My mind is going a few different directions with what to write about tonight and I am also very focused on changing my blogging and sleeping pattern so my plan is to keep it short tonight.

One: Still enjoying the energy of the gathering of sweet friends here last week.

Two: My brother came by my house last night and gave me a beautiful new guitar that plays so sweetly. I feel like we have been friends forever and she is inspiring me to play better and try new things that I have never done before.

Three: Yesterday I wrote up the outline for my weekend workshop in Holland that I will be teaching on May 8-9. The course is Sound Healing for Balance and Joy. The realization for me was the same tools that will first serve by restoring balance are also the tools that will bring you joy- not the tools themselves but the effect of their use.

Sound Healing for Balance and Joy

A Two-Day Workshop utilizing Vocal Expression, Singing Bowls, and Tuning Forks

Sound Healing for Balance

Chakra Tones

Chanting

Body Tuners (C & G Tuning forks)
Brain Tuners

Singing bowls

Sound Healing for Joy

Chakra Tones

Overtone singing

Chanting

Body Tuners/Brain Tuners

Singing Bowls

The same tools that are used to bring balance and harmony to the nervous system and the mind-body-spirit can also elevate us to states of great joy. The first task is to clear away the clutter and excess chatter. Sound has the capacity to sidestep our left-brain linear thought processes and allow us to drop fully into the present without fear, projection or anxiety. Once we have arrived, we are in a place to access the fullness of our being.

This is a fully experiential workshop. We will immerse ourselves in sound, produced from within and without. What you will take from this are simple, accessible, powerful tools that can assist you in managing physical, mental and emotional pain so that you can tap into the true potential of your being.

“The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.”

Holland- 2012

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.