Song With No Words

This morning I got up- for about 5 minutes. I took out my 12-string guitar which I have hardly played at all in about four years- not because I don't love it but because the body is too big and it is just a little awkward for me. Sat back down on my bed with it and didn't stop playing for close to two hours.

I had forgotten just how much I love the sound of that guitar. I heard things I had never heard before, beautiful overtones. I also found myself playing in ways that I had never played before and developed some kind of a cool riff in a minor key that I couldn't stop playing. I loved the sound of it.

I sat playing it and wondered how I could be playing better than I had ever played and how I could be making up new riffs when I hadn't practiced in forever and had also put it down for a good 20 years before I started playing again just a few years ago. My technique is lacking but my ear is better- more creative and more open.

I think it is partly due to all the sound healing work that I do. My sense of hearing is much more sensitive and refined- being able to hear more subtle sounds also allows me to produce more subtle sounds. The other thing that crossed my mind was that I seem to be thinking of the creative process differently since I took the Expressive Art Therapy training. In relation to creating art, one of the freeing things for me about the EA process is that when I see something now that inspires me to draw, I don't have to draw or paint the object or person that inspires me. Before that, I had always felt that I had to be able to paint the landscape or the flower or the person perfectly and I didn't have the technique so I always felt frustrated and incompetent. What I learned from Expressive Art Therapy was that I could express the feeling I get from it and get a great deal more satisfaction and joy from the process.

~Not my 12-string guitar!~

I think the same thing is happening for me when I play the guitar. I am experiencing a deeper ability to listen to what wants to be played, as well developing a new kind of openness to what is emerging from the instrument. There are times that I have felt constricted by the belief that I had to either learn, or write, a song. After all, that was why I learned to play the guitar in the first place- because I loved to sing. I have always enjoyed just sitting and playing the guitar, but even when I did that I was mostly playing chords to songs even if I wasn't singing along with them, rather than allowing the song to find itself, so to speak.

Zoom Zoom Zoom

Well, I thought for a minute I could upload my pictures from Dropbox but when I copy them on to this page they are gigantic and there is no way to make them smaller. So here I am again in the Land of Frustration! I have so many wonderful pictures of Holland- including a whole wall of hang pans that I so want to post. 

Oh well... I have been having many great sound experiences here, mostly of my own making. Shipping this weekend by teaching a two day workshop. It looks like we will have a reasonable turnout for it and I am looking forward to it. I have had two very nice three hour workshops that began and ended with Expressive Art Therapy and had a sound journey in the middle. 

Expressive Art Therapy is a three step process- Access, Release, Transform:

Access an image that expresses the feeling sensation on the body as it responds to a significant event or situation- possibly painful, but not neccessarily.

Release the image through an art form- visual, movement or sound 

Transform the image/experience with a new image that represents a calmer, less stressful response to the situation.

In the workshops I am teaching, the original trigger or challenging situation is released through the Healing Sound Journey which is followed by a visual art piece which represents the transformation of the event. I love the combination. It really feels like sort of a missing link to me. 

I gave someone a session today who had an extremely positive response to one of the workshops and wanted to follow up with a session to help anchor the experience. 

The time is flying by so fast- I can't believe I am leaving in a week and a half. Suddenly three weeks seems like no time at all.

Top Secret

Six people in workshop today that only one had signed up for. All of them had powerful experiences. It was the first time that I combined the Expressive Art Therapy with sound. It was good. (Really... can you tell I'm overtired?)

We had five of us at dinner and then Paul shared this great video with us. Still exhausted so this is it from me today. Amazing though- my days are so full that I was ready to fall asleep and realized I hadn't posted anything yet!

I think it would be fun to contrast this with a video of African drummers- the same level of precision with such a totally contrasting feel to it!

You Never Know (And Sometimes You Do)

Slowly starting to get new clients in my new space. Today someone came for a session who I met almost two years ago at an Expressive Art Therapy training I had taken. Turns out she saved my contact information and last week contacted me to make an appointment for a session. We hadn't had any contact since we had taken the class together.

So interesting to me when you don't have any idea that what you shared at some past time has had an impact on someone. You might not have even known they were listening or remotely interested. I have had people contact me for a session sometimes years after they came to one event that I did.

So, part of the moral of the story is, don't be afraid to share what you do- and don't assume that no one is listening. You never who you might reach- usually just when you least expect it!

A few years ago when I was in St. Petersburg I taught a class for the Florida State Massage Therapy Association. It was an opportunity for me to network and reach a fairly broad audience and for Licensed Massage Therapists to get a few of their necessary continuing education credits. About three years later I got a call from a woman who had been at that meeting. I had played a crystal bowl and she told me she had never forgotten the sound of that bowl and had wanted one ever since. She was just waiting until she could afford it. She came to the center later that week and bought her first crystal bowl.

And this is the other part of the moral of the story. That is how sound is. Sometimes it just penetrates through all the other clutter and chaos and you know when it strikes you. You know that it just changed you- or brought you back home in a way that nothing else could in such a brief instant.

Chill Music

I came across a similar video earlier today and was fascinated by it- stunning, both visually and sonically. I couldn't access it to upload but you can click here to watch it. I had seen some of the instruments before- the percussion ones and the horns but the cello and harp knocked me out! So beautiful... such extraordinary sounds.

As for some of my other personal inspiration today, I met with a woman whom I had "randomly" met in the grocery store last week. She has a very entrepreneurial spirit and has started a number of great businesses locally, one of them being one of the best restaurants in Newport- cool, funky and eclectic with consistently great food for over 20 years. We were discussing her latest venture, which is helping other small businesses get off the ground. After about five minutes (yes, I'm a little slow) I said, "Well, maybe you could help me." Here I am reconfiguring my business which, in its most recent incarnation, was a sound healing center open to the public on a daily basis for 7 years. Now, after a three year period of transition, it is in my home and I am still in the process of discerning what parts of the old formula I can use, what new pieces can be integrated, and what is to be either eliminated from the equation or transformed in some way to accomodate the space I am now in. So yes, I can use some help from a seasoned and successful entrepreneur who has both vision and know how in putting it all together

So she came out to my house, had a ride on the sound table (which she loved- surprise, surprise!) and we spent three hours discussing the numerous projects that I would like to bring to fruition- my private sessions, my book, traveling and teaching, offering individual sound healing retreats, integrating Expressive Art Therapy into my session work, creating short videos, recordings and more. (The "more" is still a secret project!)

So, I am excited!