Create a safe, peaceful place through the beauty of nature & music...

70 minute DVD video + User Guide

The Sunlit Paths relaxation video experience ... providing comfort
for people at home, in hospitals, nursing homes & hospice care

Description: Sunlit Paths is a therapeutic video resource which helps relaxation and promotes emotional well being, for individual use or in complementary therapies. It provides an uplifting journey through peaceful spring gardens...colorful blossoms, lush greenery, lakes, water birds and koi. Highlights from over 20 gardens in beautiful Wilmington, North Carolina: Japanese, classical, and natural garden parks. This simulated journey is intended to be an active viewing experience, offering a variety of choices of images and music. The close-up camera style engages the viewer on a personal level. It is especially valuable for those who are confined to bed, as it helps them feel as if they are outdoors on a beautiful spring day.

Uses / Applications: Sunlit Paths has a variety of applications in both clinical and residential healthcare settings. It is useful for people who simply need help relaxing and is also comforting for patients with serious medical problems. Sunlit Paths is intended for repeated viewing. For caregivers and nursing staff, the beauty of nature and music helps enhance the healing environment of health care settings. It provides a positive focus for patients. For practitioners in the healing arts, such as expressive therapists and music therapists, it can be used as an emotive tool / visualization aid.

Benefits: Calming, uplifting, reassuring...helps relaxation, decreases stress and anxiety especially in those people who have fears about hospitalization and upcoming procedures. Used with a therapist, it can aid in pain management. Promotes emotional well being and helps improve quality of life. In health care facilities, Sunlit Paths enhances the therapeutic environment, for patients, family and staff. As with actual healing gardens, it helps create the sense of a healing environment.

The Sunlit Paths DVD is intended to aid relaxation and ideally should be used when the patient is able to focus on themselves and fully participate in the relaxation experience. It is not a medical intervention. It is an alternative, therapeutic tool for use with conventional medical treatment. The above stated benefits are observational / anecdotal.

Music & Musicians

In addition to a richly layered nature soundtrack, Sunlit Paths offers a variety of instrumental background music to accompany the journey: traditional Celtic folk harp and modern harp improv; flute: classical, modern and improv; violin: Japanese folk tunes and classical; and koto: modern-traditional.

William Jackson: The primary artist featured in Sunlit Paths, is an internationally known composer, harpist and multi-instrumentalist who has been at the forefront of Scottish music for many years. In 1976, he was founding member of the top Scottish group, Ossian. He is also a trained music therapist and lives in Scotland and Asheville, NC where he works with children who have cerebral palsy and autism. William generously allowed Nature's Light to use excerpts from his CD, The Ancient Harp of Scotland. www.wjharp.com

Katherine Hoover: Critically acclaimed modern composer and instrumentalist, Katherine Hoover of New York City, is also the founder of Papagena Press which first published her award winning Kokopeli for solo flute. Ms. Hoover's music is also published by Theodore Presser Company. The excerpt from Katherine's Reflections used in Sunlit Paths was performed by Wilmington flutist, Victoria McLamb. www.papagenapress.com

Minoru Miki: Mr. Miki is an internationally known Japanese composer and instrumentalist who is also the founder and director of the Ensemble Nipponia (now Pro Musica Nipponia). An excerpt from Minoru's "Hanayagi" (The Greening) from the CD Kabuki & Other Traditional Music features renowned koto player, Keiko Nosaka. www.m-miki.com

James Kurtz: James is a German-American composer and multi-instrumentalist residing in Wilmington, North Carolina. His music has been used extensively in the healing arts. For Sunlit Paths, James plays Celtic harp for Gliss in E, various harp improv compositions and recordings, and keyboard on Good 'ol Dixieland and Native Spirit.

Dan Reynard: Dan is a composer and instrumentalist who plays flute on Native Spirit for Sunlit Paths.

Victoria McLamb: Victoria is a flutist, previously with the Wilmington Symphony. For Sunlit Paths, she plays classical excerpts from Mozart's Andante in C and K.P.E. Bach's Sonata in A Minor. Victoria is featured on flute improv and Japanese folk tunes from our prototype video, Garden of Light, which is also used in Sunlit Paths.

Nobuaki Yamashita: Mr. Yamashita is a violinist with the Wilmington Symphony. He is featured in the classiclal excerpt of R. Vaughan Williams, The Lark Ascending for Sunlit Paths. His previously recorded Japanese folk tunes for Garden of Light are also featured in Sunlit Paths.

Gardens & Gardeners

Sunlit Paths features highlights from some of WIlmington's finest gardens. The Nature's Light organization deeply appreciates the following gardens who shared scenes or blossom close-ups:

Airlie; Arboretum, New Hanover County; Ash's Maple Nursery (featured on About Us page); Clair; Cox-Lane; Forrest; Galloway; Greenfield Lake; City of Wilmington; Gurganus (featured on Home page); Horton; Ingram; Inn at St. Thomas Court; Landfall: POA, Temple of Love, Pete Dye Course; Latimer; Leahy; McRae, II; Malizio; Mildenberg; Olds; Orton Plantation (featured right), Sprunt; Perry; Rehder, Sr. (featured on Garden Lovers page); Root; Rosenmeier; Ruffin, Jr. & Sr.; Scott; Smith, Percy; Theobald;UNCW; West; Williams, III; Willard; Wright.

Sunlit Paths was made with grants from the Cape Fear Memorial Foundation and the New Hanover Regional Medical Center Foundation, Wilmington, North Carolina.