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)

The Revelation of a Quiet Waterfall

As much as I wish to write every day about sound there are so many things that come along that seem to grab at my attention- which is feeble to begin with! And then there are so many topics in the arena that I want to write about that I flounder and often derail myself. I have resolved however that each day I do something to spread the word, how powerful the Word is- the sound, the primordial vibration, shabda- how powerful it is. Nada brahma- the world is borne of sound and is sound.

Today I write. Maybe a paragraph, maybe a chapter. We'll see where the current takes me.

When I was in the Bahamas at the Yoga of Sound & Voice workshop with Silvia Nakkach and John Beaulieu, Silvia asked us each to write about our journey and how we came to be there. A memory surfaced in the asking. I have thought about this, talked about it and written about it innumerable times; certainly the question comes up in almost every group or class I facilitate- but in that moment a very early memory came to me and it carried with it the gentle impact of a sound that soothed me as an infant.

My story, how I got involved in sound healing, stretches further back as the years go by and I begin to understand the subtleties of powerful moments that I once took for granted. For a long time the story began when I attended my first nada yoga workshop with Shyam Bhatnagar about 25 years ago.  Then, as I began to study and explore sacred sound, I was taken back to my father talking about the power of sound as a means to control the masses both in ancient and modern civilizations and as a tool for healing and enlightenment. Examples could be given but I will save those for another day! I think I was about 11 years old.

With a growing understanding of music and sound therapy I went further back to receiving my first transistor radio. I was 7 years old. That was the ultimate music therapy for me at the time. I loved music and wanted to listen to it day in and day out and this way I could. I was 5th in the line of 6 children- in classic codependent family dynamics I was the "lost child", the "quiet one." I was introverted, shy, fearful and hypersensitive. What better way than to lose myself in music? If I was unhappy or scolded I would retire to my room and listen to my radio. At night I hid it under my pillow and played it so softly that no could hear it but me. For years I went to sleep with music on in the background.

There are some gaps but that was in essence my story- those were the big events; but when Silvia asked the question two weeks ago, unbidden, another memory came forward. I was an infant, lying on my stomach in my crib, rubbing my hand back and forth on the sheet. In the past the memory of this was all about the sensation- the tingling in my hand that spread through my tiny body, but now what I remembered was the transfer of sound that I could both hear and feel, the sound of a gentle whooshing like a quiet waterfall that both soothed and fascinated my infant mind. This was the sound, the feeling and the action that lulled me to sleep as a very tiny child and, to my conscious awareness, my first experience of sound medicine.

Wow- and in writing this and reading back on it a revelation comes to me. This was the sound inside my mother's womb! When there was no arguing or fighting going on, this was the sound that I heard- the ancient rhythm of blood and water, a gentle whooshing; and I was safe there, soothed by the rhythms and the tones of the quiet waterfall within my mother's womb.


For a fascinating video on the development of hearing and the effect of sound in utero click on this link!

Music to Disappear Into...

Just a quick update.

I am sitting in my "tent hut" at Sivananda Ashram on Paradise Island, Bahamas. The reality of being here has been very different than my expectations- which involved "retreat". The schedule is extremely busy and full and there are MANY people here who are for the most part overworked, overtired and moving fast. Up until this morning not much of a sense of serenity but today I blew off the ashram schedule and slept until 8:30 which was perhaps the closest experience to the divine I've had since I've been here!

Okay, that's a little cheeky I know, and not entirely true because I had a total out of body experience yesterday during one of our practice sessions with Silvia Nakkach.  We were chanting seed sounds and I went completely into a different reality. I truly had no sense of body or being "here". Occasionally my awareness would touch in enough to know that I had not heard what she was singing although somatically my body must have picked it up because I would find myself repeating the sounds. And that is not entirely true either because I got to the point where I was in total silence and no longer singing. I entered a still point. After we were done I had no memory at all of what we had been doing.

From the seed sounds we flowed into a mantra practice that was more along the lines of a bhakti practice and I "came back" with that. We did a call and response practice singing "Tasmai Sri Gurave Namaha" with different people leading it and when we were done the room was bright and shimmering. I felt clear, energized and grounded.

Oh, the reason I am here by the way is that I am attending a week long workshop with John Beaulieu and Silvia Nakkach followed up by a two-day practicum with Silvia- very exciting! And my daughter Angela decided to take the workshop too which makes it doubly wonderful!

A.A. Bondy "How Will You Meet Your End?" (+playlist)

Speed of Sound

Yes, I know. I haven't written in months even though I think of it every day. Still moving through many transitions- from Florida to Rhode Island, caring for Mum as she moved through the end stages of her life, shifting out of a long-term relationship, moving into a new apartment after Mum died- and I have been in a bit of a funk moving too fast for so long and losing the sense of moving from my center. Feel more like I am being thrust out on the edge of some kind of centrifugal force.

Time to stop.

So today I am wandering around my apartment trying to figure out what to do first and finally remember... MUSIC.

Yes, MUSIC...

So I put on AA Bondy because it is the first thing that comes up on my iTunes- and rapture, sweet rapture! As quickly as the speed of sound hits my consciousness I am dancing in my kitchen. And I feel like myself again instead of some odd piece of driftwood floating on an unfamiliar ocean.

That's the beauty of MUSIC.  Thank you. Sometimes the answer is so close, so familiar, so simple, that we forget altogether. Sort of like looking for your glasses when they're on the top of your head- or better yet, you already have them on!

New Life

Margarett McKean Vernon
November 2, 1921~September 8, 2013

My last post was dated September 5. When I wrote it I was in Massachusetts at my mother's house where I have spent the better part of the last year.  I didn't write much during that time because, at the age of 91, my mother's health began to decline and she was moving toward making a transition. I wasn't living there but was there almost full-time, living an hour and a half away. She passed away on September 8- just over two months ago.  During the last two months I have spent a lot of time at there house, going through "stuff"- the stuff of a lifetime- as well as organizing her memorial service and celebration of her life which were held on November 2, which would have been her 92nd birthday.

The winter before last I lived with her for almost 3 months and after that decided I needed to be nearby on a permanent basis as I knew we didn't have much time left together.  So the truth is that I have spent the better part of the last two years with her, although in 2012 I did have more time to myself.  This year her dimming eyesight really failed her and her arthritis had gotten to the point where she was more and more physically uncomfortable.  I felt the need to be with her more and more. Although I have 5 siblings my life also was in transition having just moved up from Florida so I made myself available as much as possible.

We had had a challenging relationship for most of my life and when the healing came in the late '90s we really fell in love with each other and it became a very warm cozy intimate relationship- not without its challenges but they were minor and ultimately quite insignificant compared to what we shared.  I always felt that the miracle of the healing of our relationship far outweighed the length of time that it took and that, in a way, the fact that we had gone through such a long period of separation made our relationship that much more special.

After her service last week I moved into a beautiful spacious apartment in an old Victorian house with gorgeous high ceilings and for the first time in two months have had a chance to begin to reflect- to have moments of missing my mother, letting myself cry and feel the loss of her physical presence and then to get quiet and feel her true presence, to bask in the warmth of it and feel the continuing deepening of our relationship. What an extraordinary thing!

I could just end this post there but I can't, in good conscience, leave this page without putting something about wholistic sound! So I will tell you about how I have the most wonderful spiral staircase that goes up to a loft- an eight-sided room in which I can play music, meditate, or throw down a futon for a guest! Last night was the first time I played music up there. I brought my harmonium up and sat and had my own quiet sargam practice and meditation time.  What a beautiful sacred space.

I have always wanted a spiral staircase, I have always wanted a loft and I have always wanted to live in this house having walked by it hundreds of times in years gone by! Wow, I got everything all under one roof. I am filled with gratitude and am so looking forward to the emergence of whatever is the next thing I am to give birth to in this beautiful new space.