A Message on Mudras

I am quoting this from a Facebook post by Nubia Teixeira, jau Uttal's wife, yogini and exquisite dancer. From wholistic sound to wholistic dance- dance as an expression of wholeness and life.

Hands are filled with the mystery of creation. ....Hands are an extention of the Heart Center and can express all the feelings and forms in the universe. ViniYoga is the science of Hand Gestures.

The Abhinaya Darpan mentions that the dancer should sing the song by the throat, express the meaning of the song through hand gestures, show the state of feelings by eyes and keep track of the time with feet.
From the Natya Shastra, a text on the arts:
"Yato hasta stato drishti"..."Where the hand is, the eyes follow"

"Yato drishti stato manaha"..."Where the eyes go, the mind follows"
"Yato manaha stato bhava"..."Where the mind is, there is the feeling"
"Yato bhava stato rasa"..."Where the feeling is, there is mood"
So vast is the hand gestures that it covers almost all the aspects of human life and the entire universe.
Hence 'Mudras' form a distinct code language and bring unique poetic element while performing abhinaya and thus the language of the mudras enables the dancer to express practically anything and everything.
Om Namah Shivaya !!!!!

The Road to Recovery with Dr. Mitchell Gaynor: Sound Healing

This is such an important video! Hooray to Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, oncologist, who has realized the importance of sound for facilitating healing and is bringing it to the awareness of the Western medical community. At last! At last! This is only the beginning of so much important information that is coming to light.

This is a testimonial from someone in a workshop I taught who had a healing that we all witnessed- a dramatic change in his skin cancer in literally a 24 hour period. It was profound. (He did request that he remain anonymous for his own reasons...)

Hi, Rosie,

Again, nothing but praise and thanks to you for this workshop on Sound Healing Therapy that finished up just yesterday.

My experience was very positive.

Everyone in our class saw with their own eyes that the skin cancer on my nose began shrinking -- and looked greatly improved-heading-toward-being-healed -- during that second day of your class.

The healing began with the C and G tuning protocol that you performed on everyone of us early in the first day of the class. And then it continued with the Biosonic tuning fork treatment that Jody, a fellow student, performed on me during day number one.

And then early on the second day Cheryl, also a fellow student, mentioned the healing effects regarding cancer of the Tibetan bowls.

Almost immediately you jumped up and took me into the next room where the bowls are kept and invited me to "find" the one that I felt would help me.  Quickly I found "my bowl."

I used it almost continually from then on. I think everyone probably enjoyed the beautiful sound that the bowl made each time I tapped it with the special "mallet."

From then on the healing of the skin cancer proceeded more rapidly and very noticeably.  Everyone in the class saw it.  Some had tears in their eyes as they express their thrill at seeing my healing. 

Needless to say I'm also thrilled.

I cannot say today that this skin cancer is totally gone yet. But the above that I've related is exactly what I experienced and everyone -- including yourself -- witnessed this.

Also I want to mention that  I am a different man today -- and will remain such into the indefinite future -- from having experienced your course and your healing touch. 

You asked me at the beginning of the second day to share with the class what the treatment that the entire class had performed on me  did for me. I will repeat my answer here:

My answer: "Two words: Universal Bonding."

And also I related that there had also been a shift within me. I've always tended to get agitated very easily. But what I now notice is that if I do get agitated that I can let it go virtually "instantly."

Already today I've shared this with a friend who needs the exact same "ability." We cannot make people not say or do things that could get on our nerves. But now I have the ability to keep my inner peace regardless of perceived negative input. This is priceless.

Thank you, Rosie.

Sincerely,

[anonymous] LMT

Express Your Self

I don't have much to say right now because it's ridiculously late. But I do have a little something to say. I have been thinking a lot about how people express themselves on social media networks lately.  It has been coming to my attention that some people use these venues to vent- Facebook is the only one I really use enough to be familiar with.  I don't understand Twitter... But I wonder how people can feel so comfortable presenting a sometimes very unattractive side of themselves without apparently thinking about what they are showing to the world and what kind of energy they are putting out there.  I know that on one hand people think there is some sort of sincerity to that and don't want to simply appear vapid and phony- but I also feel like we can use this media to express the very best and highest of who we are and leave our pettiness behind- that we have an opportunity to censor ourselves when we say too much or are overly critical, angry or abrasive.

Just sayin'...

Revelation of the Heart

This morning I read a  line from the book Little Bee by Chris Cleave. "The dreams of my country are no different from yours- they are as big as the human heart." It lead me to thinking about the heart. I envisioned the energy of the heart as it expands from the physical heart.  The HeartMath Institute and other scientific researchers have measured the electromagnetic frequency of the heart and found that its energy expands several feet beyond the body, far more than any other organ including the brain.  What came to me is that the energy of the heart is not actually expanding.  It is an all-encompassing energy, the Heart of who and what we are- and that it is compressed, condensed into the form of the physical heart.  What we truly are IS the All-Encompassing Heart of Love.

As Gregg Braden explains very succinctly in the following video is that the first spark of life happens in the heart- it is the first organ to develop and the heart sends signals to the brain- not the other way around. Click here to watch.

A Slight Adjustment

I haven't written in a while- busy getting settled in for what looks like a permanent stay in Rhode Island- at least for a while! I closed my sound healing center in Florida on October 1 after a flurry of activity there in September, then headed back up to New England.  It was strange. I had been gone for four months- May through August- and although a dear friend had taken it over with the desire to keep it open and run it, it had clearly for the most part been lying dormant during the time I was gone.  The garden was untended, the kitchen cupboards were becoming home to insects... a couple of people had rented some space for the first couple of months after I left but apparently didn't have any clients so they had left, and there were no other activities going on there.  Initially it was very sad going in there and feeling the emptiness.  I wasn't really expecting that. The good news is that I went back to get some winter clothes and teach a couple of workshops and was slammed from practically the minute I got there. Sessions, workshops, kirtan, selling merchandise... I actually had the busiest month I have had since I opened the center 7 years ago. Nonetheless, I was leaving and so the decision was made to close, a good decision in all ways.

And now I am in Rhode Island sitting in my new "office"- a small sun room which doubles as a dining room with a table that seats no more than a cozy four people and an old Glenwood cook stove in it. It isn't winterized but the stove heats the room up quickly and the room gets warm and cozy as the sun comes round. I have two other rooms in the house- a bedroom with a four-poster bed and a loft, and a small kitchen with a small fridge and freezer- and the shower is in the kitchen as well! It is great- fun and funky with the touch of an artist's eye everywhere you look.

I am sharing a space for giving private sessions with an old friend in downtown Newport, upstairs in the Congregational Church, a beautiful old brownstone church and historic landmark designed by John LaFarge.  It's very interesting because years ago I used to attend Sanskrit classes up there with my teacher, Swami Bob, so I have a strong connection to it. I also did a concert there with Roop Verma years ago after he taught me to play tamboura. And the person whose space I am sharing worked for me close to 30 years ago when I was a potter and had four small boys all under the age of ten! It is so wonderful to return to the intimacy of New England after the generic spread out emptiness of Florida, where there is such a lack of community simply by design. Each "neighborhood" seems to have its own mall down there rather than the neighborhood coffee shop (with a few exceptions) where you know you will run into someone you know.  It was one of the things I missed most when I was living there. Even out west, where the land is very open and spread out, the layout of the towns are designed to create community- a church, a town square, a restaurant, a coffee shop, whatever...

What happened for me was that I actually created a community there via the sound healing center because I was so starved for it! I wasn't aware of that at the time- I simply knew that the space I was looking at for an office was actually perfect for a sound healing center.  It was a calling I could not ignore. It served many purposes as it turned out- and one was my own personal need for community and connection.

One of the things I have been exploring lately is working with tuning forks for self-healing- conducting an experiment, if you will. Organization is not my strong suit and I have been very challenged moving into such a small space, especially after having lived in a good-sized house in FL and having all my sound healing tools and instruments in their own space- the Sound Body Center.  Now most of my crystal bowls and Tibetan bowls are in my car! I can only have what is really necessary- anything more just takes up space. So... if I come in the house after shopping, put down the groceries, throw my coat and scarf on a chair, take off my clothes to change and don't put them away immediately, suddenly everything is cluttered and slightly overwhelming.

I am working with the brain tuners. Ahhh... simplicity! Tap those tuning forks- in most cases right now the Fundamental (256 hz) and the Beta tuner- a few microtones up from the 256- which creates a beat frequency that corresponds to the the Beta brainwave. The pulse created between the two tuning forks entrains the brain to the Beta frequency for peak concentration and alertness. Every time I find myself feeling a need to organize- whether it's to clean the kitchen, put stuff away in my bedroom, or simply having a lot to do and not knowing where to begin, I tap those tuners and listen. 

Theoretically it takes 40 seconds for the brain to respond to a frequency, but with the tuning forks it doesn't seem to take that long. Maybe it's because you bring them up to yours ears to listen to them and it starts the temporal bones resonating right away, sending the signal directly to the brain. Thus the response is virtually instantaneous. I don't know- that's my theory though, because every time I have done this lately I immediately (within about ten seconds) know what I need to do and where to begin. It's feels like such a tiny little adjustment and suddenly everything is doable- sort of like working on a puzzle and you just need the one right piece to make sense of it all and bring it all together.  That is how it feels- like I look around and nothing quite fits and I don't know how to make it fit- and I use those tuning forks and here we go, really very cool and exciting to see how consistently effective they are.

I've also been using the Alpha tuner to minimize anxiety and the Delta tuner for sleep. I don't have a great deal of anxiety- it's very low level but I have an awareness of it at times, and again- I just tap the tuning forks and it seems to simply disperse within a few seconds, leaving me feeling peaceful and grounded again. Sleep? Not a big problem either, but occasionally after I go to bed it's as if I get a second wind and suddenly could stay up for hours.  Delta tuners... ding! Thirty seconds later I am putting them down on the bed next to me and drifting off into a wonderful sleep- so amazing!

Hopefully, with my new sense of organizing my mind and my time I will be writing more! I think of this blog every day and so often don't get to it. That is definitely one of my intentions for the winter- to write lots more.

We Are Sound... What if?

"But what if on some level we are made of sound? What if in the beginning was the Word? What if the music of the spheres is no myth? What if we ourselves are a harmonic convergence? What if the holographic grid of our being is a linguistic and musical interface between higher-dimensional light, which might be considered a form of divine thought or intention, and sound in higher-dimensional octaves?" ~ Sol Luckman

What if? Huh... I never questioned it. As far as I know we ARE sound.  We are a configuration of pulsing, vibrating, resonating molecules. And hence, we hear a sound... a voice, a bird, a chime, a heartbeat, a breath and we resonate. Not only do we resonate but sometimes we gravitate physically, mentally, emotionally toward that frequency.  Sometimes it is the frequency of silence, of kindness, of compassion that draws us nearer to its source. 

Me? I follow the sound of music- literally! How many times have I heard music coming from a park, a bar, a festival and practically run towards it because it feeds me and it nourishes me. (We can be fed without being nourished, right?) 

Last week I went to a kirtan in Westport, CT, with Jai Uttal. We had a little chat before he started about some of the transitions I am moving through in my life and it connected me into some sensations around my heart- some sadness around letting go of parts of my life that are no longer working for me- no longer nourishing me. When the kirtan started my tears began to flow in a very sweet gentle way and I found that it was the perfect way to release some of the sadness without being overtaken by it- that I was able to move into a deep heartfelt space and to experience the feelings without having to get into naming and details... and as the kirtan evolved and grew stronger my heart grew quieter and more joyful until I was swept away by the music and the singing. I closed my eyes, merging with the music,  and a memory arose of body surfing in the ocean- that feeling of getting into the perfect position when the waves are just the right size- not too big, not too small- first, making the effort to align myself with the oncoming wave and then being picked up by it, swimming a few strokes with it, then letting go and surrendering to it and the sheer exhilaration of being carried, whatever distance, to the shore.  

And I thought to myself, "I am being swept up in a wave of bhakti." 

Maybe bhav is really a better word, as it was really the experience of ecstasy- bhakti refers more to devotion which can lead us to ecstasy. Kirtan is really a practice of bhakti yoga and yoga, any yoga, always has the goal of union with the Divine. 

Enough about that- this isn't really supposed to be a treatise on yoga- just an attempt at clarity!

Anyway, I had a lovely week of sacred sound.  I had only returned from Florida a week earlier and am still getting settled into my winter domicile in Rhode Island. But I was off to western Connecticut, first for Jai's beautiful kirtan and then to perform two Sound Journeys- one at my friend Suzanne Benton's house in Ridgefield, CT, and the next night down the road from there at Blackbird Yoga.  Unfortunately somehow we forgot about photos- also I thought I was recording the Sound Journey on Friday night but it turned out it that I somehow turned "Record" off instead of ON! Oh well, here is a photo of my arrival at Suzanne's- instruments by the door- followed by a couple after they are set up. 

And last but never least- here is a very rocking Hare Krishna kirtan which Jai did in Westport a few nights before. This was recorded in Boston a few months earlier, in August of this year. And check out the woman playing the kartals as it starts to rock- she is amazing! Hare Bol! Enjoy...

In Appreciation of the Gentleness of God

God is being so gentle with me...

I am making huge changes in my life- leaving a long-term relationship, closing my business of seven years, and relocating back to New England- said to be the 3 most stressful events in one's life all going on at once.

This summer when I first officially "moved" back to Rhode Island one of my sons, Moose, and his wife Addie were living virtually around the corner from me which was so lovely and wonderful and comforting- and fun! In September I went back down to Florida and I spent the month house-sitting for dear friends with an amazing house, a Himalayan cat, a swimming pool and a koi pond while I wound things down at the sound healing center.

Actually "wound down" may not be the best way of putting it- I had the busiest month I have ever had there in terms of my business!  And at the end of it I spent the last week cleaning, packing and going back and forth to my storage unit- all that mixed in with last minute visits, sessions, lunches, dinners and cups of coffee and tea with dear friends so that we could say goodbye one more time.

After saying goodbye to my life of 17 years I headed back up to Rhode Island.  I just got back last night. However while I was in Florida my son and his wife moved out to Minneapolis so they were gone when I got back.  It has been strongly in my mind that I need to spend time alone as I have never done so for any length of time and that was my intention when I came up for the summer last May. Instead I was busy getting settled and reconnecting with family and friends, trying to get my business established up here and outside of that getting every minute I could with Moose and Addie knowing they would be leaving soon.

I had a small cabin on an old friend's property but was rarely there for more than three days at a time as I was so busy.  Now I am back and winter is coming on the heels of fall. I drove in last night with the outside temperature at 49 degrees, a windy rainy blustery night.  Perfect. This weather I understand. I felt my cells coming alive again, my spirit excited and happy.

My friend Joya- actually my dance teacher from 40 years ago- who owns the house I am living in leaves in a month- back to California, gone for the winter.  The house will be empty except for me- and I will get my alone time, my healing time.  And I am grateful for the gentleness of the transition. I realized it tonight. The sadness that Moose and Addie are gone, who were such great company over the summer but the awareness that Joya was here still- good company and a great friend- and that the shift to being here alone was being done in such a beautiful gentle way.

This morning I awoke to the sun coming in my bedroom window.

And where is the music? Where is the sound? Everything that has sparked me lately in the realm of music and sound has been soft, gentle, compassionate and humble. The day before yesterday my sister Jenny and I went to see the movie "Searching for Sugarman." The story of Sixto Roderiguez, a brilliant musician who faded into obscurity before he ever had a chance- a beacon of wisdom and humility who accepted that "Reality wins." He worked hard and accepted the reality of his world, the son of hard-working blue collar immigrants, but with his acceptance he never got beaten down by life. He escaped the anger, cynicism and bitterness that could so easily have become a part of his persona. And 40 years later he still had a dream and a gift to offer. You'll have to go see the movie to get the rest of the story!

And finally... this beautiful meditation that was sent to me a couple of weeks ago- today I had the chance to sit down and watch it... and breathe with it.  Take time for yourself.  Use the sounds around you as a reminder to be present to your Self, to be present to your breath, to be present to the Buddha within...