Sound and Self-Healing

I have not been feeling well for the past three days so tonight I have to make it short. So I just sat back on the chaise longue and listened to a CD that my friend, musician/sound healer Dave Chandler, had recorded of me in the RISD Chapel last year. The good news is that while I was listening to it I did not feel the pain in my stomach that has been plaguing me for several days. It's a 20-minute sound meditation with singing bowls, flutes and rainsticks.
It was nice to sit back and listen to it on a good stereo for the first time. I didn't have it on CD until today so I could only listen to it on my computer before. I had also never really listened to it consciously before except maybe right after we recorded it, which was about a year and a half ago, so it was quite new and fresh to me. I was surprised at how clean it sounded. It was also very interesting to feel the way different sounds washed over different parts of my body and to note the way my body received the sound- a good experience!

On that note I am going upstairs to put it on replay in my CD player and go to sleep to it. Meanwhile check out Dave's website and listen to that first track he has on there. I'm listening to it right now as I write this and it's great!

Just Breathe...

Tonight I am exhausted but I wanted to do a quick post before I go to bed. I know there is something that wants to be said.

When I was in my early teens I used to "try" to meditate. The big distraction was my breath! If only I could breath totally silently then I was sure I'd be able to meditate. When I got older I learned an amazing mediation technique. Meditate on the sound and the movement of the breath. What a revelation! The one constant as long as I am alive- I am breathing. It was like some major secret had just been revealed to me.
Tomorrow I do a kirtan. Tonight I came up with a very sweet and simple melody for a chant to Lord Shiva. I am looking forward to sharing it. I am grateful that each day I am getting more response to my work up here. It feels good.


Benefits of Chanting Sanskrit


Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati (Ramamurti S. Mishra, MD) my teacher's guru
My beloved teacher, Swami Sivananda Sarasvati
Reasons for learning Sanskrit through chanting, according to Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati:
  • You learn Sanskrit naturally and effortlessly.
  • You enter your being through discipline of meditation, relaxation and concentration.
  • You experience natural unity and integrity with the world.
  • You receive natural and holistic healing, unifying body, mind and spirit.
  • By the radiation of natural health on all levels you help others in the same direction.
  • You experience the integrity of all world languages through the vibration of Sanskrit language with chanting.
  • You enter into meditation in a natural way.
  • You experience natural and spontaneous revelation of freedom and enlightenment, the light of natural awareness.
The Sanskrit language, known as “The mother of all tongues” is one of the oldest known languages, if not the oldest, on our planet. The written alphabet is called “devanāgari”. It is said that the language derived from the cities of the devas, “the shining ones” (“nagar” is the word for city). Each letter was derived from an icon of one of the many diverse Goddesses. The great Devi created 50 subforms of herself, the mātrikas or “little mothers” whose names are still recited daily by devout shakti worshippers. Each letter has its own meditative quality and vṛtti (perturbation of the natural mind) associated with it. 

Because each phenome in the Sanskrit language has its own vibrational quality, with the proper pronunciation one can attain states of mastery- theoretically even if you did not know the actual meaning of the words! This idea has another level of importance, because if the language is mispronounced one can inadvertently be bringing in unwanted vibratory energies. For example, “the pigeon”... rājakapotāsana... the word “rāja” means king or sovereign. Leave off the long “a” and the word becomes “raja”- which translates as either pollen of flowers or menstrual excrement! Properly pronounced it really translates as “the royal pigeon pose”. When one is teaching [yoga] one can be adding to this energy of excellence through the correct pronunciation of Sanskrit.

In 1786 Sir William Jones, one of the first people to seriously study the language outside of India had this to say about it:
The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.
My personal experience of studying and chanting Sanskrit is that it charges the brain, balances the nervous system, creates new neural pathways and improves memory. 

This short video is from an introductory Sanskrit class for yoga teachers that I taught at Living Room Yoga in St. Petersburg, FL several years ago. The actual devanagari letters are below so you can chant along.
 

Bells of Mindfulness


Sister Dang Nhiem with her beautiful teachings of the bells and the breath has been in my mind all day.  The teaching is simple and beautiful. There is nothing I can add to it.

I did the above drawing in a workshop after we had done a vocal meditation on the chakra tones. I was playing a singing bowl at the same time and this was how I felt at the end of the meditation. It was a revelation about the balance of energy.

Back In The Saddle Again!

A whirlwind of "soundy thoughts" going through my head. Spent so long working on my new flyer today that I actually thought I had blogged already!
I see some things that still need tweaking. More refinement when I am done with this short update...

Saturday, February 14, as well as being Valentine's Day, is also World Sound Healing Day, an event initiated by world renowned sound healer Jonathan Goldman in 2002. I am still feeling slightly disheveled in my new pad, even though it looks and feels great so I hadn't set up an event here to join in. I gratefully accepted an invitation to lead a chanting group in Newport, Rhode Island on Saturday morning where we will start off by toning the heart sound "AH" along with hundreds of thousands of other people across the globe who will be sending a Sonic Valentine to Mother Gaia. The global intention is to heal Mother Gaia, her waters and raise the consciousness of all beings on the planet. We will follow this with an hour or more of toning, chanting and kirtan.

I am so happy to be able to do this as we did it every year when I had the center and I have taken a couple of years off due to major life changes. I feel like I'm getting back in the saddle- and it's a saddle that feels like Home!

Several organizations are involved in measuring the effect of prayer, meditation and other spiritual activities on the electromagnetic field of the earth as well as the consciousness of her people by gathering statistics on the numbers of violent crime at specific times across the globe. To see some interesting information on this, click on this link: http://www.healingsounds.com/world-sound-healing-day-4