Shirley & Chakras, Part 2...

( Shirley MacLaine as Ginnie Moorehead)

I have been a fan of Shirley MacLaine's for a long time. Her portrayal of 'Ginnie Moorehead' opposite Frank Sinatra's 'Dave Hirsh' in the Vincent Minnelli directed film, "Some Came Running" (1958) is one of my favorites of hers. It was one of her first big film roles. If you haven't seen the film, I'm going to inject a "Spoiler Alert" here as I'm about to say something about the film's ending. In the original draft of the filming script, Sinatra's character was supposed to get shot and die. Things were not all smiles on the set for the duration of the shoot as Minnelli is said to have been a perfectionist, and Sinatra had his own ideas about "things" on set. One decision that Sinatra drove home was that Shirley's character should be the one to die. I believe he has been quoted as saying something to the effect of "Let the kid take the bullet". So she did, and MacLaines career was made. Don't know how many people are aware of this other tidbit, but Shirley was the only female member of the Rat Pack. She's a very talented lady.

I also have tremendous respect for her in a spiritual sense. I admire her greatly for the self/inner exploration she has done for years. She endured quite a bit of ridicule when she first "came out" about her spiritual/metaphysical studies. When her book "Out on a Limb", and the subsequent mini-series came out, she became the butt of many jokes. A lot of people saw her as being a 'nut'. Not me. She had the resources to embark on a personal journey of self discovery and "enlightenment"...I envied her. I think she's a sharp lady.

The above is an ad that ran for Shirley's video, "Inner Workout for Stress Reduction & Relaxation" (1989). A co-worker of mine in the early 90's gave me a VHS copy of the meditations, and they had such impact on me. It was one of my main introductions to the Chakra system. Well, as we all know, the VHS video tape is pretty much going the way of Beta-max tapes now that DVD (and now BlueRay) are king. My VHS copy of this "inner workout" has degraded quite a bit over the years from age and usage. For a number of years now, I have been keeping an eye out for it to come out on DVD.

After years of not finding anything on DVD, I found the above DVD on Shirley's official site. It has been 20+ years since her Chakra tape came out, so I was thrilled to see this new disk. My fingers were crossed in the hope that there was at least some of the original meditation included. I ordered "Guided Meditations For Inner Power", and was thrilled when it came in the mail (it arrived while I was in Nashville picking up the car my mother left me in her will). Once I got back to Savannah and settled back in, I popped the DVD in during a sleepless night. Figured there might be something on it that would help me relax, and maybe catch a few "Z's".

It turned out to be the exact meditations I had done for years. The quality of the recording isn't pristine, but I'm thrilled to have it in the DVD format. I can't recommend this program enough. There are two meditations included (one is an open-eye meditation, the other closed-eye), and a few minutes of instruction from Shirley on the Chakras. I did post a blog entry awhile back that has the 'open-eye meditation' in three parts...you can check it out here. It will give you an idea of what that particular meditation is like. (I also wrote a bit about Chakras in my post, if you are wondering what they are). I did spend quite a bit of time trying to find the closed-eye meditation and the Chakra instruction portion from the beginning of the video online, but had no luck.

I can't recommend this DVD enough. If you enjoy meditating, or are looking for a good introduction to meditating, these are wonderful. The impact they had on me the first time I used them was incredible. I have turned several friends on to the meditations over the years, and all have raved about them. The disc costs $29.95 on her site. I would post the contents of the DVD here, but I am going to honor the copyrights (the meditation videos from my other post were posted on YouTube by someone else). If you want to get a copy for yourself, or check out her site, you can find a link on my 'Links' page (go to the top of this page, and click on 'Links').