This past Friday I attended a retreat for oncology patients in Exeter, Rhode Island. I was there as a therapist offering treatments with tuning forks and craniosacral therapy. For the closing of the retreat I did a sound journey in the woods by a fire. What a setting! All the women that I spoke to during the course of the day expressed feelings of gratitude, empowerment and deeper connection to themselves and the people around them. Here are some pictures of the beautiful spot under the pines where I did the sound journey as the shadows grew long at the end of the day. It doesn't get much better than this! Some women sat by the fire, others lay down on rugs and blankets.

As I wrote in my last blog entry, I had just learned the night before that Dr. Mitchell Gaynor had recently been found dead in the woods near his home in New York. He did so much for the field of sound medicine, bringing it to the forefront as a complementary therapy, introducing it to all of his patients, as a means of boosting the immune system and helping patients to quickly drop into a natural state of deep peace. It was very powerful and poignant for me to have the opportunity to dedicate the sound journey to him at a time when I was still feeling raw from the news.

A couple of years ago I gave a patient with very advanced cancer a treatment with tuning forks. She was a beautiful bright spirit who was in a lot of pain with tumors throughout most of her internal organs. She had fought for a long time and knew she did not have a lot of time left. She was still willing and eager to try anything that might give her some relief. I gave her a treatment with tuning forks, never touching her body. After the session she told me her pain was not relieved but that she had experienced deep peace which was a great gift for her as it was something that she no longer had.

Dr. Gaynor was right. There is no other modality that can bring a person to a state of peace as quickly as sound. It doesn't have to be long, complicated or dramatic. It can be as simple as one tone from a Himalayan singing bowl or the sound of two tuning forks tapped on the knees and held up close to the ears, vibrating the temporal bones and sending the frequency directly into the nervous system in a matter of seconds. (Dr. John Beaulieu's Body Tuners with the frequency of 256hz and 384hz (C & G) are ideal for this.) Sound is simple, effective and can also such a pleasant form of medicine, so natural that we often don't even consciously notice its effect right away.