Notice the progression of the layout of the bowls. I do not decide which bowls to play or where to place them. They tell me. As I played them they began to direct me to move them, closer and closer to Karen until they were almost hugging her body. Then at the end some of the bowls were moved away from her feet and her sides and the sound was simply moving back and forth from her crown to her feet, back and forth between the two.
I was very sorry that I did not record this session. The bowls were singing beautifully.
Dr. John Beaulieu's sound studio in Stone Ridge, NY
One of my oncology patients at the Women & Infants Integrative Care program sent me this article tonight. She is actually going to be participating in this program. It is so exciting that western medical establishments are finally waking up to the power and potential of sound and music therapy.
Sloan Kettering and Pandora Music Genome architect to ‘prescribe’ music for cancer patients
by Mark Sullivan
Pandora’s chief musicologist Nolan Gasser has made a career of tailor-fitting streams of music to listeners’ tastes. Now, Gasser is taking the body of knowledge he gained as the architect of Pandora’s Music Genome Project and focusing it on helping ease the suffering of cancer patients. The Music Genome Project was about breaking down and categorizing
hundreds of music characteristics (or “genes”), then delivering streams
full of songs containing the genes that people like. That same matching
algorithm, along with some hard science from music therapy research,
Gasser believes, can be used to “prescribe” music that will ease some of
cancer’s more unpleasant symptoms.
Gasser, an acclaimed pianist and composer in his own right, is now
working with members of the Integrative Medicine Department at New York
City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on the first phases of
such a therapy, and hopes the project will receive sufficient grant
money to bring these ideas to fruition. Sloan Kettering has long been a
pioneer in the field of music therapy and has an active Music Therapy department.
Healing music on ESPN
Gasser’s music therapy work was featured last week in an ESPN Films special called “Breaking Music Down to Its Genes,”
in which he takes viewers through “The Wellness Suite,” his composition
designed to contain the right traits to soothe and inspire cancer
patients.
You might wonder why ESPN would produce a show about playing music
for cancer patients. The point of ESPN Films’ digital shorts series The Collectors
is to “profile passionate people scrounging for information to save the
world’s bees or find the formula for funny,” as the network put it.Producer
Jamie Schutz proposed Gasser as a subject based on his music data work
with Pandora, but when he learned what he was doing with music therapy
at Sloan Kettering, he thought that would be a perfect focus for the
film.
The music in “The Wellness Suite” uses a number of musical techniques
that music therapy research has shown to help relieve fatigue, pain,
anxiety, and nausea in cancer patients. “The slow, heartbeat-paced tempo, consonant harmony, lyrical and
sustained melody, occasional bursts of rhythmic energy, the use of
strings, and so forth,” Gasser said, have been shown in the research
literature to create positive therapeutic effects. Longer pieces of music that have “a slow, unravelling, and narrative”
quality also have been shown to captivate listeners and ease pain.
“The Wellness Suite,” Gasser said, is “an extended work that puts all
these things together.” In the ESPN special, the piece is performed in
front of three cancer patients. Their responses to the music tell the
story (see video above). “I came up with a melody that for me spoke of healing,” Gasser said.
Accounting for taste
“The Wellness Suite” acts as a sort of pilot for the wider body of
work Gasser hopes to do with Sloan Kettering. He hopes to find existing
music, and create new music, that brings to bear both the therapeutic
musical styles used in the suite and the personal musical tastes of the
individual cancer patients at Sloan and elsewhere. For instance, the research shows that long, sustained drones with
shifting harmonies above have the capacity for healing. “So if the
patient likes jazz, we might go out and recommend modal pieces by Miles
Davis or Charles Mingus that have those qualities,” Gasser said.
Sloan Kettering and Gasser hope to develop a repertoire of music for
different types of patients (with different musical tastes), then
conduct scientifically rigorous testing to find out if patients who
undergo this approach to music therapy really fare better than patients
who receive different approaches, or no music therapy at all.
Above: Pandora’s Nolan Gasser
Image Credit: FiveThirtyEight
Evidence exists that music can help ease discomfort, but very little
has been done to affect this by linking specific musical traits to
personal taste. “Hopefully the results of our research will show that by
integrating musical features with personal taste, we can better move
the needle on treating the ailments of cancer treatment,” Gasser said. He says patients will also be given some instructions on how to listen to music so that they can get the maximum benefit.
The first round of testing at Sloan Kettering will focus on using
music to relieve symptoms like pain and nausea. But later tests may try
to determine if music can accomplish even more in some patients, tapping
the body’s innate healing powers. “It would be nice to explore grander prospects like increasing
general metabolism in the fight against cancer,” Gasser said. “The
prospect that a sustained musical therapy could help in the act of
healing or even reduce the spread of cancer is pretty ambitious, but it
certainly can’t hurt.”
Gasser says there’s every reason for optimism. “We are musical beings; music is part of our very identity,” he said. “We all have the capacity for music to have a positive effect on our well-being.”
Gasser is working on a new book called Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste that documents his work at Pandora and his 20-plus years exploring the nature of musical taste.
Listening to a fantastic radio show saluting Brian Wilson- "June 9, 2015 broadcast of the Magic Transistor Radio show on WPRK
FM, Winter Park, FL, USA, spotlighting the music of Brian Wilson, in
celebration of the June 5 opening of the motion picture Love & Mercy in American cinemas." Click here to listen. It's so good! There are some great and different arrangements than what you may be familiar with- like the version of "California Girls" which is very cool.
Playing music during 11:11 event with Alex Grey
Spent a long time this evening looking through old newsletters from the Sound Body Wholistic Health Center. How I miss that place! I love where I am... and I am still trying to figure out how to get things really moving the way they were when I had the center in a space that is my home. There was the Monthly Sound Healing Movie, frequent sound healing and nada yoga workshops by myself and so many others, concerts with Sacred Voices and Fred Johnson at the center and all over the St. Pete area, weekly sound journeys, garden lunches, playing music for all kinds of events, drumming classes and so much more. I am astounded when I look through the old newsletters and my appointment books.
A gorgeous cake from a memorable birthday celebration at the center!
The truth is that, beyond giving birth to four awesome sons who have grown into amazing men, I feel like the center was my greatest achievement thus far- and I am certainly not ready to throw in the towel! How to take things to the next level in a totally different environment, that is the question.
I have had such a busy past two weeks that I have rarely been able to find the time to blog- and when I do it's late at night and I find myself falling asleep at the computer. Because of that, many nights I have simply opted out rather than drive myself into exhaustion.
It has been good. More sessions, last week's company and training, the holiday weekend which meant time with my son Nic and my grandson, working for my friend Lark today who was behind on jewelry orders- and tonight- a concert by David Crosby which was so excellent. As good as and better than ever!
That's the nice thing about musicians- they just keep getting better with age, unlike some other professions where you're better off quitting while you're ahead or before you make a total fool of yourself. And, as Dave Crosby said, "Music uplifts humanity." Yes, indeed.
This past week a woman came up here from New Jersey to train with me from Monday through Thursday. We had a great connection pretty much instantly- she was relaxed, easygoing and very receptive- so it was really was a very enjoyable experience on my end. While she was here I gave four sessions- one to her, two which she observed and one in which she assisted by doing reiki while I was working on the person.
I wanted her to have as wide a range of experience as possible for her first time here so I ended up having a kirtan the second evening she was here. My friends Lynn Carol and George Henderson were here also, visiting from Florida, so there were four of us already! I invited a handful of people at the last minute and got a great response so we had a really nice group and very sweet kirtan here on Tuesday evening.
I also gave her a session with a set of Himalayan singing bowls she had tentatively picked out for herself. My thought was that if she was going to use them for healing she should experience what it would be like to actually receive a treatment with them!
One morning we went over to my friend Lynda Loranger's beautiful sound studio in Little Compton and experienced a sound bath with her gongs and Himalayan bowls. That was really wonderful- and nice for me also to be able to receive that day!
On her last evening we watched the movie Touch the Sound- a brilliant documentary by Thomas Reidelsheimer about Dame Evelyn Glennie, a solo percussionist who is quite deaf in that she lost her ability to hear through her ears by the time she was 12 years old, but has made up for that by learning to hear with her whole body. Watching and listening to her play it is clear that she is profoundly sensitive to sound. The way that she talks about and shares sound is a revelation.
Clearly Thomas Reidelsheimer is a deeply sensitive individual as well. Fifteen years ago he made the movie Rivers and Tides about the artist Andy Goldsworthy, which is pure poetry and then followed it up with this extraordinary film in which he illustrates his subject with his own incredible perception of sound and movement that is reflected in every frame of the film. I have watched it at least 5 times and am stunned by its beauty every time.
This is all to say that we had a great three and a half days together, filled with sound experience. It was nice for me to be able to focus so much energy on one person who wanted to engage in all that I had to offer in a short window of time. There is much more and I think we are both looking forward to her return in the fall. I know I am! I am also looking forward to doing other one on one trainings and sound healing retreats for individuals and being able to tailor the time for their own individual process and practice.
Looking forward to the next three days. I have someone coming to do a Sound Immersion with me tomorrow, staying for three nights. I spent a few hours preparing food so we won't have to spend too much time with that while she is here. There is so much ground to cover! She asked if she could apprentice with me and come up perhaps three different times between now and the end of the summer. Sound Immersion is what I am choosing to call it- it just came to me when I sat down to write. It leaves it open without expectations and I don't have to rename what is happening any time anyone wants to study with me or come for a sound healing retreat for a few days.
At the same time, my friends Lynn Carol and George Henderson are going
to be here as well for two or three days, so it is going to be very
full!
I have had the idea of individual personalized sound healing retreats for a while so I am excited that this is finally coming to fruition. This is not quite that- the emphasis of course will be more on education and practice and there will be less time for receiving and reflection. She will very likely get a session each day that she is here however and that in itself is worth the price of admission! I also have several people coming over for sessions during the time that she is here.
We will be discussing and working with the voice, first and foremost and then dip into VibroAcoustic Therapy, tuning forks and Himalayan singing bowls. When she comes back we will explore more deeply the singing bowls and tuning forks and who knows what else? It depends on how much she wants. We can go into mantra, Sanskrit, chanting, crystal bowls, Healing Sound Journeys and more.
If it was you, what would you want for your Sound Immersion? Would you want to learn to heal others with sound? Yourself? How to incorporate an instrument you already play into your healing practice? Would you simply want receive and have time to process with Expressive Art Therapy? Or maybe after each sound healing session you would just want to go over to the beach and take a nice long walk!
Your Sound Immersion is for you- you get to design it the way you want it!
I can't believe that after three years of not being able to upload videos from my computer to YouTube, it is so easy from my phone!
So here's what we have tonight- a few days ago I got a shipment of Himalayan singing bowls. This is a grouping of five of them that sound absolutely gorgeous together. I find myself haunted by the sound. Every time I walk by them I have to hear them and even thinking about them does something indescribable to my mind. I find them completely intoxicating.
Click here to find out about the upcoming workshop on Toning, Tuning Forks and Singing Bowls on August 1-2 in St. Petersburg, FL.
Tonight I add a couple of small touches to the Event Registration page. Right now am going to Facebook to create an event there too. Also working on setting up some other events in FL while I am down there.
Very busy getting ready for apprentice who is coming for four days next week as well as my dear friends Lynn Carol and George who are coming up from Florida. I am feeling slightly anxious around the possibility of not getting enough time with them and putting my energy into trusting that it will all work out perfectly!
I got a small shipment of Tibetan bowls in a couple of days ago- a set of five among them that are absolutely intoxicating! They are more expensive than the ones I usually get but they are definitely amazing quality- stunning both visually and vibrationally. Tomorrow I will post a little video of them.
Well, I fell behind on my daily blogging with so much going on in my life. One was a problem with the internet for a couple of days and then a big glitch getting the Event Registration page working properly which took a lot of time. However it IS working now and you can click here to check it out! It needs a bit more tweaking just to get it really looking right but at least it is all working well and people can now sign up with relative ease.
So, I am committed to Being Back! Tonight is more of a brief check-in as I have to get on Facebook and create an Event for the Florida workshop, as well as making some final touches on the Registration Page for it. As of about an hour ago I am also contemplating setting up a series of Healing Sound Journeys for August and turning my ride back from Florida into a bit more of a road trip.
I did discover this very awesome project which is going on in Rangely, Colorado. A huge abandoned and unused oil tank was discovered by "sound artist and sonic thinker" (I love that description!) Bruce Odland back in 1976. When he entered it, he discovered it had extraordinary sonic properties. Ever since then, a small group of musicians have been playing and recording in it. As it says on the website, "The Tank is a sonic wonder of the world, with a shifting, swirling
reverberation longer and richer than the Taj Majal or the Great Pyramid." In 2013 a project began to raise money to turn the tank into a Sonic Art Center which is now coming into being.
Guess what my newest obsession is? I can't wait to go out to Colorado and visit this place! I want to do a Sound Journey there. Please be sure to click here and visit the website (http://tanksounds.org/the-tank). It is just to cool to miss- and be sure to watch one or two or more of the videos. They are all so fascinating. They are on the top menu of their website under "Media" or just click here.
While my dear friend, old boyfriend, loyal support person Henry is working on getting a link activated for people to register for my workshop I have a tiny window to post... well... something!
How about this? Seriously- this video blew my mind. I was sitting at my kitchen table cheering as I watched it on my laptop. I want to get
married just so I can have Father Kelly sing this at my wedding!
Great day today! Gave a talk and a sound journey to a group of high school students at The Greene School in West Greenwich, RI today. What a cool place- I wish I could have gone to a school like that. The class was a group of seventeen 9-12 graders who are taking a week-long intensive on Sustainable Healing Modalities- and a few other students and faculty who stopped and listened on their way through the room to wherever they were going. They started the day off with yoga and then got me! Which basically meant they got to zone out on some really cool sounds for an hour- not a bad way to start the day.
The follow-up to the "Mum Dream" has been powerful- tears of joy as I have felt the palpable sense of the presence of her personality fade and an overwhelming love take its place. I keep thinking of the last few lines of the introduction to A Course in Miracles. "The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way: 'Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.'"
Ever since I took the money workshop in Holland a lot has been happening. Last week I wrote about being at the Rhode Island Cancer Summit. It felt like there was a big opening there. As a follow-up to that, today I got an email saying that the writer for Women & Infants Hospital wants to talk to me because they want to do an article on sound therapy. Meanwhile tomorrow I am teaching a class on sound healing to a group of high school students who are taking an intensive on Sustainable Healing Modalities. I am really looking forward to that. I have loaded the car up with all kinds of fun and interesting instruments from around the world. I suddenly have many more people calling for sessions and someone who wants to apprentice with me coming in a couple of weeks.
A few weeks ago I was looking at some old material from the sound healing center I had in Florida- notepads, appointment books, calendars, etc. I was so busy every day, meeting with people, giving sessions, doing concerts, sound journeys, hosting events, teaching workshops, etc. and I thought "This is how it's supposed to be." I have been wondering how to make that happen here, knowing it would have to take a different form and curious about what it might look like. Suddenly it all seems to be taking shape and evolving in a very organic way. It feels good.
My son Namdev sent me this song. He sent it on Friday. Friday night I was visited by my mother during my dreamtime. (See last blog post.) http://youtu.be/IWwAUAWN5lQ
Last night my mother came to me in a dream and said goodbye to me. I didn't realize the significance of it right away. The beginning of our journey towards her departure really began just over two years ago when I was here in the Catskills at this same exact place for a workshop with John and Silvia. My mother had been recently diagnosed with congestive heart failure but was on diuretics and was relatively stable. That weekend was the last time I left her for any period of time before she died. She declined over the next 6 months and passed in September of 2013.
I had the great good fortune of being able to be with her most of 2012 and 2013 up until she passed with the exception of a few days here and there. After she passed I felt a tremendous amount of peace around it. I had spent so much time with her and afterward felt so much that she was with me. I did not feel her absence- rather, I felt an overwhelming presence. I have had brief moments of missing her but they have been insignificant compared to the overall sense of her being with me so much of the time.
Last night I saw her in a fur coat (dark brown actually, not the the one in this picture). She looked middle-aged, not old, and beautiful- glamorous but very down to earth. Behind here were woods, a forest or a jungle- reminiscent of the feeling of the background in "The African Queen". She was going on a cruise ship. She was some distance from me, maybe 20 feet or so- close enough to talk, but not to touch... She stood at a distance and I realized with some surprise that she was leaving. She seemed very clear, steadfast, and peaceful. The sense was that she was going away and was not coming back and she was totally okay with that. I was surprised but okay too- I didn't feel like I needed to approach her, give her a hug. I was just accepting that this was what was happening.
It didn't hit me until I went into our dream group this morning and suddenly I realized that she had come to say goodbye to me. It was such a surprise. I didn't really expect her to leave- I thought I would continue to feel her presence. I do feel on one level that she is still with me, but not nearly so close as she has been. There is a distinct awareness that she is now further away, on her own journey. I have wondered many times if at some point that would occur and actually been curious that I could feel so okay and at peace with her passing. Up until now I have really had no real sense of loss.
I am fascinated that this process began for me in this same place when I was here two years ago and has come to a sense of completion, the closing of a door and a real sense of grieving. I think she must have known that this is a safe place for me where I have a huge sense of support. There were several people here this time that were here that first weekend and a couple of people who were also in the Bahamas when I went to a workshop there just a few months after she died. They knew what was happening at the time and in fact just yesterday I was talking to a woman who had been here that first weekend. The first thing she did when she saw me yesterday was ask how things went after I left here that weekend and we had a long talk about it.
I cried a lot today, more than I have in the past year and a half since she died. Still, tonight I feel happy and at peace even though I am sure that there are more tears to come.
Last night's dream concert led to a night of deep sleep and rich dreams. Our experienced has been enhanced by drinking raw cacao with various other herbs added to it- the most intoxicating to me is the touch of rose which is completely intoxicating.
John Beaulieu~ "The dreamtime concert is an environment for incubating dreams". Looking forward to sleeping tonight.
Silvia Nakkach~ "Music has oceanic possibilities". She says she is the Minister of Transportation. Indeed. Her music transports us to wondrous places!
I love my dreams. In fact, I love my dream life as much as I love my "waking" life (which I believe is just a another level of dreaming where we actually think we are awake). So I relate to all 24 hours really as a dream.
Starting this evening and for the next 3 days I am taking an amazing workshop with John Bealieu and Silvia Nakkach on Sound and Dreams. If tonight's introduction is any indication, it promises to be off the charts. According to John, science is now saying that certain levels of sleep, dreaming and wakefulness are all going on simultaneously. For example, we can be awake and daydreaming or asleep and lucid dreaming which is actually an experience of being conscious in the dream state. This is an interesting article that seems to relate to these ideas. Conscious Experience in Sleep and Wakefulness
Two of things John said we would be gaining of an understanding of are 1) Becoming more aware of when our consciousness is shifting from one state to another, presumably so that we can make more conscious choices about our state of awareness and 2) Learning about dream analysis.
Tonight we had our "orientation". After the initial talk about logistics for the weekend, there were a lot of massage tables and yoga mats set up. We all lay on them and received incredible sound and bodywork. The musicians and sound healers are all very high level practitioners and it was really an extraordinary shamanic experience. I came out of it pretty disoriented! I am looking forward to going to sleep tonight and seeing what happens in my dreamtime.
Wow! Crazy two days! Today was the RI Cancer Summit in Warwick, RI and tomorrow I leave for the Catskills for a four-day workshop on Sound and Dreams with two of my favorite teachers, John Beaulieu and Silvia Nakkach.
The day before yesterday I was reading an article on Mercury retrograde because I was actually wondering as we get further into it if the bizarre effects of it are cumulative! This is the article I was reading which I found pretty fascinating. Click on the title to get to the link. ~Mercury Retrograde and What it Means for You~
Honestly I don't even remember what was happening that made me curious- that was two long days ago! Yesterday things were pretty smooth until I got home and my car suddenly smelled weird and smoky and when I checked under the hood there was no oil whatsoever on the dipstick. I talked to my "car guy" and was going to drive a mile up the road to the gas station and get some oil but as soon as I got out the driveway I thought "Nope"- bad sound and bad smell- so a friend came over and put 3 quarts in it. Meanwhile I was freaked out because I had to get up to Warwick today and drive to the Catskills tomorrow.
I don't need to go into all the details but, over the course of the evening, after I had been telling my son Nic earlier in the day about the whole Mercury retrograde thing, he calls to tell me how he had picked up a really cool antique barometer/thermometer that he thought he could sell and suddenly realized it was leaking mercury all over his floor and had to clean up the spill (a relatively small amount), throw out his clothes, fumigate the house, etc. Not so cool.
Next event... today my dear son saves the day by picking me up and bringing me to Warwick to the Cancer Summit, since I suddenly had no way to get there. I got there and somehow there had been a lapse in communication (Mercury again? Rules communication...) They didn't have me on the roster, no table for me (although they let me set up at an empty one) and apparently (though it turned out not be true) no information on sound healing other than what I had brought myself. Ugh- I was so embarrassed- not to mention that they said that exhibitors were supposed to be set up by 7 a.m. and it was now after 10! I had never received any information from Women & Infants and knew nothing other than being told that it didn't really matter when I got there.
So everyone else had these nice fancy tables set up with banners and loads of information and there I was with my instruments and no space to do demos (and an unsolved problem about what was up with my car and how I was going to get up to the Catskills tomorrow) feeling very out of place.
In the end it all worked out. The other people from the Integrative Care Program had some extra information that I was able to put on my table and we found under some other flyers that in fact they had provided for me about my sound healing services. Turned out I had a great day, connected with some wonderful people and the woman who heads up the event for Women & Infants said that next year she would like me to do a breakout session. So that was very exciting.
After that whole thing Nic brought me back home and we got my car over to Pat, my car guy. He determined that the issue is a pulley for the water pump and a pretty easy fix. He can have it done first thing in the morning so I should be good to go! (Hopefully there are no other surprises under the hood.)
Picking out the perfect selection of instruments to bring to the Rhode Island Cancer Summit tomorrow. (Right now I am hearing Mike Oldfield's voice saying "Plus- tubular bells!")
Still singing the kirtan I learned yesterday every second I am alone today. In between those times I had a really lovely visit from two Baha'is, Philip and Anne Cantor, whom I met a few months ago. We had a great connection and are forming a wonderful friendship. They live about an hour and a half away and have become very interested in my work so they took the time to come visit today. I gave them each a sound healing demo- Philip in the Somatron recliner and Anne on the Soundweaver. Anne got some hands on work and came back a bit more grounded than Phil, who seemed to have gone somewhere far far away and clearly experienced a profound shift. I wish I'd had the video camera going when he was talking about his experience- he was in such a beautiful place. Amazing what can happen in less than 20 minutes.
They also shared with me some stories about Abdu'l Baha which I always love and never grow tired of and we watched a short video which talked about His embodiment of certain essential qualities as a spiritual being in a human body- the first one being happiness.
