Echo

A woman and her daughter were climbing the mountain gathering herbs and medicinal plants. The daughter nearly tripped over a half buried stone as they passed through a hollow, and stubbing her toe, she yelled out in pain, "Oooww!!"

Just then, the daughter heard a cry from the other side of the hollow, "Oooww!!"

Curious, the daughter yelled into the hollow, "Who is there?" to which came the reply "Who is there?"

This made the daughter indignant, thinking someone was playing a cruel game, so she yelled, "You are nothing to me!" And the voice answered in kind, "You are nothing to me!"

The daughter caught up with her mother who was some distance ahead humored by what was happening.

"Daughter," the woman said, "Pay attention!" Then the mother yelled, "You are beautiful!" to which the voice replied, "You are beautiful!" Then the mother yelled, "I love you!" and the voice echoed back, "I love you!"

The mother explained to her open mouthed daughter that the voice is known as Echo, but truly it is the voice of life. "Life always gives back to us what we put out, a mirror of our thoughts, words, and deeds. If you want to have a friend, be one. If you want compassion, give it. If you desire others to be patient and respectful of you, give your patience and respect to them. This is the law."

Happy New Year!

Prayer for Self-Acceptance

(adapted from the Open Heart Prayer of the Padmacahaya Foundation)

Divine Love and Inspiration
I thank you for all of the blessings you bestow upon me.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Grace me to accept I am human, and therefore, I sometimes hate and reject myself. Please help me to accept all that I deny within myself, so that I may learn to enjoy life including my habits, personality, weaknesses, and ignorance.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Grace me to hear and see the way my thoughts, words and actions are self-rejecting and hateful that I may bring love to them.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Grace me to forgive myself and others even when I still feel frustration, resentment, sorrow, irritation, fear and anger.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Grace me to love and respect myself including when I behave with arrogance, selfishness, jealousy, and self- loathing.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Grace me to love and respect myself including all of my mistakes, fears, worries, burdens and dissatisfactions.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Grace me so that I may learn not to fear darkness, to know that no darkness can contaminate or limit you.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Bless me that I may trust I am Your instrument whether I am filled with calm and peace or filled with anxiety and pain.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Grace me to know you are within me so that I may cease my painful searching for you outside of myself. Grace me that I may accept your presence within me and your unconditional love for me.

Divine Love and Inspiration
May I trust that Your Love and Light radiates without limit to fill, illuminate and purify all beings, the entire Earth, the Universe and all existence.

Divine Love and Inspiration
Grace me to accept all paradox beyond my understanding and to trust in your wisdom and love for me above all reason. I thank you for all the blessings that you bestow upon me. I now offer my silence so that I may be closer to you.

Twas the Night Before Christmas (2008)

A special MP3 for my family and friends to celebrate this holiday season...

Mrs. Clause has shared some bad financial news, and Santa's plans fall through. Now who will bailout our weary hero and save Christmas? Listen and celebrate the true meaning of the season.

Twas the Night Before Christmas 2008

Ho Ho Ho

The World of Sound Healing - Part V: Finding a Practitioner

Once you are drawn by a particular form of sound healing, the next step is to find someone to work with. If you are lucky enough to live in Asheville, NC, you'll have a very wide range of practitioners to choose from. Asheville is blessed to have many well-trained and unique sound healers. But no matter where you live, you are bound to find excellent resources close to home with an internet search. Having chosen which form of sound healing to explore, remember that every practitioner, no matter the modality, is going to offer what reflects his or her individual life experience. So choose someone with whom you resonate (pun intended) by asking about their own healing journey. Sound healing requires a great deal of positive intent, focus, and attention. There's so much more to it than just banging a drum or singing or tune. Practitioners will be far more likely to access certain depths if they have plunged those depths themselves, providing you a much richer and powerful facilitation. Enjoy your travels!

The World of Sound Healing - Part IV

Tuning Forks
Tuning forks, similar to those used to tune a piano, are also used as instruments of healing. One system of using tuning forks called Acutonics is similar to acupuncture, but rather than inserting needles, special tuning forks are used along the meridians, or energy pathways, of the body. The vibrations created by the tuning forks are received through the body recalibrating organs and cells and bringing about a healthy vitality and restored balance.

Individualized Compositions & Specialized Equipment

Many sound healing practitioners are skilled musicians and improvisationalists able to bring forth music that is created specifically for an individual, group of individuals, or a specific intent such as “world peace” or “DNA activation” either live, in CD form, or both. This music can then be used by an individual for meditation, movement, or relaxation. The personalized intent behind the music continues to work with all levels of the listener’s consciousness, bringing about the realization of that intent often first by clearing that which is preventing it and then by supporting its unfoldment. The benefits of such music composed especially for healing can be accentuated through the use of specialized sound healing environments and tools. Sound tables, similar to massage tables, contain specifically placed audio equipment to deliver sounds directly to the body and are sometimes enhanced by sacred geometric design or highly resonant materials such as gemstones or copper. Sound chambers, specially designed rooms, some using light as well as sound, further heighten and intensify the delivery of sounds to the body.

The World of Sound Healing - Part III: Tibetan & Tribal Instruments

The Tibetans, particularly Bon shaman, are masters at healing with sound. Tibetan bowls, bells, ting-shas, the shang, gongs, and other instruments are used to shake up the energy in the body and dispel disease, shift stagnated energy, or fill the body with healthy vitality. For example, ting-shas are special bells used to scan the body and actually change pitch or timbre to signify energies in the body that need to be cleared. Bowls are sometimes placed on or around the body to allow their vibration to penetrate into the cells while bells and gongs are played near or around the body to shower it with intense, audible vibrations. Science has shown that Tibetan bowls emit alpha waves which are very like the waves emitted by the brain in meditation. Achieving this state is essential to healing as it activates the body’s own wisdom to heal itself.




Drums and rattles are tools used by shamans of cultures all over the world for their healing benefits. Percussive instruments shake up stagnant energy, bringing space and new life to your energetic field. Rattles, for example, are easy enough for anyone to use just about anywhere. Use them after an argument to clear the air, in the car to dispel road rage, or around the head to break repetitive thought patterns. Drums have traditionally been used to create sacred space and a morphic field in which shamanic journeys are taken. A soul-retrieval is an example of this type of healing in which the shaman searches other realities for pieces of the client that have been rejected, lost, or stolen. The drum assists the process. But it is enough to simply participate at a local drum circle in order to feel the intense power of drums and their ability to alter your current energetic state, getting you out of your head and into you body.

Many find the sounds of another tribal instrument even more relaxing. Possibly the world’s oldest instrument, the Aboriginal Didjereedoo is a long hollow tube with a multi-textured vibratory effect. Though only one "note" or drone can be played, the overtones are extremely rich and grounding. Didjereedoos are often played along the body or onto a specific body part to alleviate pain, tension, and illness.

The World of Sound Healing - Part II: Voice

The voice is by far the most versatile and sensitive of all the sound healing modalities, and the range of healing offered is as individual as those who facilitate it. There are voice healers who help clients access their own voices either through singing, toning, chanting, speaking, or even movement. One needn’t be a “singer” to take part in this type of experience, but for those who are a little shy about singing solo, there are toning groups or workshops offered by practitioners. The results of such vocal exploration can be greater confidence to express oneself, richer vocal qualities, purer and more effective communications, stress-reduction, and an experience of joy. A healer may also use his or her own voice to help others. For example, a healer may sculpts sounds by sensing subtle energy needs and matching or contrasting various frequencies that help a person move energy in various parts of the body. Still others may sing improvised melodies or lyrics that relate to healing a certain memory or experience in the client’s life.

Voice Analysis is another branch of voice healing with many variations. The premise for voice analysis is that changes in pitch, volume and speed of the expressed voice reveal strengths, weaknesses, and imbalances of the individual. These deficiencies are then brought into balance using frequencies or tones and exercises that can help by restoring the voice to its full power. Whether performed by a computer or a practitioner, voice analysis can bring a new awareness to the potential of one’s voice, our greatest tool for self-expression and creation.

The World of Sound Healing - Part 1

As our lives become ever more complicated and the world around us continues to change at breakneck speed, more and more people are seeking different and deeper ways to connect and return to wholeness. The field of sound healing, while ancient in its roots, is just now emerging into the mainstream in answer to this need, garnered by the support of ever-increasing clinical applications and research. So, what is sound healing all about?

Sound is simply vibration. And science reveals what we can’t see with our eyes—that all of life is vibration. What appears solid, like a hard table, is actually comprised of vibrating atoms engaged in a musical composition of great mystery and complexity. Our bodies are no different than that table; we only appear solid to the limited perception of the eye. But unlike the dense table, the body is much more impressionable to shifts in energy.

Disease manifests when we fall into resonance with harmful vibrations, be they of mind, body or spirit. Sound healing, by tapping into vibrations that are supportive and beneficial to our bodies, and through something called entrainment, brings the body back into a state of health. But just as you don’t need to understand how the internet works in order to send an email, you don’t need to comprehend the scientific or spiritual principles behind sound to benefit from sound healing.

The world of sound healing is rich and diverse. There is without a doubt something for everyone. But with all the choices, how on earth does one decide which form of sound healing may help? This series is meant to provide background information to help you make your choice, but it is by no means exhaustive. Once you know what is available, follow your intuition, experiment, and trust your own experience.

Stay tuned for Part II.

Meditation for Opening the Ear Chakras

Working with sound makes one highly sensitive to the subtle energies that are always at work and at play in our physical bodies, our thoughts, our emotion and our interactions. Here is a meditation designed to help you open your ear chakras wider and wider, making it easier to perceive and thus have some response-ability toward sublte energies.

Sit quietly and listen. Begin by listening as you normally do...to your breath perhaps, the noise of a pet or of people speaking in the next room. Tune in to as many different sounds as you can. Then turn your attention inward. Begin to listen to your own heartbeat, the sound of your internal organs digesting or secreting or working, the sound of your cells dividing and your bones growing. It may at first take some imagination. That is fine. Our imaginations have the power to lead us into new perceptions, as imagination is really attention.

Now, begin to expand your hearing to things beyond your immediate surroundings. Can you hear the neighbors, cars on the freeway a block away, crowds cheering at a game in the next town, planes flying in the skies of a state across the country? You get the idea. Expand your hearing into space. Listen to satellites shifting. Listen to the sun's flares boiling. Listen to the sounds of empty space.

Finally, bring your attention back to your immediate surroudings. Do you hear more now than you did? Does the hiss of the refrigerator sound different...perhaps it has more layers, more overtones? Is your breath noisier? Whatever sounds you hear, relish them. And know that the work you have just done will work for you.

Remember!

The power of the word, ya'll. Check this out!

Easing Chronic Pain with Sound

I came across this truly beautiful piano piece today for easing chronic pain. Follow this link and scroll down to the MP3 sample. Ahhhh...

Other artists composing sweet healing music for mind and body:

Kenneth Hope

Richard Shulman

Visionary Music