The Sound of the Universe 3.17.11

Did I mention that when I was a kid I wanted to be an astronomer? As someone who is both passionate about sound and a latent and secretly aspiring astronomer this talk given by Janna Levin left me absolutely breathless by the end of it. Incredibly brilliant and a beautiful delivery as well. Enjoy...

Biosonic Bliss 3.16.11

Right now I'm in Massachusetts visiting my 89-year old mother who is in pretty amazing condition for her age (which I attribute to her growing and eating her own organic vegetables for the last 60-plus years). Her only real complaints are dimming eyesight and arthritis which can cause considerable discomfort for her.

Her latest and greatest pleasure seems to be receiving treatments with tuning forks- specifically a protocol put together by John Beaulieu- Biosonic Repatterning using Pythagorean tuning forks. I learned this protocol over ten years ago from Avi Khadir Aberman (at that time still known as Phil), an old friend and colleague of John Beaulieu's. When I first experienced them I found them heavenly and wanted to add them to my sound healing practice right away. As it turned out though, I didn't use them much for a long time because I already had a primary sound healing protocol using Somatron vibroacoustic technology and this has really been the backbone of my practice for well over 15 years. In the last 3 years though I have begun working with the tuning forks more and more.

My mother has had all manner of alternative therapy and exposed me to a great deal as well. When I was 7 and injured my neck she had a woman come to the house and give me massage and reflexology almost every day for 2 weeks. When I was 18 she gave me a subscription to The Homeopathic Layman's League of the Northeast along with a homeopathic first aid kit of Dr. Schuessler's Cell Salts and I began learning about homeopathy. It has gone on from there. She herself has had every kind of sound healing treatment I have offered from toning which loved ("It's like taking a bath in ginger ale!") to a treatment in the Inner Dimensional Sound Chamber, which made her extremely nervous. ("Do I have to go in the monkey cage again?" referring to the sacred geometry frame around the sound chamber, when it was offered on another visit). She gets acupuncture, massage and craniosacral therapy on a regular basis, which includes treatments from my sister and I whenever we come for a visit- tui na, Thai massage, Bhakti massage, craniosacral therapy and sound healing.

So about 6 months ago when I was visiting I decided to bring my tuning forks with me. It's an odd thing. Even though I know that for me they are magical, somehow I think other people may just get bored. Well, so far- as far as I know- that has never happened, but somehow I thought it might be a stretch for my mother. Why? She is the IDEAL receiver of almost any kind of alternative therapy as long as it doesn't involve a monkey cage! Anyway I gave her a treatment with the Solar Harmonic Spectrum tuners. It is an off-body protocol and the person just lies on a massage table (or whatever works) while the practitioner(me, in this case) plays a series of intervals with two tuning forks at a time, holding them up to the client's ears. The whole process takes about 40 minutes. Unfortunately I didn't give her the session til the second to last day of my visit. As soon as it was over the first thing she said was, "Can I have another one tomorrow?" And then declared that it was simply blissful.

So now whenever I come she wants the tuning forks. Today, having arrived yesterday, I gave her the first session of what will probably be a series over the next seven days. Her response today was pretty much the same as every other time. After a bit of a challenge getting into a comfortable supine position on the table, within the first few minutes of cranial work she became deeply relaxed and then I started with the tuning forks and soon she was quietly snoring. She wasn't really sleeping but she goes in very deep. (Her snoring style when she is asleep is much more intense.) I also become entrained through the skin and bone conduction as I feel the vibration of the tones moving into my body. After the session was over she really did fall deeply asleep and slept on the table for about another half hour or more. Then she got up, needing less assistance from me than usual and exclaimed that it was simply wonderful, heavenly. She said she felt marvelous.

I asked her if she remembered anything. She said no, she just felt wonderful. She was beaming. She soon began remarking that she had much less pain in her body and couldn't get over how well she felt. She said she felt freer. She repeatedly stated over the course of the afternoon how amazed she was at how much better she felt. I must admit that I am somewhat amazed as well. Something that seems so gentle is so powerful and goes so deep. I haven't used the tuning forks on anyone else who was dealing with physical pain so this is a real eye opener for me to see just how powerful this treatment is on the physical level.

After I was done she called three friends and set up appointments for all of them, including one for one of the owners of the day spa where she goes for her manicure! So interesting...

Having just arrived yesterday we have been having a richly musical time so far. Last night we watched a wonderful program about a reunion of Pete Seeger's old group, The Weavers. The female singer Ronnie Gilbert had extraordinarily beautiful radiant youthful skin some 30 years later which I commented on. Mum said, "That's what music does- you know that!" Yes, it does.

3.9.11 Forever Young

Watched the movie "Young at Heart" last night, which follows a senior citizen chorus from Northampton, MA over a period of six weeks as they prepare for a concert in their home town. The music is great- songs by James Brown, Talking Heads, The Clash, The Police, Bob Dylan- and the old folks ROCK! I showed it at my sound healing center and was disappointed that so few people showed up- four to be exact (besides me). It is such a wonderful inspirational movie and I cannot imagine how anyone would not love it, so I felt badly knowing that so many people missed it. It speaks to the power of music, and in this case singing, to bring people together- to connect, uplift, inspire, empower, heal, motivate, and above all to keep the spirit alive.
Here they are doing a song by Kurt Cobain... totally cool!

3.4.11 Healing Frequencies

Watch this! A series of frequencies showing cymatic formations in a drop of water. Absolutely astounding as you consider the effects of these frequencies on the brain and the body. Dr. Gary Robert Buchanan is taking the work of Hans Jenny and Dr. Peter Guy Manners to the next level. Enjoy...

2.28.11 Tambouras and Headphones!

A few days ago I wrote about about my experience with headphones and how generally these days I tend to stay away from them, as well as an including a really interesting article from the New York Times. The same day I ended up having a really interesting experience.

My friend Rob Pieniak came over to the center that afternoon to record some stuff with me. I was playing the tamboura and had it tuned so that the dominant tone was a B instead of the usual C# which I tend to play it in. Rob recorded me playing the tamboura for about 7 minutes. Tuning the tamboura down just that much created a very deep rich resonance in the lowest string. After he had recorded it I put the headphones while he played it back and I chanted along with it. The resonance of the tamboura and the steady entrainment of the rhythm was so powerful- it was amazing listening to it through the headphones. I could feeling the tone moving down inside of me, especially in my chest, resonating deeply within my body. It brought me into a very blissful state!

2.24.11 Headphones- To Have or Have Not

People have often recommended using headphones or earbuds to me for use with the telephone, in favor of having one's hands free while talking. Years ago I would hold the phone in place with my shoulder while I did the dishes. My neck no longer allows that, besides the fact that phones have gotten so small it is practically impossible to hold them in place that way anymore. If I could have my way I would have a nice old-fashioned desk phone with a rotary dial and a curly cord but I'm afraid I will never have another such phone. I have also developed a tremendous distaste for "multi-tasking" and today I'd really prefer to just sit down with a cup of tea while I talk on the phone. I also have an extreme aversion to the idea of these frequencies going directly into my ear and have never been able to stand earbuds. In my teens and early twenties I loved listening to music with a really good set of headphones but once I had kids it was no longer an option as I needed to be able to hear them if they cried or needed something so I gave them up a long time ago.

Then when the Walkman craze hit I just found it rude- that someone would sit right next to you and put their little headphones on and go off into their own world. I actually had a boyfriend who would do that when we went for bike rides together. It was a very short relationship because he was more interested in listening to his music- without sharing it- than he was in being with me or listening to music together, or being able to have a conversation when we were riding our bikes.

For a while Henry kept trying to convince me to use earbuds when I was on the phone but I couldn't stand the way they felt and intuitively I just felt like the sound going directly into my ear was not a good thing. I have not researched this at all. I just know how it feels for me. Interestingly a few weeks ago this article came out in the New York Times. I have copied the article below in case the link doesn't work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine/09FOB-medium-t.html

Against Headphones

By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

One in five teenagers in America can’t hear rustles or whispers, according to a study published in August in The Journal of the American Medical Association. These teenagers exhibit what’s known as slight hearing loss, which means they often can’t make out consonants like T’s or K’s, or the plinking of raindrops. The word “talk” can sound like “aw.” The number of teenagers with hearing loss — from slight to severe — has jumped 33 percent since 1994.

Given the current ubiquity of personal media players — the iPod appeared almost a decade ago — many researchers attribute this widespread hearing loss to exposure to sound played loudly and regularly through headphones. (Earbuds, in particular, don’t cancel as much noise from outside as do headphones that rest on or around the ear, so earbud users typically listen at higher volume to drown out interference.) Indeed, the August report reinforces the findings of a 2008 European study of people who habitually blast MP3 players, including iPods and smartphones. According to that report, headphone users who listen to music at high volumes for more than an hour a day risk permanent hearing loss after five years.

Maybe the danger of digital culture to young people is not that they have hummingbird attention spans but that they are going deaf.

The history of headphones has always been one of unexpected uses and equally unexpected consequences. Headphones were invented a century ago — the brainchild of Nathaniel Baldwin, a tinkerer from Utah who grew frustrated when he couldn’t hear Mormon sermons over the noise of the crowds at the vast Salt Lake Tabernacle. Baldwin’s device, which was designed first as an amplifier, came to incorporate two sound receivers connected by an operator’s headband. Within each earphone was, according to legend, a mile of coiled copper wiring and a mica diaphragm to register the wire’s signals with vibrations. When the Navy put in an order for 100 such Baldy Phones in 1910, Baldwin abandoned his kitchen workbench, hastily opened a factory and built the prosperous Baldwin Radio Company. His innovations were the basis of “sound powered” telephones, or phones that required no electricity, which were used during World War II.

It’s not incidental that Baldwin imagined headphones first as a way to block out crowd noise and hear sermons. Workers and soldiers have long used them to mute the din of machinery or artillery while receiving one-way orders from someone with a microphone. From the beginning, it seems, headphones have been a technology of submission (to commands) and denial (of commotion).

When World War II ended, submission-and-denial was exactly what returning veterans craved when they found themselves surrounded by the clamor and demands of the open-plan family rooms of the postwar suburbs. By then, they knew what device provided it. In the ’50s, John C. Koss invented a set of stereo headphones designed explicitly for personal music consumption. In that decade, according to Keir Keightley, a professor of media studies at the University of Western Ontario, middle-class men began shutting out their families with giant headphones and hi-fi equipment. Further, they recalled the sonar systems they saw at war.

The Walkman appeared in 1979, the invention of Sony, and headphones became part of a walking outfit. Headphones and earbuds are now used with MP3 players, mobile phones, tablet computers and laptops.

Most discussions of the transformation of music by digital technology focus on the production end. But headphones transform sound for the consumer too. Headphones are packed with technology. When an audio current passes through the device’s voice coil, it creates an alternating magnetic field that moves a stiff, light diaphragm. This produces sound. If you think about all the recordings, production tricks, conversions and compressions required to turn human voices and acoustic instruments into MP3 signals, and then add the coil-magnet-diaphragm magic in our headphones, it’s amazing that the intensely engineered frankensounds that hit our eardrums when we listen to iPhones are still called music.

Whatever you call it, children are listening to something on all these headphones — though “listening” is too limited a concept for all that headphones allow them to do. Indeed, the device seems to solve a real problem by simultaneously letting them have private auditory experiences and keeping shared spaces quiet. But the downside is plain, too: it’s antisocial. As Llewellyn Hinkes Jones put it not long ago in The Atlantic: “The shared experience of listening with others is not unlike the cultural rituals of communal eating. Music may not have the primal necessity of food, but it is something people commonly ingest together.”

Headphones work best for people who need or want to hear one sound story and no other; who don’t want to have to choose which sounds to listen to and which to ignore; and who don’t want their sounds overheard. Under these circumstances, headphones are extremely useful — and necessary for sound professionals, like intelligence and radio workers — but it’s a strange fact of our times that this rarefied experience of sound has become so common and widespread. In the name of living a sensory life, it’s worth letting sounds exist in their audio habitat more often, even if that means contending with interruptions and background sound.

Make it a New Year’s resolution, then, to use headphones less. Allow kids and spouses periodically to play music, audiobooks, videos, movie, television and radio audibly. Listen to what they’re listening to, and make them listen to your stuff. Escapism is great, and submission and denial, too, have their places. But sound thrives amid other sounds. And protecting our kids’ hearing is not just as important as protecting their brains; it is protecting their brains.

2.20.11 Resonant Frequencies and Altered States

MRI two days ago. Entranced by the sound. Had one few years ago after a head injury and it took them 45 minutes to get me to actually relax enough to lie down in it due to the claustrophobia. They were going to give me a sedative but I didn't dare take it as I didn't know the extent of the injury yet and was afraid to take anything. When I had it this time (for cervical spine) I was totally fine. It was an open MRI so I had peripheral vision which was nice but all that is beside the point. What I really loved was the sound- I did use earplugs but it was still very loud. All these different rhythms that I became quickly entrained to- some took me out of my body and some brought me back. I was also fascinated by the sensation of the radio waves as they moved around my body and came from different angles.

Today, a Sunday, Henry and I were sitting outside in the courtyard at our home in St. Pete playing music together. I was playing guitar and he was playing flute. All of a sudden a huge flock of birds came in and started singing wildly. As long as we played they sang. Then he started playing a quena, a beautiful wooden flute with a very sweet sound that he got in Peru and I was playing the silver flute along with him. The birds seemed to love the harmonies, especially when we were playing intervals of thirds.

It reminded me of when I lived in Jamestown, RI many years ago and had a pottery studio in the barn on the property. It was quite dilapidated and the loft really had no windows left- they were just big openings in the wall! It was full of barn swallows but the first floor where I had my studio had been set up for an auto mechanic some years earlier so it was enclosed, had a huge heater, great shelving and 220 current so I could run an electric kiln in there. One day I was in there throwing pots and I put a Mark Isham tape on (it was the 80's- no CD's yet!). It was a very rhythmic piano piece and the birds in the loft suddenly started singing along right in time with the music. I was so amazed, they just loved that music and whenever I put it on that would happen- and they would not only sing, but they would keep the rhythm of the music.

It also brought back a great memory of Sunday mornings years before that when my exhusband Jonathan and I would get together with our neighbor Dave Nabozny in Newport and play music. It was a Sunday morning ritual for a while- coffee, pot, pastries... and Dave on the guitar, Jonathan on blues harp and me on the flute. My kids were little and they would sit on Jonathan's lap while he played the harp and all in all it was a pretty wonderful time. This time there was no pot (we no longer indulge!) and instead of little kids around there are just flocks of birds to enjoy it along with us, but it was equally as pleasant a morning and in fact I did dip into quite an altered state of consciousness for a while and ended up laughing hysterically.