I keep forgetting how new sound healing is in the United States. It’s been around, of course, but not in anything like a mainstream way. When I say I’m a sound healer, most people get a very confused look on their faces–but fortunately most of them are curious and very intrigued.
So I thought maybe it would make sense for me to describe some of the ways we work. My sound healing page is a good start, but I want to go into more specifics here, so you can see how it works and why.
We are bundles of Frequencies, held together by other Frequencies.
Our bodies are made up of cells, that are made up of atoms, which are made up of elements, which are made up of energy, and energy vibrates. Everything has a resonant frequency, including us. If you match the frequency of a crystal goblet, you can shatter it if you sing at it loud enough. If you match the resonant frequency of cancer, it will shatter, too. Kidney stones also break up with targeted frequencies.
But that’s all very destructive, and we don’t like to destroy. Well, cancer, okay, we can destroy cancer. But wouldn’t it be better to enhance the immune system so it can fight the cancer off all by itself? Great. Big. Yes. And that’s when sound healing is at its very best.
Illness almost always starts with stress.
Stress is a killer. Most people are in stressful situations pretty much every day of their lives, with very few exceptions. We endure stress at our jobs and at home. Unless we are very lucky, our workplaces fester with resentments and hidden agendas. Pressure from the top, pressure from co-workers, pressure to perform well enough to get a raise that probably won’t even cover cost-of-living increases . . . And then when you get home there are so many things to get done, mini-crises, or sometimes huge blow-ups. Our families aren’t necessarily all harmony all the time. If you have kids, you have stress from school, from bullying, from projects they forgot to tell you about, or grades slipping because there aren’t enough hours in the day for them to do everything that is required of them and still sleep enough to remain functional. It kind of never ends. No, I don’t have a solution.
But I do have a way to intervene and reset your body so the stress is more manageable and less destructive.
When you get to my studio, we’ll chat about how you’re doing, whether you have pain, and whether you have a specific goal or need. We’ll set a strong intention for the healing session, an “I am” statement that will direct your innate healing energy to flow where you want it to go. I’ll help you get settled in on the massage table, and we’ll get started.
The first thing is to help you relax, and to start you on this healing journey with some imagery that you can allow to drift through your thoughts as we go. I’ll do a short guided meditation, and repeat your intention statement a few times so you have it solidly in your mind. Then I’ll play some frequencies, either with tuning forks or singing bowls, that will help you get deeply relaxed. I’ll sync my breathing with yours, and let the frequencies work their magic on me as well. I want your brainwaves to get into Theta, if possible, but deep Alpha will do. It’s hard for some people to really let go and allow themselves to be so vulnerable with another person. I’m honored and proud to say that most of my clients fall asleep, at least for a little while. That’s trust.
Next, I’ll do an assessment of your energy body and biofield. That means listening to the effect that your chakras have on one of my tools; for example, a Tibetan bowl will get louder or softer, wobbly or shrill in a chakra is in distress. If there is too much energy in your Sacral chakra, my bowl will often get loud, or the sound pressure will increase. Often I will feel resistance as I pass the bowl over it. If a chakra is depleted, the volume will dip, or the sound will break up or get a little wobbly. If you’ve been through some kind of physical or emotional trauma that is causing you physical distress around that chakra, the bowl will sound very shrill, sometimes like it is screaming. I’ll make notes of all of those things on a data sheet I keep in your file.
Your biofield is the protective shield that surrounds your body and expresses your energetic self.
Some people call it their personal space, the bubble of self that feels ookie when somebody gets too close when they haven’t been invited. That can make your skin crawl, and there’s a good reason for it. When someone gets close to you, they’re not only in your biofield, you are also in theirs. It can feel downright unhygienic. So yes, we have this magnificent sensing organ beyond our skin that feels energy–there’s your sixth sense right there. A trained sound healer will be able to hear, feel, and sometimes intuitively understand a mass of stuck energy in someone’s biofield, simply by listening to the reaction of their bowl, fork, or other tool.
That luscious, sometimes luminous space around us has been named “biofield,” because that’s really what it is. It’s an electro-magnetic field, which can be measured and observed, but it’s way more than that. It’s auxiliary memory. It’s the Feel you present to a room, sometimes well before you enter it. It carries memories of trauma, which get stuck and cause you to feel weighed down with the cares of the world.
I can’t tell you how many times I have cleared a lifetime of accumulated gunk out of somebody’s biofield, and they get up and wave their arms like wings and almost dance around, marveling at how light they feel.
Biofield gunk can be cleared with a variety of tools, but I have found that a gong is a nearly unstoppable force when it comes to busting up sound-clots. I can tap the gong lightly as I walk around you, slowly building up a soft wave of sound that breaks up those stuck energy forms, usually by sounding a high harmonic or a distorted roar when it comes into contact with them. Lion roars, and the old cloud breaks up and fades away. I usually follow the gong with a harmony ball, which is the same kind of harmonically rich sound, only many octaves higher. My bestie and business partner Laura Kraemer describes it as using a big broom to sweep the whole room, and then going around with a small brush to pick up the little bits the big broom can’t get to. That’s exactly it.
Once your biofield is clear of the gunk I found during the assessment, I will begin to work on your chakra system, to bring those chakras with excessive or depleted energy back into harmony with the rest of the system. There are a lot of ways to do this, and I tend to use different approaches for different situations. If it’s trauma, I’ll place a Tibetan bowl over the chakra on the body, and use a bowl with a releasing tone, slightly disharmonious, to gently break up the energy and pull it away, sending it up and out of the biofield. If it’s an imbalance based on a conflict, or a stressful situation, I might tap tuning forks in releasing intervals over the chakra and pull the energy up and away. For a depleted chakra, I might use two harmonious bowls to create harmony and nourish the chakra, but frequently I’ll use a crystal bowl and chant in harmony over the chakra, sometimes just a soothing vowel sound, but often a Sanskrit mantra that supports the intention.
After a quick reassessment to make sure your chakras are back in harmony, I will choose some tools that will help me enhance your intention and build toward your ultimate healing. For example, if your intention is, “I am calm and confident,” I might use a couple of tuning fork protocols, like Calming Anxiety or Motivation, to help your body support your emotions. I might do some autonomic nervous system balancing, or work with your vagus nerve to calm your nerves or ease your pain. If you are in physical pain, I’ll definitely work on that with my weighted tuning forks, to release and relieve, and through relaxation deepen the healing process.
Toward the end of the session, I might do a little drumming to reinforce the balance of the chakra system, or use a rainstick to generate some more movement and flow in your biofield, depending on what I find and how you want to feel when we’re done. I’ll add some beautiful sound in with a Koshi chime, some watery tapped tuning forks, or the harmony ball. Then I’ll stand at your feet and gently hold your ankles to help you get grounded into your body again, and release any friendly beings we have called in for assistance, including my good friend the Purple One, Master of Sacred Sound. (Yes, Prince is my spirit guide . . . go figger.)
I’ll slip away and allow you to return to full waking consciousness in some Sacred Silence, and then we will chat about what I found, what you felt, and how to move forward.
There will probably be homework. You don’t go to the dentist and get your teeth cleaned and then stop brushing them once you get home. No. You take care of ’em, because you only get one set of teeth, after you’re grown up anyway. And you only get one set of chakras, and one energy body. Trust me, the more you take care of your energy body, the better you will feel. As Above, So Below. It’s a thing.
So that’s your basic sound healing session, though believe me, there are so many tools and so many sounds and so many ways of working in a biofield that I would be writing for years if I tried to describe it all.
Sound interesting? Want to give it a try? Sound travels, so I can work with you anywhere in the world. Your energy bodies will respond in real time, and then you can listen to a recorded session later and experience it all over again. Visit my sound healing page for more information and rates, and then my contact page to schedule a session.
As always, thanks for your time and attention!