This morning I walked into my sound healing room to open the curtains and noticed my flute lying on one of the tables. I picked it up and played it for just a minute or two and was about to put it back when an extraordinary sound caught my attention. I could hear a very faint resonance of tones in the room. I blew a few notes on the flute again and stopped. Same thing...a barely audible harmony of sounds. I tried it again- where were these beautiful mysterious tones coming from?

I walked over to the circle of crystal and Tibetan bowls and played again. Ah yes, there it was! The tones of the flute were causing the other instruments that had the same frequencies to vibrate in sympathetic resonance. It was extraordinary, ethereal- and astonishing to me that in so many years of working with these instruments I had never heard such an enormous response from one instrument to another! So subtle and so beautiful.

I sat down in the circle of bowls and continued playing, sometimes pausing after one or two notes, sometimes playing a whole phrase. I sat and played, mesmerized by the tones that came forth, for probably close to an hour- me playing my flute and the bowls answering. Several times in the course of the day I went back in there and did it again. I wish had a recording device that would pick up such subtle tones- I definitely would have recorded it!

Over the years in my workshops I have shared many examples of sympathetic resonance as it is a key component in sound healing. Often when I am teaching and I have a gong next to me, my voice hits a certain tone that causes the gong to resonate. It is actually loud enough to distract me sometimes but it is also a great example of how one particular tone will cause another object (it doesn't have to be a musical instrument) to resonate if the tone is the same as said object's resonant frequency.

In its application to sound healing, knowing that all aspects of our physical body, our emotions and our thoughts have specific frequencies, we can effectively release trauma from the body by using this principle of sympathetic resonance.

In life we can simply observe and enjoy the interplay of tone and harmony as a subtle vibratory experience (sometimes not so subtle!) when we feel a resonance or connection to another. It could be the way a song makes us feel, or a tree, or a flower or the presence of another person. On the flip side when we get triggered and are upset, anxious or in pain, then we have the opportunity to explore what can help us to shift our energy back to a state of calm or homeostasis. Again it could be a song, a tree, a particular healing modality, the presence of another person, the remembrance of our breath- any myriad of possibilities because everything is vibration.

As it says in the Vedas, "Nada brahma." The world is sound.