The Time To Sing Is Now

I only have a very few minutes. I want to share with you the trailer to the incredible documentary “The Singing Revolution”, the story of how 3 Baltic countries- Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia- eventually freed themselves from oppressive Soviet rule in the late eighties and early nineties. Massive protests against the regime began in the late eighties. Singing was a major component of their rallies and demonstrations.

As we are clearly at a crossroads in deciding how the US is going to go forward, I felt this is an important example of inspiration, motivation and hope which brought clear results. The full movie is available on YouTube and available to rent through Amazon Prime.

Moments of Darkness, Moments of Light

I wanted to write just a tiny bit before I go to sleep, given that I wrote the title hours ago and then got sidetracked. There’s so much going on in the world and some of it is so sad, so tragic, so painful and then there are these beautiful glimpses of light. I feel so strongly now that when we experience those moments of light that we cannot- must not- take them for granted, and that as we experience them we need to do all we can to magnify them, to amplify them and to share them. We cannot keep them to ourselves. Everyone needs hope right now.

I woke up this morning with the intention of doing my Course In Miracles workbook lesson before I did anything else, but somehow I fell right into temptation and looked at my phone first. The way the world is right now, I know better. But it didn’t stop me. And the first thing I saw was a beautiful but very sad post by Anne Lamott, reminding me of the havoc that is being wreaked upon the people of the United States by an uncaring and despotic government. How did this happen? Well, it happened and I am not even going to go down that road of wasting time asking how we got here- because here is where we are.

But is the world just a dark place? Not my world, and I hope that you too can see the patches of sunlight. Last night a dear friend took me to see Les Misérables in Greensboro. It was brilliant, beautiful, extraordinary and dynamic- absolutely wonderful in every way! Late this afternoon we watched a talk that one of the monks gave who is a part of the group of monks walking for peace right now from Fort Worth, TX to Washington, DC. Their goal is simple- to spread peace and compassion and that is a beautiful and glorious intention. Where people are doing good, where people are sharing their love and light, we need to bathe in it, to absorb it and to radiate it.

This brings to my mind a beautiful prayer I learned many years ago at the 1994 International Sound Colloquium. It is a silent prayer done with hand gestures but the meaning is this:
I offer you peace
I offer you friendship
I offer you love
I hear your needs
I see your beauty
I feel your feelings
My wisdom comes from a higher source.
I bow to that source within you.
Let us work and play together.

Anne Lamott’s piece finished with these words: “All the courage I’m seeing around me thrusts me into these deep days of winter, where I notice how the slant of light is exquisite.”

Getting Clear

I had such an interesting experience this evening. I have been intending to do a sound healing for someone who lives out of the country. We talked at least 3 weeks ago about her intention but I have been slow in getting to it between doing an event on the solstice, preparing for Christmas, wrapping and shipping packages and the upcoming New Year events. I was feeling somewhat guilty that I had not yet gotten to it even though I knew she understood and was fine with it and had the understanding that it would happen when it was the right time, as did I- but I was still not 100% comfortable with how long it was taking to get to it. As it turned out she sent a text earlier today basically updating her intention. I still expected that I would not get to it til next week.

So, a few hours ago I was sort of mindlessly playing some Tibetan bowls in my living room and moving some of them around, setting them up, shifting them around and switching some of them out. Then I began setting up crystal bowls around them and suddenly I realized I was setting up the sound healing session and that I was supposed to do it tonight. Various other instruments began calling me and soon I was setting up the entire space to do a sound journey which I would record for my client. There was a lot of specificity. The instruments were essentially guiding me and arranging themselves. I didn’t bring in all the instruments I normally use and brought some in that I sometimes play but basically never use for session work.

I was quickly guided to clear the space of everything that didn’t belong there and set up the room around the instruments. I needed to create an altar. I usually think of the room itself as an altar and I don’t need to change things, but I was guided to get certain crystals from my sound healing room, along with pictures and murtis and even specific candles and candle holders. The process took a long time, probably a good 90 minutes and then I was basically “told” by whoever/whatever was guiding me that I needed to take pictures which I would share with the client. Right away I realized that is now a part of the healing session. I’m not sure why but it was very clear that the visual is an important piece.

I did the sound journey and just listened back to it and was hypnotized by it. I wanted to make sure the recording was okay before I sent it off. It was pretty wonderful. Hopefully it will be good for the recipient as well! Please do not hesitate to reach out if you would like a long distant private sound healing session. If you’re reading this blog then you know where to find me.

Here are pictures of the set up for the session.

Home Again, Home At Last

I listened to this beautiful meditation this morning. I love this woman’s voice. I lay in bed in perfect stillness, not trying… not trying to focus… to let go… nothing… just being. And in the midst of it, I had some awarenesses and deeper integration of things I already know on some level. At some point she says something about picturing the stillpoint within as the eye in the center of a hurricane, and I thought, “That is the truth of who we are- the still point in the midst of the storm- and instead of focusing on the stillpoint, we are trying to fix the storm. We are all points of perfection and when we can remember and drop into that place of perfect peace, that is when we can hear the still small Voice reminding us that we are already Home.”

“Warmth” by Karma Moffett. To see more of Karma’s work visit https://www.karmamoffett.com

Beautiful Bleak Midwinter

I have spent the past few nights sitting on my living room floor surrounded with Christmas presents, boxes, wrapping paper and ribbon- wrapping all the goodies for my numerous children and grandchildren- all the while watching Christmas movies, The Great British Baking Show and the occasional YouTube video. This came across my feed and I thought it was stunning and a perfect holiday share. Each of these singers in their own right take my breath away… and then there’s Rufus Wainwright looking regal in his robe! I had never heard the song before and was so moved by it that I played it twice through and then had to learn because it is so gorgeous.

In the Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain,
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty —
Jesus Christ.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone…
~Poem by Christina Rossetti, Music by Gustav Holst~
(There are actually two more verses but they were not sung in this concert.)

The Sound Of Falling Snow

Hah! Okay! Here I am! Whew… it’s taken a long time to land. I actually started a blog post a couple of weeks ago and I left it too long without hitting “Save” and it all disappeared! So I am going to keep this one short. My intention for the next few weeks is to write short blog posts at least a couple of times a week- hopefully even more frequently and get somehwat caught up on tracking my amazing year- and hopefully include lots of sound illumination in here as well. The world is crazy, busy and very full!

I am not a newshound, by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to say that I have felt a need to at least keep an eye on the headlines so I have a sense of what’s going on, at the same time trying to stay detached and not get too work up about it all. I’m not going to get political here, beyond saying that I needed a break from all of the news and craziness a couple of days ago. I was putting things away in my kitchen so I put music on YouTube instead of… the other scary stuff! My TV is hooked up to a good sound system so sometimes it’s a great way to listen to music.

The first thing I came across was an extended version of Max Richter’s On The Nature of Daylight, the incredibly beautiful soundtrack to Arrival. I was so happy to be able to listen to it for a full 20 minutes. I think I could really listen to it for hours on end.

That was followed by a piece by Ólafur Arnalds, Only The Winds, which has an accompanying video/short film that is completely hypnotic- poetry in sound and motion.

And finally, I listened to a beautiful composition by Arvo Pärt called Silentium, which begins and ends with the sound of falling snow, one of the most precious sounds of near stillness. A sound when you step outside and hear it, when you step into it, that brings the inner being naturally into a deep quiet place. You want to listen to it.

What I want to share about all of this is that each piece of music, one following the other brought me so much calm and so much peace, as well as happiness and gratitude and simple remembrance of the beauty contained in each moment, something that is so easy to miss in a world filled with noise and which seems at times more chaotic than ever.

Take a break. Take a listen. Drop in to your Self for a little while.

What Is Home?

I am sitting in a thatch roofed house in the Netherlands overlooking fields, farms and a river. The sun is trying to break through the clouds and I am trying to catch up on a few things before I go out for a walk. I only have 3 days left here. It has flown by and I am sad to be leaving. It’s hard to go “home” to a place that doesn’t really feel like home. I do my best when I am there to make it as homey as possible, but living where I don’t really have a strong sense of community, family and familiarity is challenging. It’s interesting and surprising to be in an entirely different country where I don’t speak the language and feel more at home here!

I’ve had a strong feeling lately that my general sense of discomfort is in fact for my own growth and I work with it… but sometimes it’s harder than others. When I am connecting with people, with nature, with sound and music, it’s all pretty easy and I feel at home wherever I am- but when I attach to a fixed idea of what this is, ie what I would prefer… this idea of comfort or connection- it becomes a lot more challenging, and some days I’m just more vulnerable or sensitive to it all than other days. I read something a few days ago in Paul Selig’s most recent book, A World Made New, and this passage jumped out at me: “What expires in the Upper Room is what you needed at a low level of vibration. What is released at this level are the very things that gave you a sense of identity or comfort in the lower vibrational field. This is only challenging as you attach to them.” (p. 165) I think that says it all.

Sound Traveling

Years ago when I was living in Florida, I was on the phone with a friend and making plans to go up to New York to teach a workshop and do some private sessions. She was very surprised that I was willing to drive up there and I said without even thinking about it, “Of course! I’m the traveling soundweaver!”I was almost as surprised as she was to hear those words come out of my mouth but it marked the beginning of a new way of thinking about my work and also became the name of my vibroacoustic environment, which consists of a vibroacoustic mattress with speakers built into it on top of a massage table, surrounded by a copper dodecahedron.

There are many ways to travel on the vibrations of sound. With vibroacoustic therapy the frequencies of the music are moving through the body and quickly facilitating a state of deep relaxation. The movement of sound through the mat can actually create a feeling as though the body itself is undulating as the sound waves move through the body.

Sound immersion through healing sound journeys, sound baths or sessions with Himalayan singing bowls placed around the body create a very different and oftentimes equally as powerful a response, as the layering of sound produces overtones which have a powerful effect on the subtle energy fields. The combinations of intervals can also create binaural beats which entrain the brainwaves typically to a deep alpha or theta state, promoting spontaneous inner visions, clarity on core issues and often a deep meditative state.

Self-generated sound- singing, toning, humming, chanting- is a world unto itself which we all have immeditae access. I leave that one open for you to play with. Some suggestions: make an elongated sound with your mouth open. Now with your mouth closed. How is it different? Try humming and sending the sound to different parts of the body. Sing your favorite song- or your favorite childhood song letting go of any judgment around how you think it should sound. Just be like a child and let it out! How does that feel?

How Fast the Time Flies

The day went by so fast! All I can think of is this song as I try to grab the tail end of the day and post something so very short that reflects the movement of the day. When it came out I had no idea of their connection to the Baha’i faith. Really very lovely to revisit this sweet sweet song along with Johnny Carson!

Wonder-Fullfillingness Wednesday! And the Music Of My Life...

This song has been creeping through my consciousness for the past two days… couldn’t get it out of my head so I decided to put it up here. Maybe it will haunt you too- in the best way possible! There’s a little more of Stevie, who had his first hit “Fingertips”when he was only 13, when you scroll down the page. I remember this song but not as well as “I Was Made To Love Her”. I was 12 when that song came out in 1967 and fell in love with it. It remains one of my favorite songs.

I know if you were to go back through this blog you would find so many of my “favorite songs”… but really music saved me… over and over throughout my life and continues to save me on a daily basis. And the feeling that comes up when I hear these songs from my past tells me that my core has not changed. Like everyone, I’ve gone through countless life experiences- traumas, love, loss, childbirth, motherhood- you name it- and still I am the same. Maybe less afraid, more outgoing, more scars, more awareness, but my essence- that which makes me Rosie- is exactly the same as it was when I was an infant, a child, a teen, a lost 20-something year old, a young mother, and now an older and hopefully slightly wiser person. I am aware of it when I walk on the beach. I flash back to the little girl walking on the beach holding my mother’s hand or walking with my sisters and I am that person. And I am aware of it when I listen to music that I love- the music that has been a revelation to me. Music helps me to remember who I am and connect with my essence.

I’m the same person I was when I first heard Stevie’s album “Fullfillingness First Finale” and had my mind blown, yet again, by his music.

In this moment I just decided I don’t want a funeral when I go. I never really did but it just got clear. I want my life celebrated with music.

Getting In Tune

Okay, really- I was actually thinking about tuning forks! It’s just that 90% of any little grouping of words reminds me of some song from my past… and all that is past is part of my present, part of the person I am today. As Greg Brown said, “There is no time. That’s why I missed my plane.” If you don’t believe me, listen to this sweet song!

Okay… let me get to my point. Tuning forks, tuning the brain. This is all I want to say. Brain tuners are brilliant, creating a binaural beat and quickly entraining one’s brainwaves to the state that is most helpful for where you find yourself in the moment and where you would like to be. For me, I tend to either go for delta tuners to help me sleep, or beta tuners to help me get organized. In fact, I used them just before I sat down here to write. I used them once earlier today as well when I wanted to get some stuff done around the house but was having a hard time focusing. As I listened to the two tones, one tuning fork at each ear, a microtone apart, just enough to create a standing wave somewhere between 13 and 20 hz (cycles per second), I felt my energy and awareness shift. My head literally cleared as if there had been a light fog that lifted. My awareness of the space around me was suddenly acute and I thought, “I just used these for ten seconds and turned into a scientist.” Kind of joking… but not. They absolutely activated a different area of my brain, the part that is highly curious and analytical.

Later today, as I said, I used them again- just a little while ago. Hours had gone by. I had spent some time doing errands, cooking (creatively- I decided to try my hand at homemade tofu!), and doing some other household tasks. I had been looking at videos for a while, studying some crocheting techniques for a project and my vision had been sort of locked into looking at things close up. I hadn’t looked at the sky in a while or out the windows at the birds- it was focused just a few feet in front of me, at most, for easily a couple of hours between reading recipes, cooking and then watching videos on my phone.

When I used the brain tuners, standing in my living room, suddenly my vision opened up and I saw the beautiful amaryllis across the room on the far side of my dining room. There was a vibrance and a clarity of vision as well as a clarity of intention and direction.

Brain Tuners are among the many excellent sets of tuning forks created by John Beaulieu, one of my favorite teachers and available right here. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Thank you Dr. Beaulieu for all your wonderful teaching and your great humour!

Music Is Medicine

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. In 2006 I had a head injury. A huge PA speaker that had steadily vibrated over the years from the very loud music that came through it, slowly moved on the shelf it where it was perched, until it fell from about 3 feet above my head, where I happened to be dancing that night. It swung from the cable and slammed me in my right temple. By some miracle and a lot of healing over the following months (sound as well as other modalities), I recovered from the injury. That’s not the point of this story. There was a particularly exciting moment for me about a week after the injury when I got an MRI and saw the image of my brain. My brain! It felt like when Peter Pan saw his shadow- “My shadow! My very own shadow!” Really quite thrilling.

11 months later I was looking through the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times and, lo and behold, there was a full page image of various brain scans taken while people were listening to music and an article about the researcher, Daniel Levitin. It grabbed me partly because I had not so long ago seen a scan of my own brain after a quite serious injury, and still more so because of the particular topic which is of course my passion! He had just published a book called This Is Your Brain On Music which, to this day, remains one of my favorite books on the effects of music on the brain. Levitin is a musician himself and had a career as a music producer, where he developed a fascination with how certain people (in this case, music producers) are able to discern extremely fine gradations of sound and music. That was the beginning. Click here to read the full article. The picture at the top of the page is the original copy which I still have in my files.

Long story short and fast forward, I just found out today that this year he has published a new book- I Heard There Was A Secret Chord. I was excited and delighted and ended up listening to about 3 hours worth of videos with him and ordered the book for myself and as a Christmas present for a loved one. Here is a wonderful video, so well worth listening to if you are an avid sound and music lover- and possibly a frequency nerd as well! Carlos Reyes is extraordinary. When he picked up his violin and started playing his first piece, I was in tears at the first two notes- one of the points that Levitin and Reyes make during their talk that I think just about everyone can relate to- the power of music to profoundly affect the emotional body, sometimes creating gentle waves, sometimes rougher waters, but ultimately bringing us to a resolution.

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

I’m sitting at the kitchen table in my son’s house in Minneapolis where I spent Thanksgiving. I was supposed to leave today (written Tuesday, Dec. 3 then put on pause…) and head back home to North Carolina, tearing myself away from my two almost 3-year old identical twin granddaughters, Ruby and Wren. I was actually in line at the gate just getting ready to board when my son Moose texted me and said, “Wren just woke up and said so earnestly, ‘I HOPE Mimi comes back,’” and asked if there was any chance to change my ticket. Well, how could I resist that? Especially when it turned out it was only $50 to make the change! So now I’m here for another 5 days and so very happy!

Sometimes “divine order” isn’t so evident. Today everything worked out in my favor- even the fact that my bag hadn’t been put on the plane yet and I was able to retrieve it a short time later in baggage claim.

When I got back to my son’s house I opened my computer and saw a bunch of comments on the movie “Will and Harper”, which I loved so much that I watched it twice in one week- some of them open, warm, compassionate and others snarky, hate-filled, homophobic and transphobic. I don’t know why and attack this always shocks me. The older I get the more I am completely baffled by the level of fear in our world. All I could think was the line “People are the same wherever we go…” from the song that Paul McCartney did originally with Michael Jackson and later with Stevie Wonder- “Ebony and Ivory”.

I understand less and less. Thinking about war, genocide… killing that has gone on throughout history., throughout so-called “civilization”. (Not civilized!) When I was younger it seemed that it was somehow rationalized (not by me) by looking at the history and circumstances leading up to it. Maybe I’m getting a little too philosophical here but I just don’t get it. And maybe this isn’t the pretty stuff I should be writing about when this is supposed to be a blog about healing… but what needs to be healed more than the mind- individual and collective- that believes in and sees separation, division and “otherness”?

What Lies Beneath

[Note: I began this writing on Sept. 6. Finally got back to it. Today is October 18.]
This morning before I got up I listened to this meditation by Rupert Spira. In it he compares the fluctuations of the mind to the ripples and currents in the ocean and talks about how, as you go down deeper and deeper beneath the surface, the ocean becomes more and more still.

In 2006 I had a pretty serious head injury. A heavy speaker fell off a shelf and swung from the cable hitting me square in my right temporal lobe. The injury came with a gift. About a week after the injury I began having shirodhara treatments from an angel, Denise O’Dunn, whose Ayurvedic treatments put me on the path to recovery. (For more on Denise O’Dunn and her Ayurvedic treatments click here.) I received seven consecutive days of shirodhara, a beautiful modality which is one of the primary treatments for traumatic brain injury in the ancient Indian system of Ayurvedic medicine.

When we began I was in a great deal of pain and it literally hurt my brain to think. If I tried to speak I would stop after a few words because it was too painful. The thoughts were there but it was too strenuous to actually attempt to elucidate them, so I would just let them go. The result of this was that the first few weeks after the injury I experienced being totally in the moment, because that was a place within which I could rest. If I was having a cup of tea, I was simply having a cup of tea. I was fully present because it was simply to painful to be anywhere else. It was an incredible gift.

About 3 or 4 days into the treatment, as I was lying on Denise’s massage table having warm medicated oil poured onto my forehead, a thought came into my mind. In that moment, as I became aware of the thought, I had an image of water striders, the small insects that skim across the surface of water. I would often see them in our swimming pool as a kid and was fascinated by them. The awareness that accompanied the image was that the water strider was the thought, floating on the surface of a pool of water, and I could either follow the thought or I could dive down below the surface and remain in stillness. For weeks afterward I was able to simply choose presence, stillness. Initially it was a necessity. It became a choice. As time passed and the acute injury subsided the more my chattery mind returned, but the experience, knowing that place of quiet, is something that has never left and the memory of it still allows me to occasionally drop in there with relative ease.

What is Courage?

I was driving through Long Island today and had such an interesting experience. I was going to a very high-end spa that had a collection of my singing bowls there on consignment. They hadn’t sold any in a long time and hadn’t kept a good record of what they had sold, so I was going there to see what bowls they had left and get it all straightened out.

So, I was driving along and began feeling very strongly that this was a place I did not belong, that I was an outsider. I was quite overcome with the sensation and I also became aware of the familiarity of it, going all the way back to the terror of my first day of kindergarten and all the years in elementary school when I didn’t “fit in”. I thought about how much fear I had had growing up and all the things I didn’t do because I was too afraid- that I would be laughed at, that I would fail. Not applying for art school, A) because if I did a portfolio they would see that I couldn’t draw and B) because I was afraid to get on a plane to fly wherever I might have to go to visit. Blindly diving into relationships because I was afraid of being alone, relationships which were doomed from the start because they were only a reflection of my own codependence and fear.

Drinking and drugging actually helped me plow through some of those fears at times in my life- but of course they had unfortunate and disastrous effects in other ways as I then threw all caution to the wind. But my early life was pretty much ruled by my fears. Every decision I made, or didn’t make, was born out of fear for a very long time.

I’ve thought a lot about this lately because I did eventually come to find my power. I came to find my center. I found much of my inner strength and connection through sound healing practices that I have discovered along the way- particularly those that helped me to access my voice. I also have made choices in more recent years that caused me ultimately to be alone. It hit me recently that one of the gifts of that, unbeknownst to me at the time, was that I learned that I could move forward and be strong and creative and successful on my own- that I was actually quite capable of taking care of myself.

Today my experience of myself is that I am a strong and powerful person and I love who I see when I look in the mirror. When I am unsure on some level, I am able to ask for help and not hide my fear or doubts. It hit me today that courage is not something we are necessarily born with. I certainly wasn’t. I think I have always believed that courage was an innate quality in certain more fortunate people. But today I realized that real courage is being able to accept and acknowledge our fears and to keep moving forward in spite of them, not to be held hostage by them.