HELLO AND WELCOME- WE HAVE MOVED!!! Our new website, complete with blog and updated events, is located at: www.wholisticsound.com Please visit!!!
This site is a forum for the introduction and discussion of ideas regarding the use of vibration, frequency, sound and music as a non-invasive modality for healing on the physical plane as well as expanding consciousness and furthering our connection to the psychospiritual realms.
“When you speak,
sound pours from your mouth like water overflowing a basin. It
inundates and spreads over your whole body. Without your conscious
awareness, but nonetheless assuredly,
In the last week I wake up most mornings to the sound of hawks around my house. The sound of the ones I have been hearing lately is surprisingly similar to a seagull.
I woke up at 6:24 this morning to the sound of a couple of birds chirping very loudly. I went to the window and saw a relatively small hawk on a low branch of an oak tree near the house. It had a brown body and beautiful brown and white striped (or speckled?) wings. (Because of the earlier caterpillar infestation that has finally come to an end, the trees look like early spring with new growth just beginning so it is easy to spot most of the birds that would normally be fairly well hidden by leaves by this time in the summer.) Two robins were nearby, hopping from branch to branch and flying fairly close to it every now and then cause it to lift its head or ruffle its wings a bit. The robins seemed distressed by the presence of the hawk- they must have had a nest nearby.
This went on for about ten minutes and then the hawk lifted its wings and flew low through the woods to another tree about a hundred back. The robins followed it and continued their commotion at the hawk's new post. So now I know, when there is a loud chirping of robins, where the hawk is.
I am writing something that has not emerged yet- maybe a bit of stream of consciousness because I have stopped keeping up with this on a daily basis and am determined to pick my momentum back up. So much going on.
I had a skype session with my teacher Silvia Nakkach a few days ago and have committed myself to practicing sargam a minimum of 21 minutes a day. It was kind of an amazing session. I have had an issue with my breath ever since I was sick with a terrible respiratory infection in 2009. I have felt that I could not get the strength in my voice back, so I finally decided to get a one on one session with Silvia. It was so great and helpful. There were two issues- one with my breath and two with the actual pitch. Every note that she sang, when I sang it back to her I was down a half step. She showed me the simplest way of changing the shape of my mouth and lips that lifted the tone right away to the proper pitch- a revelation!
On a different note (pun intended), tonight my sister Jenny and I went to see the new movie, Mr. Holmes, about an aging Sherlock Holmes with Ian McKellan. In it was someone playing the glass harmonica, an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. How they managed to weave that into the movie is beyond me but it was very exciting to see and to hear! I have seen videos of it before but it was wonderful to see an instrument so unusual and relatively obscure in a movie. I love when unusual these sounds and frequencies that I am constantly searching for and researching are brought to the forefront in mainstream media.
I have not posted as frequently lately, but that is because I have spent so much of time actually immersed in sound that I have not had time to write lately!
These tools are so powerful. I have been doing this work for so many years and it never ceases to amaze me. Today I gave an oncology patient a session with the tuning forks and she had a really great experience and felt wonderful afterward.
Last night I was up very late going through old journals reading testimonials from 1995 when I first started working with the Dreamweaver vibroacoustic environment all the way up to 2011- the last year I had the sound healing center.
Here is a very short one from a 7 year old girl who had a five-minute session about 20 years ago:
"Rose,
I was around a wall but the people were out side.
I was dancing inside the wall. Thank you"... /
So cute!
Another from 1999:
"Rosie,
The loving healing you offered me was just what I needed. The earth toned embryo at the end will stay in my mind's eye forever. I feel reborn!
Thank you for your love and unconditional healing"...
And a very sweet poem that my friend Joyce was inspired to write after her session a few years ago:
"Now I lay me down to breath
Search my soul for what it needs
As sound is seen And vision heard
I soar within
On God's word
Truth is there
My spirits free
Please come back on earth with me."
Two nights ago I couldn't get to sleep so once again I decided to use the brain tuners, which have never failed me yet. Same old story- I tapped the fundamental and the one that goes with it to create a delta frequency and sure enough about 30 seconds later I put them down on the bed next to me and went straight off to sleep!
Notice the progression of the layout of the bowls. I do not decide which bowls to play or where to place them. They tell me. As I played them they began to direct me to move them, closer and closer to Karen until they were almost hugging her body. Then at the end some of the bowls were moved away from her feet and her sides and the sound was simply moving back and forth from her crown to her feet, back and forth between the two.
I was very sorry that I did not record this session. The bowls were singing beautifully.
Dr. John Beaulieu's sound studio in Stone Ridge, NY
One of my oncology patients at the Women & Infants Integrative Care program sent me this article tonight. She is actually going to be participating in this program. It is so exciting that western medical establishments are finally waking up to the power and potential of sound and music therapy.
Sloan Kettering and Pandora Music Genome architect to ‘prescribe’ music for cancer patients
by Mark Sullivan
Pandora’s chief musicologist Nolan Gasser has made a career of tailor-fitting streams of music to listeners’ tastes. Now, Gasser is taking the body of knowledge he gained as the architect of Pandora’s Music Genome Project and focusing it on helping ease the suffering of cancer patients. The Music Genome Project was about breaking down and categorizing
hundreds of music characteristics (or “genes”), then delivering streams
full of songs containing the genes that people like. That same matching
algorithm, along with some hard science from music therapy research,
Gasser believes, can be used to “prescribe” music that will ease some of
cancer’s more unpleasant symptoms.
Gasser, an acclaimed pianist and composer in his own right, is now
working with members of the Integrative Medicine Department at New York
City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on the first phases of
such a therapy, and hopes the project will receive sufficient grant
money to bring these ideas to fruition. Sloan Kettering has long been a
pioneer in the field of music therapy and has an active Music Therapy department.
Healing music on ESPN
Gasser’s music therapy work was featured last week in an ESPN Films special called “Breaking Music Down to Its Genes,”
in which he takes viewers through “The Wellness Suite,” his composition
designed to contain the right traits to soothe and inspire cancer
patients.
You might wonder why ESPN would produce a show about playing music
for cancer patients. The point of ESPN Films’ digital shorts series The Collectors
is to “profile passionate people scrounging for information to save the
world’s bees or find the formula for funny,” as the network put it.Producer
Jamie Schutz proposed Gasser as a subject based on his music data work
with Pandora, but when he learned what he was doing with music therapy
at Sloan Kettering, he thought that would be a perfect focus for the
film.
The music in “The Wellness Suite” uses a number of musical techniques
that music therapy research has shown to help relieve fatigue, pain,
anxiety, and nausea in cancer patients. “The slow, heartbeat-paced tempo, consonant harmony, lyrical and
sustained melody, occasional bursts of rhythmic energy, the use of
strings, and so forth,” Gasser said, have been shown in the research
literature to create positive therapeutic effects. Longer pieces of music that have “a slow, unravelling, and narrative”
quality also have been shown to captivate listeners and ease pain.
“The Wellness Suite,” Gasser said, is “an extended work that puts all
these things together.” In the ESPN special, the piece is performed in
front of three cancer patients. Their responses to the music tell the
story (see video above). “I came up with a melody that for me spoke of healing,” Gasser said.
Accounting for taste
“The Wellness Suite” acts as a sort of pilot for the wider body of
work Gasser hopes to do with Sloan Kettering. He hopes to find existing
music, and create new music, that brings to bear both the therapeutic
musical styles used in the suite and the personal musical tastes of the
individual cancer patients at Sloan and elsewhere. For instance, the research shows that long, sustained drones with
shifting harmonies above have the capacity for healing. “So if the
patient likes jazz, we might go out and recommend modal pieces by Miles
Davis or Charles Mingus that have those qualities,” Gasser said.
Sloan Kettering and Gasser hope to develop a repertoire of music for
different types of patients (with different musical tastes), then
conduct scientifically rigorous testing to find out if patients who
undergo this approach to music therapy really fare better than patients
who receive different approaches, or no music therapy at all.
Above: Pandora’s Nolan Gasser
Image Credit: FiveThirtyEight
Evidence exists that music can help ease discomfort, but very little
has been done to affect this by linking specific musical traits to
personal taste. “Hopefully the results of our research will show that by
integrating musical features with personal taste, we can better move
the needle on treating the ailments of cancer treatment,” Gasser said. He says patients will also be given some instructions on how to listen to music so that they can get the maximum benefit.
The first round of testing at Sloan Kettering will focus on using
music to relieve symptoms like pain and nausea. But later tests may try
to determine if music can accomplish even more in some patients, tapping
the body’s innate healing powers. “It would be nice to explore grander prospects like increasing
general metabolism in the fight against cancer,” Gasser said. “The
prospect that a sustained musical therapy could help in the act of
healing or even reduce the spread of cancer is pretty ambitious, but it
certainly can’t hurt.”
Gasser says there’s every reason for optimism. “We are musical beings; music is part of our very identity,” he said. “We all have the capacity for music to have a positive effect on our well-being.”
Gasser is working on a new book called Why You Like It: The Science and Culture of Musical Taste that documents his work at Pandora and his 20-plus years exploring the nature of musical taste.
Listening to a fantastic radio show saluting Brian Wilson- "June 9, 2015 broadcast of the Magic Transistor Radio show on WPRK
FM, Winter Park, FL, USA, spotlighting the music of Brian Wilson, in
celebration of the June 5 opening of the motion picture Love & Mercy in American cinemas." Click here to listen. It's so good! There are some great and different arrangements than what you may be familiar with- like the version of "California Girls" which is very cool.
Playing music during 11:11 event with Alex Grey
Spent a long time this evening looking through old newsletters from the Sound Body Wholistic Health Center. How I miss that place! I love where I am... and I am still trying to figure out how to get things really moving the way they were when I had the center in a space that is my home. There was the Monthly Sound Healing Movie, frequent sound healing and nada yoga workshops by myself and so many others, concerts with Sacred Voices and Fred Johnson at the center and all over the St. Pete area, weekly sound journeys, garden lunches, playing music for all kinds of events, drumming classes and so much more. I am astounded when I look through the old newsletters and my appointment books.
A gorgeous cake from a memorable birthday celebration at the center!
The truth is that, beyond giving birth to four awesome sons who have grown into amazing men, I feel like the center was my greatest achievement thus far- and I am certainly not ready to throw in the towel! How to take things to the next level in a totally different environment, that is the question.
I have had such a busy past two weeks that I have rarely been able to find the time to blog- and when I do it's late at night and I find myself falling asleep at the computer. Because of that, many nights I have simply opted out rather than drive myself into exhaustion.
It has been good. More sessions, last week's company and training, the holiday weekend which meant time with my son Nic and my grandson, working for my friend Lark today who was behind on jewelry orders- and tonight- a concert by David Crosby which was so excellent. As good as and better than ever!
That's the nice thing about musicians- they just keep getting better with age, unlike some other professions where you're better off quitting while you're ahead or before you make a total fool of yourself. And, as Dave Crosby said, "Music uplifts humanity." Yes, indeed.
This past week a woman came up here from New Jersey to train with me from Monday through Thursday. We had a great connection pretty much instantly- she was relaxed, easygoing and very receptive- so it was really was a very enjoyable experience on my end. While she was here I gave four sessions- one to her, two which she observed and one in which she assisted by doing reiki while I was working on the person.
I wanted her to have as wide a range of experience as possible for her first time here so I ended up having a kirtan the second evening she was here. My friends Lynn Carol and George Henderson were here also, visiting from Florida, so there were four of us already! I invited a handful of people at the last minute and got a great response so we had a really nice group and very sweet kirtan here on Tuesday evening.
I also gave her a session with a set of Himalayan singing bowls she had tentatively picked out for herself. My thought was that if she was going to use them for healing she should experience what it would be like to actually receive a treatment with them!
One morning we went over to my friend Lynda Loranger's beautiful sound studio in Little Compton and experienced a sound bath with her gongs and Himalayan bowls. That was really wonderful- and nice for me also to be able to receive that day!
On her last evening we watched the movie Touch the Sound- a brilliant documentary by Thomas Reidelsheimer about Dame Evelyn Glennie, a solo percussionist who is quite deaf in that she lost her ability to hear through her ears by the time she was 12 years old, but has made up for that by learning to hear with her whole body. Watching and listening to her play it is clear that she is profoundly sensitive to sound. The way that she talks about and shares sound is a revelation.
Clearly Thomas Reidelsheimer is a deeply sensitive individual as well. Fifteen years ago he made the movie Rivers and Tides about the artist Andy Goldsworthy, which is pure poetry and then followed it up with this extraordinary film in which he illustrates his subject with his own incredible perception of sound and movement that is reflected in every frame of the film. I have watched it at least 5 times and am stunned by its beauty every time.
This is all to say that we had a great three and a half days together, filled with sound experience. It was nice for me to be able to focus so much energy on one person who wanted to engage in all that I had to offer in a short window of time. There is much more and I think we are both looking forward to her return in the fall. I know I am! I am also looking forward to doing other one on one trainings and sound healing retreats for individuals and being able to tailor the time for their own individual process and practice.
This past week a woman came up here from New Jersey to train with me from Monday through Thursday. We had a great connection pretty much instantly- she was relaxed, easygoing and very receptive- so it was really was a very enjoyable experience on my end. While she was here I gave four sessions- one to her, two which she observed and one in which she assisted by doing reiki while I was working on the person.
