This last few years (2008 to 2015) is a 7 year cycle period for me – from age 42 to 49, from the 6th to the 7th life stage. I have been working with sound during this whole stage.
During my Masters Degree in Consciousness Studies and Transpersonal Psychology I began a huge shift in my spiritual practice (which had been Authentic Power practice and Yoga, both chakra based practices) to include the use of Sound and Silence. I trained as a Transformational Yoga teacher, learned the bija mantras and the Indian musical notes Sa Re Ga etc., as well as other forms of chanting including the OM from Hatha yoga, Tantric mantras from Shakti yoga and Vedic mantras from Shabda Yoga. I also learned how these mantras related to the chakras and how to use them to bring about balance and healing that would filter immediately from the subtle into the mental and emotional levels of wellbeing. I studied this at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in New Delhi in January 2008. I was in India to attend the first International Congress on Psychology and Spirituality. There I met Swamiji Vidyanand and after the congress I went to train with him as a teacher.
Also, during my MSc course I undertook an individual research project into the effects of Sound and Silence on the psyche and the physical body. This research and the training in Transformational yoga, which combined postures with a lot of chanting and study of the chakras and subtle energy field of the body correlated closely with the colour meditation and study of the subtle energies and chakras I had undertaken at the College of Healing back in 1994.
Working with the chakras has been at the heart of all of the healing work I have done. I feel this is essential, as they relate to the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of the multiple human systems. They relate to the endocrine system, the glands, hormones, the chemical messengers in the body; the circulatory, digestive and elimination systems. Each chakra helps to regulate different aspects of our system.
Then I began to put together what I had learnt about the energy centres (another name for the chakras) and intention with Gary Zukav when I studied Authentic Power with him; what I learned about energy, intentions and healing at the College of Healing; about sound, energy and intention in Transformational yoga and I became more excited.
As a student of Psycho-therapies, Person Centred Counselling, Transpersonal Psychology, Authentic Power (a spiritual psychology) and Healing my primary focus has always been on healing psychological and spiritual issues, using Transpersonal tools, i.e. tools that include the notion of holism, a spiritual reality and a connection to a wider more meaningful reality.
Now, discovering the power of adding Sound into the mix was the most exciting thing in the world for me. You see, I come from a family of musicians. Singers, pianists, violinists. Now my sons are both musicians too, they play guitar, classical, rock, base and also drums. I sing, dance, play samba and shamanic drums and my soul never sings more sweetly than when bathed in music, all types, but particularly classical, and I CHANT ALL THE TIME! I sing every day.
As a family we sang together. We were a dysfunctional lot, a bunch of addicts if ever you met one – alcoholics, smokers, food addicts, shop and workaholics, sex addicts, we did most of the good ones – but the place where we were healthy, whole and in harmony was when we made music together. We sang as a family at celebrations, it was the one thing I remember that united us. When we were all one in LOVE and harmony. Whether it was singing around my paternal grandmother Mabel at the piano, she was a brilliant professional pianist, or singing in 3 or 4 part acapella harmony around the Christmas dinner table, we made wonderful music together and always, always it moved us to tears.
I sang in the school choir and in school musicals, my mother sang in a choir at St George’s Hall in Liverpool. We always cried when we heard each other sing. It made our souls BLOOM, put us in touch with our own and each others’ beauty and perfection, our emotions, our souls were exposed, open, blossoming – it was the only time I think we were truly vulnerable and authentic with each other.
So, now I am practicing and studying sound healing (there’s always more to learn) and discovering deeper and deeper levels. It excites me and empassions me – really FLOATS MY BOAT. I am studying Sound Yoga, musical intervals and scales, how to use tuning forks, singing bowls, new ways of chanting and toning to remove pain and energy blocks, where I would have used my hands before. I LOVE using sound to do things my hands used to do. Its so gentle and sweet.
I am bringing together all the Shamanic, therapeutic, colour, sound, chakra and energy tools I’ve learned during the last 25 years to evolve my own personal practice as well as my healing work. I have created Sound Mind Yoga a simple blend of these tools that anyone can use to enhance wellbeing and I am doing a diploma in Sound Healing to learn as much as I can about new things I can do with sound. I have plenty to do during my Uveitis sabbatical, including using all these tools on myself!
When my sabbatical is over I will blend Hara Willow Healing and Amazing Lyfe and Sound Mind Yoga into some coherent meta approach. It will be focussed into one stream. Not sure what that will look like, as I’m still in the chaos stage of revisioning my life, but it will get there…