Awakening to Music

In my aerie this morning, woke up and lay in bed... and for some reason I did something I never do these days. I plugged in my cool little iSound speaker and lay in bed listening to music. Random selections from my iPod... From Jai Uttal to Billy Bragg to Van Morrison to Ray LaMontagne to Robbie Robertson to Shyam Bhatnagar to Andrew Bird to Silvia Nakkach to Tinariwen to John McDowell to Fleet Foxes, on and on and on. That was about 7 hours ago. I got up after about a half hour of listening to one track flow into another. I thought I might have to skip tracks occasionally because I knew it would constantly be changing genres- from meditative to rock n' roll to shamanic to folk- and I thought it might be too jarring or weird at times, but every change has been a totally pleasant surprise. The biggest thing that hit me very quickly was that this music was waking up parts of my Self that have been sleeping- on all levels.

Coming from a sound healer that may sound funny- but I spend so much of my time immersed in sound and music that I really don't listen to it recreationally much at all anymore. I give people individual sessions with my voice and tuning forks, I am surrounded by singing bowls, I perform healing sound journeys and lead kirtan, I teach sound healing workshops, I practice singing and chanting on my harmonium and guitar, I spend hours researching and listening to all kinds of healing sound and music from all sorts of arenas.

I enjoy the silence in between all these various sound immersions. They are all deep and meditative for me in their own different ways. But today music woke me up and reminded me of another whole side of the experience which I can't necessarily put into words. My response to it? I have gotten a tremendous amount done, moving easily from one task to another- organizing my apartment, going through old photos and letters of my mothers, sat and cried understanding what a life of love she lived and what a lover of life she was, got still as a stone listening to Shyam Bhatnagar chanting, sang, danced- and some beautiful freesia that I thought I was going to have to heave suddenly started blooming again and filling the air with a heavenly fragrance which I attribute totally to the music!

The only thing I forgot to do was get dressed- I'm still in my pajamas! Too busy, having too much fun- and flannel is just so warm and cozy.

(Amazing... I just realized that I started with songs that began with the letter "T" at about 7:30 am. It is now almost 3:00 pm and I am just on the "W"s. I guess I have a fair amount of music on there!)

Here are some of the people I have listened to today, just in case you're interested in a more thorough overview!
Jai Uttal
John McDowell
Emily Lou Harris
Shri Shyam Bhatnagar
Andrew Bird
AA Bondy
Robbie Roberston
Rosie Warburton (!)
David Chandler
Van Morrison
Tinariwen
Bon Hiver
Fleet Foxes
Ray LaMontagne
Marjorie de Muenck
Venerable Choesang
Tito La Rosa
Silvia Nakkach
Greg Brown
Devendra Banhart
Devil Makes Three
Trampled By Turtles
Billy Bragg & Wilco
Jeb Loy Nichols

Back At It!

Happily, I have begun working on a book that I put on a shelf back in 2005 when I opened my sound healing center in Florida. Literally- I put it on the shelf of the desk where I worked every day when I was not actually doing sessions and hosting events. I thought I would have time to write so I kept it close by where I could see it every day; but in fact running a center was much more than a full-time job- especially a center for a modality that was so far out of the mainstream. I advertised it as a sound healing center because otherwise it was just one more wellness center and that was not my mission. Lots of people could run a holistic/alternative healing center. My passion was, and is, sound and music. Bringing that to the public was work, work, work- and love, love, love- no time for anything else as it turned out.

Now that I have closed the center (for the time being) and have relocated and am in a beautiful third floor apartment- my nest, my aerie- I have the time and space to write. I had no shortage of material when I began, but now, after running a sound healing center for 7 years, I have even more to write about- not to mention the growing science behind an age-old technology. Science is slowly beginning to catch up to the wisdom of the ancients- at least in some fields- which is very exciting!

In light of recent research, here is a really interesting article by Dr. John Beaulieu discussing the use of tuning forks to stimulate nitric oxide production on a cellular level.

And here is a picture of the tuning fork man himself. From the mirror image pose it would seem that he is merging with his subject matter!

Dr. John Bealieu, Bahamas- 2014
(Photo taken by Rosie Warburton)