Bea absolutely loves to dance. She dances when she's happy, sad, when she does her talk exercise, along with her strolling exercise, when she is trying to figure out a problem and even during her rigorous exercise program. Someone might ask where the music is? Wondering how anyone could dance without music. Bea finds music everywhere; especially when she's near the water. She hears the rocks and stones rolling over each other making a sweet tinkling sound.

She hears them singing their stories of the journey they've been on for hundreds and hundreds of years. Rolling, smoothing their sharp edges; they teach Bea about the struggles in her life. Solving her problems one at a time, she will smooth out and become calmer appreciating everything around her. This will lead her to her thanking the maker of everything.

She loves to listen to the water sing. Doing her notice exercise helps her be able to hear that the singing is different almost every day and in different kinds of water. There is a drumming sound when the water is falling from up high. She does a different dance here, drumming with her feet. She does a swishing dance when the water makes a swishing sound. In areas where the water is very still, she just stands there quietly swaying back and forth and doing her simply enjoying her life exercise.

The water, no matter where it is or how it is flowing, sings a special song to Bea about solving her problems. Doing her notice exercise she can see that the water goes around and over the rocks. A lot of the sparkling, glistening, sun-reflecting water just goes around the rocks. It adjusts to the obstacles in front of it. Bea always wants to do this, but finds it difficult; which is why she does her brain exercise so often.

She realized at that moment, she kind of acts like a bully with her problems. She supposed that sometimes that was a good exercise, but maybe not always. Maybe she could learn to bend like water. That was it. Wasn't it? The water kind of bends around the rocks and stuck logs. It definitely needs to bend around the logs in Timothy's Dam he worked so hard on for days and days.

She began to do her brain exercise right then. She wondered how her friends really felt when she was trying to force a problem to come out the way she thought it should-- not the way the maker knew would be best. When she was putting her nose in the wrong place, it usually ended up being a sorry nose and she would find herself and her nose just plain stuck.

She just had to learn to move on from her planning and scanning. Others and their problems, all too often seemed like just another exercise for her. Something to take her away from her bad memories and bad feeling about herself. She knew she had to begin to be serious about doing her detachment from things which have a hold on your exercise.

She kind of knew how upset, hurt and discouraged Timothy would be if the water acted like a bully and pushed all of his logs out of the way and rushed through everything he had worked on. The beautiful strong Timothy's Dam would be demolished even before he'd had time to finish it. Bea thought, maybe, she was pushing through her friends' exercise of working on solving their problem before they even finished. Maybe, she should wait until they asked for help from her. But what if they never asked? Then what would she do? That would be very hard.

She was so used to rushing in to help her mom with every little thing. Because her father was never around, someone had to help. Remembering back, she realized, her mom was trying to tell her she needed to figure her problem out without Bea sticking her nose into everything. Her mom never said it that way, but Bea now understood. But this was a longtime exercise for Bea. This was another lesson she could learn from the song the water sang.

The water teaches Bea how to be safe too. Sometimes when the water is acting like the little bears that were mean to her when they would bully her, the rough waters sang of danger. Just as she stayed away from them, Bea stays away from that kind of water which sings a song to remind her to take care of herself.

Bea, the swirling bear, can be seen spinning with her arms spread out as far as they can be when she listens to the breeze going through the trees. She doesn't know for sure if it is the wind singing or the leaves but she loves how it makes her feel. Just as with the water, it is different every day and sometimes from moment to moment.

Bea felt a bit of a twinge as she had a bad memory of what happened when she was little and the wind barely had time to sing of danger to her mom and the large elm tree came crashing down on their cave, gouging a very large hole in their home. She still practiced her on alert exercise when the wind began to change its song to a faster deeper whistling sound. If that all too familiar song continued for too long, and she could feel her fears growing with the strength of the bully-like wind, Bea did her sprinting exercise and got out of there as fast as she could.

Oh, but the birds, yes the birds. What beautiful songs they sing. When Bea does her notice exercise, she hears so many different sounds. Some even seem to be dancing on the thin branches, causing the branches with leaves and pine bows to dance also. Bea can't help but join them with her dance exercise.

Sometimes the song the wind, leaves, water or birds sang, matched how Bea was feeling. The woeful moaning song helped her do her notice exercise. She never wanted to burden her friends with her sadness or anger. She preferred to be still like the calm water. She didn't feel so alone with her feelings of loss when she heard the mourning dove or the wind sing the song that was in her heart as she thought of her wonderful time with Timothy and how much she missed her mom. She also missed the happy times at play that she felt the mean little bears took away from her, not allowing her to play with them.

She often wondered in her brain exercise what things would have been like if her father had been around more and if she could really have had the courage to tell her mom what those mean little bears were doing to her and how they were treating her. She realized that was one of the main reasons she started to pretend. She didn't really want to have to pretend, but it seemed the only way she knew. She had to pretend that didn't really mind that her father was never there. She didn't want to hurt her mom's feelings. She needed to take care of her.

She wondered if she'd learned to pretend from her mom, who never said a bad word about the fact that her father was so absent. When Bea would do her notice exercise she could see great sadness in her mom's loving eyes. Maybe that was one of her mom's exercises; which had become her own too. But her mom did a good job at pretending.

She taught Bea how to take care of others' feelings by not letting them know how you really feel. Mom still laughed and played with Bea and had her join in her dance exercise and her strolling exercise every day. She even showed Bea all of the good paths where all of the best berries were and even an occasional pile of nuts saved by the squirrels, when no one was at home. She pointed out her favorite streams to catch fish.

But, the best, of course, the places to get honey. Her mom warned her though, if she stuck her nose into the yummiest of places, she must be ready to get her nose stung at least once and sometimes many times. But to Bea, it sounded very worth it. That exercise, as you have heard, has taught her many lessons over the years.

Every once in a while, some angry memories would sneak in. Bea knew it was time for her to go stand at the edge of the swirling, frothy waters. It was a mystery to Bea, why this makes her feel so calm; but it does. She suspects it has something to do with the maker.

So, Bea does have music when she dances. It is all of these songs she carries in her heart.