Singing Ringing Tree

The latest most exciting discovery in my world of sound exploration, unusual instruments, sound sculptures, etc.  This video is also brilliantly shot and beautiful. Enjoy!

Tuning Mom

Well, again Mom has had profound results from the tuning forks and I realize I need to be writing about this and keeping track because the results are so dramatic and consistent.

For those who have not read my posts from early last year my mother is 90 years. She is very "with it" mentally, but she does have pretty bad arthritis. Typically a lot of pain in her neck, her hips and her hands. Her mobility is thus somewhat compromised- she uses a walker and after a lifetime of needlework and gardening her fingers have become very stiff and she has lost a lot of the sensitivity that she had in her fingers so it is hard for her to pick things up and to do things that require manual dexterity. 

I began giving her treatments with tuning forks a couple of years ago and she responded really well to them so we have been working with them more and more.  The results are very fast.  

Last week I used the Otto 128 (cycles per second) on her hands- the wrists, joints, and fingertips. She told me the next day that her hands felt much better and she called me three days after that to say that she couldn't get over how much better her hands still were after the treatment.

Today I came to visit and tonight after dinner we were sitting at the table and she complained about a lot of pain in her right hip and butt cheek. I decided to work on her right where she was- sitting in her chair.  I used the Otto 64 on the points that I could get to- no specific protocol, just basically where it hurt and where I could get to with her sitting in the chair. Then I switched to the Otto 128 and did the same thing but also used it on the outside of the right thigh, basically following the gall bladder meridian. I got to one spot and she said all of a sudden her butt was hurting again- I told her I thought it was referred pain and that I also felt that something was clearing and wanting to stay with it a couple more minutes. 

Then I told her that I would work on her some more when she went to bed so that I could work on her with her lying on her side. She decided to go up shortly after that. I told her to let me know when she was ready to get in bed and I would come up. She called down the stairs about ten minutes later and said that the pain in her hip was completely gone! She was astounded- as was I and my sister Miranda who is also here for a visit. I used the otto 128 on her hands after she got in bed but she had no other complaints. Can't wait to see how she's feeling in the morning!

Getting in Tune

Thinking about the tuning fork workshop I took last weekend which led me to this great old song by The  Who...

We come into the world in tune- at least for a little while- then it seems like we spend our lives trying to get back in tune. So interesting... I feel like I am more in tune with myself now than I have been in many many years- really trying to listen and follow the guidance I get- which comes mostly as feeling and impulses from within. Is this situation comfortable? Is that where I want to be? On so many levels from eating the right food to being with the right people to how I choose to move through my day. And refining the levels of discernment- which voice am I listening to? Is it a real gut feeling that is assisting me in making a particular choice or is it my ego looking for a little comfort or instant gratification?

Getting in tune.  I have been away from my home for 17 years.  Florida was never my home. It was just where I lived. I have had shoes that felt more like home to me than Florida ever did!

Life Changes

Well, again... a pause between my writings. Every day I think of it and wonder when I will find the time! Today I decided to simply hibernate and work on my writing- which included a bunch of handwritten cards while I had my coffee this morning. I moved up to Middletown, RI a few weeks ago- just outside of Newport a half mile walk from the beach. Living in a tiny little cabin in a thicket of honeysuckle and wild roses for the summer. It's so beautiful.  In the winter I'll move in to the big house on the same property. All I hear is the wind blowing through the shrubs and trees, birds of all kinds, squirrels jumping from branch to branch, the occasional insect and a few cars or motorcycles way off in the distance very occasionally.  Sometimes there is a chorus of neighborhood dogs or music off in the distance.  Right now a plane going overhead. Earlier today I heard a bird that kept sounding like it was saying "You 'n me, you 'n me..." over and over. A butterfly flew in and visited me in my kitchen this morning and then flew out. A couple of days ago I had to help one out.


It is so wonderful being here.  Work is flowing much more easily for me which is wonderful and I have had so many amazing sound experiences already this year.  I have been able to attend 3 workshops already which had been few and far between for me since I opened the center. The first was the weekend with Shyamji in the Netherlands which I want to write about today. Next was the Temple of Sound weekend with Bhagavan Das and Yogi Amrit Desai in Salt Springs, FL and then last weekend a phenomenal workshop on working with tuning forks with John Beaulieu. And I still have kirtan camp to look forward to!

So... Shyamji... oh, my life changes every time I see him, hear him, experience his beautiful sweet voice and sacred songs and mantras. The first time I experienced Shyamji (Sri Shyam Bhatnagar) was back in 1990. My stepmother Lore, a yoga teacher, took me to a deep meditation workshop with him in New York City. I was a year in recovery for substance abuse, rebuilding my spiritual foundation. We went to New York for the day. It was a Sunday. It was a beautiful day and the sounds he created were new to me. He played his tamboura and chanted seed sounds and mantras and we would repeat after him the sounds he made. We got home that evening and the next morning when I was driving my boys to school I realized I was in a totally altered state. I could function perfectly well but it was as if there were no resistance to the world around me. I was moving through it with ease- almost as if I were in still point and the world was just moving around me. I told Lore when I saw her that morning for yoga class that I felt as if I were an "open window".

On the drive to NY we had talked about A Course in Miracles which my sponsor in NA/AA had told me about.  I was really interested in it and had been wanting copy for a couple of months but didn't have the money to purchase a copy. Lore told me she thought she had a copy but she had so many boxes of books she didn't know where it was.  After yoga class that morning I mentioned the book again.  I had never seen it and didn't know what it looked like- had only heard about it through my sponsor. There were about 4 boxes of books in the room right near us. I looked down and saw a book with the binding facing away from me. I reached in and pulled it out and it was A Course in Miracles! I pulled out one volume after another- all 3 without seeing the cover or the title on any of them.  Lore said laughed and said, "Well, I guess you are supposed to have them." Apparently I was.  It changed my life- and I did have the awareness that for whatever reason I needed to see Shyamji first before I actually got the books. It also turned out to be the beginning of my journey on the path to working with sound as a healing modality- little did I know.

I have had the opportunity to be with Shyamji several times since then- all of them when I was in the process of transformation and healing on very deep levels. This last time in the Netherlands was certainly no different. The trip to the Netherlands in itself was huge for me.  I was going to a country I had wanted to go to all my life and I had actually never been overseas.  The trip had already been so powerful for me. I was finding parts of myself that had been buried so deep- reconnecting with wonder and fascination from my childhood- really happy and joyful parts of my childhood that I didn't even know existed. The workshop with Shyamji was my last weekend in the Netherlands- I was leaving the following Thursday.

Looking down the path at the Spiritual Center, Schoorl, Nederlands

I took a train to Alkmaar and met a woman there who I had met years earlier in Arizona who had been living in the Netherlands for years. She lived in Alkmaar and was a Watsu practitioner and acupuncturist. There was to be a concert Friday night followed by a two-day workshop at a spiritual center in Schoorl. Basia, my friend, and I went to the concert together and he told us that evening that the purpose of his concert and the entire weekend would be to remember what it was like to be one with our mother when we were in the womb, before most likely before the third trimester and any trauma or separation occurred. The next day, seemingly out of the blue, I had an experience of remembering what it was like to be totally and unconditionally loved and loving- not with my mother but with a man I had had relationship with many years earlier. It was not the form that was important though- it was the content- the remembrance of love.

Two days later when I was back at my friends Paul and Jane's in Soesterberg I told Jane how I wanted to rent something in Rhode Island for the summer but hadn't been able to find anything affordable. And hour later I got an email about a place for rent.  I hadn't really told anyone yet that I was seriously looking.  Here I am. This is the place.  This is me.

Common Threads

Sitting at my computer listening to Zoe Keating in the background.  Hmm... I don't think I have posted any of her videos yet... Okay- first things first first, so you can connect with my musical mindset this morning.

Brilliant...

I am awash with so many thoughts about sound that I don't know where to begin.  My mind is full and at so many points throughout each day I think, "Oh I should be taking notes or blogging about this idea... music... process..." whatever, but it rarely happens.  Now that I am out of Florida and have let go of ambassadorship at the sound healing center hopefully it will free me up for more writing!

I think about my last seven years in Florida and what I created there- a community when I didn't have one. A group of people who came together for many different events- meditations, zikrs, sound journeys, kirtan, classes, workshops and private sound healing sessions of kinds- all with personal goals, intentions and reasons for being there, unique to each one but with the common thread of a love of sound and music running through and connecting each person.

It occurs to me that maybe that's one of the things that makes Zoe Keating's music so compelling... these threads that run through and connect the different parts- entraining and entrancing. Others who come to mind with a similar approach- Phillip Glass and Mike Oldfield.

Common threads...

So what is at the front right now? Reconnecting with people from my past, letting people know I am here and ready to start working. 17 years have gone by since I was in Rhode Island for any length of time but it feels like no time. It's really sort of bizarre- like maybe 5 years have gone by? Except what I have done and what I have learned.

I left here just opening to the world of healing with sound, mostly exploring VibroAcoustic Therapy and healing with the voice. When I left I continued to explore and expand in those fields but have done so much more! Workshops with Fabien Maman, studying drum therapy with Buddy Helm, working with tuning forks, frame drumming with Layne Redmond and Barbara Gail, Mantra Therapy with the late Thomas Ashley-Farrand (Namadeva) and his  wife Margalo (Satyabhama), Nada Tantra with Bhagavan Das, workshops with Swami Karunananda and Vidyananda from Yogaville, Kirtan Camp and lots of weekend workshops with Jai Uttal, massage school (Bhakti Academe of Intuitive Massage and Healing), CranioSacral Therapy, Dolphin Assisted Therapy through the Upledger Institute, Biosonic Repatterning with tuning forks, various workshops in Ba Gua and Hsing-I... and more. Well, I guess it would take 17 years to have done all that...

So, I guess it's time to make a brochure...

Home Again

Hmmm... new Blogger page is unknown territory! Feeling my way through their new set-up.

Anyway, here I am- back in Newport RI after 17 years although it doesn't seem anywhere near that long. Familiarity is an interesting phenomenon- like there is no gap in time... But in that time I have done so much, learned so much, grown so much.

My new pad with massage table set up- sweet!
Tibetan bowls in foreground, tuning forks to the left of table!

Now I have a cozy little space behind an old friends house- a tiny cabin with two single beds and enough room between them to set up a massage table. Gave my first session up here a few days ago. The healing environment- the wellness consciousness- has vastly changed, expanded, opened since I left here, at least it seems that way to me. Time will tell what is really real! When I left very few knew much at all about healing with sound and I don't know yet what the awareness is (of sound as a healing modality), but there are certainly many more alternative healing centers here now so I am really looking forward to the opportunity of presenting more.

Lots of possibilities- my prayer is really to have more work than I know what to do with- I can sort out the overflow later! Meanwhile it is just wonderful to be home in a physical environment that really supports and nurtures my being.

 Florida was a place of such incredible growth for me for a lot of reasons- not the least of which was that I was in an extreme Discomfort Zone all the time- it was physically awful for me. Whenever I would get out of that climate I would feel about a hundred times better... so I am extremely grateful to have found a place in which I can make a transition in a pretty undemanding way. I don't have to make any big commitments. I am just here, feeling it all out- and so far IT FEELS GOOD!

On top of all that I am near two of my boys (grown men!), my mother and my grandson.

Life is good.

The Art Of Sound & Letting Go

This is a very good demonstration of cymatics, the study of waves- in this case clearly showing how sound organizes matter. I love that the higher the sound frequency is, the more complex the wave pattern.  And why do we love music so much? It's not just the effect on the emotional body, but the effect on our cells. Fabien Maman demonstrated this beautifully with his photographs of how healthy red blood cells are affected by sound, as well as cancer cells. Many more photographs can be found in his book The Role of Music in the 21st Century. 


I am leaving my sound healing center In Florida that I have nurtured for the last 7 years and going back to Newport, RI, my ultimate comfort zone, for a while. No idea what the future holds- who does? Lol! Hopefully I will find lots of work there teaching, giving private sessions and doing meditations and sound journeys- continuing to do what I love. Also I will be near my mother, two of my sons and daughter-in-laws and my amazing grandson Jonah which will be such a blessing.

Florida for me has been the Land of Exponential Growth- that's what happens when you live in a place that goes against pretty much every aspect of your nature- physical, mental and emotional- you grow and grow and grow! The one oasis I have had has been the Sound Body Wholistic Health Center. As a dear friend said to me a few days ago, I have kept it going with sweat and adrenaline against some very difficult odds. It has been my labor of love. And I am so ready to let it go! Sad, but ready...