Blog Your Blessings Sunday

Today I'm grateful for a wonderful blog network called Blog Your Blessings Sunday. Through them I have met some wonderful people and read some great blogs. I highly recommend it.

If you are interested in joining, go to http://lifeamongotherthings.blogspot.com/ for more information.

Intention and Sound Healing

Since I reviewed the book, 7 Secrets of Sound Healing by Jonathan Goldman, I've been thinking. One of the main points of the book, almost the main idea in the book, is that intent is the most important element in healing.

All right, that is true in energy healing. And sound healing is, I guess, a form of energy healing. But what about all the medical research that shows that certain speeds of steady, unison drumming cause specific changes in brain waves?

Of course, Goldman is talking mainly in terms of assigning various notes to various ailments or parts of the body, or the idea that certain genres of music are healing, while others are not. His point is that the right note to heal one person of a specific problem might not be the right note to heal another person with the same problem---or even the same person at a different time.

So maybe the medical research does not invalidate what he is saying. But i wonder.

If you work with sound healing, especially if you have read 7 Secrets, what do you think?

7 Secrets of Sound Healing | BYB

I just read 7 Secrets of Sound Healing by Jonathan Goldman. It is the best introduction to healing with sound that I have ever read, and it comes with a 26-minute CD of healing music composed by Goldman.

The small hardback book is not much larger than the CD it contains, but it is about three-fourths of an inch thick and 161 pages long. It is beautifully designed.

The book is printed entirely in Indigo ink on cream-colored paper. That is startling at first, but it is easy to read. And the dark, dark blue becomes a soothing element, contrasting with some startling ideas.

7 Secrets of Sound Healing is full of good information and experience from one of the pioneers of modern sound healing. Even without the CD it is worth the $17.95 list price. I bought it at Amazon.com, though, and paid only about $12.50. And the CD is lovely.

Goldman was a rock musician until he decided about 25 years ago to pursue the possibilities of healing with sound. Since then he has founded the Sound Healers Association, has won Grammy Awards for his healing music CDs, and has authored several successful books on healing with sound. He has devoted his life to studying and teaching the use of sound for healing.

This book not only explains the basic principles of healing with sound. It also debunks a lot of myths about sound healing, including some that Goldman himself believed in until research evidence and experience taught him otherwise.

Although I will probably write more about this book in the future, I won't list the 7 Secrets right now. Each one takes a whole chapter to fully explain.

I just wanted to let you know about it as soon as possible if you haven't read it already. This is by far the best book on Sound Healing that I've read. I highly recommend it. Whether you are just starting out or have been in the field awhile, I believe that you will find this book valuable.

7 Secrets of Sound Healing will make you think, and it may force you to reconsider everything you have been taught about healing with sound. And that could be a blessing in disguise: It could make you a much better healer.

Please read the book, listen to the music, and let the rest of us know what you think.

Poll: 92% Believe Music Is Healing

In the Polls section of a site called Care2, about living lightly on the earth, I ran across poll results showing that 92% of those who took the poll believe that music can be healing.

The people who took the poll may not be representative of the public at large. They tend to recycle, care about peace, and be concerned with water and wildlife conservation and the environment. 

Even so, it was by far the most definitive poll on the Care2 (and I took dozens of them, just because they are interesting and fun). Most of the poll results were about what you would expect from a well-educated, green-leaning audience. Pretty sensible and often pretty evenly divided on issues.

But almost everyone believes that music can be healing. I find that very encouraging. How about you?

Seeing Sound: Harmonic Overtoning | BYB

Last Saturday was the monthly Meetup of my group that works with sound for healing.

We always use rattling and chanting to break up and reform the energy in the workspace for our purposes, and we always use drumming, which in itself is healing. However, sound is not always the main focus of the healing work we do.

But last Saturday we were doing psychopomp work. We were guiding the souls of the dead, especially those who had died unexpectedly with no one to properly mourn them.

To do that kind of work, calling the spirits of the dead who may not yet realize that they are dead, and calling the spirits of loved ones or spiritual figures to come and escort them to the other world, we use an ecstatic trance posture. (See the work of Felicitas D. Goodman, Ph.D., for more info on that.) The psychopomp trance posture requires toning or wailing to call the spirits.

In preparation for the work, we did a little bit of practice with harmonic toning---not that harmonic overtoning was required for the work, but it is especially effective. And doing harmonic toning is also very healing for those who do it.

We spent 30 minutes in the posture, toning (or wailing) to call the spirits. It was a moving experience, as it always is. This time, though, was especially rewarding in a different way.

One of the healers, Lyn Clark, who trained for several years with South American shamans, was able to psychically See the sound. At the times when we were successful in creating harmonics, she saw the sound as light. And she saw us weaving strands of that light into a huge cube. What a blessing to share with us!

Lyn has worked with us many times before, and has done that same kind of work with us several times. But we had never toned harmonically while doing that work. (We just wailed.) And so she had never seen that particular vision.

You can be sure that we will be working even more with harmonic overtoning in the future!

Music and Sound in the Healing Arts | BYB

John Beaulieu, the author of Music and Sound in the Healing Arts, discovered for himself the energy and power of sound for healing. Beginning as a little boy of 6 years old, he noticed that certain songs he played on the piano had the power to calm his family, to defuse tense situations, even to prevent fights.

Later, as a professional musician on tour, he played many musical genres, from classical and jazz to country and pop. He noticed time and again that even the same song, played different ways, with different energy, could be used to affect the audience deeply in very different ways. The energy in the music could cause the audience to do whatever the musicians wanted: eat more, buy things, dance, calm down, and so on.

Then Beaulieu became a therapist in a hospital and began to experiment seriously with the use of sound as energy for healing the body and mind. He went back to school and became a doctor of naturopathy. And his successful work with patients drew the attention of physicians and other therapists.

Music and Sound in the Healing Arts is a brief book, packed with facts, diagrams, exercises and the genuine experience of a gifted intuitive with a professional credentials. It describes his work and his discoveries and tells how to use tuning forks, voice (toning) and all kinds of music to heal the mind and the body.

This is a beautiful little book, and I highly recommend it. Personally I feel blessed to have found it.

Great Harmonic CDs for Healing | Blog Your Blessings

Currently I'm buying and reviewing harmonic CDs. I'll be back soon with more reviews and recommendations for CDs to use for healing.

I'll won't tantalize you by recommending unavailable recordings, but there is no need to miss out on something just because the chain stores do not carry it.

Meanwhile, I just want to say what a blessing it is to be able to locate hard-to-find, out-of-print CDs on Amazon.com. Often there are plenty available---but there is no other reliable way to get them.

Stay tuned...

Book of Sound Therapy | Blog Your Blessings

The Book of Sound Therapy by Olivea Dewhurst-Maddock, is subtitled Heal Yourself with Music and Voice. That's an ambitions promise, and the book delivers pretty well.

At 124 pages, the book is more of a survey than an in-depth textbook, but it still covers a lot of ground and gives a good introduction to the field.

I can see this as the basis for a course of study, with experiential lessons in using musical instruments and in hearing and creating harmonic overtones to supplement the text.

Written by a voice teacher, the book is focused mainly on the use of the human voice. Though I tend to work more with musical instruments, especially percussion, I think The Book of Sound Therapy is well written and well worth reading and working with. Topics include

* Introduction (including a history of the use of sound for healing)

* The Nature of Sound

* The Voice

* The Languages of Music

* Self-Exploration Through Sound

* Five Sounds for Meditation

* Healing with Sound

* Resources (Useful Addresses, Bibliography, and Discography)

There are physical exercises to improve voice quality (to be expected, I guess, since the author is a voice teacher).

Surprisingly there is also a section on using crystals to enhance voice quality.

As one might expect, the book is Eurocentric (presumably without the author realizing it). There is the usual nod to South Asia (mantras and chakras), a bit on Sufism, and a single page on harmonic chanting (though nothing about the use of it by Central Asian peoples). And there is nothing on the use of sound by indigenous peoples in Africa, Australia, or the Americas.

What The Book of Sound Therapy does cover, it seems to cover well, and there are some unusual topics and ideas. For example, the section on mantras covers more cultures and religions than I expected, including Celtic and Sufi mantras as well as the expected Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Jewish ones.

The retail price of this book is $14.00, but you can buy it for much less on line. The book was published in 1993 by Gaia Books Ltd in London and by Fireside Books (Simon & Shuster) in New York. It is nicely designed and well illustrated.

I plan to work with this book, hopefully with a group. I'll let you know what happens. If you have worked with this book, please share your experiences.

As always, I feel blessed to have access to such authors through their books. And I feel blessed to have you to discuss these ideas with.

Blog Your Blessings

Sorry to say that I've been too busy to blog lately. I've been blessed with a great new job!

But it comes with a long commute. And then I got sick!

I'm on the mend, so watch this space. I'll be back soon with more on sound for healing.

Till then, please check out some of the blog links on the lower right side of this page.

Healing the Land with Sound | BYB

Sound not only heals people, animals, and plants. It also heals the land itself. In recent years people have begun experimenting with chanting, for example, to clear polluted lakes. And it works.

I discovered interacting with the land through sound for myself, almost accidently some years ago.

We went camping in Big Bend National Park, a vast desert area that stretches north from where the Rio Grande flows through the mountains of Northern Mexico and Southwest Texas. The park is huge, many miles across, and mostly desert.

We were there in early February, because the heavy rains are in March and September, and anyway, between March and October it is just too hot to enjoy. Presidio, which is right outside the park (and farther north than much of it) is often the hottest spot in the United States.

Because we were there during the week, there were even fewer people around than usual in the winter. It was lovely! You could hike for hours and not see another human being (and that was on the "easy walk" hikes).

On the first day we managed to get a camping space in the Chisos Basin, which is the high crater of an extinct volcano. High above the desert floor, the Basin is an oasis of grass, oak trees, a creek, and lots of friendly wildlife. It is also much cooler than the desert floor below. That's important, even in the winter.

After setting up camp, we went hiking. One of the "easy walks" at Big Bend is along Oak Creek to a hole or window in the crater walls where the creek falls for a hundred feet or more to the desert floor below. The view out that window is spectacular. You can see for miles.

But after that easy walk, we were tired and hungry. We sat down on a bench to eat an early supper before the long walk back to camp. It was very, very quiet in that little canyon with no one else around.

After we ate, we started drumming. I had packed a couple of small drums and rattles in our day packs along with the food. It was pleasant, but something didn't sound right.

We stopped and looked at each other for moment. "What's wrong with this picture?" "No echo!"

That's right, we were in a small canyon (maybe 40 feet across) with high rock walls, yet there was no echo at all when we drummed. It was as though the walls were hungrily absorbing the sound.

We drummed as long as we could with the early winter sunset coming. By the time we left, it was getting late, and we had not brought a flashlight. Uh-oh. Total darkness on a rugged, rocky path with cactus along the edges and mountain lions in the area.

So we had to move fast. Yet I wanted to keep feeding the hungry land. I couldn't really drum and walk fast, so I started rattling. Immediately it was as though someone put his hand on my lower back to help me along. And it did help.

Whenever we met some (unwise?) people going the other way, I felt foolish and stopped rattling. Immediately the helping hand was gone. Each time I started rattling it returned.

We continued the practice of drumming or rattling on all our hikes in the park. We had some other interesting experiences, too. After conferring with others who had had experiences in other desert environments, here's what we concluded.

We know that even before the Indian peoples of historic times came to the area, it was home to paleo-Indians for thousands of years. We believe that they gave back to the land for its generous support by drumming, singing, and dancing. And the land was nourished by that.

But they have been gone from that area for at least 100 years. The white ranchers did not feed the land. And the modern tourists tend to either go there to throw off the stresses of modern, perhaps urban, life or to soak up the peace, quiet and healing vibes.

But no one comes to feed the land with healing sounds anymore. If it had not been for that quiet canyon, we might not have noticed either. Try it, and see what you discover.

In later years my friend Bill Freeto used to go to a forested park on the outskirts of Chicago. He would walk deep into the woods to a certain spot to meditate. After a few years, a buck started coming to escort him to his spot. Later sometimes two or three bucks would escort him.

Eventually several does started hanging around. They felt safe, I guess, because while he did not get to go often, he had been meditating there for years. When he began to practice throat-singing, the does would come closer, seemingly drawn by the sounds.

Make of this what you will, but I believe that all of us who use sound for healing should also be using sound to heal the land. Try it and see. I believe that being able to give back something to a place that nurtures and supports you is a true blessing for everyone.