A Taste of My Own Medicine

I just spent about an hour on the Athena Table, a vibroacoustic table with speakers built into it made by the Somatron Corporation. Vibroacoustic basically means that you hear the music and you feel the vibrations of it throughout your body as well. I listened to some fairly quiet ambient music by a sound healer named Michael Brant DeMaria called "In the Flow". I had never heard it before. It must have been a demo that a distributor had sent to me. I hadn't been on the sound table for at least a couple of weeks... Why not? It is at my disposal!

Amazing the tools we have available to us that we totally forget to use. Forget? Are too lazy, too distracted? Too busy checking texts and emails? What? I don't know. I love music. I love to feel good. Hello? This is the therapy I offer to other people and have been offering since 1995- and I don't use it? Okay, that's not entirely true but I certainly don't avail myself of it to the extent that I could and probably should. So, I was surprised and pleased by how relaxed and clearheaded I felt when I got up. I shouldn't have been surprised- I know this works and I understand how it works.

I have some quiet thoughts ruminating about this whole process since I got up. The dominant one has to do with the Your Turn Challenge and how this might impact other areas of our lives- the idea that taking one necessary step in one area of our lives- in this case writing a little bit every day and putting it out there- might just lead to forward motion in other areas of our lives. I don't have a whole lot to say about that right now. I'm just kind of curious... I may have more as the week progresses.

Meanwhile here's a little bit more about this amazing technology. The Athena Table was donated to the Sound Body Wholistic Health Center in Florida when I opened it in 2005. It was the original prototype for the Somatron Body Mat. My friend Byron Eakin, owner and inventor of Somatron, told me that he would donate it to the center on the condition that I would never sell it. I readily agreed to his terms! This is what it looks like on the outside. If you lift up the panel in the middle there are two large flat speakers under there and also two small speakers on either side of the little pillow where your head goes. These pictures were taken at the center.

It is now in my living room- initially that was a little bit of a fiasco! When I originally moved in October my plan was to put it in one of the downstairs bedrooms and use it as a separate treatment room. Unfortunately the hallway was too narrow and the movers couldn't get it in there, so suddenly I had this huge thing in the middle of my living space and I did not see how it was going to work. The living/dining/kitchen area has an open floor plan so it sat in my dining area for about two weeks til a friend helped me figure it out and we saw a spot in the living room where it could go along with a vibroacoustic recliner. Now if two people feel like being antisocial one can now go on the chair and one on the table and just tune out the rest of the world for a while. It has turned out to be a pretty cool arrangement. Here it is in my living room under a bit of a disguise!

So, it's in fact supercozy. I put a 3" futon on top of it to sleep there in November when I had a house full of family and it's so comfortable that I never took it off- AND the vibration of the music still comes through even with the futon which is awesome! The black recliner is also a Somatron- it is basically a zero gravity recliner with speakers built into- one in the low back and one in the leg rest and one on either side of the head. The sound technology in the chair is so good- it is really a wonderful experience. Wasn't there a (cheesy) song once- "Make the World Go Away"? This will do just that- all the while revealing your inner world! Very cool.

Okay, the truth is it's way more than cool and I do not wish to minimize it. It is powerful. Profound. What happens when you lie on one of these sound tables or recliners? You drop into a deep state of relaxation very quickly. The vibrations of the music are pulsing, vibrating, resonating through every cell in your body! All the stress, tension, pain and trauma throughout the mind-body spectrum begins to release and let go. You become one with the music and experience the flow of a stream of consciousness is. Healing happens. This can actually be a life changing experience. I have seen people have healings on every level- physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. It's no small thing.