Five Minutes of Mindfulness (Step to the right...)

I am almost finished reading Jill Bolte Taylor's amazing book My Stroke of Insight. (Click on the title to watch her Ted Talk video.) I first saw it about 5 years ago, made a copy of it and have watched it several times. It is the story of her personal experience and simultaneous observation of herself, a Harvard-trained brain scientist, having a severe stroke as a result of a massive hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain. She observed the left brain function of her brain shutting down over a period of four hours while she drifted in and out of a state of deep peace, euphoria and oneness- which she now believes resides in the right brain and is accessible to all of us if we choose to make a conscious effort to access it.  Over an 8-year period of recovery she consciously chose what parts of her left brain activity she wanted to resurrect and those aspects of its abilities and tendencies that she wished to leave behind (nit-picking, replaying negative tape loops, holding on to anger, etc.). It is a powerful and illuminating story.

In 2006 I had a head injury, a severe blow to my right temple. I am grateful to be reminded of what I learned during that time. The primary lesson for me was that I had a choice about how I thought and what I thought about. I did not have the mental energy to step out of the present for several weeks if not longer, and it was an incredible gift. My head hurt so badly in the beginning and it literally was too exhausting for my brain to think so my mind became very quiet- the deepest quiet and strongest experience of presence that I can remember having in this lifetime.  The defining moment that stayed with me was a little over two weeks after the initial injury. I was receiving an Ayurvedic treatment called shirodhara. I lay on a massage table with warm herbal-infused oil streaming onto my forehead and I had a thought. Up to that point my mind had been silent for some time- not unaware, in fact very present, but very quiet. So in this moment, as I observed myself having a thought, I saw in my mind's eye a water strider on the surface of a pool of water. The water strider represented my thought and I knew in that moment that I could follow it as it skittered across the surface of the water (the pool of my mind) or I could dive beneath the surface to where it was completely quiet and peaceful.


That awareness stayed with me for a long time and in fact became a practice as my left brain began to reengage more and more. I could either follow a thought and engage in it to whatever level was comfortable or, if it was uncomfortable on any level, I had the option to simply dive beneath the surface and let it go. As time has gone by, although I always remember this, I would say that I have become to some extent lazy in engaging the ability to make a conscious choice on how I expend my mental energy and I am so grateful to be reminded of the possibility- adn as Jill Bolte Taylor puts it, the I can "step to the right and bring my thoughts back to the present moment." It is a conscious choice.

It makes me think of how many times I have heard myself and others say, "I can't stop thinking about..." blah, blah, blah- whatever it is. Yes, in fact I can. It is a conscious choice and it requires a certain amount of exercise. 

Which takes me to the next point. Yesterday I heard a great interview on NPR with Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head... Basically he is a proponent of a simple meditation technique: 5 minutes... sitting... bringing the attention to the breath... and every time you notice the mind wandering, bringing it back to the breath... again and again and again. And, as he puts it, every time you do this "it's a bicep curl for the brain"- which I love! Between listening to his talk and reading My Stroke of Insight I have decided to turn to a practice of 5 minutes of mindfulness at least twice a day and preferably more. We'll see how that goes. I already know from past experience (years when I did a lot of meditation) that meditation on the breath is one of the most powerful meditation techniques there is because the breath is always available to us and every time we notice the breath in that moment we are present.

In Jill Bolte Tayor's book she talks about how she changes her mind if her left brain activity is not being cooperative (that voice that is like a petulant child who sometimes just refuses to be quiet!)...
1) remembering something that she finds fascinating that she would like to ponder more deeply
2) thinking about something that brings her great joy
3) thinking about something she would like to do

I would add to this list "listening to music." Music immediately engages the right brain and pulls us back (or forward!) into the present. It can drop us into a state of peace, joy, motivation with no effort on our part- all we need is to remember that we have a choice

The bottom line is- we have the power to change our minds, to choose what we engage in. We simply need the willingness and the discipline.

True learning is constant, and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in one instant and change the world in the next. That is because, by changing his mind, he has changed the most powerful device that was ever given him for change.
                                 ~A Course in Miracles, Text: Chapter 7, Section 5 (Paragraph 7)~

Norah Jones - Rosie's Lullaby

Yes, this is definitely my lullaby.



My good friend Will told me a few weeks ago that I had to listen to this song. I found this video of it that same day and soon began sobbing- heartfelt, gut-wrenching tears. The video itself is exquisite.

For me, the song touches such a deep place that I have no words for it.  I listened to it over and over that first day, singing with it and weeping. I don't know if it brought up some grief over my mother's death that I was unaware was sitting quietly in a space in my heart waiting to be released- or if it was something much older, deeper, the longing for Home. I only know that this song is one of a very few that I feel has really tapped into the deepest part of my Self.

I immediately ordered the CD and the studio version is so rich, full and poignant. I typically listen to it at least once a day and most of the time it still makes me weep. I figure they are tears of a grief and a longing that need to be released so I have been letting them go. The funny thing is, I don't feel sad- more just a pulling on my heart.



I am posting this one- a live version- rather than the studio version because the imagery is so beautiful. Whoever put together the visuals did a beautiful job.

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)