Music has been my breath, an extension of my will, my constant companion, my lover, my mother, my child.
My mom says I was singing with the church choir when I was six months old. I became obsessed with the guitar when I was three and began to play one when I was four. It became everything to me. I had my first 10,000 hours in by the time I hit high school, and my second 10,000 hours by the time I was 20. In my early 20s I played for six-to-eight hours a day, more when I had a gig. It was my job. And it paid off, if you’re into that sort of thing. Which clearly I am.
There is no difference between me and the guitar. That’s just how I like it.
When I heard about sound healing a little over a year ago, major tumblers fell into place in the lock-and-key system of my life. I felt an excitement that had been missing for some time. All the disappointments that the music-entertainment business had to offer became utterly irrelevant. I have always wanted to be a healer with music. I remembered a short story I started writing 20+ years ago, about a woman living in a cave on the fringes of a tribal community, a woman who healed with sound and rhythm and her own strange, rich and magical voice. Little did I know I was writing about . . . me. Well, not the living in the cave thing. But the singing part, and the rhythm part, and the healing part.
At the time I desperately wanted it to be me. I wanted to know the secrets of sound and healing, I wanted to know the sacred chords that David played to please the Lord. I wanted to know how the ancient Bards used sound to raise storms or fog to confound the enemy. I wanted to know how to combine rhythm, rhyme and melody to change the world, or create portals to another. I wanted to go back in time and learn from Merlin, Taliesin, Amergin, Vivian.
For a time, I worked with John Hartford, who taught me so much about music, and the music business. We were eating cookies in the wheelhouse of the Julie Belle Swain one afternoon, talking about rhythm while he taught me to pilot. “Everything is rhythm,” he said. “The paddlewheel has a rhythm, visually as well as physically. You can feel it in your bones, and when something is wrong, you can feel in your gut that it’s off. Every river has its own rhythm, and if you learn them, you can go anywhere.” That’s a truth.
The body has rhythm, too: our breathing, our heartbeat, our footsteps, the way we chew food–our digestive process is all about rhythm. Our cells have their own rhythms, and they work in rhythm together, which is what “being in sound health” really means. Being in tune, being in rhythm. Everybody has their own unique rhythm, and their own unique pattern of frequencies.
When the body gets out of tune or time with everything else, the whole body starts to lose its vibe.
My journey to becoming a sound healer has been a whirlwind in some ways, and in others, well . . . you could say I’ve been training for this for 49 years and change. And I thought I had skills. And I thought I had ears. Oh my, oh my, I have so much to learn. Every time I think I am getting close to the top, I discover that there’s a bigger mountain on the other side that I have to climb, too – and when I get to to the top of that one, there’s another even bigger. It used to intimidate me; now I find it more energizing than any other thing I have ever encountered. My ears have opened up and been completely re-wired. My eyes have upgraded processing that allows me to see what I am hearing. My nervous system is now tuned so I can feel sonic distortion minutely with my fingers. And my intuition is not only driving the bus, it’s leading the whole friggin’ convoy.
Along the way I have had to leave some things behind. Anything that artificially alters mood or brain chemistry is gone. Anything. Coffee? Nope. Wine is right out. Herb? Gone. I’m sure black tea will be next, but until then I am going full Granny Weatherwax with it.
And I wouldn’t trade one minute of what I am doing now for all the pecorino romano in the Costco warehouse.
The formal training is rocketing forward. I am deep in the case studies phase now, and with every session I learn and discover more and more about what sound can do, and discover more “extra-sensory” talents emerging. A few hundred years ago I have no doubt these skills would have landed me in the middle of a very large bonfire. My desire now is to continue learning, practicing, growing, building skills, and putting in a whole new 10,000 hours. What is happening to me gives new meaning to “of sound mind and sound body.” And I like it.
Thanks for hanging with me on this journey. Want to deepen your own groove? Subscribe and stick around–I’ll keep you in tune.