The Power of Mantra, The Science of Sound

Yesterday, January 6, 2021, was not a good day in the history of America- the culmination of four years of narcissism, arrogance, intolerance and self-righteousness by a disgruntled employee of the people.

I made a commitment to myself a few days ago- that I would put something out there every day on this blog. I missed yesterday because I was beside myself as the events of the day unfolded. I actually went into escape mode for a while- took a drive so I could listen to the news and not be sitting in my house watching it all on the TV or computer. I needed a change of scenery. When I got back I went up to Mahesh and Mukta’s, my neighbor/friends in the other house on the property where I live, and had pizza and a glass of wine. I was going to stay up there and blow off Day 6 of the 7-day mantra practice I have been doing with Jai Uttal but somehow, after eating way too much pizza, I felt somewhat emotionally revived and decided to go back up to my house and chant. I knew it would be the best thing for me and that I would be really disappointed in myself if I missed it.

Chanting in the time of Covid… I swore I would never do webinars- now I am so grateful for them. Thank you Jai and beautiful Nubia for bringing yourselves to our living rooms!

And of course I was so grateful that I listened to my heart rather than my mind as I knew I would be. As always the chant was perfect for the day - a devotional prayer to Hanuman, the monkey-god whose heart is so big and so full that it overflows with ardent love and devotion for Lord Ram and his beloved Sita. The perfect chant when the heart is feeling wounded.

On another note which isn’t exactly a change of topic- it relates- I am fascinated by the way significant dates repeat themselves. Exactly 15 years ago yesterday, on January 6, 2006 I sustained a fairly serious head injury. I was hit in the temple on the right side of my head by a large speaker. I got a concussion but the miracle was that the flat side of the speaker hit me square in my temple. I am convinced if it had been at the slightest angle the damage would have been far worse. Anyway, that is another whole story but what I want to get to here is how nāda yoga, the yoga- or science- of sound, which Sadhguru talks about in the above video, saved me or at least got me on a faster track to recovery.

About a month and a half after the injury- I hadn’t yet started driving again and could still barely talk, had a fair amount of swelling and pain- my nāda yoga teacher Shyam Bhatnagar offered a 7-day sound meditation retreat in Fort Meyers, FL. We sat with Shyamji and chanted for several hours every day, along with doing a dietary cleanse. Shyamji is a nāda yoga master and uses the voice, mantra and tamboura. After about 3 days I started noticing distinct changes. My mind started getting clearer and there were differences in my energy level. When I arrived at the retreat I already could see considerable improvement compared to the acute stage but with the mantra and meditation practices I could distinctly sense that my nervous system was receiving benefits on a subtle yet very deep level. I also had a lot of emotional clearing during the process and became aware of the deep level of trauma that I had undergone as a result of the injury.

The healing process was long- a good year- but the improvement in the beginning with a week of mantra practice with someone who really understood the science of sound was profound. I had many other helpers during this time who I am deeply indebted to, but the mantra and purification practice with Shyamji certainly helped get the ball rolling.

Dancing With the Goddess

In 2015 I accepted Seth Godin’s challenge to “ship” every day for 30 days- which meant writing a blog post. I did it for almost that whole year I think. I definitely did it for many months- and I had a sense of commitment every day, a sense of satisfaction, and a sense of completion. My commitment to myself as of January 1 is to post something- or ship- every day for 30 days.

It’s late. I wake up in the morning thinking about this- this blog- observing sound throughout the day, listening deeply at times, enjoying music on a more external level at other times and sometimes just being busy… doing stuff, making lunch, doing laundry, going to the grocery store, catching up with people on the phone- all the stuff of life. Today several hours were spent in mantra practice. Tonight I spent an hour chanting this beautiful mantra to Ma Durga during a webinar with Jai Uttal. Feel your breath, let yourself drop in and enjoy that quiet place inside for a little while…

Gratitude

I woke up extremely conscious of the passage of time yesterday and am feeling directed to make better use of it. There is no shortage of it- as well as the opportunity to spend a lot of said time in solitude. My intention this winter was to focus on immersing myself in the experience and study of sound and its effects in various forms. Of course that has been my path for a very long time but there is an opportunity right now since there is no gathering in groups and I am in a new place and not particularly inclined to promote private sessions right now until the spread of Covid begins to subside.

To that end I have joined a 7-day mantra practice with Jai Uttal as well as a 40-day kundalini yoga practice which begins on January 4. Those are the formal practices I am engaging in. Then there are my personal practices. I am definitely exploring the effects of Richway’s BioAcoustic Mat since I do not have my Soundweaver here. I haven’t been using it as often as I could but that is going to change too! I am using it with the BioMat on top which is a great combination. Yesterday I gave myself a 50-minute session while doing long distant healing for a friend at the same time. The music I used was Nawang Khechog and Carlos Nakai’s recording “Winds of Devotion” which is so beautiful and one that I have always found to be very powerful and effective on the Soundweaver.

Today I went for a beautiful walk in the woods. I found myself filled with deep gratitude… gratitude for time, for beauty, for the experience of being in a body where- because of the apparent separation- we have the gift of appreciation, for my teachers- past and present, known and unknown, for my ancestors, for my family, my parents, my siblings, my children and grandchildren, for all the masters who have walked the earth, for all that is past and all that is to come. It was an endless, expansive and totally joyful experience. From gratitude I moved into prayer. i walked and I prayed and I prayed and i walked. The prayer became the simple mantra from Dr. Emoto, “I love you, I thank you, I respect you.” As I looked at the trees, the water, the ferns, the rocks, the sky, felt the air on my skin, heard the sounds of the running water, thought about the molecules, atoms and particles that all matter is composed of… “I love you, I thank you, I respect you.” And myself, a hand on my heart “I love you”, joined by my other hand on my heart “I thank you”, and one hand then raised to my third eye “I respect you”. Over and over, tears streaming down my face.

I love you.
I thank you.
I respect you.

Circles, Cycles and Sound in the Time of Covid

For the past 3 days I have been immersed in the Sound Healing Global Summit online. Two days left. I had an idea that I couldn’t stand online workshops but in the time of Covid I am finding myself incredibly grateful for them. I dipped my toe in when I was in the Philippines- initially to attend a Weight Watchers meeting that I used to go to every Saturday morning when I was at home in Rhode Island. It was so wonderful to see familiar faces and feel the connection from 12000 miles away! After that I started joining in on Jai Uttal’s Friday evening kirtans and Gina Sala’s Monday Mantra class, which for me, being 15 hours ahead, were a perfect way for me to start my Saturday and Tuesday mornings- with joyful sound and meditation- and to dive into practices that otherwise were completely inaccessible to me where I was, especially once we were in lockdown.

So back to the Sound Healing Summit…

FAST FORWARD!!! I started writing this on August 5. It is now October 17. My life has made such a wide and clear circle in a year. One year ago today I was getting ready to drive to North Carolina to help my dear friend and former partner Henry navigate his way through a health procedure. Sadly he died on October 18 while I was still on the road. Two days later my sister Jenny died. Henry’s death hit me like a sledgehammer and I spent a year moving through layers of grief around that. Now, a full year later, I find myself in North Carolina living in the house where he spent the last year of his life which he had helped one of our very close friends to build.

Last week, on October 11, we had a Celebration of Life on Zoom for my sister Jenny, and I found myself processing a lot of untapped grief around that. It was a beautiful event and I am so grateful that it was a full year later so that I could be fully present for it and not held captive by the feelings I had been dealing with around Henry’s death.

So… transition, changes, travel, lockdown, Philippines, music, sound and healing…

The Sound Healing Summit was an inspiration. At some point well into my stay in the Philippines, after being on what turned out to be a major sabbatical that went on much longer than I anticipated, I realized I could not make a plan as to what would be next. And I knew that I would know what the next step was to be quite simply whenever it came to me. Clarity came within the first hour of my tuning into the Sound Summit. I have a lot to process and won’t get into much detail here but it centers around creating a Wholistic Sound Certification Program. Nothing will begin to happen until at least the spring. I am spending the winter here in North Carolina brainstorming, formulating a plan, and writing.

When I went to the Philippines I brought one small (but mighty!) Himalayan singing bowl with me. I had an idea about doing short meditations and making some videos. Unfortunately there was never a strong enough signal to post them so now I am posting one short video I made one beautiful morning on Camiguin. The sound is not great as there was a ton of background noise- the people of the little fishing village mending their nets right behind me- and I was really just experimenting. Unfortunately since it turned out to be impossible to upload anything I never refined the process!

Love, Loss and Impermanence

Benjy Wertheimer shared this earlier this morning on Facebook. Powerful, poignant and deeply resonant- good words to wake up to. He had a powerful reference point for it in his own story of love, loss, grief and more love. I know we will each have our own context.

For me, in this moment, it is much about my last few months as I wrote about in my previous post- feeling as though my heart had been pulverized as I watched my 38-year-old son Ben become less and less responsive after an eye surgery where they had to go in through his cranial bones. Eventually he turned around but there were a few days that were without question the longest days of my life as i wondered if he was slipping away for good, as I saw the nurses have to restrain him when he didn't know what was happening and was trying to pull out his feeding tube and many leads to the EEG glued to his head, when he didn't know where he was or why he was there, when I saw nothing but fear and confusion coursing through his being . I am still processing it with an awareness of impermanence and the strangeness of the illusory passage of time and the wrenching of the heart. And the softness and love that permeates through it all.

“You will lose everything.
Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memory.
Your looks will go.
Loved ones will die.
Your own body will eventually fall apart.
Everything that seems permanent is absolutely impermanent and will be smashed.
Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away.
Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away.
Right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground.
For that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this is the key to unspeakable joy.
Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you.
This may sound obvious but really knowing it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence.
Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude.

Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar."

~ Jeff Foster ~

Preciousness- Forest Dweller's Melody by Jai Uttal

Ran across this tonight. It was so sweet and precious I had to post it.

Sweet subtle breathtaking beauty... Thank you Jai Uttal.

The world is a river of sound.
Nada brahma...

Sound Pleasures

Woke up this morning to the sound of the hang drum being played in the next room. How sweet is that? I stood by the door and rather surreptitiously recorded a bit of it!

The first thing I did when I went downstairs was pick up my friend Ine's guitar and play the Devi Stotra.

After breakfast I went out for a walk through the farmland and enjoyed the funny squeaky sounds of the magpies dancing in the fields. I think they've gotten a bad rap. It seems as though I've always heard them spoken or written about in disparaging tones. I suppose they've done something to deserve that but I've only seen their beautiful black and white colours and heard the wonderful sounds they make and so far I have a very good impression of them!

After I got back to the house I went upstairs and listened to a couple of tracks by Jai Uttal on the sound table. That was a really great experience! If you want a really good meditative experience, listen to this track. If you want an even better experience, contact me and have a healing session with it on a vibroacoustic sound table! Even Jai said he really didn't realize all that was going on with this music until I gave him a session on the sound table with it- there are some beautiful low frequencies that you don't really hear when listening but that you feel deeply on a vibroacoustic table.

The house is very quiet- just the sounds of birds, the hum of the refrigerator and off in the distance there are trains- one to Berlin twice a day, and ones from Amsterdam to Soeste and back every ten or fifteen minutes. One tiny little train with only one car goes by, once a day I think- maybe twice? That's the train to Poland!

Sometimes it gets very windy because the land is so flat- there is nothing to slow it down. Other days I've heard the rain beat down on the roof. But today, just the birds, the train and the refrigerator- and the clicking of my keys on the keyboard.

One of the loveliest effects of the hang drum is the simultaneous sound of the fingers tapping on the drum at the same time is it is creating lovely tones and beautiful ringing overtones.

Sita Ram- Sing With Your Hands!

I was looking through one of my old journals with notes from many sound healing workshops I have taken. There are notes in here from workshops with Shri Shyamji Bhatnagar, Thomas Ashley-Farrand (Namadeva), Jai Uttal, Fabien Maman, and John Beaulieu plus some writing about some shamanic journeys with two Peruvian shaman. This journal, along with the one that follows it, probably contains the most important writing of my life. Interestingly it begins and ends with workshops I took with Shyamji.

I opened it to look up some notes from a workshop with Silvia Nakkach which I realize now is actually in the other one. I got sidetracked because I opened to a page that had the words to this lovely bhajan that Shyamji sang in a workshop one time and I wanted to find a melody to it. His tune was completely different than this one- so gentle, sweet and beautiful it had us all in tears. Unfortunately I don't think there is a recording of him singing it.

Sita Ram Sita Ram
Sita Ram Kahiye
Jahi Vidhi Rakhe Ram
Tahi Vidhi Rahiye

This one is sweet too though, in a different kind of a way, and I decided to post it as my musical inspiration for the day although I have already sat down and found my own melody to it. One of the things I enjoy about this video is the way this man sings with his hands. You get the feeling he is telling a story- which he probably is! One of the things Silvia always tells us is to free our hands and arms when we sing and it will help us to free our voice.

This is a photo from a page in my journal during one of Shyamji's workshops. It says, "Sita Ram Sita Ram Sita Ram." (To any Sanskrit scholars who may see this- I didn't realize that "Ram" had a long "A" when I wrote it. I think that's the only mistake?))

Sweet Relief

Today I celebrated my pain relief after 6 days of hell by listening to Jai Uttal's "Queen of Hearts" CD and dancing, dancing, dancing!

Jai Uttal- Oh Krishna....Sweet Kirtan

I am very tired tonight and my mind is rather pleasantly empty. When I thought about what to write- my commitment to shipping something every day- this beautiful kirtan by Jai Uttal came into my mind. It was a very lovely evening in Miami about four years ago, at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, without a doubt one of the most beautiful churches I have ever been in. The scene, with the lights changing from reds to blues to purples, the angels behind them, the ethereal painting on the ceiling and the sweet beautiful music, was something out of this world.

 

Inspirations

Beautiful Shyamji, my nada yoga teacher

This morning I updated my profile on my blog and spent so much time looking at pictures as I was considering updating that I came across all kinds of wonderful inspirations in the process! I decided I would share some of the things that have inspired me today- people, places, instruments- rather than getting too wordy.

The first is a suikinkutsu, also known as a Japanese water harp- an instrument I discovered while researching outdoor instruments for my healing sound gardens. The next one is a music piece by one of my teachers, music therapist, preserver of indigenous and sacred music Silvia Nakkach who has a voice of gold and a heart to match- Sarasvati incarnate!

Deity of Sound- sculpture by my dear friend Ceramic artist and musician, Brian Ransom

The side of a music school in Minneapolis

Singing, Ringing Tree- Crown Point, Lancashire, England

John Beaulieu's sound studio in Stone Ridge, NY

Sarasvati, She Who Flows

My beautiful teacher, shaman/maestro Don Tito La Rosa

Jim Pepper's saxophone! Smithsonian Institute

"The Gift" by Patricia Bowers

Playing music for visionary artist Alex Grey

Dear friend, colleague, amazing sound healer, Baba Frejon/Fred Johnson- vocalist extraordinaire and dancer Katurah Robinson who dances from her heart

Athena VibroAcoustic Table built by Somatron Corporation

My dear teacher, bhakti yogi, amazing musician and "kirtanmeister "Jai Uttal

Beautiful friend, brilliant artist, hostess of my healing sound journeys Suzanne Benton- blissed out after a Sound Journey

Another brilliant teacher teacher and revealer of the magic of tuning forks as well as craniosacral therapist/polarity therapist/naturopath/psychologist John Beaulieu

My Sanskrit teacher, the late Swami Sarasvati Sivananda I miss you, Swami Bob!

Music Heals... Kirtan Camp- 2011!

Just got back from an amazing 7-day Kirtan Camp with Jai Uttal last night! I believe the end count was 55 kirtanistas chanting their hearts out... crying, laughing, singing, praying and playing together. An atmosphere of love, nurturing and support...

I realized sometime over the course of the last few days that I felt physically better than I have in a very long time. Was it the food- mostly raw, all organic... the climate- San Anselmo, CA, just north of SF- and the awareness of what an incredible physical drain Florida has on my body... the music- chanting, playing harmonium and drumming for the better part of 7-8 hours a day... the devotion, the bhakti, the shakti? Well, I think it had to be all of the above... again my favorite word comes to mind- WHOLISTIC. Healing on all levels- body, mind, heart and soul. Giving myself space to be and to heal. I realize how little music I have been enjoying for myself and my own spirit lately.

Such a good reminder of why I do what I do.

So simple.

Music heals.
Sound heals.
Love heals.

Here is a just a glimpse of the absolute sweetness of it all- which also speaks to Jai's generosity and spirit of willingness to share with no agenda of his own. Someone asked about how he combined other instruments with his kirtan and specifically enjoyed his use of the banjo- which is something I have always loved in his music, so the next day he brought it in.

12.2.10 Awake

3 a.m. Couldn't sleep so I just watched Jai Uttal's first music video. His musical soul being is so beautiful. I use his music all the time for sound healing sessions. Finally he created his first music video. Share it!
http://vimeo.com/17230312