Have you ever pondered what it might be like to experience a moment of tranquility amidst the chaos of daily life? Melissa Felsenstein, the founder of Innersounds Meditation, reveals how sound healing can be your haven. Melissa used this therapeutic technique to conquer her personal battles with anxiety and depression, but she's also refined it into a unique formula to certify a new generation of sound practitioners.
Sound healing has many benefits including healing the nervous system and creating calm to allow the body to work better. Melissa provides an insider's look at her 200-hour professional sound healing practitioner course, designed to equip aspiring practitioners to become a professional sound healers. We talk about the process of crafting crystal bowls and gongs and the differences between them.
From achieving meditative states, reducing insomnia, to balancing chakras, Melissa lets listeners taste the experience: at the end of the episode there is a mini sound bath.
More about Agile Vocalist, including artist biographies, liner notes and additional visual material for every episode can be found on the Agile Vocalist web site.
Have you ever pondered what it might be like to experience a moment of tranquility amidst the chaos of daily life? Melissa Felsenstein, the founder of Innersounds Meditation, reveals how sound healing can be your haven. Melissa used this therapeutic technique to conquer her personal battles with anxiety and depression, but she's also refined it into a unique formula to certify a new generation of sound practitioners.
Sound healing has many benefits including healing the nervous system and creating calm to allow the body to work better. Melissa provides an insider's look at her 200-hour professional sound healing practitioner course, designed to equip aspiring practitioners to become a professional sound healers. We talk about the process of crafting crystal bowls and gongs and the differences between them.
From achieving meditative states, reducing insomnia, to balancing chakras, Melissa lets listeners taste the experience: at the end of the episode there is a mini sound bath.
More about Agile Vocalist, including artist biographies, liner notes and additional visual material for every episode can be found on the Agile Vocalist web site.
Once you understand how to get under the noise of your own mind, like to get out of your own way, when you understand that the pathway to silence it gets easier and easier to get there and the sound healing is a way to establish that path.
Speaker 3:Listen to this next Agile Vocalist episode. Agile Vocalist is a podcast and blog about sound and the performing arts with a California connection. Melissa Felsenstein is the founder of Innersounds Meditation and a professional sound practitioner with over 10 years experience. She's a self-proclaimed ambassador of rest and delights in helping others return to a calm, meditative and deeply restful place. During these profoundly restful states, your body begins engaging in an all-systems repair reducing stress, easing sleep, strengthening immunity, enhancing intuition, deploying mood boosters and life just feels a whole lot better.
Speaker 3:Melissa experienced all of these benefits herself when she used sound to heal her own vicious cycle of anxiety and depression. She has spent the last 10 years refining her technique into a unique Innersounds formula specifically designated to heal the nervous system and create internal calm. Melissa offers a 200-hour professional sound healing practitioner course where she teaches others how to become a professional sound healer. I'm also incredibly grateful to Moonlanding Meditative Arts for welcoming us in as guests to their gorgeous space for this episode. Moonlanding Meditative Arts is where mindfulness meets creativity in a beautiful Oakland California space. The studio offers health coaching, open creativity studio time, classes and more to awaken your inner creative, connect your mind and body and move. Visit moonlandingstudio on the web for more info.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:And, as Melissa said, we are here at Moonlanding Meditative Arts in Oakland and a beautiful converted space, so you wouldn't know the city was 50 feet away.
Speaker 1:It was so quiet and soft and it just feels like I could be out in nature somewhere.
Speaker 3:That's one of the interesting things about this city is that there's a lot of energy, but it's very easy to slip into the trees and let nature come in. So we're so glad to have you on your tour through the.
Speaker 1:Bay Area.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yes, you want to say a little bit about that what you say if you come down periodically?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so well, I'm Melissa Felstens-Dynab, inner Sounds Meditation, and I'm actually a third generation Bayarian. So my grandmother was born in Oakland, my mom was born in Oakland and I was born in Mountain View, which is not cool as cool as Oakland. I was like Mom, you broke the streak, you know. But yes, I have a very strong affinity to the Bay Area.
Speaker 1:It really feels just. You know, you arrive in different places in your life and you know, sometimes you were born in that place, sometimes you just stumble upon it, but you have that sense of home and I just really feel it here, with the beautiful bay and the breeze and just the trees. When I arrived here in 2015 to start my sound healing business, I had come from LA and the first thing I realized when I moved back was like, oh, I'm a tree person and there's really not a lot of trees, especially when you get out in nature in Los Angeles. You know it's desert, so there's a lot of shrubs and little like trees that are trying really hard but not really getting, you know, very big.
Speaker 1:But here you know you can stumble into redwoods, and I saw these oaks and I just it just sort of stunned me like, oh yeah, you know I love trees, love being in the trees. So of course that led me to go further north and now I'm living in the land of trees in Portland, oregon, and I've been there for about a year and a half.
Speaker 3:What sound did you wake up with today?
Speaker 1:Birds I did. I'm staying in a place that it's actually just in the city it's about seven minutes away from here but the trees I don't know, they're just. There's a lot of birds and they're out there singing their little hearts out, and I love it. It's one of my favorite sounds to wake up to. If I have an alarm, it actually is the Koshy time, so you put that on your phone. I record it and yeah, and that's why it wakes me up.
Speaker 3:Would you say that that's your favorite instrument? Do you have a favorite instrument?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think my favorite instruments are gongs. I love them. I watched your video about the gong thing.
Speaker 3:You didn't bring the gong Not today.
Speaker 1:No, no, yeah, I've got. I'm thoroughly obsessed.
Speaker 3:That was incredible, because the one where you played the ring of it the overtone, where you were talking about how the overtone creates its own frequencies. I could hear that. I mean that was a great video, because as a singer, I immediately heard that overtone, that chord ringing like ch-ch-ch-ch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's definitely. So the gongs, they're really exciting.
Speaker 3:So in my background gathering it seemed like there was one of your instruments is astrologically connected. I guess it's the gong. Do you want to tell us about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can go over it like a like, briefly.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, so gongs are handmade, they're hand hammered, and some of the gongs are called symphonic gongs, which means they're for a symphony or any kind of music or not. And you could use one of those in a sound bath as well, but it's not tuned to a specific frequency, it's just tuned to sound however the gong maker has deemed to be gong Versus. They have another set of gongs called planetary gongs and these are based on the orbital properties of each planet and they've translated it into a frequency and then the gong maker, you know, hand hammers the gong to be that exact frequency and it's tuned with like an orchestral tuner so you can see exactly like the Hertz of those gongs. So if you think about, astrology is based on the planets and what's happening in the cosmos, and these gongs are now the sound of that planet. So when Mercury is in retrograde right, right, that's a popular one, right? Everyone's always talking about Mercury retrograde you can then listen to Mercury as a frequency, as a gong.
Speaker 3:Is that by pulling in data from telescopes I mean that there's a whole lot of listening, for you know, in space profession, right listening for signals and things like right.
Speaker 1:Well, this is more based on the orbit of Mercury and then translating that into a sound.
Speaker 3:Okay, so that's data that's becoming yes right, what's the glue?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like a Swiss physicist like came up with the formula, got it and then. So it's interesting, because not every gong necessary, like Jupiter isn't the biggest gong right. It's a 28 inch gong. It's a gas giant.
Speaker 3:Just a bunch of iron, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it can be a fun way to. I mean, I like using the gongs with astrology just to give myself different themes as a player, different ideas of, like, what's the intention of the sound bath, you know? Okay, mercury's in retrograde, so let's talk about what's happening with that and then do a as an astrology based sound bath.
Speaker 3:Have you ever been asked to do a sound bath? That's Well, that's reflective of something that's happening astrologically, like not centered on a person, not centered on a planet, but on, like, the collective things.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah those are what I do, okay, okay, yeah, for my for my live streams, for my on-demand community.
Speaker 1:I'm always doing these astrology, just the collective, yeah, what's happening in the sky and what might it mean? And then I give a little like astrology talk and then we like let it all go and just let the sounds that come in and and give you the gifts. I love it. Yeah, astrology I took a long time to come, come into. You know like I used to think it was absolute bullshit and I lot of swear is okay to swear.
Speaker 3:I am happy to have a groundbreaking episode. I get to mark it.
Speaker 1:Or I could not swear but, I, usually just you know, not really. I just kind of felt like it was coincidental, like yeah, if you, you know, you know Mercury's and retrograde you look around for like things going wrong and your phones break, yeah, these kind of things. Right, it's a pre-disposition Right like where it's sort of like self-fulfilling process.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah so that's how I used to feel and when I started playing the gongs a lot. Every once in a while, I have this feeling. I'm like, you know, I really feel like playing Jupiter, you know, and I have no idea why. Like, but I'm gonna just bring it.
Speaker 1:I bring Jupiter. And then always there's like someone in the crowd was like you know, but it was happening enough times and I thought, okay, you know, all right, I'll start looking into astrology because somehow I'm intuiting, right right, these things that are happening in the sky, sure, and they're coming out with the gong choices I'm making anyway. So once I started to do that, it got really interesting to play the gongs, you know, and pair it with the astrology, it became a real fascinating adventure. So my favorite thing about gongs is their unpredictability. So, unlike all these other kinds of instruments, the attack and the decay of a note, right, is pretty predictable. When you play a guitar, you you didn't you know what the chords gonna sound like, right, you know, you know, when you play a gong, because of the resound, which is the ability for a gong to spontaneously emit a sound without you doing anything.
Speaker 1:So there's like a almost like skipping stone and water effect right yeah, there's like a buildup that happens and then all of a sudden you've done nothing and a huge wave of sound has just echoed back and it's so powerful, it's so fascinating to because you're it's a in also to play a gong in a healing manner. It's very intuitive.
Speaker 1:So it's all about you know, if you were to watch some of my live stream videos, you'd see me just you know, throwing away different mallets because they're just not the right, my intuition saying like, nope, not that one, not that one, oh, this one, oh, here it is, this is, this is the mallet. And then you're trying to sort of, you know, figure out and read the gong, and what does it want to say today for this group, for this moment in time? And then it'll change. You know, like so it's very it changes day to day, it can change hour to hour the mallets, different sizes oh yeah sizes, weights, the touch part, the, maybe the contact point might be.
Speaker 1:Like you know, really fluffy and soft and sometimes they're really hard and more like an egg shape, right, yeah? So there's a lot of different mallets out there and that's just. I think that's the most it's. It's just this wild ride that you never know and sometimes you know I've done very similar. I've been playing for so long you could say I've done like 2000 of the same, pretty much the same connection with the gong. I'm trying, not to say hit, I'm trying to reduce violent language, making contact, we're connecting with it and I will connect on that 2001 connection and it'll be completely different, you know, be completely different, which is just a very addictive. It's so fun, it's extremely addictive. So a first, let's listen, yeah, because a lot of the time we have these preconceived notions.
Speaker 1:You know, especially crystal bowls, they represent chakras as well, right, so chakras are energy centers that are in the body and people might have this idea in their minds about, like.
Speaker 1:I'll just give an example that's very common it's like, oh, I want to work on my heart chakra because I really want to partner and I want you know a relationship, and and then we do this sort of blind sort of acoustic listening where we have you, go through each one and just write different notes about how you felt and it always ends up the the one that you really resonate with is. It tends to be the note that you really resonate with tends to be different than the one you thought the chocolate, the chakra you wanted to work on interesting doesn't necessarily match with the actual bowl that you should start with, because the bowl you want to start with is the one you want to play the most is that a manifestation of the, the tug of war about the intellectual brain and other parts of the?
Speaker 1:brain, yeah, right, like intellectual versus intuitive, right? So intellectual has a totally a plan, and intuitive brain is, you know, you're it's not even a brain, but like the intuitive body, yes, and the mental body, the intuitive body, it just has so much more to give you, so much more knowledge, so much understanding, vision. I feel like our intuition is. It's hard, though, to get connected to it in the world we live in. It's really tough, and I think that's one of the biggest benefits of sound healing is, you know, because of the way the instruments, the way they affect our brain waves and how they slow them down, we're able to access more of those intuitive understandings, just like when I am, you know, taking people through the training and they're discovering the bowl that they should work with, the note. It's the same kind of thing like they. It just opens this other part of yourself and I think it's the easiest way.
Speaker 1:I've done a lot of wellness, you know you name it, I've probably done it and I think this is the most accessible way to reach these different states of you know, whether it's just pure rest and relaxation or it's more theta brain wave state, with sort of creative insights, understandings. It could be more of an emotional healing yeah, you never sort of know what adventure you're going to have. But of all the wellness tools, I mean there isn't one out there where you just lay down and listen and you don't have to do anything else right, it feels almost luxurious.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's a, there's a lot, even as someone who has a deep affinity for music, as you do, and you know you don't get to go to a concert and like lay down, you don't get to that sort of you know where, you're just so deeply relaxed and meanwhile you're hearing all these sounds and, of course, our bodies, that on a physiological level we're very connected to sound, you know, as as animals, and it affects us in a really deep way. So just to be able to completely rest, lay down, be really comfortable, have your little eye pillow over your eyes and your blankets and your, you know it's not about like wearing Lulu lemon pants, you know you can wear your pajamas right and just sort of laying down and then hearing these different instruments in this very immersive way whether it's live and in person or online you can get very similar experiences actually.
Speaker 3:How did you get into this work?
Speaker 1:That is a great question. It's kind of a we have to go back in time, you know, to like 2009. And at the time my father, who was an MIT graduate, he worked for Hewlett-Packard for you know, 35 years as an engineer. He was a very intelligent man, a very interesting man and unfortunately he became mentally ill very, very quickly, like severely mentally ill. It was pretty much like one day, you know, I had my dad as you know, he was as close to him as one of my best friends and then the next day, like he was gone.
Speaker 1:And so it was this very extreme moment in my personal life, you know, where I was just really afraid for him. It was very hard on the family, it's really hard to see someone so unwell and not be getting any better, and it's just the whole system, for mental illness is really not conducive to actually helping people. So I was undergoing just this roller coaster of very extreme anxiety and depression. So I was feeling I didn't know at the time, but of course I know it now like the grief of losing my dad, like he was here but he wasn't here right as a parent anymore. So that sort of deep grief, depression and then this very high anxiety of for his safety and all the things that were happening in my personal life and it just kind of the stress started to really accumulate and my nervous system just never got a chance to recover because the intensity of his experience was just getting more and more extreme and I just like I just found myself just in this really dark place and I was trying everything. At the time I was like all right, you know, I'm going to go to yoga classes and I'm going to do Reiki and I'm going to do acupuncture and I'll do Western pharmaceuticals, like I will do anything to get myself just feeling back to normal. And it's also was a very isolating time and I think a lot of people understand this combo now after COVID, like the feeling of a lot of, you know, ambient anxiety, feeling really depressed, feeling isolated, right. So I felt really isolated. I have a hard time even now explaining sort of what happened to him and it was very hard at the time.
Speaker 1:And so it started to affect my work life and I was working at a corporate job, I was not performing well and I took some unpaid leave. I couldn't drive because my anxiety was too much at the time. I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating, I couldn't drive. So I like walked to a yoga studio and at the very end of class, which I was like sitting in Shavasana and I was just like for those of you you don't know, shavasana is the very last pose where you relax, and normally it's my favorite pose. But when you're that anxious you can feel that post can kind of make you feel worse because you're like, oh wow, I can't even just relax for a couple of minutes on the floor.
Speaker 1:So I was sort of feeling a little angry and the person just played a crystal ball. I'd never heard one in my entire life and I just had this immediate reaction where it was like my whole body exhaled, you know, like a sense of like like just calm, and I don't know I even, like had this sort of vision. I've never had any kind of visions or anything I wouldn't say I'm. I felt like this vision of just sort of like kind of gold sort of energy and just this sense of like deep relaxation. So gold, I had this sort of gold energy in the sense of like really deep relaxation and hope. Right, it was like a beacon of light.
Speaker 1:Like you know the story of Pandora's box. Yeah, well, they say. Actually, when you look at the translation, it was probably more like a vase. It's one of those vases that is very skinny at the bottom and wide at the top and there's a theory that she didn't intentionally, not actually open anything Like. She put the vase down and the vase fell over. And then all these you know the latter, you know these, these horrible things you know were emitted from this vase that they say like under the lip, is where hope was still like still sitting there under the lip, and that's sort of the what I was feeling, this sense of like, oh, this hope still exists inside of me to maybe get better Right, like, oh, I can relax again. This is, this is amazing.
Speaker 1:So I walked up and I was like you know, hey, what's this white salad bowl? You're playing because I didn't know what it was. And she's like, oh, it's this thing called a crystal ball. I'm like, great, where do you get them? And she's like Florida. I'm like, okay, which one should I buy? And I just bought three. Five days later they're delivered in the mail. I just start playing them every day for myself and I would just play for like 15 or 20 minutes and then I would take a rest, like just I'd get sleepy, which you'll find out later. If I'm going to do a little sound bath, we'll get a little sleepy.
Speaker 1:And I would just sort of knock out, and you know, slowly but surely, you know, eventually, like four weeks later I think, I got a gong. And then I was playing that you know, and I I had, I was living in an apartment in LA and I had neighbors, you know, beneath me and I had to write them this letter. I was so embarrassed, I was like, um, so I'm going to buy a gong, I'm wondering why can't I play this gong? And they're like, oh, you can play, you know, when we're still at work, so anytime, you know, weekdays, until 6 30 PM. And so I had my little routine of playing my gong and my bowls and I slowly got better, even though my dad's story got, you know, way worse. I mean, he eventually died of his illness in a really tragic way. I'm sorry, Thank you, but you know, my sort of inner conditions changed and then I got really interested. You know, I sort of like my father, I have like that bit of a science mind, you know, and I was like what is happening?
Speaker 3:Why is this working you?
Speaker 1:know, I started looking into it more and looking at research papers and you know, when other people started to notice I was back at work and they started to notice like wow, melissa, you seem so much happier. You know, because I had had, you know before, sound healing. I was like sunglasses, giant lime headphones, 9 AM to 5 PM, you know, just all day. Just I want to disappear, I don't want to talk to anyone, I just can't, I can't do it, I just I don't have any extra energy for anything besides, just like the basics of my job.
Speaker 1:So, beautiful, yeah, and so it was fun to just you know. These people were like hey, what's going on with you? And I'm like I was so embarrassed, I was like, oh my God. I always say I'm like a reluctant new.
Speaker 3:You didn't want to tell them Healer.
Speaker 1:I'm like a reluctant sound healer. Yeah, I was really embarrassed. I was like this is so weird.
Speaker 3:Is this like a how much time wise? So you said this started in 2009, as when?
Speaker 1:As when, my dad was sick, I started doing sound healing like in 2012. So, yeah, I mean, I have been dealing with anxiety and depression for two years. When I stumbled upon that yoga class and then I'd say I was starting to feel better, within like six months, you know, I was really doing a lot better and I was very committed to my healing practice. Yeah, you know, monday through Friday, not Saturdays and Sundays because my neighbors wouldn't let me. But yeah, my friends at work were just so intrigued because they could just sense like there was a difference, you know, and I was like oh, I'm doing this weird thing with sound and it's like I play these balls and they're like well, we want to check it out.
Speaker 1:And I'm like okay. So that's how I started.
Speaker 3:That's beautiful. I'm sorry for your loss.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Yeah, it's a difficult journey, but my dad gave me a lot of gifts. Like I wouldn't be here with you, I wouldn't be here with your community, I wouldn't be here performing soundbats at, you know, all over the Bay Area in Portland. So, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:What was his name?
Speaker 1:Ron.
Speaker 3:Let's honor him for a moment here. Yeah you, the bowls were your first instruments, and then came the gongs.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, the bowls were my first instrument. They're really. The bowls are, I feel like, are what set the stage in your brain to then move to the gongs, which then are more ethereal. They're going to take you into sort of deeper parts of your, you know, into your worlds of spirituality and emotions. But the bowls are pretty like, they're very forward, they're very straight on, they're head on.
Speaker 3:And each bowl is astrologically connected.
Speaker 1:The bowls are connected to the chakras.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:What's kind of interesting about them that maybe your listeners would be interested in too is that the bowls are heated to 4000 degrees and then when they're created, when they're created they're created, you know, by machines. They're not chiseled from quartz rock, right right they're. You know they're created by machines. But it's not so exact or a perfect process. It's very imperfect and as the bowl cools it becomes a note. So it's not like the manufacturer goes. I'm going to make a 14 inch D crystal bowl. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:It's that that bowl happened to cool to the note of D, wow. So, in a way, right, if you're going, it's like it's like they choose their note, you know, they, they decide. And then, if you can think about, like, where the notes could fall unlike a piano which has the white notes, right, and you're just to go all the way up the scale and each note is, you know, tuned to a certain frequency Well, these ones can be a little bit sharp, they can be a little bit flat. So the way that they interact with each other is very different from Western music, right. So like you could play different combinations and because one might be really sharp and one might be really flat, they might get together in a really different way. That actually sounds pretty good, but in Western music theory they maybe wouldn't necessarily get along.
Speaker 3:So everybody's set of bowls is a little bit unique. Oh, they're completely unique.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is why when you know one of these babies, if they're, they're highly breakable, right it's, it's just very it's like a big wine glass or something. And when you lose one, I mean I've been trying for years to replace the C sharp that I had. I even know what frequency it is, but I haven't found a bowl that's cold to that note yet. Oh my gosh. So they're very much like in you form a relationship with your instruments. You know, if you're a healer, you're definitely really getting to know them really intimately and they're, they're like your family. You know, these are my little, my little babies. I got three little babies over there. Thank you, this is a laundry list question.
Speaker 3:Sound healing is a powerful tool for doing things like balancing and restoring your digestive system or your metabolic system or reproductive system, metabolizing and integrating emotions or trauma, reducing insomnia, increasing high quality sleep, releasing flash insights or inspiring people with creativity, balancing and soothing overworked chakra.
Speaker 1:Chakras, chakras, chakras, chakras.
Speaker 3:And nervous system, or boosting natural, natural opiates alleviating depression, which you've talked about? Which of these many things, many challenges that sound healing can help with? Do you see people coming to you, coming to the practice, about what's drawing?
Speaker 1:them? Well, definitely, I mean. Maybe our first question is why, Sort of why, does sound healing manage to do all this laundry list of things and more?
Speaker 1:Yes, and you know how is that possible. And you know, as we talked about, traditional sound healing is done when you're, you're laying down, so your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your rest and digest, gets to just totally relax, especially if you're trained in sort of like how to make the environment to be very supportive of the nervous system, the props that you use, you know how to make your body really comfortable. So if the parasympathetic nervous system is relaxing, right, and it's just getting a break, a lot of those things that we're talking about on this list are what start to just naturally heal right, because that's it's in charge of all those things, right. And then on top of it, you've got these slower brainwave states happening. So people will find, as they move with sound healing not move, but as they are listening to sound healing their brainwaves are drifting into these slower states.
Speaker 1:And a lot of that just has to do with the qualities of the instruments themselves and just the subtle difference in the, the volume of the crystal bowls just sort of leads to a sense of monoreal beats, right. So, feeling like there's sound kind of going in and out of your a lot of people call it very circular, and this is true online or in person. If it's mic 12 and professionally you have a mix, somebody's doing the professional mixing, like I do your live stream is going to get that quality too, and so it sort of it seduces the mind into these quieter states of meditation. So when you combine parasympathetic restoration and meditative states, often you get all the benefits of meditation too, without the pain, right.
Speaker 1:Like have you tried meditating anytime recently, like you're sitting there, you're seated, you're in pain, your body's not happy and you're going through this entire you know laundry list of just different thoughts and then you're upset at yourself for having the thoughts because you really are supposed to not be thinking. And it's like this very punishing kind of feeling. A lot of people in the first five years of meditating don't feel that good. Right, it takes a long time to build that muscle. Meanwhile, with sound healing, your, your mind's focused on sound and it's listening and it's becoming more and more relaxed. You're getting a little bit sleepy and you just enter those meditative states very passively and that's where you can get those flash insights, you can get visions, you can fall asleep, you can snore. Some people really knock out. They have never heard me play the gong.
Speaker 1:I think it's like a prop. I'm like, no, it's not a prop. Okay, I play it every time, right, but the sleep is what we need because you know we're very sleep deprived, as you know, as humans, and so those are the that's the why factor of how you get all these different benefits from just laying down and listening. And then, as far as what's attracting people, a lot of people are just feeling really stressed out and they're just looking, they're desperate for ways to relax where their mind really feels that sense of calm.
Speaker 1:Because sound healing like once you understand how to get under the noise of your own mind, like to get out of your own way, when you understand the pathway to silence, it gets easier and easier to get there and the sound healing is a way to establish that path into silence.
Speaker 1:And then you become meditation, becomes much easier after doing sound healing for, like, I don't know, 10 minutes three days a week, you're going to be able to meditate a lot easier, you know, within a few weeks To traditional meditation, I mean, will become easy. And then, as far as the people that I'm hoping to like work with I know that was a question I saw in our conversations was like, well, who do I like working with, and it's fun to make it clear like, right now, what I really want to work with is just I want to train others to be professional healers and especially I want to diversify. You know the world of healing right, so I really want to offer a lot of BIPOC scholarships, both for my events and also all my trainings, because, you know, the more people we see, the more diversity we see out there in wellness, the easier it is for people to feel welcomed right, to feel welcome, to feel like it's safe.
Speaker 3:They see themselves, yeah.
Speaker 1:They see themselves and you know, like many aspects of many wellness segments, you know sound healing. I was driving down the five to come here and there was a huge billboard for crystal bowls called crystal tones. By the way, they're expensive. I have other ones you should buy that are not there, but they're very high quality.
Speaker 1:Anyway, they're most expensive ones out there. Right Right, they're cataracts. So on the billboard is this you know, white, blonde woman, and I'm just like I'm. It's my mission to try and change that. Yes, and I really am also seeing a lot of. You know, you can literally go on Amazon right now and deliver your crystal bowls to your house in two days, and there's a lot of people who are calling themselves sound healers, but they aren't necessarily understanding how sound works with the nervous system and the science behind it. And you know I've developed a method over the last 10 years about my specific soundbaths and the formula that I use to, really because I am so I just want to get everyone healing right, and so there's a. It's a very mixed field right now that I'm seeing, and so I'm just really excited. Last year, I launched um. I've been doing trainings for a long time, many years, but I finally had the courage and to end the investment of time to create an actual certification program.
Speaker 3:So just like you get certified in yoga and it's 200 hours.
Speaker 1:I have a 200 hour sound healing certification program Because I want legitimate professional healers out there in the world. So that's my, that is my goal to change you know the way to change wellness as much as I can.
Speaker 3:Okay, this is the first. You haven't done this in your podcast yet. No, I'm not, you're a soundbath, I'm bl yeah. I know.
Speaker 1:So again, our listeners want to take a moment to find themselves into their bedroom or on a couch. We can offer that your nervous system, a nice, comfortable position with a lot of support. I'm taking a few deep breaths, taking it all the sounds around us.
Speaker 1:I'm hearing some sounds like we people living above the space and we're just going to include that along with any other airplanes, traffic and horn, and we don't need ideal cave silhouettes to achieve deep states of rest and self-connection, again taking a nice deep breath in and as we have this little mini soundbath, just inviting the sounds to carry you into somewhere new. Right see, if you can invite the sounds to carry you into a brand new place inside.
Speaker 2:You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you you.
Speaker 1:You, you, you, you, you, you, you you. You. You, you. You. You, you, you, you, you you.