes.

Ross Tayler (23:58)

I hope so too. And I think we're starting to see signs of that. Sometimes we need to go to the extreme to be able to see what we need to see. One of the things you said in the poem was that trees bend without breaking. What would you like to say about that?

Terry Mack (24:22)

Well, I wrote another poem about that when I was in high school, and one of the lines was about young saplings: they bend, but sometimes they snap and break. So there is that possibility too. If you're overloaded with things, things can break you. And trees, if they are bombarded too much, can break as well. But generally we have this resilience within us, as do trees. You can see trees that are chopped down to just a stump, and then the little growth starts to come out. That tree is not dead. It just has to remake itself. It might have been cut off, but it hasn't broken. It's still alive. It still comes through.

Ross Tayler (25:03)

Yeah. There was a willow tree like that at the centre I worked at, where they cut the whole tree down, and every year it would sprout all these branches. It was amazing how quickly it happened and how full it would become. If you saw that tree in the winter, you would think there was no life in it.

Terry Mack (25:22)

Look at our trees around here in Alberta. They're gone. They're sleeping. And then we have six months where they grow and become amazing, and then they go back to sleep.

Ross Tayler (25:33)

In the bio you talked about helping people connect with their own inner song. Say more about that.

Terry Mack (25:44)

Well, that's an interesting thing, because what I aim to do is help people reclaim their own voice. In this world, particularly for women, our voices are silenced more often than they are for men. What I've noticed in doing this for 20 years is that the flute starts to become a voice. If we can get out of the need to play somebody else's songs, which are fine, and start to find your own response to what you're doing, then that soul song starts to come out. It may never do that for some people. They just get joy from getting some good sound out of an instrument.

I call people like me musically wounded: the musical education system wounded me in a way that made me think I would never, ever be able to make music. I had a session on Tuesday with a student who told me exactly the same thing. In flute music there's something called picture tablature, which shows a picture of the flute with the six holes or the four holes, and shows by pictures which holes need to be covered or uncovered to play. I gave her this, and she froze up. And I said, we need to step back. I know where you're coming from, because this is what happened to me. This is musically wounded, when somebody freezes because they're shown something. So I said, we're just going to look at the pictures, because the pictures are showing you which fingers to move.

And I have created this little song called The Way of Mist that I give to my students who are just beginning, because they want to play something that sounds like a song. When we start this little pictorial, they get it, and they brighten up: oh my gosh, I played a song. Three minutes before, they could barely get a sound out of it. So that starts to engage your soul too. You become happy, and it becomes a voice. It becomes a way of freeing yourself and connecting to your own song. So my method now is to do it that way, rather than trying to play somebody else's song. They're playing my song, but it's a song that came to me to help people connect.

Ross Tayler (27:50)

It's interesting. I was just thinking back to being in elementary school, in music class. For whatever reason, I was pretty disruptive, and I always ended up by myself in a room reading a book, because the teacher didn't want me in the class. I can't remember why, but there was definitely something that didn't resonate, or that I didn't identify with. And I wonder, what are the kinds of stories you hear from people about that freezing that happens?

Terry Mack (28:23)

Well, I've connected over 1,800 people to flutes and done hundreds of markets, where people are walking by. And so many people walk by who may not necessarily say they're musically wounded, but you can hear it when they say, the only tune I can carry is in a bucket, or, the only instrument I can play is the radio. Those are all indications that, for some reason, whether it's their own self or, usually, something external, somebody told them, don't sing, just mouth the words in the choir. Or even going back to, children should be seen and not heard. All of those messages wound us in deep ways. And when it comes to music, kids are naturally more exploratory. So trying to herd them into a box and say, read the notes and count the time, that's where I went, this is crazy, I can do this other stuff, and the instructor didn't honor that. I've heard that over and over again from so many people.

It doesn't necessarily come up with them telling me specifically, but I watch them when they pick up a flute, and I show them some basics, and they get a sound, and I've had people start to cry, because they say, my gosh, I've always wanted to make music, and I never thought I could, and here's this instrument, and I got this beautiful sound. That is really, really common.

There's also this unusual part. I believe the flutes are calling people to come together in peace and harmony, and the experiences I've had with people showing up in the most unexpected places and times and telling me things are incredible. In Nanaimo, at Port Place Mall, when it was actually a mall before they cut it up, I would book a little table and connect people to flutes through that. One woman who lived in North Nanaimo came running in one day, and she goes, I hate this place. I never want to come here, but I have had this ticker-tape message going through my head: go to Port Place, go to Port Place. So I come to Port Place, and I see you. And she said, I have been looking for a flute for two years.

And there's story after story like that. When I moved back from Nanaimo to Spruce Grove, because I'm originally from Edmonton, I changed my business card to an Alberta number, because it's just easier to have an Alberta number. And a woman phoned me and came to my house to choose a flute. I said, I've only been back a month or two, how did you find me? And she said, well, funny thing. I was in a used bookstore, I picked up this book, I opened it up, and your business card fell out. So to me, that's the universe saying, she's a connector, find her and she'll have a flute for you.

Ross Tayler (31:04)

And there are a lot of stories we were told as children that involve flutes. What's the one with the... I can't think of it right now.

Terry Mack (31:10)

Yeah, there's the wandering minstrel, the Pied Piper.

Ross Tayler (31:15)

The Pied Piper, yes.

Terry Mack (31:19)

That's one. And then there's the opera The Magic Flute, which I have never yet seen, but I've heard a lot about it. It's just this connection that flutes have to people. I think it's the heart, the soul and the breath coming through, and the spirit of the trees coming through, and you get this beautiful, incredible flow of sound. And with intention, sound has a property of healing. I'm not going to say it heals everything physical, but by encouraging people to let go and connect more with their bodies, you allow your body to do things it needs to do. Our bodies will heal a lot of stuff quite naturally if we get out of our own way.

Ross Tayler (32:02)

And there's a lot of conditioning in North American culture, especially in terms of being judged or judging ourselves. It reminded me of a story. I went to Cuba 20-plus years ago, and we ended up connecting with some Cubans at their house. Music is such a big part of their culture. The music started playing, and there was dancing. So I'm dancing, and the host looks at me and goes, you know, for Cubans, music is in our blood, dancing is in our blood. But for you, music and dancing are not in your blood. It wasn't that funny in the moment, but it's funny in hindsight, because what he was actually saying was, you have conditioning around it. There's this judgment you have, and it holds you back, and you're in your head and not in your body. I know those things now, but I didn't know them then.

And you said in your bio that music is a sacred act. In my opinion, it's a part of connecting to the sacred. Music has helped me through very difficult times. It changes moods. I remember when I managed Starbucks, when the mood was low in the store, I would change to reggae, and the mood in the store would lift. We're impacted by music in so many ways.

Terry Mack (33:21)

Yeah. And the words in the music nowadays are not always uplifting. They can be very negative. But music just has this power to connect people. It's amazing.

When I first started playing the flutes, I wanted to go learn more about them, and there weren't a lot of people in Canada. Living on Vancouver Island, it's a hop, skip and a jump to Seattle. So there was this flute event called Flute Quest that I used to go to, where I got to meet a lot of makers and a lot of people playing the flute, and learned a lot. And then there was this event called the Pacific Northwest Flute Gathering on [Vashon?] Island. I'd only been playing the flutes for maybe eight or nine months, and I went to this event. On the Friday night they do a student showcase, where you can play something if you want to. I was the only Canadian there, so I decided I would play this one song.

And this was also one of those teachable, learnable moments. I played the song, and three different people came up to me. One said, oh, that was so Celtic. Another said, that was so Andean. And another said, I loved how you made that kind of like a ballad. And I thought, it's one song, and three people told me totally different things about how they were feeling that song. So that was a huge learning moment about the power and the impact. It's not something I can tell people to experience, but I can put it out there, and they can experience it. Some songs will uplift people, and other songs will bring you down.

I managed the volunteer program for the distress line in Edmonton for a year. When you're on the distress line, you're listening to people who might be suicidal, or very depressed, or very despondent. I was talking to one guy who was deep in the throes of a breakup, and he was so sad. I asked him, what music are you listening to? And he said he was playing all the sad breakup songs. So I said, play something different. Play something that makes you feel better, not something that keeps you down in the dumps. Play something different, and it makes the difference.

Ross Tayler (35:40)

And back to what you said about different people naming different lineages, like Celtic and Andean. What do you attribute that to? Do you think it's some part of them that is hearing it that way? I find that fascinating.

Terry Mack (35:54)

Yeah, I think whatever moment they related to in that song either reminded them of something in their experience, or it was reaching into their ancestral soul, where they maybe have some kind of connection, and starting to open it. I really can't explain it. All I know is that when I play and put out the music, it is with the intention that people receive it where they need it most. And that's what I keep hearing, the differences.

Ross Tayler (36:24)

And so you never play the same song twice.

Terry Mack (36:26)

Well, that's not quite true. I have a whole repertoire of songs that I play. But because it's breath, it's always going to be slightly different. When you're outside playing these flutes in different weather, things will happen that affect the quality of the sound. I'm playing the song the same way with the fingering, but I might have to adapt to the wind. The wind may come in and steal the sound away, so I might have to move while I'm playing so the wind doesn't swallow the sound. And in the moment I might be brighter, so the song might feel a little brighter coming out. My emotions come through in the song too.

Ross Tayler (37:02)

So it's unique in that way. A piano, or a guitar even, some instruments are kind of mechanical. And I'm getting that the flute is really not mechanical. It's way more about the energy of the person, the energy of the wood, all of those things culminating together to create a unique sound based on the environment and how you might be feeling on that day.

Terry Mack (37:27)

Absolutely. It's very emotional. And in the many times I've done markets or played at different events, I can see the person who is called to the flute. People walk by and they'll go, yeah, I like it. They're listening to it, it's hitting them, it's having an impact. But the person who is called to the flute will be going, where is that? Where's that sound? Where's it coming from? I've got to find it. And then they show up. And I know there's a deeper calling that they're ready to answer by hearing. It really is like the Pied Piper. It just draws people in.

Ross Tayler (37:56)

Sure. I've been to several wellness fairs and had a table, and there's often been someone playing and selling flutes. It is interesting to watch, and interesting to have that in the background, because it's quite soothing and supportive.

Terry Mack (38:14)

Well, from 2006 to 2018, I was the person on the island doing those markets. Now there's a fellow with [Haunted Coast Flutes?] who goes and does those markets. There may be others. But I'm pretty well connected. I run a Facebook page called Canadian Players and Makers of the Native American Style Flute, to try to connect makers and players in Canada. And I run a Canada-wide Zoom flute circle, where I'm trying to get people together. There are lots of connections through Facebook with the States, and people go down to the big events in the States, but I'm no longer going to the States. So I'm trying to make more connections in Canada.

Ross Tayler (38:53)

And so there's a large community of people connected to these flutes that you're a part of creating.

Terry Mack (38:59)

Yes.

Ross Tayler (39:01)

I love that.

Terry Mack (39:02)

That's one of my quiet ambitions: just to get people to connect to the flutes. And interestingly enough, I've had people who reconnected to their sense of music through the flutes say to me, I can now go back and sing. I haven't wanted to sing for a long time, and now I'm joining a choir and singing again. Because it got them over that musically wounded experience they had, and helped them understand that they really wanted to sing. It's amazing. It's all accidental for me. It wasn't ever planned.

Ross Tayler (39:32)

It's certainly pervasive in our culture. At one point my business was called Owning Your Voice, and that's because I needed to heal my voice. So I was teaching and learning at the same time. There was a time when I would have been so scared to do this. I couldn't even have imagined doing what I'm doing right now with you. And slowly, over time, I've reclaimed that voice. So many people struggle with their voice, and that's why it's hard to set boundaries, it's hard to speak our truth, it's hard to stop doing for others, because that requires a boundary to be set. There's such a connection between the two, and one supports the other to open up. I think that's the work you're doing underneath.

Terry Mack (40:16)

It is. Another angle I have is this philosophy of living life creatively, that we create our lives. But it's not just artistically. We are creative in every moment of our lives. You don't have an ingredient in the kitchen for the dish you started to make, so you have to figure out something else. That's creative. That's what creativity is. We live in the moment with creativity.

One of the projects I may get to someday, because I'm a go-with-the-flow kind of person, well, I've actually started doing this, is to connect people to finding their way into their own art, whatever that is for them, and to step aside from judgment and let it be. Lucia Capacchione has a book about drawing with your non-dominant hand, which is an interesting way of getting past the barriers to creating things. So I started to do lines. I love the rhythm in lines, so I do a lot of interesting line sculptures, and I realized that I don't have to make a reproduction of the forest or the fire truck. I look at it as a continuation of what I'm doing with the flutes, finding the flow in the lines. So I started doing that, and now I get people doing it, and that's fun.

Ross Tayler (41:31)

I love the permission you're giving people, because this is definitely something I come up against. Again, when I was working at the treatment centre, I would get laughed at because I couldn't draw a proportional stick man. That's just who I am, but I'm very creative in other ways. For the longest time I hadn't recognized those things as creativity, like building a website or the different kinds of photos I take. I just judged myself as not being creative. And I share this because I think we're holding back that creative life force that wants to express itself. When we think about depression, as much as it is the energy we struggle with, it's also the pushing down of something. And I think what we're often pushing down is our purpose, our creativity, our life force. The tension between those things is an energy we can't be with, but it's an energy that's trying to move and be expressed, like you said, our voice. And we're misinterpreting it.

Terry Mack (42:32)

Yes, we are. And once you start to let it out, it's joyful. You just stop judging and say, okay, what happens here if I do this? What's next? If I put a line here, do I like it? Well, if I don't like it, it's not a big deal. Start over. We start over with things so much in life, and yet we have this fear and this judgment around anything that involves putting our soul into something, because somebody else isn't going to like it. The problem is allowing other people to say, I don't like that. I've had people say to me about my music, you should do this. And I'll say, no, thank you. I don't see that as being a fit for what I'm wanting right now. Thank you for the information, but I'm not going to take that one. I don't think it works.

Ross Tayler (43:15)

And then there's comparison. We compare ourselves, or we compare our art to someone else's art, and then it shuts us down because it's not the same. I know I've done that, for sure.

Terry Mack (43:26)

Yes, everybody does it, whether it's art or writing, or you go to Toastmasters and learn to give a speech, or you make a dish. Like cake decorators. I make a homemade cake and put my little decoration on it. It doesn't look like the stuff they do in the bakery, but I'm not trained for that. I just like to make something look a little bit pretty without making it horrible. Because if I try to make it too pretty, it's going to be horrible.

I think one of the things that has happened to me in these past 20 years is learning to step out of some of the judgment I impose upon myself. Not all of it, but a lot of it. I started a women's group, for example, just in the area. I wanted to have a women's group to talk about wellbeing. We have a local Facebook chat, and I put out that I was looking for women who would be interested in getting together a couple of times a month to talk about wellbeing. Out of the thousand people in that chat who could have responded, four or five did, and only three of them made themselves available. And we've been running that group for a year. That group's changing us all, because we have this different connection through what I'm doing, which is encouraging people to start looking at things and exploring and chatting, learning to trust each other and value each other. It's important.

Ross Tayler (44:46)

I've been facilitating men's groups for about 12 years.

Terry Mack (44:49)

Yay.

Ross Tayler (44:50)

And the power of groups and circles is hard to put into words, the benefit. There's a lot of fear around it, but there's so much you can get from those groups. It's amazing, so I love that you're doing that.

Terry Mack (45:00)

Well, I'm really going to celebrate you for that, because we need more support for men. Absolutely.

Ross Tayler (45:06)

And because of the men's circles, I have a lot of women actually ask me if I know of any women's circles. So is your group virtual or in person?

Terry Mack (45:16)

No, this one's in person. And I'm toying around with what I want to do with it. I'm reaching 20 years with the flutes, and I'm once again asking, should I keep going with the flutes? And of course the universe is saying yes. But now I'm asking, what else can I add to my life? Because I'll never be retired. If you're retired, you're dead. I don't want to retire from living, right? I'm retired from working for other people, but I'm not retiring from life. I'm doing things that are interesting to me, that I enjoy. I call myself a curiosity catalyst as well. My curiosity encourages other people to embrace some of their own curiosity and to take that step or two. You don't have to be perfect at anything. In fact, perfection is so overrated. You just have to be present and enjoy the things that you can.

Ross Tayler (46:10)

So Terry, that feels like a good place to pause and allow that to become someone's contemplation. I always like to close the conversations by asking a question, and I'll ask you the same question I always ask, which is: what is one simple way someone could connect with the sacred today?

Terry Mack (46:30)

With the theme of today, it's literally just to step outside, look around you, and look for the beauty in the world. Even in a concrete jungle, you can find that one little plant that's struggling through a crack in the sidewalk. You can see an incredible explosion of colour in the sky, or a unique way that somebody has put flowers together in their yard. There's beauty everywhere. You just have to open up to beauty and recognize resilience, and you can do that by spending time outside, looking around and being curious. I would also say, track one new thing that you learn every day. It doesn't have to be something massive. It can be as simple as, I learned that if I shake the ketchup bottle, it's easier to get the ketchup out. But you've learned something, and it brightens your day.

Ross Tayler (47:18)

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. It's such a good message to be reminded of.

Terry Mack (47:24)

Well, thank you. It's been a real pleasure to chat with you.

Ross Tayler (47:26)

Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation. I'm so grateful to our friend who connected us, and I love the gift of sound that you're bringing into the world, and all the impact it has and the different things that come from it. It's a beautiful thing. I love your story and your passion, and thank you for sharing that with the listeners.

Terry Mack (47:48)

Well, my pleasure, and thank you again. It has been delightful to spend some time with you.

Ross Tayler (47:54)

You're very welcome.

Ross Tayler (47:54)

Thank you for joining us on Sacred Sundays. I hope something in today's offering spoke to your spirit, stirred something true, or simply gave you a moment to breathe. If this conversation resonated, please subscribe, rate, or share. It truly helps this work reach the people who are meant to find it. If you'd like to step inside my world a little further, I host a free live practice three mornings a week called Start With You. Just 20 minutes on Zoom to return to your own energy. Everything you need can be found at the link in the show notes. Until next time, may your day be slow and sacred.