the Henny Flynn podcast
A space to settle in and listen — and see where the episode takes you. This gentle, reflective podcast is an invitation into deeper self-awareness with profound self-compassion. Henny shares insights from her own life, alongside practices that help us connect with our inner wisdom, explore our relationship with change, and find a greater sense of flow.
There are no fixed answers offered here — just space to be with what’s true, and to grow from there. If you’re drawn to slowing down, listening in, and exploring what it means to live with greater authenticity, this podcast is for you.
Guided by psychology, mindfulness, therapeutic coaching, flow journaling, and everyday compassion, we explore ideas that help us step further into our inner worlds.
the Henny Flynn podcast
The Science and Art of Sound Therapy, with Kathy Harmon-Luber (S15E2)
Tap to send me your reflections ♡
How can music change the way we think, feel and heal?
Meet Kathy Harmon-Luber, the author of "Suffering to Thriving: Your Toolkit for Navigating Your Healing Journey," who joins me this week to share her story of overcoming serious health challenges through the power of sound healing.
In our conversation, we unravel the ancient wisdom and modern science behind sound’s impact on emotional and physiological well-being. From personal anecdotes to professional insights, we explore the profound role sound and music play in cultivating self-compassion, emotional stability, and overall healing.
- How sound healing is making a resurgence in modern medicine, finding its place in hospitals and nursing homes in the States.
- The therapeutic effects of various musical genres, vocal yoga, and the intuitive joy of musical expression.
- Kathy shares some compelling research along the way, from organisations like UCLA, which opens up how these practices could play a role in reducing stress and inflammation.
- Personal stories of how sound has helped overcome physical and emotional barriers, illustrating the remarkable benefits of integrating sound into daily life.
- Finally, we explore the future of sound healing through the lens of innovative medical treatments and pioneering professionals like Dr. Mitchell Gaynor.
Our episode includes a special offering for listeners—a short course on healing the heart chakra, complete with a sound bath designed to open this vital energy point.
This episode is a celebration of Kathy’s journey from suffering to thriving and a testament to the incredible healing potential of sound and music - a journey of transformation and renewal.
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You can find out more about Kathy, her FREE heart chakra offering, the Yoga Magazine article on sound, and her book here: www.SufferingToThriving.com
For Kathy's free heart chakra and sound bath offering, you can find out more here: https://healingartshealthandwellness.aweb.page/p/bfd182f7-b456-4ce8-b743-f21fcbd630d8
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We all instinctively and experientially know how different sounds can affect us A crying baby, a siren or a single note on a violin and we often turn to music as a source of comfort or joy or excitement or as a way of helping us build our energy. So it makes sense to me that it's also part of our healing journey and, as I've reflected on this conversation and on the guest I'm about to introduce to you, music or sound has definitely been part of my own healing journey. Welcome to the Henny Flynn podcast, the space for deepening self-awareness with profound self-compassion. I'm Henny. I write, coach and speak about how exploring our inner world can transform how we experience our outer world, all founded on a bedrock of self-love.
Speaker 1:Settle in and listen and see where the episode takes you. My guest today is Cathy Harmon-Luber. My guest today is Cathy Harmon-Luber. She's the author of Suffering to Thriving your toolkit for navigating your healing journey how to live a more healthy, peaceful, joyful life, which sounds like a really wonderful thing. And Cathy herself was bedridden for five years with a range of debilitating health conditions and I'm sure she will share some of that with us today. As a certified Reiki and sound healing practitioner, she now helps others as they navigate their own illness, injury, loss, and also she supports others as they learn how to cope and to thrive.
Speaker 1:I am delighted that she's with me today and I'm really looking forward to exploring how important sound can be in adopting a more compassion-based response to ourselves and the world around us, and my instinct says that much of the benefit of sound comes from this change that it can create in our mood state, our emotional state. And also I am really curious to talk to Kathy about what ancient wisdom tells us about sound and also ask her about what modern science is telling us about the way that sound impacts our whole physiological system. So this is going to be one of those wonderful, wide-ranging conversations I'm sure, and I'm looking forward to Cathy joining me in a moment. So, cathy, what a joy to welcome you here, and I mean even just in the couple of minutes that we've been chatting before I press play. I can already feel this is going to be one of those enriching conversations Me too, henny, I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, and we've just for everybody listening we've recognized that Cathy and I are both sitting here surrounded by trees and, yeah, I kind of feel as though, oh, let's bring a little bit of that tree energy and wisdom into this space as well. Love it, lovely. Reflecting on our conversation today, I noticed there have been a number of reminders for me around how sound is so important for me and has been so important in the changes that I've made in my own life. And one of those reminders has been in a conversation with a client today and we were talking about how to connect with our inner parts. So I'm a therapeutic coach.
Speaker 1:I do a lot of work with parts, work with clients. And this client said to me well, do you have any tips about, like, how I can do it when I'm not with you? And I said, yes, music. And then I thought, oh, that's really interesting. I'm talking to Cathy later Because one of the things that I found when I was doing my own sort of discovery of my own inner parts was that I had a piece of music that helped anchor me back into that place and help me connect with them on this very deep level, and my recognition is that actually it was that piece of music that was the key that helped me drop into that space and I just yeah, I just kind of wanted to open there and sort of see where does that take you, cathy?
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that, henny. Yeah, yeah, I think we all realize that music is deeply moving excuse me and powerful in our lives, like we think of our favorite song, and it shifts everything within us, right. So it makes sense and you know, it's interesting. People are beginning to realize now what our ancient ancestors many, many, many years and centuries ago knew that sound part of healing. Whether we look at ancient Greece or we go to ancient China and India or South America, all over the planet, in every culture music is a part of healing and we've gotten away from that really in modern day life and I think it's wonderful that we're coming back to it. What we're seeing is such a resurgence in sound healing that it's being integrated into hospitals and nursing homes here in the United States. All over Europe and Canada it's being integrated to work in complement with modern medicine and so it heals us in many ways.
Speaker 2:Honey, my entry point into sound was a couple of decades ago. I was a busy nonprofit executive, very stressful job, had to raise a lot of money, all the issues of managing an organization, and I was very stressed out. And so I began to go to yoga studios and there was sound integrated and then I started going to sound baths and drumming circles on the beach in Santa Monica and what I noticed is it helped me with my massive anxiety at the time. It helped me to just kind of reset and come back, as you were saying, to that inner place where we can take a deep dive and really get in touch with our intuition and what I like to call our inner healer. Our bodies have innate wisdom. Our inner healer, our bodies have innate wisdom. We are so busy in our society. You know our devices and our jobs and our families and everything that we get super disconnected from that, and sound is a beautiful entry point in. And so that was the beginning of my journey.
Speaker 2:And then I've had for many decades, spinal issues, seven hereditary spinal issues that have gotten progressively worse when I was 20, I was told I had the spine of look at lots of alternatives and not even alternative medicine, complementary medicine. What can I do in combination with Western medicine to have the best life possible? And in 2016, I had a tremendous spinal disc rupture. It's like the little jelly cushion between the vertebrae. It ruptured it was the fourth one and it was inoperable and it left me bedridden for five years. Dark place.
Speaker 2:When my husband said, you should be listening to music every day and I'm like, oh right, I'm a classically trained musician. What was I thinking? I just I wasn't in that place to even see that. But I began to do that and I felt so good and it took me to a different place in my head and within me. And then I began with a little more time on my hands and years of being really really pretty much not able to go swimming or running or hiking in the mountains or any of the things I love to do dancing.
Speaker 2:I had time to really explore sound healing and understand the science behind it. Sound healing and understand the science behind it, why it works. And and I began that's when I got certified. Even though I've been doing sound baths and things for many, many years. I got certified and I began to realize that that sound was helping my spine to heal. And I'm happy to say I'm at a place doctors said it was really 50-50 whether I would ever walk again or ever even basically get out of bed again. And I'm thrilled to say I walk every day now and I have a pretty normal life, and so I credit sound with that in many ways.
Speaker 1:Gosh, Kathy, there's various things sort of coming up for me as I'm listening. It's part of me that just wants to. I just want to create some pauses because there's so much in what you've just shared, and one of the things that sort of went through my mind as I was listening to you is, you know, this sense of you being bedridden, you know being there, this uh reminder or remembering that sound music is actually really important to you and I I kind of had a sense of it's one of my favorite books what Katie did, not Louisa May Alcott. I can't remember who wrote it, but do you remember the book what Katie did and what Katie did next?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's an American classic, Kathy. Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:And I'm such an avid reader oh well, you know it was definitely a book from my childhood and part of the story is about this little girl who was bedridden and this sort of feeling that she had of, like, you know, pushing at the, resisting what it was that was keeping her there. And then, I think, an aunt arrives and sort of gives her this wisdom that helps her understand that actually this time that she spends in the bed can also be a time of growth and learning and discovery. Yeah, and I just yeah, I just really felt like her.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It was it was a time of discovery. I'm astonished I don't know this book, but anyway, it was a time of discovery and I learned we could go one of two ways. I could. Every moment is a choice, and we always hear that. But until you're in a pretty dire situation, a pretty dire situation where that's all you have is that moment of choice. And I realized I could become one day a very bitter, angry old lady, right, or I could choose something different. And so every day it was about what am I choosing? Today I could choose to suffer in my mind, or I could choose to thrive. What's it going to be, kathy, right? And that's hard. I don't want to make it sound like you know it's an easy choice. It was not.
Speaker 2:There were plenty of dark days, but at the end of the day I had to find something to live for. And I and I say this in my book, you know, and I I believe this it's like our healing journey can be a portal to a whole new life that we can be grateful for. I can now. I wasn't in that moment. I did not see the silver lining in it at all plenty of dark days but it opened the door for me to go deeper into sound and energy, like I also do Reiki I'm a Reiki master so between sound and energy and making those a path forward when other paths clearly were not an option, like we could sit there and and say ask all the right, all the wrong questions, right, and it's like, why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? I mean, we can just go down that rabbit hole of terrible questions, right? Or we can say what if? What if, what if something better is happening in my life and I just don't see it yet, what if there's something new to explore?
Speaker 2:And so I really leaned into that and said I love this sound and energy stuff. Why don't I get certified? Why don't I learn more? And in my practice of doing it, it helped my spinal healing exponentially and I began to learn why. There there's some fascinating science behind this. There's some amazing things coming out of UCLA, University of California, los Angeles. A guy by the name of James Jimzuski and medical doctors working together in research have discovered that all the different kinds of cells in our bodies make a sound that they can hear in the laboratory right, and so a heart cell has a different frequency than a brain cell and so on. And what they recognized was when cells were atrophied, when they were sick or diseased, they stopped making their frequency, but what made them get reinvigorated and heal is the very frequency that they are known to emit.
Speaker 2:And so I get goosebumps when I say this right yeah big.
Speaker 1:This is so big I want again to sort of to pause to allow that.
Speaker 1:That piece of knowledge that's, that's something new for me as well, and I'm sure that's something new for for many people listening, um, and it it resonates with a piece of some research that I've been, that I saw recently, around water cells and how they change. The actual shape of the molecule changes according to whether it's coming sort of fresh from a mountain spring or it's a water molecule that's, you know, in water that's gone through many, many, many people in a city, and and how, uh, scientists are now looking at what actually helps restore that molecule to its, to its original shape. And it feels very, uh, yeah, very aligned with that that work as well. It is, and, of course, I mean it makes it, you know, on such a visceral level. It makes so much sense that if, if there is a sound that a cell naturally emits, then the sound, uh, mimicking the sound that it emits, will be what it responds to. Gosh, how beautiful. So tell us more about the kind of science, then, that the people at UCLA are uncovering. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So basically, this will really change, I think, the face, and not just me, a lot of people are saying this. It changes the face of modern medicine. It is why so many hospitals and nursing homes are integrating sound into their integrative medicine departments.
Speaker 1:And how are they doing that, Kathy? In what way are you seeing that happen? Okay, I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you something very personal. That happened to me, honey. And how are they doing that, kathy, in what way are you seeing that happen was in the cancer ward, had an integrative medicine department. This was in Charlotte, north Carolina. They had a very large integrative medicine department and I and I spoke with them and they had people come by and give her a sound bath. They loved that. I would be, you know, facetiming with her and doing sound. I'd play my Native American flutes for her. She always loved those and people were available to do Reiki, energy healing as well right there in the hospital. And so and I get goosebumps as I say it, because you know also the playing of music in hospitals, you know it isn't just like it used to to be. You'd go to a hospital room and the televisions were blaring on the entire hall Music. They've realized that music alone because music we love is healing.
Speaker 2:One of my teachers, john Stewart Reed, says 20 minutes of music you love is deeply healing. People say, oh, it probably has to be classical music, right? No, not necessarily. If you love jazz or hip hop or R&B, doesn't matter. If you love it, it is speaking to the cells in your body, and why?
Speaker 2:Here's the science% water, and water is a better conductor of sound than air. And so right away we're like our bodies are these instruments that are making sound and vibrating to the sounds around us. And it takes about four to five minutes for bodies to come into entrainment, which is just a fancy word for being in resonance and coming into the same frequency as the sounds we're hearing. So, obviously, doing sound for four to five minutes, but they found that the sweet spot is really about 20 minutes. So how easy is that? Put on music you love for 20 minutes, and if it is lighting you up, it's also healing, right? That's an easy little thing that we can do. Singing is fabulously healing, and so is humming. You, dr jonathan goldman's done some great work on this.
Speaker 1:well, it's humming it's funny actually, because um just before coming on air, so I always do three humming breaths as a way of settling my system, coming deep into the um parasympathetic and and I know that the work of stephen porges around the um vagus nerve, you know also shows us how humming that kind of that, literally that resonating through the body, helps to settle the body and bring us out of that sympathetic state and also how I think it's in the Body Holds the Score as well, that Bessel van der Kolk talks about the impact of the group of singing and how that also helps to settle the system, and we all know the power of being in a choir, don't we Right?
Speaker 1:yes, we do, you know, when we're all harmonizing together and that sense of the whole body being connected with the group. So so much of this. It's really interesting, I think, because, as you know, as I'm listening to you, I'm, you know, I'm listening with many parts of me, and so much of what you're saying I think we all understand. On a very deeply human level. It's something that we've experienced.
Speaker 1:Our kind of inverted commas rational or cynical mind is taught that when we simply trust the body's response to something, it might not be quite sort of true enough, or we need the rigor of science to prove things, and so I think it's really interesting that science is now catching up, as you said before, with the ancient wisdom that has always known that sound is important. I mean, at the very least it's that, but it's important for the way that we connect with ourselves and the way that we connect with others, um, and so it really makes sense that healing is part of it. I I'd love to hear from you actually a little bit more about some of the um, what the kind of ancient wisdom tells us about sound and maybe also how that has influenced you and the work that you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's a beautiful question. Nobody has ever asked me that before. The ancient wisdom Okay, so you know it depends on where you go in the world. Wisdom Okay, so you know it depends on where you go in the world. But think of it this way Every culture has its medicine melodies that are passed down from generation to generation. I'm thinking of in South America, which is what I'm currently studying. You know medicine melodies that are used as part of healing, that are transmitted. You know, in all over Africa, the Middle East, singing, chanting. In India, you know mantra uh, because that's thousands of years.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly so. So every culture, and and this has been my great passion is just like going down the rabbit hole of, like you know, different cultures and where, what their medicine melodies sound like. But even more than that, it's that they believed that singing everybody. There are lots of clients I work with who say, oh, I don't have a voice, I don't have a voice and I don't sing, and I don't sing, and I definitely wouldn't sing, you know, out loud and except in the shower. But here's the thing it doesn't matter how good your voice is.
Speaker 2:The act of singing is so healing and ancient cultures knew that. They built that into healing ceremonies. They build it into ritual to healing ceremonies. They build it into ritual. They did it as a way of life and as part of their work. They would sing group songs and it didn't matter the quality of voice. Part of the reason why it works is you touched on this the vagus nerve connects our ear. It's the wandering nerve through the body. It controls heartbeat and breath and digestion and all the things that we do not think about right. And I believe it was Jonathan Goldman, dr Jonathan Goldman who said that singing and humming, because they stimulate the vagus nerve. It is like a massage for all the organs in our body. Isn't that beautiful?
Speaker 1:It's really beautiful.
Speaker 2:I think ancient cultures knew this to some degree. I love studying the temple cultures and archaeoacoustics. Archaeoacoustics is a relatively new and recent decades relatively new in recent decades, maybe three or four decades a branch of study that combines archaeology with studying some of the archaeological sites and structures. We think of places like Stonehenge, but there are places all over the Middle East and everywhere South and Central America, the Americas, the North America. There are all these places where acoustics were built into the structures in a way that when people sang or played instruments like bone flutes or drums or rattles. These are all things that we find in the archaeological record right Going back.
Speaker 2:I have a photo screenshot of flutes made of bone that go back like 80,000 years. It's 80,000 years. They were playing music. Why, you know playing music, why you know it wasn't just to entertain. They recognize the healing power of music and singing and dance, which also is very healing right Moving the body and singing and so I love that. And there are many ancient sites where they've discovered and this is fascinating that when we look at pictographs and petroglyphs in caves, that the places where there are the most number of them they have found are the places that resonate most in that particular cave. How cool is that? Like they marked it on the walls with their, with their, their, like having a big sign that says, like sing here it is, this is the place
Speaker 1:I am great yeah, that's really gorgeous and you know, and obviously you know in more well still very old structures but perhaps more recent structures like and, and as a community. I think you know it really. Um, it absolutely makes sense that there's that, there's that there are layers and layers to this and you know, just I mean for the know, the limited amount that I know of like shamanic traditions. Obviously sound is incredibly important as part of that healing journey and something else happens.
Speaker 2:You know, when we sing alone or in a group, when we sing, it's hard to be perseverating about what's going on in your life, it's hard to be worrying, it's hard to live from a place of fear. You know, I love Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun. She says and probably lots of people have said this, but love and fear cannot exist at the same time. So if you're in a beautiful place of singing, you're in that place of love, right, it's a place of love of nature, love of humanity, love of self, love of spirit or source. And when we sing, we become like one with everything, right, and that is a very healing thing as well.
Speaker 2:One of the things I'm studying I've been studying with Sylvia Nakach vocal yoga and currently studying medicine melodies, right, and she goes into this in great detail about how, when we become one with all and however we define that, everybody defines it in a different way but when we become one with all, we become a channel and song and sound just move through us. It doesn't have to be you know, I'm a classically trained musician it doesn't have to be. I have to get that note right. I have to make sure that I'm harmonizing correctly. You know, I don't remember where the song is supposed to go. There is something amazingly healing about just singing.
Speaker 1:Just being in the sound. Yes, being in the sound, yes, being in the sound, absolutely I've done. Um, a friend of mine, a dear friend, uh, helped me release a belief that I had from being the youngest of four children, that I couldn't sing, and she, uh, she's a, a voice therapist, I suppose, for want of a better word and she helped me release that belief and access my singing voice as a means of expression, and that was absolutely life-changing for me, actually, cathy, because it meant that suddenly, so I write, I write poetry, I use my voice for speaking, but to then have this, and it is more private, but to have this private connection with myself through song, has been so beautiful. And there are many times when I drive back to where we live and I come to, like there's about an hour away, is where we first start seeing the hills and I start singing. These words will just start forming and I'll start singing, and it's so beautiful and the thing that it, I think, everything that you're saying.
Speaker 1:What feels very clear to me is that so much of illness and stress and anxiety is either the cause or the result of inflammation. Yes, and I just wonder whether part of what sound does is. It helps reduce that inflammation because, you know, if I'm anxious and I hum, my system settles and I know that when my system settles, cortisol is deactivated or is less activated, adrenaline is less activated.
Speaker 1:And therefore there's less inflammation in my system and therefore I can even feel myself settling as I'm saying this, you know.
Speaker 2:Therefore, Doesn't that feel true?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it feels so deeply true. And the other thing I really want to share with you as well I feel like I'm now like just like Cathy Cathy, I like sound too, but I always wanted to learn how to play the piano and a few times in my life I've really tried and I put emphasis on that word tried in this. This is how you learn how to do things. You, it's slightly hard, there's a bit of resistance, you know, it's like a hard edged thing. And this time round I've just gone.
Speaker 1:I like that sound, oh, I like that sound, I like that sound. So I put those three sounds together and every day now I play just for a few minutes and, honestly, it is the most rewarding, beautiful experience it's. I call it another form of meditation, call it another form of meditation and at the end because then the sound, the, the peace, whatever it is, it comes to this natural conclusion. And then I sit there and I'm bathed in the waves of it and I mean this sounds like I can't. Me 10 years ago would not have understood me being able to say this now, but I'm sat, bathed in the waves of it and I literally thank the piano.
Speaker 2:You know, I started playing piano at three and classical flute by the time I was eight, and we learn, or try to learn, through a system, whatever that system is, and you've got to get it right. Like you know, music teachers are like hey, no, no, you got the note wrong and for I think most of us, especially very sensitive types who feel the music that is a hindrance to learning what really has helped me is to unlearn everything I learned about playing Baroque music and getting every ornamentation perfect, like it's crazy making in a way, and it's beautiful and it's wonderful and I love the music. But on my path I've had to unlearn that in the way exactly you articulated. Honey, okay, so I have native flutes, a few of them. You can't play a wrong note on them, I just play them because I like the sound of exactly what you said this note and this note. There's no wrong note, that music.
Speaker 2:Playing that music is a meditation. It is one of my daily meditations and it transports me to this beautiful place of just pure joy that when we're really struggling with a piece of, let's say, piano music, that we're trying to get a passage and we play it 20 times in order to get it perfect, it loses the joy. There's a joy in music, in the just making the sound and being the receptacle to listen to the sound and let it fill us up, and being curious. The whole beauty of music is that we can get curious. Do I like that sound? Do I not like that sound? And what is the most amazing thing is that the sounds, like I said earlier, the sounds that we like, the music we like, is our always in, in in music play enough, like really, with that childhood you know joy and wonder and curiosity.
Speaker 2:When was the last time we played with that? I do that every day now, but I did not always. And it really. That came to me at that time when I was bedridden. It's like okay, well, I'm not going to, I can't play my classical flute. It twisted my spine and I'm laying flat on my back. My husband brought me from my studio one of my Native American flutes and said why don't you just play with this? I thought, play, play. I don't really play with music, do I? And it took me right down this crazy, crazy rabbit hole of of just inquiry and curiosity.
Speaker 2:Oh, kathy you're doing and it fills you up?
Speaker 1:right, it really does. And honestly, that man, that man who brought you that flute, that's a wise being.
Speaker 2:I would say yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1:I mean really that's, and I love, I mean that I mean the play on words here of you know, play, it's so true, like how?
Speaker 1:So there are so many things in life that I feel the same way about writing, so that when we're at school, you know we're told, uh, you can't start a sentence with and, uh, you can't have a one word sentence.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, debates over the Oxford comma, you know, um, these, this place that we come to up in our heads rather than the flow of words on a page. And I think I think that might be the thing that really struck me when, when you and I were first introduced about sort of coming, you coming on the show, and I was thinking about the relationship that you have with sound and and it, it felt like there was a an openness to it, not not the rigidity that we can so often bring to the concept that we have of music and what music is and what music isn't, and and I I really love the way that you're sort of speaking about how important it is just that we find something that we love, we love to listen to, or something that we we love to play, and and if we love it, well, that's enough, it's healing.
Speaker 2:That is our medicine. So in my book I have a whole chapter on what is your medicine. You know, for me it's art and music and sound and nature and lots of stuff. But every person is different and he said something really interesting I want to circle back to about how inflammation is at the root cause of a lot of disease. And that is so true. And science, you know, medical researchers tell us this, so we know it's true. I have a theory that part of that inflammation is when we're not in alignment with our true nature. Inflammation is when we're not in alignment with our true nature, when we're not in alignment with that which brings us joy, that which is play, that which is our medicine.
Speaker 2:We all wear masks. We go to work and we're one person or we're a different person to some degree with our families, as opposed to our friends or whatever it is. Everyone wears a mask a little bit and to varying degrees, but we also have. When we go deep within, we see our authentic self, our true nature. Authentic self is very overused as a phrase these days, but call it what you will call it our truth, who we are at the soul level, the challenge, I think, to building a healthy, happy, joyful, meaningful, purposeful life is identifying who am I at that soul level and how do I bring that into every moment or close to it. It's a big challenge Every moment of my day. What lights me up? How do I do that? Obviously, responsibly. We still have jobs and families and stuff, so we have to do all the things. But how do I bring that authentic self?
Speaker 2:So maybe it's in thinking about sound. Maybe it's just going outside and singing to a tree, something that, a melody that comes to you, right? Not a song that you memorized in school or choir, but like just spontaneously singing. Maybe it's picking up an instrument, as you do, and just saying what notes are lighting me up today. Maybe it's looking at a palette of colors and saying what color resonates with me today? Right, because whatever it is that lights you up is a message to you. You know who said this. I think it was Wayne Dyer. He said something like if, if, if, if. Oh boy, am I gonna get this right. If, if. Prayer is us talking to God, intuition is God speaking to us, right, and so it's that if, if certain things light you up, that is your intuition, I think is that inner voice?
Speaker 1:I think there's something. There's something very uh strong coming up for me as well, as I listened to you there, cathy that for many of us and I hold my hand up and say me included For many of us, we move through life without that deep connection to our bodies and I I know and people who've listened to the podcast for a long time will have heard me mention this before that in 2016, when I was critically ill yeah, something about that year you are not the first person I've interviewed on the podcast who's said the same thing had.
Speaker 1:2016 has been a really big year for huge life-changing events, often related to critical illness.
Speaker 1:But at that time, as part of my process toward healing, I heard myself say to one of the many practitioners who helped me heard myself say to one of the many practitioners who helped me I feel as though I've been disconnected at the neck. She was a nutritionist and she was asking me about my digestion and I just looked at her with this like I don't, I don't know what you mean. I literally didn't know, I couldn't compute what she was talking about. And then the realization I've been disconnected at the neck and I think a lot of my work is that I do as a therapeutic coach is about supporting people with how to come through gently, through this blocker in the neck and come into the body and actually really listen to what the body is saying, and my sense is that I suspect that's an awful lot of what you do as well, cathy, in terms of and that sound enables us to hear our body, because you put a really good tune on your body wants to move.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, exactly. So if you can connect with that, you can build a deeper connection in other ways absolutely, and we can have that connection when a song comes on.
Speaker 2:Up until that moment our bodies can be rigid, contracted, stressed out, whatever we happen to be going through. Put that song on and it's suddenly we breathe and we relax and then we start to move. So, and that is the beauty of sound, you hit on something huge, honey, and that is when you say you felt cut off at the neck. Think about this our heart and our heart chakra is the center. It connects our upper chakras and our lower chakras and so often we get blockages there, and the blockages can be from the neck to the solar plexus. They could be only at the heart, they could be only at the throat chakra. Different for different people, but part of what we're talking about when we say going inward, connecting to what's within the heart is the seat of the soul right, and when it is contracted, locked, we often don't hear intuition speak, we don't hear our inner healer.
Speaker 2:Oh, I, I have a free offering for our, our listeners. I was going to mention at the end, but I'll I'll mention it right now dr charlize davis, a doctor of functional medicine, and I put together a whole series. It's free of healing the heart chakra and she speaks about it from the medical standpoint and it's more than just the heart and the breast and things like that. There's way more to it than that. And she speaks briefly about what's involved there and how we know when we have a heart chakra blockage from a medical standpoint and I speak about from an energetic standpoint what does that look like and how do we open it? And I give, I think it's about a 20 minute sound bath that is for the heart and that's all free and it's on my website which we can put in the show notes. But that's huge, like we all have had that feeling where, where we've, we've, either we either cut off from the neck down or we feel like the heart is blocked or there's a contraction there, or we often can feel it viscerally. And if we don't address that, that is when it becomes a bigger health issue, as you say, inflammation, when we are blocking our chakras, which are the energy centers of the body, and all over the world there's a Celtic chakra system and a South American Andean chakra system and the Indian chakra system. However it looks, they're energy centers and when they are blocked, the result is the same illness and disease ensue. You know if if we don't take care of it.
Speaker 2:So, and part of the way we can open, yes, with sound, with sound with movement, lots of good things. But. But sound is a great way to start the inquiry because it's so accessible. You can do these things at home. The work I do is one-on-one with my clients and we can target in on a specific condition that they might be having or health challenge. But the singing, the humming, the percussively tapping on the body, it's a little like EFT tapping, but just percussively tapping. It's like our mother's heartbeat when we're in the womb and it's deeply grounding and we know, Playing wind chimes.
Speaker 2:I mean so many things that we can do in our homes and, of course, listening to soundbaths on YouTube or wherever in our homes and, of course, listening to soundbaths on YouTube or wherever that.
Speaker 1:When you said about the percussive tapping, you know, we know in various psychological journals that there's been lots of research as well. So on the EFT tapping, but again, as you say that that tapping just on the chest, rhythmically, we know that it calms people down. It's part of, I think it's part of cognitive behavioral therapy as well, like this ability to connect with the body and you know these actions that. I think you know it's very easy to dismiss the simplicity or the accessibility of these kinds of techniques and gifts that we can give ourselves, because it doesn't come in a pillbox, you don't pay lots of money for it, they're things that are readily available and so I think their value gets diminished in many ways because of the way that we perceive value collectively, open up to what some of these opportunities are, in order that we can explore what really works for us, without that sort of inner critic going, oh no, I don't think that's not for us, but actually to be able to open up and just see, see what works. Yes, may I read?
Speaker 2:you a short quote, please do, by this wonderful doctor. He's an oncologist, dr Mitchell Gaynor, and he wrote a book called the Power of Sound Healing which I read many years ago. He's an oncologist. He does sound baths for his clients and anybody interested in this can just go to YouTube and type in his name and watch him give a sound bath to his many, many cancer patients because he believes in this so much.
Speaker 2:He's a Western doctor who believes in this. He tells us, and I quote, sound and redress imbalances on every level of physiological functioning and can play a positive role in the treatment of virtually any medical disorder. And so that, my dear, is the future of medicine, that the doctors are proceeding, and he's not the only one. All the research that I read is by doctors and medical researchers and sound scientists working together. And the research that's going on now, that is coming out of, in the US, the National Institutes of Health combined with the National Institutes of Mental Health, rutgers University, mental health, rutgers University, ucla, like they're all researching this, because it really is the future of integrative medicine complementary medicine.
Speaker 1:That's key, isn't it? It's this idea that it's integrative, that it's not something other. That's right, it's woven in. I have a friend who worked for many years as the lead nurse in a big oncology charity here in the UK and then she gradually trained as a somatic practitioner so using massage and you know different sort of massage techniques and then she became the lead somatic practitioner. So she went from being a senior nurse to being a senior somatic practitioner in the same charity, working with the same patients, because they recognized how important the power of touch is for their patients.
Speaker 1:And it feels like it's a very similar shift of recognizing how important sound is. I've got a quote for you, actually, Cathy, something that I came across, which is from Cambridge Sleep Sciences, so from Cambridge University Sound is a very powerful and effective means of changing brain state and improving mood. It is understood that low frequency sounds are linked to relaxing brain states, while higher frequencies encourage alertness and focus. Yes, so that is such a simple observation and it's so important. I think that these sort of organizations scientists, researchers are doing this work. Just as people are researching the power of mindfulness, people are researching the power of somatic practices and really recognizing going all the way back to what you said right at the beginning the wisdom that traditional ancient cultures have known forever yes, I love that, I love that.
Speaker 2:And something else about low frequencies, you know, yes, and so they can help us to go into a much more relaxed brain state. You know alpha and theta Theta is the beautiful brain state of creativity, and alpha relaxation and all of that. But new science that I think is not even published yet. This is with one of my teachers who's a sonic scientist, working with medical researchers, john Stewart Reed. They've discovered that low frequencies, when applied to red blood cells, helps them to reinvigorate. So there's something about the low frequencies, and low frequencies are especially good with pain reduction.
Speaker 2:So when I was going through all of this with my spine, I had tremendous pain and was on lots of pain medicine cocktail and just horrendous.
Speaker 2:One of the things I found with sound and I have a gong.
Speaker 2:A gong is one of the most healing of all instruments because it has the lowest of low and the highest of high frequencies, so it has the full spectrum and in doing that it is, if you will, speaking to all of the various cells in our bodies. And so the very low frequencies low frequencies of tuning forks helped me with pain management in a way that I didn't believe it would. I was certain, you know, nothing would help. And I still have pain to this day, and sometimes it's insane and and I use my low frequency tuning forks and I always have this little part of my brain that says yeah, as if this is going to help the pain. This is so off the charts today, as if this is going to help, and I am always astonished that it takes it down a notch or a smidgen. And sometimes, when you're dealing with pain or or other kinds of things, that little increment that sound is able to provide, combined with everything else that we're doing, makes things tolerable, when sometimes they are not tolerable.
Speaker 1:Brilliant, brilliant. I love that. I love that because I was really feeling what you were saying just then, that sometimes just that that little shift can be can feel so enormous because, exactly as you say, it takes something from being intolerable to to being tolerable, and then, and then our other coping mechanisms can kick in, you know, and we can start to rationalize something or we can look for other solutions, whatever, but having for me it makes sound part of first aid, you know, part of your first aid is like, okay, let's go here, that's right, and then we can see what can come next.
Speaker 2:Everything is incremental. In healing right, everything's incremental. So the bottom line is to have a really good toolbox of what you can turn to, and so sound can be one of the tools in our toolbox Brilliant, Brilliant.
Speaker 1:Oh, Kathy, it's been an absolute joy. I can't believe we've we've been speaking for almost an hour now. It's just no Just. And also I mean thank you so much for sharing about that free offering that you have. I'll definitely include the details of that because that sounds so wonderful and you've also ignited in me a lovely, timely reminder of reconnecting with sound baths as a healing practice. Wonderful, it's really lovely.
Speaker 2:And I'll mention one more thing for anyone who wants to take a deep dive. Also, on my website website toward the bottom of the homepage, there are lots of articles and I I did a pretty robust article for yoga magazine on the power of sound healing. So there are lots of free resources there for people who want to take a deeper dive and they've got um the links to go to some of these people who I've quoted.
Speaker 1:So there are more resources there.
Speaker 2:Brilliant it's been just a delight to be here with you, Henny. I've loved this conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I have one more question for you. Actually, I have a question that I it's something that I often ask my guests, and it's something I ask my clients too, and it's something I ask my clients too. If you saw this time in your life, right now, as a chapter in your book of life, what would your chapter heading be?
Speaker 2:Ooh, new life. It would be new life because everything I have gone through opened a door to a life that is fundamentally different from what I had before, which I thought was the life of my dreams, is so much more healing, centered in alignment with my soul, purpose, I believe, and what I am meant to do on this earth. So new life. I know that sounds very just sort of fake life. I know that sounds very just sort of fake, but new. It is a total new life that I never would have thought possible were it not for all the health challenges I went through yeah, well, we are honored to have been part of this experience, of this new life with you, kathy.
Speaker 1:It's been wonderful, it's just been a delight. Thank you so much honey, thank you, thank you.