Perhaps one of the most mind blowing characteristics of sound waves (and my absolute favorite thing about sound healing ) is just that… it is mind blowing.
Like, literally.
It will take a stubborn mind, digging its heels in and refusing to relax and turn it into a purring kitty drifting off on a celestial superhighway of healing and harmony.
Honestly. There is nothing I've ever found quite like it. Nothing in my 20 + years of soul/globe searching has helped my mind find the peace and quiet it's looking for like sound.
You see, I was always THAT girl. That girl lying in savasana at the end of a long and “supposed-to-be-relaxing” yoga class with thoughts bouncing around her head like ping pong balls. And ping pong balls was lucky. Ping pong balls was what I got on a good day when I could objectively see my thoughts and watch them. On bad days, the thoughts were downright upsetting. They blamed me for not being able to relax like the people around me. They told me there must be something wrong with me, that I must be broken if I can’t even do this thing right. They may have even made me swear under my breath at "Moonlight Songbird" the blissed-out instructor who didn't even mean to but totally just left her body and found the answer to life she was seeking. And now she is complete. Amen.
And forget sitting down to meditate, there was no point. I would get up more stressed than when I started. And just to cover all my bases, I had tried MANY forms of meditation. Sitting for HOURS, and I mean hours, at the Shambhala center waiting for …nothing…( that was the point actually), walking meditations in a Belizean medicine man’s jungle garden, staring at fires, staring at flowers, staring at my hands… ( you name it, I've started at it). And friggin' Wim Hof. All that method helped me connect to was how fast my limbs could turn red when provoked. It also made me a bit of money. ( I've always been really good at mind over matter "challenges" and tend to make, then win, bets about that type of thing). But I digress…
No- nothing worked for me. Not until sound.
It all happened one day. After recently learning in an Ayahuasca ceremony that sound was an incredibly powerful mood booster (see my first blog post) and that it could lift the energy in a room (or heart) like nothing I'd ever seen- I tried it on myself.
I sat down to meditate and instead of being silent, I sang. The second the first note sounded, I knew I had stumbled onto something. First of all, I felt lots of energy moving in my body. Sensations I had always heard about from others and longed to feel were pouring over me in waves. And that mind of mine, that beautiful, overactive mind of mine, didn’t fight. It listened.
I think that is the power of sound. It pulls and directs your attention/energy. It gives the mind something to focus on. Something to explore, to follow. And because thought is vibration, and sound is vibration, the thoughts will match the level of sound. Sound is in charge. It sets the “tone” (pardon the pun).
Ultimately, by lifting up and transmuting the energy of fear, sound reconnects you to the love you are at your core. And whether this is felt consciously or unconsciously, everyone I've worked with has felt more refreshed, uplifted and deeply (and I mean deeply) relaxed after their session with sound.
So, if you haven't been able to quiet that mind of yours and are in the market for more relaxation or healing, sound may just be your medicine!
Photo by Lucenda Richard.
