Mental Health conversation centered around 12 step recovery and related topics. We talk about spiritual living, living with addiction and growing in the 12 steps. Find us on our home at https://recoverysortof.com/. If you want to join the conversation, email us at RecoverySortOf@gmail.com, find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RecoverySortOf, Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recovery_sort_of/, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Recovery-Sort-Of-112376247161866/?view_public_for=112376247161866.
Ever heard of sound healing? What is sound healing? We have Denise join us to explore the world of sound healing. We talk about humming, sound bowls, singing, and a variety of other ways to make sound. But how is it healing? Denise helps explain how the vibrations of sound healing can assist in getting ourselves back into balance. We find out where to start our sound healing journey. Listen in and then share your thoughts with us.
From the episode:
Episodes mentioned:
How to find us and join the conversation:
Email: RecoverySortOf@gmail.com
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/recoverysortof/message
Ever heard of sound healing? What is sound healing? We have Denise join us to explore the world of sound healing. We talk about humming, sound bowls, singing, and a variety of other ways to make sound. But how is it healing? Denise helps explain how the vibrations of sound healing can assist in getting ourselves back into balance. We find out where to start our sound healing journey. Listen in and then share your thoughts with us.
From the episode:
Episodes mentioned:
How to find us and join the conversation:
Email: RecoverySortOf@gmail.com
Transcript:
recovery sort of is a podcast where we discuss recovery topics from the perspective of people living in long-term recovery this podcast does not intend to represent the views of any particular group organization or Fellowship the attitudes expressed are solely the opinion of its contributors be advised there may be strong language or topics of an adult nature [Music]
welcome back it’s the recovery sort of podcast I am Jason a guy who is interested in healing no matter what way it comes and I’m Billy I’m a person in long-term recovery I’m Caroline I’m also a person in long-term recovery and today we have Denise with us hi Denise hi everybody and uh we’re going to talk about sound healing as a more specific version of this but maybe holistic healing somewhat in general you know to include some other practices that maybe have felt good but that’s why we have Denise here Denise is here to tell us more about sound healing and I will turn it right over to her and let her give us the the version of her story she’s comfortable with that tells us how she got to hear where she knows about sound healing so go for it Denise hi I’m something you say and I have been in long-term recovery for any seven days that will be 36 years so I’m pretty proud of that and um so you know my journey with holistic healing started a long time ago and I think even probably before I entered into recovery I think there was a a knowing that something was unsettled within me and uh searching um even at that time searching for really to heal myself and so you know once I got into recovery and I began this journey my Foundation is in the 12-step Fellowship but there were some things that happened to me along the way where I just I still felt and I grew and I wrote some notes and I do some reading whenever I like talk or share with people and so everything that I’ve done holistically or really anything I’ve ever done in my life has been driven by my madness or my insanity or my misguidedness or have being lost and somehow in the darkness of myself I have like awoken and found myself doing things that I never even heard of um and so back in 1995 or 94 like I began this journey so at that point I’m eight or nine years clean I’m pretty I’m I’m doing well I’m staying clean I’m sponsoring people I’m helping people and I find myself um in a Trauma Center for Women and um and through that journey I was making a collage and I’ve decided that I was going to quit this corporate world that I was living in and I was going to go and be a massage therapist I didn’t really know what that meant um I just it kind of came up in a picture and so that’s what I did and my family was like why crazy there she goes here she goes what is this recovery thing so that’s what I did and I went to the Baltimore School massage and when I what I entered into was a lifelong journey that I started to hear things like energy vibration healing movement um that we were that I was more than just a physical existence I started to study that on a much deeper level and through that I became introduced to many modalities I started to learn about chakras which are energy systems and I began to um on this wonderful Journey Reiki a mariki master so I do a lot of work with energy and then um somewhere along the line I um I became a yoga teacher I did a 500 train hour training and um it’s kind of odd I was really thinking about this that my brother is a musician and so is my daughter my daughter is a music has a masters of Music my brother’s been a musician all his life and um I had been searching like I had tried I couldn’t read music like it just wasn’t connecting with me but there was this searching this inner like something was missing and um and so when I became a yoga teacher I really would How Sound started for me was I wanted to learn how to teach people to chant and that the vibration of my own vibration was what began my interest in sound healing because we all have that it’s not something we have to buy it’s not something that we have to search for if we we don’t have to go very far it’s right within us and I began to take some singing classes and Mantra and Sanskrit and I began to vibrate with my own sound and then I ended up in Australian Workshop and I was in the meditation I was laying on the floor the person was playing the Himalayan bowls and I knew with certainty that I was going to learn how to incorporate that into my journey and so that’s how I ended up getting certified I went to a school in Boulder Colorado I’m certified through my booty um in the in Himalayan bowls down healing but it’s so much bigger than that it is so much bigger and when it comes down to the very like the Pinnacle of it all it’s really about our own vibrations and our own healing our own sound and so I can give you a little demonstration then I’m gonna throw it back to you guys so this one I took from my daughter because she also does a lot of work with healing trauma and with sound vibrations and things like and so these are tin shawls so in a perfect world right in the perfect world our vibration would go like this
I would have a beginning a middle and an end it would rise and Peak and fall and we would all be happy little people but that’s not what happened so we started out our vibration we do our meditation and we’re like oh yes we’re good right and then somebody somebody like Cuts us off in traffic and then and then I would get a call because our kids
and we cut it down and so when we use sound whether it’s external sound or internal sound the idea is that we are all vibration we are mere vibration and it’s basically it’s not working good for me this morning so it’s
and to stop that and to come back to homeostasis or a place of balance where our internal external vibrations they rise they peek and they fall and you can see how that feels just when you think about it just just thinking through that idea Denise um you know I’m picturing this this old thing where like soldiers used to march across the countryside to get to the battles right and they would they all March in step and yet if you march over a bridge you can’t march in Step you break a step before you cross the bridge because all the steps all the vibrations of the same steps at the same time will actually crumble the bridge um and so I was just thinking about that and when you were describing that sound healing idea of like what our vibration is supposed to do right it’s supposed to have that beginning and then you know quote unquote we kind of feel or experience the middle and then it ends right but if you don’t end and you have all these random different kind of vibrations going on because we can’t express them in our world and they all get inside I’m like picturing those soldiers walking across the bridge right with all these different vibrations how it might I don’t know just topple us or make us feel uh you know not whole I guess
different direction how you know so I think what happens is and I think we can all relate to having experienced the altering of our vibrations where we get it all up and we’re having a good day and we feel Zen but then we start climbing just like The Ting shawls right and then maybe even at some point be shut down and so I think what’s really important is that being aware of it being aware that I am vibration being aware that other people are vibration because then what happens is is then you have us all clanging together and you ever walk into a room you’re like wow they’re vibrating really high or wow that field so we can feel also other people’s vibrations and so I do every single day at least something to check in and I don’t always consciously think I’m checking my vibration but I’ll do a breathing meditation or humming so humming brahmari it’s an ancient technique where people hum it’s I do that when I teach meditation or introduction to meditation or introduction to sound healing where it’s just simply humming there’s a lot of information on the internet about that it’s something that like I said we have access to we have access to it in our car we have access everywhere so and we’ve done that since little children right you’ll see people humming because it’s very soothing and it has a lot of medicinal benefits as well um so taking time out first of all to acknowledge that we have vibration and secondly to say okay so where is my vibration and thirdly is there something at this time that I can do to adjust and make that vibration flow have a more even rise Peak and fall have I settled in you know and in recovery we do inventory and that’s part of it taking that inventory so just as a at a base level Caroline and Billy have either of you ever done a sound meditation because I I have done it twice I both times I said I don’t know if that put me in a very deep like brainwave state or if I took a nap I’m not sure but either way I feel amazing leaving and I was just curious have either of you ever had a sound bathe meditation or anything yeah so I actually uh did a session with Denise which is what prompted all of this when when she invited me I was like that would be an amazing topic for the show so that was a couple months ago that I got to go down to Denise’s house and lay on the floor of her living room on a yoga mat and uh and do a sound healing meditation experience and it was amazing and I um as someone who really doesn’t have experience with any of this I don’t know that I walked away from that saying oh well my vibrations are aligned or if it was just simply the matter of you know relaxing for an hour I it but but I walked out of there just feeling so relaxed it was such a great experience something I would absolutely do again um yeah I mean there’s the one I think the thing that I like the most for for anyone who’s done this before at one point Denise would like put the bowls on you and then you are like truly feeling the vibration and that was just that was really cool um and I’ve tried to Denise when you were when you were leading that I think one of the things you said was you know if you if your mind starts to wander come back to ride the the sound the waves of the sound was was what you said and I’ve used that now a few times just in other meditations that I’ve done to try to that was really helpful for me in terms of trying to stay uh in the moment um so I really like that and we did some I call it sound meditation with a therapist actually who would do like some therapy and then there would be the mantras like you would do Channing uh certain Sanskrit chants that he would do with like incense and some music and it was pretty fascinating I’ve done that I’m gonna say a handful of times was it any of that uh that Vu that Vu sound because I’ve heard of that one so these were old Sanskrit mantras that they I’m sure meant something but he would say it had to do with like the specific sounds and the vibrations that were thousands of years old and these vibrations were healing you know in some way I’m sure I’m totally bitching up his way better explanation at the time I had never heard anything like that so I was fascinated at the time I’m like okay my wife started going to him because she was trying to quit smoking and so he specifically dealt with addiction and he did that through like say it would be like a half hour therapy then a half hour of meditation and then we just went to see him because she found it so interesting we went to see him a couple other times for different things and would do the meditation as part of that we took our kids and our kids got to experience it as well so Denise how was Billy’s uh explanation there did that sound spot on or do you want to clean it up some or some great points so Sanskrit I think when you talk about chanting and Sanskrit it tastes way but the thing most profound about talking about that is that what we’re searching for is not new thousands and thousands of years ago the human being has been trying to quiet the mind the human being has Triumph in trying to balance the the vibration the insanity and using sound is part of it right because we can use sound we can use breath we can use um movement um silence silence is as important as sound so that so they so when I play the bowls what a lot of people might not know and um is that not only is the sound important but it’s the space between the sound and how you bring them out so sometimes people go to sound healings and they’re like I felt agitated and and it’s a practice sometimes it’s it’s ringing us up a little bit but the way that I do it is the sound between the the silence between the sound is where people go deeper even it’s like that’s why it’s like a ringing out or following the sound and there goes my phone but um I also so when I’m a massage therapist and I’ve been doing that for 27 years but I use the sound bowls in private sessions with people where I just do the sound healing I put the bows on their body I move the bowls around their body and also do it individually so not just it’s not just a group healing it can be done one-on-one with people and that’s mostly how I work um I do a few times at my house maybe before the pandemic I was doing it probably 10 times a year at different places but since the pandemic I’m doing it two or three times a year but um planting is amazing and sanskrat there’s something about that language and I’m far from an expert on it but there’s something about this stuff the vowels and the vibration of it that has like a perfect pitch I mean there’s a lot of research about that using it with autistic children and different things like that I mean so yeah so you did pretty good bill you just your experience of it and it you know it triggered me to like realize that yeah since the beginning of time this is I don’t know somehow when I got clean and in recovery I thought this was new like we were the only people who were searching and that is like so far from the truth because by going out and and um and studying right because I’m a student I’m an obsessed student and just prior to coming in here I was listening to something called slow speaking I think it’s a guy named David Rock and so he was like prepping me to speak and he was giving me these tips and I was like yes I just found so my life is a driving force of who I am and the text the techniques that I use to have a better life and to have a happier Soul which can be very challenging in this world it reminded me when you were talking there about the uh the space in between the sound a couple of books I’ve read um both sort of Buddhist philosophy type books but they they talk about this idea of like how much space is in the universe right and like yeah we we look at like the parts that are there like the planets as being the important parts and yet it’s all this space so much space between them and it related that to sound and like it talked about during meditative practices trying to listen to what’s beneath the sound right like the space or the silence that existed before the sound could come and be on top of it I don’t know something about that idea always like really pulled me in this idea of trying to find the emptiness that is underlying everything else we’ve put on top of it and something about that uh uh I don’t know I guess just speaks to me or feels nice and and maybe that’s what I was picking up on when you were talking about the space between the sounds I think us out too um
Summits um um just because I’m constantly learning but from one thing that I I’m pretty sure about is that I know people sell an idea of like this is the way and what I have found is that there are many ways and so like I can do the sound healing over here and then you know next week I might go like I did papasana and I sat in silence for you know 10 days or I’m going off to learn about how to quiet the mind like there are many ways and I I don’t use just one I’m I don’t know maybe I just need more help or more support but I am I feel like holistically the world is vast right I mean I just went to a drum circle that was amazing there was after not only where we were resounding we were dancing and chanting and we put them all together all the sounds together like it’s amazing like there’s so much sound and there’s so much about silence there’s so much so many ways to step away from our suffering step away from our grief step away from our loss I personally have all those things going on in my life and so I need to surround myself with surround myself with places that are healing and uplifting and loving constantly like not weekly not monthly but like daily like and wherever I find that you know and I like to to so I like to say like what is my mission my mission is to help people find their joy to help people find just a glimmer of peace not the not the whole picture just a little bit and you know a lot of like I don’t really call myself a Healer even though I work with people a lot I like to think of myself as a facilitator of healing like I create a space in a place where people can come and go inside and find their own place to heal and isn’t that what really recovery is about [Music]
thank you one of the questions I want to ask and I don’t know if this is pertinent to sound healing necessarily but I feel like you came in from what I understand of your story and and you kind of addressed the recovery portion first and then found these as you know I don’t know if you call them add-ins or or you know complementary practices along with it do you feel like these would have greatly helped you or impacted your life or recovery had you been able to be introduced to them early on and or maybe if that’s not the case how do you feel like these would help maybe newer members who are just finding recovery now if they could be introduced to these kind of things early in their recovery program would that be extremely useful or maybe they’re just not useful practices until later on or how do you feel about that
that going off and thinking that this is recovery and so when I I just I just did um yoga and I did a yoga workshop and a meditation workshop at a convention um a couple weeks ago and I’m and I’m always clear when I do that this is not Narcotics Anonymous this is not a 12-step Fellowship this is not what keeps me clean this is like an like an I don’t know it’s it’s part of me now it’s my whole it’s part of my recovery but it’s not what keeps me clean because what I found is that my my 12-step Fellowship keeps me clean right and so you know could I have got misled and then ended up because you know in a I mean people could end up doing all kinds of things out there in this holistic world like psychedelics and but that all that’s off the table for me like I cannot use no matter what and so I’m I mean the steps you know when you get to 11 Step and I don’t have in our literature in the Narcotics Anonymous literature it talks about that we have the freedom together we’re supported to go and find these um other spiritual Avenues and experience different things but you know for me it always comes back to that it’s a fine line and I think for me it’s it it’s not where I stay clean period okay so I am like all in my recovery and this is part of who who I but I’m like all in this too but I can’t let neither one can go I need them I need it all but if something had to go I’d be sitting in a meeting you can find silence and meditation there you can find all the things that that you I could find everything I need there I guess in a certain way um that’s that’s a really challenging question and I think you know yeah if I found it sooner maybe some of my journey I might not have ended up in a Trauma Center but maybe you know the Chinese the trauma center LED me where I needed to be so you know I I admitted myself to a Trauma Center because I didn’t want to use and what I did was I I opened up opportunity for me to find deeper healing what do you think has inspired you along the way as you’ve done these practices um you talked about the yoga you talked about the sound healing and there might have been another one I can’t remember but what inspired you to once you had tried them and felt like they were useful for your life to go and be a practitioner or someone who facilitates these these kind of things like I you could have just said I just want to go and you know do these practices the rest of my life not necessarily I want to teach them or was it just the desire to learn it better for yourself or or did you have a strong pool to like want to share this with others I think
to me so that was triggered like I was in a non-knowing not just you know I went to my job and I you know when I take off together my daughter’s soccer game and they’re like you don’t have any more time off and I’m like well I’m not I’m going to start my own business it kind of was out from being a rebel sort of but I think the rest of it like I went to yoga training um because I just love being a student and it was more affordable than college so I just was looking for a place to learn and I loved the practice and I never really had any intentions of chica um of teaching and then I started teaching I still don’t teach a lot like I teach private lessons in my home I have a yoga studio room in my home like I do everything from my home and I and I you know um I facilitated Retreats for a really long time um pre-pandemic so I think it’s just been motivated by my own wanting to learn more and then it grew from there and then yeah just from wanting to to do better to be better to sometimes it’s driven by my pain like I took death and dying of course in death and dying because I had loss in my life so it’s usually motivated by what is happening in my life you know like I was going through a divorce so I went and took a you know a course on conflict resolution like that’s just who I am I’m a student of the world with when it comes to sound healing in specific are there more than one modality of sound healing like is there different approaches to it or maybe just even different instruments that can be used at different times for maybe different means do you want to talk a little bit about that yeah so I think there’s all I think you know the there’s the um you know the metal bowls crystal balls but then incorporating into that I mean you have you have like um I have wind chimes and I have a Gong and um my daughter when we do groups she sings and chants um she plays The Surety box which is another instrument so other instruments can be brought in the flute is a beautiful instrument that’s part of sound healing obviously I talked about drum circling is another like sometimes you can even have like drumming in the background or you could go full drumming it’s a different experience um singing singing a sound healing harming is sound healing vibration um like I have like this rain all kinds of things make sound um and again when it comes back to me personally is that when all else fails I know that I have my own internal sound and and people I have found are uncomfortable with their own personal sound like but it’s something that we all should I think I just can’t express enough how people should utilize their own sound you know I was humming and chanting before um they’re all done it’s just something to my heart and you can also move sound through your body so when you use your physical sound like if you go really deep it’s like the lower chakras because Samuel and I’m not to hold on the topic the chakras but so if you go really low it’s deep in our grounding and if you go really high it’s up in the spiritual realm of our being so um I practice a lot of moving my sound through my body whether I need to ground and then moving it up into my um my insight and my connection with my higher power in the universe so sound is amazing when you’re thinking of those uh I’m just curious do you go into it like oh this person is giving me the energy uh that they have a lot of resentment or anger or frustration so if that’s a good time for drums right to kind of get that out or maybe somebody’s feeling sad or grief so we go into the bowls like is it go like that or is it more is it based on something else I think that whatever
it’s a room of people in a drum circle or in a samueling that are all some people are going to feel real chilled other people going to come in there all so it’s it’s what it is it’s about creating a balance where the vibration is like yeah a lot of people call it high or like you felt amazing or you felt great but maybe you just felt more balanced because it’s really about balancing balancing our energy balancing like um I don’t know if you’re familiar with chakras but the seven main chakras are there so you have the root April the navel the heart the throat the third eye and the crown their energy their energies um they’re also nerve centers in our body and so it’s not about having any of that more than the other like oh I live in my heart no because if you lived you ever see someone who lives in there like they just fell in love like when they’re fluttering around and stuff and you’re like boy they need to put their feet on because we use terms like that like wow like you tell your children when they’re misbehaving you’re grounded okay because they need to get grounded or you know when somebody’s angry you tell you know you you feel like they need to be in their heart more because we just need to have balance we use those terms um I can’t think of any right now but but in real life we subconsciously just use them um all the time and the ground in your kid is one of them it’s like okay we gotta scratch this craziness and get our feet on the ground yeah you talk about that and you say balance and the thing I think that maybe and this is just for me uh you know I make up my own [ __ ] but it sounds like you know I’m listening to this this sound healing and then I get in tune with myself you know it’s like a tune-up it’s getting me to the right frequency to vibrate with myself I guess I may be like I’m walking around the world vibrating a little off from where I’m at trying to you know meet all the demands or please all the people and then maybe this this sound kind of brings balance by getting me in tune right it gives me the vibration I need um I think somebody else wanted to have a question so one thing Denise having left um this the session that you did feeling so great and not having kind of another opportunity necessarily on the horizon one thing that I was curious about was I mean it is is there value to going on to YouTube and trying to find you know someone doing sound healing bowls there or do you have actually need to physically be in the room with the instrument that’s making the vibrations like can can you can you do it virtually I guess is is my question yes I mean I think I’m I’m a I’m a big fan of YouTube and um whatever you know whatever is the next best thing obviously feeling the real vibration is best but then the next best thing would be maybe listen to this you know being part I think there’s something that happens in a group with real people even in meditation there’s something that happens there’s a connection it’s bigger it’s more profound but then you layer down you say well this is my next best option but think the thing with that is that we can get isolated and kind of be on our own and I think that that groups and being with people are very therapeutic and um so I think there’s emerging and a balance with that you know the other thing too there is a book it’s called the humming effect which you know I um I took a course with um Jonathan and Andy Goldman and um so five minutes of humming right they did blood work and so there are physical things that happen in the body when and this is just because I have the research on this but I’m sure there are studies but across the board won’t stay on healing as well but like the oxytocin goes off which is your trustworman your nitric oxide levels go up which creates expansion in your blood vessels right your your blood pressure is lowered so um your cortisol is lowered because it works it’s like but with humming it’s like five minutes at eight to five minutes and it gets too hot it gets too high so they have like this humming that you do it’s a technique it’s a practice it’s all practice you know and some days the practice goes well and some days the practice is hard right and that’s why I think that’s what you know in um you’re familiar with patanjali Sutra or the eight limbs of yoga there’s a part in there where they talk about the obstacles you know and so we give up we don’t get benefits right away or we get lazy or it gets hard or so what are the obstacles that block us from continuing because the word here is practice it’s just practice um I have not been cured I still have you know I’m still in the practice I’m still learning I could study forever it’s just such a beautiful world and wealth of information that I’m fascinated by it what role do you think that intention plays going into like a sound healing and maybe even a holistic healing in general and then from there how do you decide how you’re going to set your intentions for different sessions of sound healing so that’s a [Music] that’s a great talk about they have a formula and it’s called so it’s called um somewhere intention plus sound equals healing so that is really important and I’m glad you asked that because setting the intention because we could just make lots of noise right and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not but so when I do whenever I do any type of healing or meditation or sound and I think Caroline will remember this is that we set intention like the intention I did got to see on healing was for healing and um I don’t remember exactly but it’s always for healing and when I do private sessions I also either I set the intention for the session based on what I’m experienced with my client or I ask them to set an intention vancupa um you do it in Yoga Nidra you do it in a lot like so it’s really is important and tension is very important the other thing too just in personal meditation separate maybe even from sound is one of the things I think is really important is for people to say I am now beginning my meditation this is my intention I’m now ending my meditation so that it’s not they go for stroll and then we’re like well that was my meditation I think it’s important to set that intention like this is what I’m doing so that we you know existed for me personally in my practice it I I get a better experience from it I don’t know that this is necessarily sound healing in itself but with you talking about these variety of ways you know we make sound we hum all these different things my meditation teacher always talks about having kind of an active breathing in the beginning of our meditations because it helps to focus the mind right you’re not only focusing on the breathing but the act that you’re doing as well and one of the ones he uses he calls ocean breath and I know it has a fancy name and I don’t know what the hell it is because I can’t pronounce all that but
okay yeah there you go I had a feeling you would know um but he talks about some of the benefit of it is you know you it’s so if anybody wants to know what it is it’s like fogging up a mirror but instead of breathing out your mouth you’re coming out your nose which sounds weird when you first say it but if you practice it it’s actually kind of fun um but it it does make a sound while you do it and he talks about how it’s one of his favorites because you’re you’re doing the practice of the movement inside your body so there’s that to focus on and an anchor two there’s the breathing feel in your your chest stomach and and mouth area and then there’s the sound you can also listen and listen to that you’re making as you’re breathing and so it’s like this three-fold anchor I guess and he loves that do you is that like sound healing or is that just kind of a another place to to stay still and centered I I think I definitely think it’s sound healing and I also think you could we could you could do a you know a whole podcast one just breathing right there are so many different breathing techniques that are a way of meditating because then breath becomes the focus but then with breath so when you do humming right you have both breathing and sound and so you have both so when you’re humming you’re breathing and breathe and humming for five minutes is harder than you think but just you know the ujjari breath where you’re like instructing the back of your throat um chanting and breathing like they’re all combined and they overlap in in layers and you know I think whatever things resonate with different people one of the things I like to do in all yoga classes that I teach or all meditation classes is there’s going to be some point where I have people make sound I think it’s really important that we or we can be stuck in our voice and I think you know I may I have people do throat sound like hmm like tea fart sounds like D or deep in the gut sounds um it just I think it just frees people it just frees us ing I I love the Himalayan bowls I love the flute I love the drums I love all of it but the thing that I like the best is my own sale and I never I was told as a child just don’t put your day job you might you’re singing Out Of Tune you know my my as a singer you know and I just I I refuse to believe that my sound was not good and so um a person who would not sing at all I will I will lead singing in a minute and and it’s we all can sing and I think when it comes down to it it’s like it’s like the greatest and I’ve been forced to do things like I I did drum um Native American sweat lodge for a long time and was part of facilitating that and we needed someone to sing we needed a singer and we didn’t have a singer and I said well I guess I’ll sing and so I’ve all I’ve been my limits have always been pushed but by my own experiences and I just encourage people who just find your voice find that place that that touches your heart um because why not yeah when you when you talk about finding your voice for some reason that statement just brought together like three things in my head um from other places right like the the one I’m thinking of um you know the ways kids if you ask children in a Kindergarten class hey uh who’s who’s a singer who’s an artist you know who’s a dancer everybody raises their hands and then Society does its thing to us right and then by the time we get to high school you ask for singers dancers and artists and you might have like two hands and it’s that that societal level like kind of beating our authenticity or our you know being enough out of us almost right and then I thought of like we just had an episode before you with Coda and you were talking about finding your voice and I’m thinking about the places where people are people Pleasers and can’t speak up for themselves and we struggle to find this voice inside of us and how your practice of like doing these sounds from different locations in our body could help that and then the third one came in and it was like well yeah man we we get stuck right we we stuff these emotions and feelings down because we don’t know how to express them in our world and and they get stuck right in that throat and in that gut and in that chest area and like I could just see from a therapy lens making these sounds could loosen up that you know what I call blockages of of Old Ship in there [Music] thank you
[Music] yeah and so you know I’ve got a lot of young Retreats like weekend Retreats from Friday to Sunday afternoon and on Friday night we would always start with a drum circle and so there would be like maybe say if there were 40 people there would be 10 people dancing right and the rest would be some would be drumming and maybe there’d be a few singing but so by Sunday by Saturday night actually by Saturday night everyone in the room would be dancing and singing and moving because we it’s hard to move from the messages that we received and kindergarten I mean sometimes I think get over it already but it’s so deeply ingrained that um need to be moved we need to be moved we need to be shifted and um and so a lot of times I watch people and help them when I’m teaching do not really think about where it came from but just to it’s not about figuring out what caused it it’s more about just moving it if you want to go book later and go find it that’s fine but in the meantime like Raise Your Arms dance and sing like just have some fun it’s different
do you feel like when you go into a a sound healing session do you go in already kind of knowing what you’re going to do like oh this person reached out they want sound bowls that’s definitely how we’re doing it or have you ever noticed that like you planned on doing one thing and they show up and you’re like oh I need different instruments and tools for this we got to do this different has that ever happened or so I think yeah I think that I have a baseline just like anything else like you know you have a baseline for your podcast and then it goes where it goes so I have a baseline of skills and tools and then so individually sometimes I work with people over and over again so I kind of know and but I get a feeling I get an intuition like I’m very I’m more intuition driven than knowledge driven and I’m not going to Discount that I don’t have knowledge but I am intuition direct driven and so like for example what the one that Caroline was in so a lot of times I move I I like people to experience the bows on their body and I also like to um energetically touch people through the sound healing so sometimes people will say to me like I’ll touch someone on their heart and then they’ll just start to cry or I’ll touch someone on their feet or wherever like I’m I’m intuitively driven to do that and then they’ll say how did you know that and I’ll be like I don’t know it just was in in a knowing it was just a knowing anyhow do I fumble sometimes if I drop the ball when somebody sometimes yeah or like sometimes it’s obvious like if a person is not being still in the sound session I’ll take my biggest heaviest bowl and put it on their feet they can’t move or so I I so there are train techniques and then there are intuition generated things and it just comes from experience you know from working with people like I’ve touched thousands I can’t even I was talking to somebody the other day I’ve touched thousands of people and so sometimes and sometimes I know when not to touch people if sometimes you know a person will give me a body signal like they have their hands are crossed their legs are crossed you know they’re different things so I sometimes it’s just reading people’s own body language yeah it’s all individual um but again like I said it’s a base training and like even in like sound healings that I do I’ve learned traditional past down like protocols so the notes are played in order like my bowls they each bow my sub my set of seven each Bowl has a node that matches the chakra and they’re played in a certain musical order that creates a certain outcome so it is a training I don’t just ring them randomly then after I do the protocol that I want to do then I can free play right was within that so yeah it’s it’s like playing an instrument which I talked about my family being musicians and what I found when I went through this training was that I found my musical instrument native flute and sound healing bowls or instruments that I can play in through my heart through my intuition not through Reading of Music however I do have notes um musical notes for the for my chakra balls I was picturing uh you dropping a sound Bowl on somebody and just you know going with it like yeah I don’t know you must have needed that like it was just part of the part of the thing it’s my knowing yeah
I’m not going to go into all the details but as soon as I walked in I was like so I I had a woman that I worked with and her husband her husband would help me with uh he played the flute and things but as soon as we walked in he had walked over to me and he goes I told her you’re not going to write this place and I’m like wow like what is happening in here but the whole time that we were facilitating the the um the meditation with the balls like there were things happening that like people laying on the floor couldn’t see like like picture fell off the wall and just energetically it was really crazy and so you just do like I just do things to try to clear the space writing shows that I played they’re used like smudging so instead of burning sage or whatever you can bring tin shawls to clear space and so just sometimes I just have to do whatever because the people came they paid their money they were ready to go and I’m like wow if it’s just yeah dropping things things were falling it was pretty crazy we never know you never know what you’re going to get when you bring energy and energetics and healing modalities into a space things are going to happen so Denise what would you say to our listeners that maybe are are interested in this and and don’t have experience and don’t really know what resources are available for them to to start to explore some of these things that we spoke about today
so um again I mean you’d go you can find you know the answers to any questions that you have um you know books reading books um this is you know this is how to heal from singing bowls I don’t know and it’s by sorenz ceresta how to heal with singing bowls that’s a resource that I use as you are trained with um he wrote that book and then again like the humming of the fact is another one and there are many many many more um you know just do a search it’s it’s huge and you know your local community like the yoga studio closest to your house there are it’s happening everywhere so if if you’re just hearing about it now then you’re it’s time for you to make a move for some reason you’ve tuned in and you’re ready to find your sound find your voice find your vibration as somebody else’s but sometimes in order to bring ourselves home we have to go out so that we can come back for ourselves thinking about the idea how in therapy you know we don’t tend to say that any one therapist is bad or good or whatever but you know we might say that a therapists might not be the right fit for somebody who’s coming in to receive therapy um for people who are listening who are interested in going out and maybe exploring the world of sound healing what would you say might be some signs that they are in the right place for them or or maybe not the right place for them that they might pick up on and could adjust well I don’t know um that’s a tough one I think that that’s a tough one because I don’t really want to call judgment on things I you know for me when I so I searched at places that are affordable and practical for everyone um I’m not going to say that I haven’t spent a lot of money in trainings because sometimes trainings can be very expensive but there are a lot of places to go that are um thanks when when it’s two when money feels too forward it concerns me a little bit um I think if I get a weird vibe and I try it once or twice and I’m like this isn’t a good fit for me I might just move one you know if anybody’s doing anything inappropriate then that would be a place to move on of course um so I mean I like to go to places that are like I’m going to um Peace Village which is donation based I’ve been to there’s um the international Meditation Center which is in Westminster which is um donation based um very beautiful programs um and you know and again I have P you know to be trained with professionals at times but I’m very careful and and I and I sorted out and I always go free is best
um I could go on YouTube and learn and learn a lot but then you know if you need to get certified and stuff like that that’s a whole different thing and you know you just talk about in yoga studios most people know sio the studios offer all types of meditations and sound and if you just you know go inward and use your best judgment I don’t know I think sometimes people are vulnerable when we’re searching at healing and so we’re easy to be taken advantage of um it concerns me because you can get attached to someone and they might be playing you could be played on your vulnerability so that’s where the danger comes in because when we’re wounded and we’re searching we can be really vulnerable um I don’t feel like that in my life so I think you know ask someone else their opinion what do you think about this class you know okay so yeah now I’m getting like I’m getting in slices so take a friend with you like one time I went with a friend in the program we went to this meditation and we blew that because she knew like I do all these things and I took her with me and when we left it’s like I said something to her about and she said I was thinking the same thing I just felt like it was bonus I just seemed like they were real I just felt like there was some kind of scam going on and she felt the same thing but she didn’t want to say anything to me and then when I said it she was like yeah I felt the same way I’m like yeah we’re not gonna go back there
maybe he’s not as vulnerable As You Are um pick a couple people with you make it a date night you know so don’t search alone switch with the bar it’s always better to have a buddy once you have decided that sound healing is a part of your you know coping repertoire or coping you know list of things you do when do you know how to use it so is this something like I say oh you know I’m gonna tune in and adjust and and I’ll start with once a month and that’s not enough it’s announced every other week and then I landed like you know what every Sunday at three o’clock that’s when I sound bowl and that’s what keeps me regular or is it more for you like I’m feeling this certain way this is a good time when I do sound stuff and it works for me to kind of relieve that is it more of like an in the moment practice for you or more of like I do this every so often to keep myself balanced and and tuned in well you know I work with the balls not every day but almost every day because I’m working with clients so my sound bowls all all the time and even though I’m using I’m using them in a session I am still receiving the vibrations so a lot of times even though I’m doing the session I’m still I’m still receiving it um any opportunity like I’m going to a up-to-coming retreat in their sound healing on the on the venue like I’m I’m signing up I’m doing it whatever it is and and and um and in my yoga practice which because I have a knee injury I’m a runner too but I have a knee injury so I’ve been doing a lot more yoga um I do it I do some type of sound healing every time whether it’s a humming or a just a three minute chant or home or whatever it is I just it’s important to sound you know I did sound before doing this talk you know I was just uh saying words and they made me feel happy so um I did my Superman pose because I learned that and I did some sound healing I put my head back and I said I chanted the word freedom I chanted the word free um and then I felt happy so it doesn’t take a lot doesn’t take a lot okay um we forgot I forgot you know I had a procedure done on my leg Friday and I’ve been limping it around and dragging my leg and and all this kind of stuff and then when I woke up this morning and I got and I’m like I forget I forget that there’s healing available to me like I don’t have to walk wallow in myself sometimes I just choose to go down that rabbit hole and it’s we’re not it’s not it’s not and it’s a daily reprieve it’s a day at a time like the sound healing that I did last week is not going to fix the vibration that I’m having today or you know the breath work that I did yesterday I need to do breath work today me and my kid I mean I have an accumulative healing so it might catch me for a little bit but eventually I’m gonna my rhythm is gonna be clanging again um so it’s it’s I know humans we want it to be quick fast easy and permanent and it’s not and that’s the heart that’s the hardest realization that it’s a you know it is really truly a day at a time whether you’re in recovery or you’re just a person walking on the earth um I don’t separate it I don’t call it either for Recovery I don’t call it sound healing for Recovery I think that we’re all in it together you know um when it comes to finding our spiritual path we can now I can now merge with at some point after being clean and finding a spiritual path I can merge into the world as a whole and again like I said in the beginning I do stay clean in the 12-step Fellowship but I have been given the opportunity to be part of the whole and to see it that and to see it that way that I am not separate I’m not different um um other people Denise is there anything that we didn’t ask today that you feel like is super pertinent to a sound healing or or how to get started or any any other information that you thought you just definitely wanted to share here today I I think um not really I think we covered miss most everything um well we didn’t cover everything but for in this amount of time I just think that um you know I was actually reading something in the spirit in the um the new enable the spirits spiritual principle a day book and it just talked about being yourself and so I read that right before I came on here because I I sometimes want to be everybody I want to be other people I want to say if other people are saying and what I told myself was just be yourself have fun and share the truth as you know it and so what I you know you know one of the things that I’ve been really working on this year with my clients is so I’m going to end with this but it’s been very profound and so I work with people and do massage every you know how many a week and you know everyone knows where their stress is where is my stress my stress it’s in my leg it’s in my back and so what I have done and what I ask people when they’re on my table or I’m doing a sound healing is they asked them to find where their Joy is where is your jewelry because it’s in there and so to shift from finding our stress defining our pain to finding looking in within myself and my physical spout self my emotional self and my spiritual self sometimes I just lay on my floor and I ask myself where is my joy and um it’s in there is it in my voice is it in my hands is it in my craft where is my joy it’s been a huge shift it was kind of my New Year’s my New Year’s um insight and so what I encourage people to do is ask yourself look for your joy and then you know if you don’t if you don’t find it keep looking because it’s there thank you guys for having me it’s been wonderful sorry I jumped in too soon Denise for anybody who is who’s listened to you today and loved what you’ve had to say and and thinks man maybe this is the person I want to go to whether they are do you do anything virtual are you available out of state to people or
somebody wanted to do something but so whatever comes to me is what I do like I don’t advertise I don’t have a website people come to me from word of mouth I use Facebook to set up events so I’m Denise Anthony and I’m on Facebook um so you could you know you could find me you could say I heard so you have to be specific because I’ll accept people who I don’t know but if you said you sent me a message and said I heard you on a podcast I’m interested in discussing some things with you or would like to have a session with you whether it be in person or virtual then um I would respond to you um that would probably be you know the best the best contact I do have an email it is send to Denise comcast.net and that is
s-e-n-d-t-o-d-e-n-i-s-e at comcast.net so you could send me an email as well perfect perfect so anybody that wants to get in touch with Denise about doing sand healing can follow them they will be in our show notes right underneath this episode and if you’re interested in sound healing just in general look for the local yoga studios you know search it online Google’s a wealth of information in this day and age and and go out there and try it out man there’s there’s definitely nothing bad about Gathering more information right either I can try this and it works or it doesn’t work for me or whatever you think of it but yeah go out there and live and hum and whistle and any other thing that makes a noise so that you can heal thank you again Denise yes thank you thank you so much [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you did you like this episode share it with people you think might get something out of it check out the rest of our episodes at recoverysortup.com also while you’re there you can find ways to link up with us on Facebook Twitter Instagram Reddit YouTube anything we’re always looking for new ideas got an idea you want us to look into reach out to us [Music]