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.

Starting Off On The Right Note

When I had my sound healing center in St. Pete, FL I led a healing sound meditation every Monday evening so people could start their week off "on the right note". Having been in major transition for the last two years and finally settled in to my oh-so-very-cool log house where I can rev up my practice again it feels just right that this challenge begins on a Monday. Challenge, yes...Thank you Seth Godin and Winnie Kao, too for the challenge to blog for 7 days in a row! Just the kick in the pants that I needed. http://yourturnchallenge.tumblr.com/

Getting started has been the biggest challenge lately. Seems like transitions could just go on endlessly... Moved in October, including getting all my stuff (sound healing equipment, sound tables, instruments) out of storage where it had been for several years- so about 6 weeks of the initial house set-up, then November- kids visiting from MN for birthdays, the crazy holiday stretch where I was still finding beds, kitchen table, stuff that you are supposed to have in your house if you ever want other people to be able to be there (and since I am going to be hosting individual sound healing retreats that is pretty important stuff!), then the Christmas craziness where life gets put on hold again (okay, really? That's crazy! The best of life is those holiday times when everything ELSE gets put on hold and we get to hang out, celebrate, eat with our families, kids, friends) and finally my 60th birthday last week which I celebrated with my two sisters in Arizona and will probably continue to celebrate all year. Then of course I got sick- so here I am typing with a plugged up ear which is driving me slightly insane! So... were I not given this challenge I could have easily put off "getting started" with my new ideas, visions, and the practicality of sitting, writing, sharing, for at least another week!

In this moment I am thinking that the real challenge for me is starting this next phase of my life off "on the right note". Blogging consistently for seven days feels like a nice way of breaking down that challenge, that invitation. Just do it.

Put It To The Test

Tom Ze- Emere

Time to put the brain tuners to the test. I have been sick and my left ear has been blocked for almost a week now. Today I have had no focus whatsoever. I just walk around singing this wonderful tune by Tom Ze! I don't actually feel bad physically- just a relatively mild cough, no fever, aches etc. It's just my ear and the feeling that the whole left side of my head is in a weird kind of a bubble. I have tried everything- using tuning forks on the acupressure points, homeopathic drops, garlic infused sesame oil drops, essential oils and massage around the ear, flushing with saline solution and finally yesterday I broke down and got some Sudafed and so far that hasn't done anything either!

So now I am trying out the brain tuners- the fundamental (C256 hz) and the beta tuner for focus and clarity. If I can't actually clear my ear out at least maybe I can clear my head a little and stop walking around in circles forgetting what I'm doing and where I am putting things. The funny thing is, now, about a minute after I used them I actually feel like there is some movement happening within my ear canal- and I actually do feel a bit more focused. Let's see if I can actually get something done around here!

Sorry that there is no visual on the Tom Ze "video"- but it's well worth a listen- such a sweet tune, sort of sacred and funky at the same time.

Update on brain tuner results to follow... ;-)

Mr. Lopez Meets Mr. Ayers

Every night for the past two weeks I have been reading Steve Lopez's book The Soloist about Nathaniel Anthony Ayers. I have been getting to bed late due to all the pre-Christmas doings that needed to be done so I was only managing a few pages at a time. Yesterday, as part of my post-Christmas recovery program, I stayed in bed for an extra two hours reading and then took a two-hour bath and finished the book. It is the true story of a homeless man in LA suffering from schizophrenia who once had a promising career as a musician but was now living on the streets as he had been for the past 30 years. When Mr. Lopez met him, Mr. Ayers was sleeping in a tunnel by night, warding off rats with a stick and playing music by day on his violin or cello for his own personal pleasure- always in sight of a statue of Beethoven, his inspiration.

What an amazing story about the power of music to placate and inspire a mind so often plagued by demons. It is not a "cure"- Mr. Ayers is a paranoid schizophrenic who refuses medication due to bad experiences in the past but when he is playing music- or listening to it- the often tangled web of his mind becomes an open space full of inspiration, clarity and joy. I had seen the movie when it came out in 2009 but reading the book gave me a much greater insight and inspired me to follow up on the story. I searched on YouTube and this is the first video I came across. It is too good not to share. I was happy to see that there are videos of the real Mr. Ayers and not just clips from the movie and I am looking forward to watching more of them.

Brain Tuner Experiment

Commitment and practice renewed. Yesterday I sat down at my harmonium for the first time in about 6 weeks, maybe more. I moved October 1st so I spent the two weeks leading up to that point packing and the last four weeks UNpacking! So good to sit and play music, so good to sit and write, so good to sit and sing. So nice to build a fire! So wonderful to have SPACE! So fantastic to have all my sound healing equipment, art and instruments in one space. Beyond fabulous to have a place where I can have company, space for my kids and their families visit and to work. It is all good- in this case that is not a cliche!

 This is pretty cool! A couple of days ago I decided to use my brain tuners before I did my Lumosity workout (games to exercise the brain) to see if they would make a difference. I used the Beta tuners for clarity and focus. On two out of three of the exercises I scored significantly higher. The other one was pretty much the same as usual. I don't remember what the third game was for- maybe it was short term memory! Interesting experiment anyway- I will definitely play some more with the combination of tuning forks and Lumosity and see if the results hold up.





To learn more about Brain Tuners visit John Beaulieu's website: http://www.biosonics.com/Brain-Tuners-in-Velvet-Bag.html. You may also want to read through some of these blogposts for more information on use of tuning forks. The third one has a very interesting video testimonial (short!)
http://wholisticsound.blogspot.com/2012/07/tuning-mom.html
http://wholisticsound.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-slight-adjustment.html
http://wholisticsound.blogspot.com/2011/08/at-last-i-am-done-with-three-months-of.html

Wholistic Sound Has Landed! (Part One)

It has been a crazy summer. I spent the better part of June, July and August actively looking for a new place- a house- where I could stay for a while, that would feel like more than just a temporary place to land. It was very frustrating. I thought maybe something was wrong with me that I was having so much trouble finding anything that I felt would work. I hadn't felt this stuck in many years. I wanted to be in love with it- not just have it be workable, doable, functional. I had a fabulous apartment in Newport that I really did love. The down side of it was that it was on the 3rd floor of a Victorian house and I was so high up that I discovered within a couple of months that I was literally feeling like I was "up in the air" all the time. I made a list of all the things that were important to me hoping that would give a little more strength to my intention.
Here is what I wrote:
A house where I can live and do my sound healing work
A large yard
Surroundings that help me to feel connected to the outdoors
3 bedrooms so I have a guest room and a treatment room
Fireplace or wood stove
Living room area large enough to host groups for classes, workshops and meditation
Fabulous kitchen
No more than $2000 a month (which would only be doable if I could work there as well.)

And I was finding NOTHING! I couldn't believe the shoddy places they were showing me for between $1700- $2000 a month... Dirty, one which clearly had termites, not enough space, in need of paint, flooring needing to be refinished, etc., etc. I looked at everything- houses, condos, apartments. I went as far as the Berkshires. Nothing, nothing, nothing... I was ready to land, to get my sound healing equipment up from Florida and immerse myself in my work. Nothing.

I was in a funk- something I don't even really know about it. Typically I might get in a bad mood for an hour if my blood sugar gets low but that's about the extent of it. The end of July came around and it was time to think about going to Jai Uttal's kirtan camp in California. I had paid for it in January and now I didn't want to go.  I emailed Jai's wife Nubia and told her I was feeling too ungrounded and up in the air and I needed to find a place to live. My sister Miranda called me that week asking when I was coming to CA as I was going to visit her also and I told her I had cancelled. I said it was too much money- I still needed to pay airfare, lodging, and a car rental- and I needed to find a place to live.  She said, "Are you crazy?! You have to go- I have never seen you so happy and excited about anything as when you went to kirtan camp the last time. Plus it's a tax write-off for you so don't worry about the money. You just have to go."

Well, when my older sister tells me something I take it seriously and she was adamant so I said I would think about it. After I got off the phone I thought, "Well, nothing is actually happening here except that I'm spending hours on the computer and driving around looking at places and I'm not finding a thing. And I'm going crazy and I'm miserable... Maybe this will help free up some energy and I'll find something when I get back."

So off I went to Harbin Hot Springs, CA for a wonderful week of joyful kirtan. That is its own story for a different post. Suffice to say I came back in a much better frame of mind. I felt hopeful and excited. The next 3 weeks went by and I was still spending hours on the computer looking at the same old stuff from here to North Carolina, driving out to Middletown, Portsmouth and Wickford, another trip up to the Berkshires and still no luck but I was in a better mood.

Blissed-out Bhaktas- 2014 Summer Kirtan Camp with Jai Uttal, Nubia Texeira and Daniel Paul

I have to throw in there at this point that there was one house in Tiverton, a log house, that kept showing up on the internet which I kept ignoring. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, although it was in the range I was considering. It had 4 bedrooms- a little bigger than what I felt I needed. It was log and I have always wanted to live in a log house. It had a big deck and a koi pond and actually looked pretty great but I kept thinking, "No... Tiverton- don't know anyone out there. Log, but it's probably not as nice as it looks. The bedrooms look small. It's probably just a winter rental" etc., etc. I had a whole lot of reasons not to bother looking at it.

Noelle, "Ming Ming" and Patience

So September rolled around and I went off to Minneapolis for my granddaughter's 5th birthday. I had a wonderful 5 days and then came back home and sat back down at the computer to look at more places.  Still in a good mood, thank God, and feeling like if I had to stay in my apartment for the winter I could live with that. But I really wanted to get my sound healing equipment up here from Florida. It had been too long. I was missing my sound table and missing my work. So I sat back down at the computer and picked up my seemingly fruitless search where I had left off.

I had one more trip planned- Salt Lake City in mid-October for my son Ben's 35th birthday. He is in his 5th year working on his PhD at the University of Utah and I had never been out there. But 3 days after I got back from MN my sister Miranda, an advanced craniosacral therapist, called me from the Bahamas and said there was a dolphin-assisted intensive therapy program beginning in just two days and some of their clients had to cancel so they were offering it on the cheap just to fill it. She said I should really seize the opportunity and fly down to the Bahamas the next day and take the program. I had the same thought as I'd had a few weeks earlier re: California. No way, I need to stay here and find a place to live. Plus it would be crazy expensive to fly to the Bahamas with less than 24 hour notice!

Nonetheless I gave it some thought- 5 hours a day of craniosacral therapy with one therapy session each day for 4 days with dolphins assisting and two more sessions with two advanced therapists during the day. As Miranda said, I could get the equivalent of a years worth of therapy over the course of the 4-day intensive. I thought about it and thought, Well, maybe I have more stuff to clear around finding a place to land and this could help me. Clearly there were more obstacles on some level that escaped me. Apparently it was meant to be because I found an unreasonably reasonable flight! That cinched the deal for me and I decided to go.

The next day I flew to the Bahamas. The program started the day after I arrived. I set as an intention to clear whatever blocks, release whatever I needed to release, to help me find a place to live. The program was amazing, a lot of openings and awarenesses- nothing earth-shattering- quite a bit of physical release and some emotional stuff, nothing that I could pinpoint in terms of any specific blocks but it was all good. At the end I had an extra day with Miranda which, as Spirit would have it, turned out to be the one year anniversary of our mother's passing. We had both been there with Mum when she died and shared something very profound at that time, so it was quite wonderful and synchronistic that we unexpectedly were together that day.

I came home the next day and there I went- back to the computer! And there was that log house in Tiverton again. This time, instead of blowing it off, I thought "Well, I've looked at everything else- I might as well check it out- and then I can eliminate it!" So I called the realtor, saw the house the next day and felt that I could easily fall in love with it. And not only that, that it would be a perfect place for me to live and work! The day after that I drove out to Tiverton one more time to look at it with my friend Lark and made the decision that yes, this was the house for me.

So here I am, in this fabulous house in Tiverton, RI- and all I can say is that I am seriously deliriously happy! Actually there is quite a bit more to say than that but I will save it for another, hopefully shorter, blogpost now that I have gotten enough stuff put away in the house to feel like I can sit down at the computer and resume writing again. Suffice to say in closing that I got everything on my list and more- some things I wouldn't have even thought of on my own- like a nice deep whirlpool jetted tub in my bathroom. Happy landings!

A Life of Miracles

A few years ago, when the movie "The Secret" came out, a group of us got together at my sound healing center in Florida and watched it together and then stayed for a few hours to make vision boards. I created a vision board that I have always felt represented the essence of who I am on all levels- from the physical to the spiritual. In fact I discovered after I had completed it that it was almost like a road map- at the left hand bottom corner was "Walking the Earth Path". Moving diagonally up and toward the right, in the center of the collage was "Journeys to the Self" and continuing toward the upper right was the section entitled "Journey to the Heart of God". I also found a poem in one section as I looked at the clippings of words that I had included. This was not planned. It goes like this:

     I am the dreamer,
     Arise and shine
     Fully human, fully divine
     O thou invisible spirit!
     Awaken my world
     A life of miracles
     Beyond bliss...

That is my life. That is who I am.

Recently I found a frame for it and today I have finally hung it on the wall. Someone said to me not long ago that I could revisit who I was at the time I made it, but I truly feel that I went into my core when I made it- into my heart and my soul and that it represents the Truth of Who I AM. The reason I decided to hang it where I can see it every day is because I am now engaged in looking for the perfect place to live- a place that I can call my home and not feel like it is a temporary fix until I find THE place. 

It is time for me to have a place where I can live and do the work that I love unencumbered by lack of space and/or any other constraints that could limit my self-expression. If I have that then the only self-limiting constraint I have is me and my own mind!