Ashana – Diving into Sound Therapy with Crystal Healing Bowls

We all have our own stories about the power of music, how favorite songs uplift our spirits, elevate our moods and just make us feel good. It’s not just anecdotal. There is real evidence that sound can actually promote healing.

         A very powerful way of using sound for healing is with specially calibrated instruments known as crystal healing bowls. Ashana is  one of the premiere healing music artists and New Age vocalists and is also a pioneer in the use of these singing bowls for healing. She tells us how she got involved with this type of music and the profound effect it’s had both on her life and those she helps. Ashana describes:

·      her personal story of how she discovered the healing power of music

·      her introduction to singing bowls

·      how she incorporates the bowls into her music

·      the effect that singing bowls have on the body

·      stories of how these sounds promote healing

·      how to incorporate singing bowls into your daily life

·      what you need to know to purchase your own bowls

·      the special surprise she has for our audience

      If you’re interested in the healing power of singing bowls, you won’t want to miss this harmonious episode of Dream Power Radio.

      Weaving together soaring, angelic vocals and the celestial sound of crystal singing bowls, Ashana is one of the premiere healing music artists of our time. In fact, Ashani’s original sound pioneered an entirely new genre of healing music with crystal singing bowls. This exquisitely crafted, luminous sonic tapestry soothes and opens the heart, enfolding the listener in a transcendent experience of the Divine and a direct experience of the Soul. This stunningly beautiful alchemy has been hailed by listeners all over the world as “breathtaking” and “a Gift from Heaven.”

     With producer, Thomas Barquee (Snatam Kaur, Seal), Ashana has received wide-spread, international acclaim for her CD recordings All Is Forgiven, Jewels of Silence, Beloved, The Infinite Heart and The Illuminated Path. Her CD, River of Light was selected for the first round of Grammy Nominated albums in the 2014 World Music category. At work in the studio for the last few years, Ashana and Thomas are preparing to release several groundbreaking projects in the near future. Celestial Sleep, Ashana’s latest release, is divinely inspired music that restores the nervous system to optimal states of relaxation through vibrational healing, gentle affirmations and the cutting edge of crystalline sound.

     An international artist and student of yoga and mantra for most of her life, Ashana has led two worldwide online group yoga meditation experiences, touching the lives of over 20,000 people in more than 50 countries across the globe.

     Ashana’s live performances have been called “powerful” and “deeply transformative” and she travels internationally, offering concerts, crystalline healing meditations, retreats and sound healing workshops, all with the alchemy crystal singing bowls. 

Performer, recording artist, sound healer and teacher, Ashana tours the world with her concerts, wo

Chapters

• 0:00 Discovering the healing power of music
• 3:34 Integrating crystal singing bowls into music
• 8:13 The impact of sound frequency on healing
• 15:09 Examples of therapeutic healing with crystal bowls
• 22:51 Selecting crystal singing bowls
• 26:49 The demonstration

Transcript

Announcer 00:00:04  This is Dream Power Radio, the place where your dreams turn into reality. Here is your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:00:13  Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Certified Dream-Life Coach Debbie Spector Weisman. This is a place where we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams, and how you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love and rediscover the truth of who you really are. One of the ways I like to exercise is by walking. And every morning when the weather is nice, I like to take a stroll down my driveway and the country road where I live. My companion on these short journeys is music playing through my earbuds. My tastes are eclectic, so sometimes I play classic rock, sometimes it's Latin jazz and the times it's some great oldies for my youth. Listening to the music makes the walk seem to go faster and certainly a more enjoyable experience for me. That's just one example of the power that music has to affect our moods.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:01:10  But now we're going to take that a step further and explore how musical sound can be used for actual healing. I'm so excited to say that our guide for this is my special guest, Ashana, one of  the premier musical healing artists of our time, Ashana is considered a pioneer in the use of crystal bowls for healing, and she's taught her modalities to students all over the world. Downloads of her best-selling music, including Celestial Sleep and The Illuminated Path, have reached millions. She's also the author of the groundbreaking book Crystal Singing Bowls :The Angelic Sound of Healing, Relaxation, and Spiritual Awakening. Welcome to Dream Power Radio, Ashana.

Ashana 00:01:53  Thank you so much, Debbie. Thank you for having me here on the show. I really am enjoying being with you.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:01:59  I'm excited to get into this whole subject of self-healing. Ashana, when did you first discover the healing power of music for yourself?

Ashana 00:02:08  When I was about two years old, I bet. Seriously, I was one of those kids that hummed incessantly, and I realized it drove my mother nuts because, it should be like, go to bed and I'd be in bed, and I'd be just singing and singing away.

Ashana 00:02:27  And it would, it would kind of drive her a little bit crazy. But it wasn't until decade later that I realized that what I was doing was self-soothing and that humming itself. And, you know, Jonathan Goldman's actually written a book about it, which was hilarious to me, because when it finally came out, I took a look at it, and I went humming. I kept humming my entire plot. We're just now realizing that humming is a healing practice.

Ashana 00:02:58  But no, not really. I mean, it's a wonderful book, but it's very self-soothing to send your own vibrations through your body, and it calms the nervous system down. And I didn't realize that that's what I was doing when I was little. So when you ask me that question, when did I first learned it was unintentionally learned it when I was two. And then it took me a long, long, long, long time in my development as an artist to actually move from the joy of music making, to see that how healing that was.

Ashana 00:03:34  And there was a switch. It was a pivot right around, oh, I would have to say around 2001, 2002 when I began integrating crystal bowls into my music, and 2005 when I met my producer, Thomas Bach. And he said if I was your producer, I'd put you into healing music. And I was like, what's that? Because to me, I never put a word on it as healing. It was just music. And it opened my heart, and it soothed my spirit. And so that's what being a pioneer in a genre is all about. You know, you're breaking new ground, and sometimes you don't even know you're breaking the new ground. And that's kind of what happened to me.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:04:22   Just doing what you love. 

Ashana 00:04:24  I was just doing what I love. It was simple as that. And that made sense to me.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:04:29  So what was it that actually led you to singing bowls in the first place?

Ashana 00:04:33  Well, it was a phone call from a friend, and she called me up one day and she says, have you ever heard of Crystal cymbals? 

Ashana 00:04:42  You need to get one. It's like, right then and there. Like got off the phone with her, got a bowl, ordered one over the phone. Never thought about it. Had no idea because at that point in time, his was 1999 at that point in time, crystal symbols were not a thing. It was actually a very unusual thing. So I ordered one and it arrived in the house three weeks later. I opened up the box, put it on my kitchen table, took out this enormous white plastic frosted heavy-These are the original crystal bowls. Plopped it down on the kitchen table, took the mallet. It went in under the side and immediately I started sobbing and the tears just went right down my face. And I thought that light had come to live in my house. It was like, oh my God, in my house this light lives. And then the second thought that I had saw it was light. It was pure light. The sound of it was pure light.

Ashana 00:05:42  Ta ta I knew it, I felt it instantly. And then the second thought that I had was. One day I'm going to put these into music. And it was absolutely clear because, here you're talking about dreams, but it was a dream of mine for decades to record and release my original material and songs. And  I'd been doing that. I'd been recording materials. 

Ashana 00:06:05  Since 1985, 1986, I was already recording process, but it wasn't until the bowls. It's like it took all of those experiments and explorations that I did because I recorded lots of material, but up to that point. But it was when the bowls came in, it's like everything landed. It just went like that. And really, after  I met my producer, Thomas Barquee. It was months later we recorded the first song. And in one of my albums, All Is Forgiven, we recorded Ave Maria and it's gone on literally to become a classic. It's played millions and millions and millions of times.

Ashana 00:06:58  So you just don't even know. You know, it was in the studio, and Thomas looks at me and he goes, what key? I said, D-flat, and what are we gonna do? And I was like, Ave Maria? And just playing it right out of my mouth and turned into a piece of music?

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:07:19  Yeah. I tell you, anybody who hasn't heard it is magnificent. I think it's on YouTube.

Ashana 00:07:26  Oh, it's all over. It's. You can find it everywhere. And I'm so grateful because that song, when I first heard it, when I first heard the master of it and it just had come out, we were just getting ready to release it. And Thomas sent me the final mixes, and I was listening to it, and I was stunned because you never know till after the whole thing is done and you're listening to it. I was like stunned. And I in that moment, I did a prayer, and I said, Divine Mother, this is yours.

Ashana 00:08:01  Take this, send it wherever it needs to go.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:08:05  Yeah, that is wonderful. So let's get back to the crystal bowls themselves. What is it about the sound that helps quiet the mind?

Ashana 00:08:17  It's pure tone frequency. And when that frequency, when we hear that sound, that the sound itself is just full of these angelic overtones, they shimmer. And when we hear this, our immediate response is that the nervous system just begins to literally within three minutes. It just begins to go like this quiet. And all of the busyness. If your brainwaves just like ratcheting it up in beta, you know, they're just like going good, good good good good good. You're in a thinking mind. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.

Ashana 00:09:01  You hear these frequencies. And all of a sudden, literally, it just starts moving and shifting into an alpha state. Especially when the person playing it, it is playing from an intention of the sound being very healing, the sound being one of peace, the sound being meant to soothe and comfort and open up to a connection and divine connection with one's soul when all of that is behind it.

Ashana 00:09:35  The pure 12 frequencies of the bowls, the intention of the player, the overtones of the harmonics that are naturally present inside of the bowls they all kind of conspire to help you move into a different state of being. And it really helps connect you to your soul.

Ashana 00:09:56  Almost instantly. For many people, the first step of that is just, can I get to this point where I'm just not thinking constantly. You know how the mind goes. Monkey mind's like constant, constant, constant. And we can't rest for anxious or stress. We're worried. We're concerned. We have chronic pain where we're frazzled. Some of us are fractured, feel fractured. You know, there's a lot going on or challenged by life's challenges. And when we can sit in, you lie down in, in preferably lying down, but sitting is lying to. And we actually have this experience of these cells just washing over us. It brings the entire energy body into a state of harmony.

Ashana 00:10:51  It brings our body systems, all our body systems, the hormonal system, the nervous system. It just brings all the systems of the body it starts to bring back into their innate harmony. And that's what happens with sound healing. It's like we literally are retuning the body back to a state of harmony.

Ashana 00:11:15  And when you do this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, the body remembers what it feels like to be. 
 

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:11:24  Is there a difference in any impact between playing the bowls and just listening to them?

Ashana 00:11:35  Well, yeah, I mean, it would be the same as if you were singing a song or listening to somebody sing a song. If you're singing yourself and everybody can imagine this, because we all have voices and we all can sing. So when you sing, you feel the vibrations of sound running through your entire body. And when you are the receiver of the song, when you're listening and you're experiencing someone who is his singing, that person is.

Ashana 00:12:05  It's a powerful experience to listen to and be present. Be a witness to another's sharing of song. You know that that is its own experience. And you know, music can bring us to tears, and music can bring us to elevate us into states of joy. Music can make us laugh music and make us feel powerful and empowered music and gather us all together. And the artists that do that work, are really gathering souls together, bringing them into a state of unified consciousness as a group. The whole group energy just elevates. But there's a really different experience from being the player or the singer. When you're doing that, there's an experience. At least I have this where the music and the sound is just going freely, straight, right through my whole body so I can feel the balls vibrating through my hands, my fingers. I can feel the sound of my voice just buzzing through. Through my bones and my blood, my skin and exhilarating.

Ashana 00:13:15  The beautiful thing is that that with crystal cymbals, they are such a simple instrument to play that anybody can actually learn how to do that. These are just here. Here's a little one, right. This can only do two things. You can tap them on the side like this. Or you take a mallet, and you run it around the top. So any pretty much anybody can do this. And to bring this kind of instrument into your life, it's a blessing. It's a gift to have that in your hand and feel that vibration going through your body is exquisite. So I recommend it.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:13:55  You are going to talk more about this, but we do have to take a short break now. We're speaking about crystal singing bowls with Ashana and we'll be right back. 

Announcer 00:14:35  Welcome back to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:14:44  Welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weisman, and we're talking about sound healing with Ashana. Ashana, you have trained students in your Crystal Ball Mastery program to use the balls for therapeutic healing. Do you have examples of stories of how this has been used to actually help people deal with things like chronic pain or other illnesses?

Ashana 00:15:09  Oh my God, there are so many of these. Oftentimes  I hear this regularly with my students. And we have another program which is called Celestial Alignment for healing, where we gather together people in a group and do an online course for eight weeks and they're playing the music. They're not even playing a bowl themselves. They're actually just using the music or meditation for uplifting, for mindset shifting. And what we've seen happen, which is just extraordinary people by the end, by actually not even by the end of the program within 2 or 3 weeks of the program people's chronic pain levels are dropping. .

Ashana 00:15:52  Then this last time we ran the program; we had a woman who was struggling with severe rheumatoid arthritis. She was going on a plane trip. She was recommended by her doctor to do the wheelchair thing in order to get through the airport. And so she went to the airport and was in the little area where all the people in the wheelchairs were. And she took a look around and she goes, gosh, these people, they feel old, and they feel sick. She goes I'm not like that.

Ashana 00:16:28   And so she had in her head one of the pieces of music from the chorus, from Celestial Healing. And she gets up out of the chair and she walks through the airport. She gets no pain, absolutely no pain, gets back out of the airport. And pretty much from that moment on, because there was a mindset shift, there was all the music that was going. It was beautiful, incredible music with the bowls and then but very, very joyful.

Ashana 00:16:57  And she just stopped her. Her whole pain, her reference to pain changed from that moment on. And we have stories of people shifting from the big I can't say the word on air, but you know, that letter that we're looking at have major changes where three weeks, six weeks later, the markers went completely down. This was from playing the bowls, listening to the music. We've had dramatic changes in levels of anxiety and stress. We've had people go, oh my goodness, this has helped me connect with my purpose, with my connection, with my soul in a way that's never happened before. So there's just all kinds of stuff. I've had people have healings to me for their cats, for their dogs. Children having major shifts. People very agitated at the end of life where they're so agitated in hospice, workers will bring in my music and play it. And all of a sudden everything goes to a state of peace and people make their transition easily and effortlessly.

Ashana 00:18:09  It goes on and on and on. I am not saying this is the be all and end all. It is not no one thing ever be all and end all. But this modality of healing, music and sound healing as a as an adjunct for healing on every single level is available to us right now. And it's so simple to bring into your life.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:18:35  It's simple and it's drug free. No side effects.

Ashana 00:18:40  None whatsoever.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:18:43  So we're actually though talking about sound frequency here and correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the frequency levels of promote healing are much higher than the ones that we hear in our normal chords course of action. Is that right?

Ashana 00:18:59  You know, I really can't answer that question. My main focus has always been on the intention behind the frequency jump. And Goldman has always said, and I think this is beautiful. It's intention plus frequency equals healing. So we have a gamut of frequencies that are available through us to us in sound. 

Ashana 00:19:30  There are scientific studies being done now where very, very specific frequencies, I mean, carefully calibrated frequencies can be used and medically to shift to, to clear cancer, to clear disease. They calibrate it to literally down to the thousandth or the millionth hertz, hertz frequency and of course, those kinds of frequencies, I don't know. I don't believe you can hear them there. They're almost like dog whistle levels. But they can and are used to invoke healing. Now, sound healing, the kind of stuff that I do, sound healing and then healing music. We operate in a different universe then. Then kind of medical frequencies or the right frequencies. We operate in a universe where we're creating music. We're creating beautiful sound where invoking states of relaxation and repose. We're creating a space where the body goes into such a state of quiet and stillness, it becomes receptive for healing. We're bringing the body back into a state of harmony, and inside that state of harmony, healing is optimized in my sound healing experiences with groups and in concerts.

Ashana 00:20:59  I've seen healing. I've seen people pass stones. I've seen people pass blockages. I mean, I haven't seen it. I literally they've told me about it afterwards. And immediately after the thing they went home and what was there wasn't there anymore. One of the most dramatic stories that happened to me was someone that came to a concert of mine in Mount Shasta, California. She had fractured her pelvis 11 places, and she was in a wheelchair. And the next day after the concert, She would walk. Okay. Wow. All right. So did I hit a special frequency in my concert to make sure that those bones met? That's it. No, you did not. Said that was not something I was doing. I wasn't even thinking about that. I was holding a space. And inside of that, holding a space, that sacred space. I was doing what I'd been guided to do for years since I started doing this work, and that is to connect with the love that in all that is, and to allow my body, my voice, my hands, to be the instrument in whatever way that spirit wants that to come through.

Ashana 00:22:20  And that's what I do. So I couldn't tell you what frequency it is, but it can split the frequency.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:22:30  Well, for those who are listening in on the podcast, they can't see what's behind you. But you have rows and rows with all different sizes and colors. If you were in the market to buy a bowl, how do you determine which one to get for yourself and is one enough or do you need more?

Ashana 00:22:51  Well, the first thing you do is you call me because I've been putting bowls in people's hands since 1999 for 25 years. literally like within three weeks of me, of me getting my bowls, I was I was such a crazy woman about it that I was. I immediately said, you told my friends. I was like, you guys got to have one of these. These are amazing. It's I started literally three weeks of having my first bowl. I was I was putting bowls in people's hands. And I had been doing that professionally since then.

Ashana 00:23:27  So certainly reach out to me. You want somebody who has the expertise in this field to help you. What's not such a great thing to do is to just go off and buy the bowl on Amazon. The quality of crystal bowls varies greatly, so get some guidance and a good place to guidance is actually, as you mentioned, I wrote a book called Crystal Singing Bowls: The Angelic Sound of Healing, Relaxation and Spiritual Awakening. And there is so much information in there.

Ashana 00:24:01  That will, I promise you, if you are attracted by this idea and I haven't inspired you enough right now, it's so cool. Get the book, there's videos in there, there's music in there. It's got an audiobook and just start reading. You will be amazed at how simple it is. What a beautiful thing to bring into your own life. And there are all kinds of resources in that book about how to get started. So that's kind of the way I do it. And to answer your question, do you need more than one? Well, you are talking to a bowl hoarder, in case you haven't noticed.

Ashana 00:24:40  Oh, I tell people that my bowls are like potato chips. You can't just have one. And I also tell them that in my house they propagate when I'm asleep. So,  you can see in this room there's 115. And I love on them all and I play them all. Does everybody need 150? No one is good. One is a beautiful place to start. Two is fabulous. Three is even better. And if you get really inspired and love sharing these with your families, your communities, and your friends, you probably want a few more. But I know so many beautiful people that are healers and powerful healers and they do incredible work. Just wonderful. So, you know, it's really up to you and where your passion calls you.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:25:34  Okay, well, Ashana, we have a special treat for our audience in a little while. But before we get there, I just wanted to ask you, how can people find out more about you and your work in your book?

Ashana 00:25:45  Oh, well, you just all you have to do is go to Soundofashana.com, and there's all kinds of stuff in there, and we have a special gift for everybody.

Ashana 00:25:54  So we are gifting everyone who's on this podcast a copy of The Golden Light of Healing Meditation. And this comes from that project that I was sharing with you about before called Celestial Alignment for Healing. This is a 15-minute guided meditation. It is, I promise you, one of the most powerful guided meditations for healing you will ever listen to. We've had people working with this meditation extensively and beautiful things come out of it, so we're just giving that to everybody to invite you into our world, the world of the sound of Ashana and have an experience.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:26:37  Well, that's very generous of you, Ashana . Well, I'll tell you what. We've talked enough about the bowls. I think it's time to hear them in action. So you offer a sampling of how you use them.

Ashana 00:26:49  I can totally do that.

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:28:48  Oh, that was magnificent. It's wonderful. Well Ashana, thank you so much for being on Dream Power Radio today.

Ashana 00:28:55  Thank you so much for having us. Debbie

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:29:00  We've been speaking about sound healing with Ashana. I hope you've enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. 

Debbie Spector Weisman 00:29:09  Until next time, this is Debbie Spector Weisman saying sweet dreams, everybody.

Announcer 00:29:15  You've been listening to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman. For more information on Debbie or to sign up for her newsletter, go to DreamPowerRadio.com. This has been Dream Power Radio.