Mindfulness Through Gratitude; Frank Kilpatrick & Rayko

Frank Kilpatrick and Rayko are creative partners who have worked together to produce soundtracks directly related to mindfulness and emotional healing. Frank Kilpatrick was Inspired by a recent trip down the Nile River to “The Birthplace of Civilization”. As a result he composed “Gratitude” to, draw attention to everything we have to be thankful for. Frank created lyrics for all songs in the Gratitude suite and oversaw video and music production. He has written numerous songs in exploratory, harmonic and romantic genres that are available for licensing. Recently, he created “Stay Alive” – a 90-minute Suicide Prevention video podcast. Frank frequently collaborates with successful musicians. Rayko is a prolific songwriter and an energetic, sought-after vocalist, and an ‘Emotional Conduit’. Rayko composed the melodies for Gratitude and sang, played on and produced all pieces as well. Her compositions often contain themes of social justice, female perspectives and cross-cultural challenge. Born in Tokyo, Rayko also composed, arranged and performed songs for the award-winning AmazonPrime series, “Man In the High Castle.” Her other compositions include “Reaching For The Stars” and “Behind The Sun”—co-written with Grammy winner Isha Erskine, as well as the ending theme for the feature “The Wolves of Saving Hill”—featuring Kurt Fuller of “Pursuit of Happyness,” and the late Michael Massee of Spider-Man 2. Rayko is the vocalist in the house band of a popular Adult Swimshow, and currently the voice of a brand new ride in Tokyo Disneyland.

• Website: www.stayalivevideo.com
• Website: www.gratitudevideo.com

• Rayko: My mom

• Frank Kilpatrick: I would say that it's something that I think of as an important tool or resource kind of like a bookshelf.
• It's having something that I can use to facilitate going down a different road. We wrote a song recently that we're just finishing up. It starts with the line, ‘hitting past my past on a darkened highway at a hundred miles an hour leading nowhere sharing at nothing'.
• If you're headed down that road, mindfulness and gratitude can give you a different turn or choice to shift your way of thinking and to shift your experiences of that day.
• That gives you a lot of power. Having that as a tool is a gift. 

• Rayko: Breathing became a lot more important. You breath without thinking. When you're born, you're already breathing and you don't think about breathing.
• But when your loved ones get diagnosed with lung cancer, breathing becomes something that is right there, in front of your face. One thing that I do with my mother is something that I learned when I was studying opera for six years. You breath deeply the best way when you're laying down because your shoulders can come up.
• We lay down together when we're doing this breathing exercise.

• Book: Practicing Mindfulness: 75 Essential Meditations to Reduce Stress by Matthew Sockolov
• Book: Mindfulness For Beginners: 4 Weeks to Everyday Peace, Gratitude and Focus by Ashley Sharp
• Book: Burned Bridges Lead To Better roads: A Survivors's Method To Risk-Taking Through Radical Change by Shari Sanahi
• App: Pray dot com
• App: Calm

• Rayko: I was a bully, because I felt quite powerless at home growing up. Don't get me wrong, my parents are amazing. When I was in elementary school in Japan, something was going on at home. I felt powerless and I took it out on other children at school.
• I was in the popular girl group. I was being so angry and took it out on others. I knew I was doing something wrong. I would go visit the students privately that I had bullied and say, I'm going to help you with your homework as long as you don't tell anyone.
• I did that for many years until I realized that I should make a change. As a child I meditated and my mom helped me through, figuring out the puzzles and putting the pieces together. Then I stopped bullying and started being there as a voice for the weak. By saving them I felt like I was saving myself.

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