November 5, 2023 • 61 mins
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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Once you understand how to get under the noise of
your own mind, like to get outof your own way, when you
understand that the pathway tosilence it gets easier and
easier to get there and thesound healing is a way to
establish that path.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Listen to this next Agile Vocalist episode.
Agile Vocalist is a podcast andblog about sound and the
performing arts with aCalifornia connection.
Melissa Felsenstein is thefounder of Innersounds
Meditation and a professionalsound practitioner with over 10
years experience.
She's a self-proclaimedambassador of rest and delights
(01:36):
in helping others return to acalm, meditative and deeply
restful place.
During these profoundly restfulstates, your body begins
engaging in an all-systemsrepair reducing stress, easing
sleep, strengthening immunity,enhancing intuition, deploying
mood boosters and life justfeels a whole lot better.
(01:57):
Melissa experienced all of thesebenefits herself when she used
sound to heal her own viciouscycle of anxiety and depression.
She has spent the last 10 yearsrefining her technique into a
unique Innersounds formulaspecifically designated to heal
the nervous system and createinternal calm.
Melissa offers a 200-hourprofessional sound healing
(02:19):
practitioner course where sheteaches others how to become a
professional sound healer.
I'm also incredibly grateful toMoonlanding Meditative Arts for
welcoming us in as guests totheir gorgeous space for this
episode.
Moonlanding Meditative Arts iswhere mindfulness meets
creativity in a beautifulOakland California space.
(02:41):
The studio offers healthcoaching, open creativity studio
time, classes and more toawaken your inner creative,
connect your mind and body andmove.
Visit moonlandingstudio on theweb for more info.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
And, as Melissa said, we are here at Moonlanding
Meditative Arts in Oakland and abeautiful converted space, so
you wouldn't know the city was50 feet away.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It was so quiet and soft and it just feels like I
could be out in nature somewhere.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
That's one of the interesting things about this
city is that there's a lot ofenergy, but it's very easy to
slip into the trees and letnature come in.
So we're so glad to have you onyour tour through the.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Bay Area.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Thank you, yes, you want to say a little bit about
that what you say if you comedown periodically?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, so well, I'm Melissa Felstens-Dynab, inner
Sounds Meditation, and I'mactually a third generation
Bayarian.
So my grandmother was born inOakland, my mom was born in
Oakland and I was born inMountain View, which is not cool
(04:51):
as cool as Oakland.
I was like Mom, you broke thestreak, you know.
But yes, I have a very strongaffinity to the Bay Area.
It really feels just.
You know, you arrive indifferent places in your life
and you know, sometimes you wereborn in that place, sometimes
you just stumble upon it, butyou have that sense of home and
(05:15):
I just really feel it here, withthe beautiful bay and the
breeze and just the trees.
When I arrived here in 2015 tostart my sound healing business,
I had come from LA and thefirst thing I realized when I
moved back was like, oh, I'm atree person and there's really
(05:38):
not a lot of trees, especiallywhen you get out in nature in
Los Angeles.
You know it's desert, sothere's a lot of shrubs and
little like trees that aretrying really hard but not
really getting, you know, verybig.
But here you know you canstumble into redwoods, and I saw
these oaks and I just it justsort of stunned me like, oh yeah
(06:00):
, you know I love trees, lovebeing in the trees.
So of course that led me to gofurther north and now I'm living
in the land of trees inPortland, oregon, and I've been
there for about a year and ahalf.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
What sound did you wake up with today?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Birds I did.
I'm staying in a place thatit's actually just in the city
it's about seven minutes awayfrom here but the trees I don't
know, they're just.
There's a lot of birds andthey're out there singing their
little hearts out, and I love it.
It's one of my favorite soundsto wake up to.
(06:42):
If I have an alarm, it actuallyis the Koshy time, so you put
that on your phone.
I record it and yeah, andthat's why it wakes me up.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Would you say that that's your favorite instrument?
Do you have a favoriteinstrument?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I mean, I think my favorite instruments are gongs.
I love them.
I watched your video about thegong thing.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
You didn't bring the gong Not today.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
No, no, yeah, I've got.
I'm thoroughly obsessed.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
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 ownfrequencies.
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 (07:43):
Yeah, yeah, there's definitely.
So the gongs, they're reallyexciting.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So in my background gathering it seemed like there
was one of your instruments isastrologically connected.
I guess it's the gong.
Do you want to tell us aboutthat?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, I can go over it like a like, briefly.
Yeah yeah, so gongs are handmade, they're hand hammered, and
some of the gongs are calledsymphonic gongs, which means
they're for a symphony or anykind of music or not.
And you could use one of thosein a sound bath as well, but
(08:42):
it's not tuned to a specificfrequency, it's just tuned to
sound however the gong maker hasdeemed to be gong Versus.
They have another set of gongscalled planetary gongs and these
are based on the orbitalproperties of each planet and
(09:02):
they've translated it into afrequency and then the gong
maker, you know, hand hammersthe gong to be that exact
frequency and it's tuned withlike an orchestral tuner so you
can see exactly like the Hertzof those gongs.
So if you think about,astrology is based on the
(09:23):
planets and what's happening inthe cosmos, and these gongs are
now the sound of that planet.
So when Mercury is inretrograde right, right, that's
a popular one, right?
Everyone's always talking aboutMercury retrograde you can then
listen to Mercury as afrequency, as a gong.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Is that by pulling in data from telescopes I mean
that there's a whole lot oflistening, for you know, in
space profession, rightlistening for signals and things
like right.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, this is more based on the orbit of Mercury
and then translating that into asound.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Okay, so that's data that's becoming yes right,
what's the glue?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, it's like a Swiss physicist like came up
with the formula, got it andthen.
So it's interesting, becausenot every gong necessary, like
Jupiter isn't the biggest gongright.
It's a 28 inch gong.
It's a gas giant.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Just a bunch of iron, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
So it can be a fun way to.
I mean, I like using the gongswith astrology just to give
myself different themes as aplayer, different ideas of, like
, what's the intention of thesound bath, you know?
Okay, mercury's in retrograde,so let's talk about what's
happening with that and then doa as an astrology based sound
(10:55):
bath.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Have you ever been asked to do a sound bath?
That's Well, that's reflectiveof something that's happening
astrologically, like notcentered on a person, not
centered on a planet, but on,like, the collective things.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Oh, yeah those are what I do, okay, okay, yeah, for
my for my live streams, for myon-demand community.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I'm always doing these astrology, just the
collective, yeah, what'shappening in the sky and what
might it mean?
And then I give a little likeastrology talk and then we like
let it all go and just let thesounds that come in and and give
you the gifts.
I love it.
Yeah, astrology I took a longtime to come, come into.
(11:45):
You know like I used to thinkit was absolute bullshit and I
lot of swear is okay to swear.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I am happy to have a groundbreaking episode.
I get to mark it.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Or I could not swear but, I, usually just you know,
not really.
I just kind of felt like it wascoincidental, like yeah, if you
, you know, you know Mercury'sand retrograde you look around
for like things going wrong andyour phones break, yeah, these
kind of things.
Right, it's a pre-dispositionRight like where it's sort of
like self-fulfilling process.
Absolutely yeah so that's how Iused to feel and when I started
(12:24):
playing the gongs a lot.
Every once in a while, I havethis feeling.
I'm like, you know, I reallyfeel like playing Jupiter, you
know, and I have no idea why.
Like, but I'm gonna just bringit.
I bring Jupiter.
And then always there's likesomeone in the crowd was like
you know, but it was happeningenough times and I thought, okay
(12:49):
, you know, all right, I'llstart 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, andpair it with the astrology, it
became a real fascinatingadventure.
(13:10):
So my favorite thing aboutgongs is their unpredictability.
So, unlike all these otherkinds of instruments, the attack
and the decay of a note, right,is pretty predictable.
When you play a guitar, you youdidn't you know what the chords
gonna sound like, right, youknow, you know, when you play a
(13:34):
gong, because of the resound,which is the ability for a gong
to spontaneously emit a soundwithout you doing anything.
So there's like a almost likeskipping stone and water effect
right yeah, there's like abuildup that happens and then
(13:56):
all of a sudden you've donenothing and a huge wave of sound
has just echoed back and it'sso powerful, it's so fascinating
to because you're it's a inalso to play a gong in a healing
manner.
It's very intuitive.
So it's all about you know, ifyou were to watch some of my
(14:21):
live stream videos, you'd see mejust you know, throwing away
different mallets becausethey're just not the right, my
intuition saying like, nope, notthat one, not that one, oh,
this one, oh, here it is, thisis, this is the mallet.
And then you're trying to sortof, you know, figure out and
read the gong, and what does itwant to say today for this group
(14:43):
, for this moment in time?
And then it'll change.
You know, like so it's very itchanges 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
(15:06):
.
Like you know, really fluffy andsoft and sometimes they're
really hard and more like an eggshape, right, yeah?
So there's a lot of differentmallets out there and that's
just.
I think that's the most it's.
It's just this wild ride thatyou never know and sometimes you
know I've done very similar.
I've been playing for so longyou could say I've done like
(15:28):
2000 of the same, pretty muchthe same connection with the
gong.
I'm trying, not to say hit, I'mtrying to reduce violent
language, making contact, we'reconnecting with it and I will
connect on that 2001 connectionand it'll be completely
(15:50):
different, you know, becompletely different, which is
just a very addictive.
It's so fun, it's extremelyaddictive.
So a first, let's listen, yeah,because a lot of the time we
(16:32):
have these preconceived notions.
You know, especially crystalbowls, they represent chakras as
well, right, so chakras areenergy centers that are in the
body and people might have thisidea in their minds about, like.
I'll just give an example that'svery common it's like, oh, I
(16:53):
want to work on my heart chakrabecause I really want to partner
and I want you know arelationship, and and then we do
this sort of blind sort ofacoustic listening where we have
you, go through each one andjust write different notes about
how you felt and it always endsup the the one that you really
(17:14):
resonate with is.
It tends to be the note thatyou really resonate with tends
to be different than the one youthought the chocolate, the
chakra you wanted to work oninteresting doesn't necessarily
match with the actual bowl thatyou should start with, because
the bowl you want to start withis the one you want to play the
most is that a manifestation ofthe, the tug of war about the
(17:42):
intellectual brain and otherparts of the?
brain, yeah, right, likeintellectual versus intuitive,
right?
So intellectual has a totally aplan, and intuitive brain is,
you know, you're it's not even abrain, but like the intuitive
body, yes, and the mental body,the intuitive body, it just has
(18:04):
so much more to give you, somuch more knowledge, so much
understanding, vision.
I feel like our intuition is.
It's hard, though, to getconnected to it in the world we
live in.
It's really tough, and I thinkthat's one of the biggest
(18:27):
benefits of sound healing is,you know, because of the way the
instruments, the way theyaffect our brain waves and how
they slow them down, we're ableto access more of those
intuitive understandings, justlike when I am, you know, taking
people through the training andthey're discovering the bowl
(18:50):
that they should work with, thenote.
It's the same kind of thinglike they.
It just opens this other partof yourself and I think it's the
easiest way.
I've done a lot of wellness, youknow you name it, I've probably
done it and I think this is themost accessible way to reach
(19:12):
these different states of youknow, whether it's just pure
rest and relaxation or it's moretheta brain wave state, with
sort of creative insights,understandings.
It could be more of anemotional healing yeah, you
never sort of know whatadventure you're going to have.
(19:34):
But of all the wellness tools,I mean there isn't one out there
where you just lay down andlisten and you don't have to do
anything else right, it feelsalmost luxurious.
Yes, there's a, there's a lot,even as someone who has a deep
(19:55):
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 sodeeply relaxed and meanwhile
you're hearing all these soundsand, of course, our bodies, that
(20:16):
on a physiological level we'revery connected to sound, you
know, as as animals, and itaffects us in a really deep way.
So just to be able tocompletely rest, lay down, be
really comfortable, have yourlittle eye pillow over your eyes
and your blankets and your, youknow it's not about like
(20:38):
wearing Lulu lemon pants, youknow you can wear your pajamas
right and just sort of layingdown and then hearing these
different instruments in thisvery immersive way whether it's
live and in person or online youcan get very similar
experiences actually.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
How did you get into this work?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
That is a great question.
It's kind of a we have to goback in time, you know, to like
2009.
And at the time my father, whowas an MIT graduate, he worked
for Hewlett-Packard for you know, 35 years as an engineer.
(21:22):
He was a very intelligent man,a very interesting man and
unfortunately he became mentallyill 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 asone of my best friends and then
(21:43):
the next day, like he was gone.
And so it was this very extrememoment in my personal life, you
know, where I was just reallyafraid for him.
It was very hard on the family,it's really hard to see someone
so unwell and not be gettingany better, and it's just the
(22:09):
whole system, for mental illnessis really not conducive to
actually helping people.
So I was undergoing just thisroller coaster of very extreme
anxiety and depression.
So I was feeling I didn't knowat the time, but of course I
know it now like the grief oflosing my dad, like he was here
(22:31):
but he wasn't here right as aparent anymore.
So that sort of deep grief,depression and then this very
high anxiety of for his safetyand all the things that were
happening in my personal lifeand it just kind of the stress
started to really accumulate andmy nervous system just never
(22:53):
got a chance to recover becausethe intensity of his experience
was just getting more and moreextreme and I just like I just
found myself just in this reallydark place and I was trying
everything.
At the time I was like allright, you know, I'm going to go
to yoga classes and I'm goingto do Reiki and I'm going to do
(23:15):
acupuncture and I'll do Westernpharmaceuticals, like I will do
anything to get myself justfeeling back to normal.
And it's also was a veryisolating time and I think a lot
of people understand this combonow after COVID, like the
(23:36):
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 nowexplaining sort of what happened
to him and it was very hard atthe time.
And so it started to affect mywork life and I was working at a
(23:58):
corporate job, I was notperforming well and I took some
unpaid leave.
I couldn't drive because myanxiety was too much at the time
.
I wasn't sleeping, I wasn'teating, I couldn't drive.
So I like walked to a yogastudio and at the very end of
class, which I was like sittingin Shavasana and I was just like
(24:21):
for those of you you don't know, shavasana is the very last
pose where you relax, andnormally it's my favorite pose.
But when you're that anxiousyou can feel that post can kind
of make you feel worse becauseyou're like, oh wow, I can't
even just relax for a couple ofminutes on the floor.
So I was sort of feeling alittle angry and the person just
(24:43):
played a crystal ball.
I'd never heard one in myentire life and I just had this
immediate reaction where it waslike my whole body exhaled, you
know, like a sense of like likejust calm, and I don't know I
(25:05):
even, like had this sort ofvision.
I've never had any kind ofvisions or anything I wouldn't
say I'm.
I felt like this vision of justsort of like kind of gold sort
of energy and just this sense oflike deep relaxation.
So gold, I had this sort ofgold energy in the sense of like
(25:27):
really deep relaxation and hope.
Right, it was like a beacon oflight.
Like you know the story ofPandora's box.
Yeah, well, they say.
Actually, when you look at thetranslation, it was probably
more like a vase.
It's one of those vases that isvery skinny at the bottom and
(25:48):
wide at the top and there's atheory that she didn't
intentionally, not actually openanything Like.
She put the vase down and thevase fell over.
And then all these you know thelatter, you know these, these
horrible things you know wereemitted from this vase that they
say like under the lip, iswhere hope was still like still
(26:13):
sitting there under the lip, andthat'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.
So I walked up and I was likeyou know, hey, what's this white
salad bowl?
(26:34):
You're playing because I didn'tknow what it was.
And she's like, oh, it's thisthing called a crystal ball.
I'm like, great, where do youget them?
And she's like Florida.
I'm like, okay, which oneshould I buy?
And I just bought three.
Five days later they'redelivered in the mail.
I just start playing them everyday for myself and I would just
(26:59):
play for like 15 or 20 minutesand then I would take a rest,
like just I'd get sleepy, whichyou'll find out later.
If I'm going to do a littlesound bath, we'll get a little
sleepy.
And I would just sort of knockout, 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 youknow, and I I had, I was living
(27:23):
in an apartment in LA and I hadneighbors, you know, beneath me
and I had to write them thisletter.
I was so embarrassed, I waslike, um, so I'm going to buy a
gong, I'm wondering why can't Iplay this gong?
And they're like, oh, you canplay, you know, when we're still
at work, so anytime, you know,weekdays, until 6 30 PM.
(27:47):
And so I had my little routineof playing my gong and my bowls
and I slowly got better, eventhough my dad's story got, you
know, way worse.
I mean, he eventually died ofhis illness in a really tragic
way.
I'm sorry, Thank you, but youknow, my sort of inner
(28:11):
conditions changed and then Igot really interested.
You know, I sort of like myfather, I have like that bit of
a science mind, you know, and Iwas like what is happening?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Why is this working you?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
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 andthey started to notice like wow,
melissa, you seem so muchhappier.
You know, because I had had,you know before, sound healing.
I was like sunglasses, giantlime headphones, 9 AM to 5 PM,
(28:49):
you know, just all day.
Just I want to disappear, Idon't want to talk to anyone, I
just can't, I can't do it, Ijust I don't have any extra
energy for anything besides,just like the basics of my job.
So, beautiful, yeah, and so itwas fun to just you know.
These people were like hey,what's going on with you?
(29:10):
And I'm like I was soembarrassed, I was like, oh my
God.
I always say I'm like areluctant new.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
You didn't want to tell them Healer.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I'm like a reluctant sound healer.
Yeah, I was really embarrassed.
I was like this is so weird.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Is this like a how much time wise?
So you said this started in2009, as when?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
As when, my dad was sick, I started doing sound
healing like in 2012.
So, yeah, I mean, I have beendealing with anxiety and
depression for two years.
When I stumbled upon that yogaclass and then I'd say I was
starting to feel better, withinlike six months, you know, I was
really doing a lot better and Iwas very committed to my
(29:55):
healing practice.
Yeah, you know, monday throughFriday, not Saturdays and
Sundays because my neighborswouldn't let me.
But yeah, my friends at workwere just so intrigued because
they could just sense like therewas a difference, you know, and
I was like oh, I'm doing thisweird thing with sound and it's
like I play these balls andthey're like well, we want to
(30:20):
check it out.
And I'm like okay.
So that's how I started.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
That's beautiful.
I'm sorry for your loss.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Thank you.
Yeah, it's a difficult journey,but my dad gave me a lot of
gifts.
Like I wouldn't be here withyou, I wouldn't be here with
your community, I wouldn't behere performing soundbats at,
you know, all over the Bay Areain Portland.
So, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
What was his name?
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Ron.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Let's honor him for a moment here.
Yeah you, the bowls were yourfirst instruments, and then came
(31:33):
the gongs.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yes, yes, the bowls were my first instrument.
They're really.
The bowls are, I feel like, arewhat set the stage in your
brain to then move to the gongs,which then are more ethereal.
They're going to take you intosort of deeper parts of your,
(31:56):
you know, into your worlds ofspirituality and emotions.
But the bowls are pretty like,they're very forward, they're
very straight on, they're headon.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And each bowl is astrologically connected.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
The bowls are connected to the chakras.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
What's kind of interesting about them that
maybe your listeners would beinterested in too is that the
bowls are heated to 4000 degreesand then when they're created,
when they're created they'recreated, you know, by machines.
They're not chiseled fromquartz rock, right right they're
.
You know they're created bymachines.
(32:41):
But it's not so exact or aperfect process.
It's very imperfect and as thebowl cools it becomes a note.
So it's not like themanufacturer goes.
I'm going to make a 14 inch Dcrystal bowl.
(33:01):
Okay, okay.
It's that that bowl happened tocool to the note of D, wow.
So, in a way, right, if you'regoing, it's like it's like they
choose their note, you know,they, they decide.
And then, if you can thinkabout, like, where the notes
(33:23):
could fall unlike a piano whichhas the white notes, right, and
you're just to go all the way upthe scale and each note is, you
know, tuned to a certainfrequency Well, these ones can
be a little bit sharp, they canbe a little bit flat.
So the way that they interactwith each other is very
(33:45):
different from Western music,right.
So like you could playdifferent combinations and
because one might be reallysharp and one might be really
flat, they might get together ina really different way.
That actually sounds prettygood, but in Western music
theory they maybe wouldn'tnecessarily get along.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
So everybody's set of bowls is a little bit unique.
Oh, they're completely unique.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yes, this is why when you know one of these babies,
if they're, they're highlybreakable, right it's, it's just
very it's like a big wine glassor something.
And when you lose one, I meanI've been trying for years to
replace the C sharp that I had.
(34:32):
I even know what frequency itis, but I haven't found a bowl
that's cold to that note yet.
Oh my gosh.
So they're very much like inyou form a relationship with
your instruments.
You know, if you're a healer,you're definitely really getting
(34:53):
to know them really intimatelyand they're, they're like your
family.
You know, these are my little,my little babies.
I got three little babies overthere.
Thank you, this is a laundrylist question.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Sound healing is a powerful tool for doing things
like balancing and restoringyour digestive system or your
metabolic system or reproductivesystem, metabolizing and
integrating emotions or trauma,reducing insomnia, increasing
high quality sleep, releasingflash insights or inspiring
(35:30):
people with creativity,balancing and soothing
overworked chakra.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Chakras, chakras, chakras, chakras.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
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
(36:00):
what's drawing?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
them?
Well, definitely, I mean.
Maybe our first question is why, Sort of why, does sound
healing manage to do all thislaundry list of things and more?
Yes, and you know how is thatpossible.
And you know, as we talkedabout, traditional sound healing
is done when you're, you'relaying down, so your
(36:22):
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 theenvironment to be very
supportive of the nervous system, the props that you use, you
know how to make your bodyreally comfortable.
So if the parasympatheticnervous system is relaxing,
(36:42):
right, and it's just getting abreak, a lot of those things
that we're talking about on thislist are what start to just
naturally heal right, becausethat's it's in charge of all
those things, right.
And then on top of it, you'vegot these slower brainwave
states happening.
So people will find, as theymove with sound healing not move
(37:07):
, but as they are listening tosound healing their brainwaves
are drifting into these slowerstates.
And a lot of that just has to dowith the qualities of the
instruments themselves and justthe subtle difference in the,
the volume of the crystal bowlsjust sort of leads to a sense of
(37:30):
monoreal beats, right.
So, feeling like there's soundkind of going in and out of your
a lot of people call it verycircular, and this is true
online or in person.
If it's mic 12 andprofessionally you have a mix,
somebody's doing theprofessional mixing, like I do
your live stream is going to getthat quality too, and so it
(37:53):
sort of it seduces the mind intothese quieter states of
meditation.
So when you combineparasympathetic restoration and
meditative states, often you getall the benefits of meditation
too, without the pain, right.
Like have you tried meditatinganytime recently, like you're
(38:16):
sitting there, you're seated,you're in pain, your body's not
happy and you're going throughthis entire you know laundry
list of just different thoughtsand then you're upset at
yourself for having the thoughtsbecause you really are supposed
to not be thinking.
And it's like this verypunishing kind of feeling.
A lot of people in the firstfive years of meditating don't
(38:39):
feel that good.
Right, it takes a long time tobuild that muscle.
Meanwhile, with sound healing,your, your mind's focused on
sound and it's listening andit's becoming more and more
relaxed.
You're getting a little bitsleepy and you just enter those
meditative states very passivelyand that's where you can get
(39:02):
those flash insights, you canget visions, you can fall asleep
, you can snore.
Some people really knock out.
They have never heard me playthe gong.
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
(39:22):
need because you know we're verysleep deprived, as you know, as
humans, and so those are thethat's the why factor of how you
get all these differentbenefits from just laying down
and listening.
And then, as far as what'sattracting people, a lot of
people are just feeling reallystressed out and they're just
(39:45):
looking, they're desperate forways to relax where their mind
really feels that sense of calm.
Because sound healing like onceyou understand how to get under
the noise of your own mind, liketo get out of your own way,
when you understand the pathwayto silence, it gets easier and
(40:09):
easier to get there and thesound healing is a way to
establish that path into silence.
And then you become meditation,becomes much easier after doing
sound healing for, like, I don'tknow, 10 minutes three days a
week, you're going to be able tomeditate a lot easier, you know
(40:32):
, within a few weeks Totraditional meditation, I mean,
will become easy.
And then, as far as the peoplethat I'm hoping to like work
with I know that was a questionI saw in our conversations was
like, well, who do I likeworking with, and it's fun to
make it clear like, right now,what I really want to work with
(40:55):
is just I want to train othersto be professional healers and
especially I want to diversify.
You know the world of healingright, 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
(41:16):
more diversity we see out therein wellness, the easier it is
for people to feel welcomedright, to feel welcome, to feel
like it's safe.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
They see themselves, yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
They see themselves and you know, like many aspects
of many wellness segments, youknow sound healing.
I was driving down the five tocome here and there was a huge
billboard for crystal bowlscalled crystal tones.
By the way, they're expensive.
I have other ones you shouldbuy that are not there, but
they're very high quality.
(41:49):
Anyway, they're most expensiveones out there.
Right Right, they're cataracts.
So on the billboard is this youknow, white, blonde woman, and
I'm just like I'm.
It's my mission to try andchange that.
Yes, and I really am alsoseeing a lot of.
You know, you can literally goon Amazon right now and deliver
(42:10):
your crystal bowls to your housein two days, and there's a lot
of people who are callingthemselves sound healers, but
they aren't necessarilyunderstanding how sound works
with the nervous system and thescience behind it.
And you know I've developed amethod over the last 10 years
about my specific soundbaths andthe formula that I use to,
(42:35):
really because I am so I justwant to get everyone healing
right, and so there's a.
It's a very mixed field rightnow that I'm seeing, and so I'm
just really excited.
Last year, I launched um.
I've been doing trainings for along time, many years, but I
finally had the courage and toend the investment of time to
(42:58):
create an actual certificationprogram.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
So just like you get certified in yoga and it's 200
hours.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
I have a 200 hour sound healing certification
program Because I wantlegitimate professional healers
out there in the world.
So that's my, that is my goalto change you know the way to
change wellness as much as I can.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Okay, this is the first.
You haven't done this in yourpodcast yet.
No, I'm not, you're a soundbath, I'm bl yeah.
I know.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
So again, our listeners want to take a moment
to find themselves into theirbedroom or on a couch.
We can offer that your nervoussystem, a nice, comfortable
(44:04):
position with a lot of support.
I'm taking a few deep breaths,taking it all the sounds around
us.
I'm hearing some sounds like wepeople living above the space
(44:27):
and we're just going to includethat along with any other
airplanes, traffic and horn, andwe don't need ideal cave
silhouettes to achieve deepstates of rest and
self-connection, again taking anice deep breath in and as we
(45:12):
have this little mini soundbath,just inviting the sounds to
carry you into somewhere new.
Right see, if you can invitethe sounds to carry you into a
brand new place inside.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you you
(56:53):
.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
You, you, you, you, you, you, you you.
(57:48):
You.
You, you.
(58:10):
You.
(58:34):
You, you, you, you, you you.
Once you understand how to get under the noise of
your own mind, like to get outof your own way, when you
understand that the pathway tosilence it gets easier and
easier to get there and thesound healing is a way to
establish that path.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Listen to this next Agile Vocalist episode.
Agile Vocalist is a podcast andblog about sound and the
performing arts with aCalifornia connection.
Melissa Felsenstein is thefounder of Innersounds
Meditation and a professionalsound practitioner with over 10
years experience.
She's a self-proclaimedambassador of rest and delights
(01:36):
in helping others return to acalm, meditative and deeply
restful place.
During these profoundly restfulstates, your body begins
engaging in an all-systemsrepair reducing stress, easing
sleep, strengthening immunity,enhancing intuition, deploying
mood boosters and life justfeels a whole lot better.
(01:57):
Melissa experienced all of thesebenefits herself when she used
sound to heal her own viciouscycle of anxiety and depression.
She has spent the last 10 yearsrefining her technique into a
unique Innersounds formulaspecifically designated to heal
the nervous system and createinternal calm.
Melissa offers a 200-hourprofessional sound healing
(02:19):
practitioner course where sheteaches others how to become a
professional sound healer.
I'm also incredibly grateful toMoonlanding Meditative Arts for
welcoming us in as guests totheir gorgeous space for this
episode.
Moonlanding Meditative Arts iswhere mindfulness meets
creativity in a beautifulOakland California space.
(02:41):
The studio offers healthcoaching, open creativity studio
time, classes and more toawaken your inner creative,
connect your mind and body andmove.
Visit moonlandingstudio on theweb for more info.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
And, as Melissa said, we are here at Moonlanding
Meditative Arts in Oakland and abeautiful converted space, so
you wouldn't know the city was50 feet away.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It was so quiet and soft and it just feels like I
could be out in nature somewhere.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
That's one of the interesting things about this
city is that there's a lot ofenergy, but it's very easy to
slip into the trees and letnature come in.
So we're so glad to have you onyour tour through the.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Bay Area.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Thank you, yes, you want to say a little bit about
that what you say if you comedown periodically?
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, so well, I'm Melissa Felstens-Dynab, inner
Sounds Meditation, and I'mactually a third generation
Bayarian.
So my grandmother was born inOakland, my mom was born in
Oakland and I was born inMountain View, which is not cool
(04:51):
as cool as Oakland.
I was like Mom, you broke thestreak, you know.
But yes, I have a very strongaffinity to the Bay Area.
It really feels just.
You know, you arrive indifferent places in your life
and you know, sometimes you wereborn in that place, sometimes
you just stumble upon it, butyou have that sense of home and
(05:15):
I just really feel it here, withthe beautiful bay and the
breeze and just the trees.
When I arrived here in 2015 tostart my sound healing business,
I had come from LA and thefirst thing I realized when I
moved back was like, oh, I'm atree person and there's really
(05:38):
not a lot of trees, especiallywhen you get out in nature in
Los Angeles.
You know it's desert, sothere's a lot of shrubs and
little like trees that aretrying really hard but not
really getting, you know, verybig.
But here you know you canstumble into redwoods, and I saw
these oaks and I just it justsort of stunned me like, oh yeah
(06:00):
, you know I love trees, lovebeing in the trees.
So of course that led me to gofurther north and now I'm living
in the land of trees inPortland, oregon, and I've been
there for about a year and ahalf.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
What sound did you wake up with today?
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Birds I did.
I'm staying in a place thatit's actually just in the city
it's about seven minutes awayfrom here but the trees I don't
know, they're just.
There's a lot of birds andthey're out there singing their
little hearts out, and I love it.
It's one of my favorite soundsto wake up to.
(06:42):
If I have an alarm, it actuallyis the Koshy time, so you put
that on your phone.
I record it and yeah, andthat's why it wakes me up.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Would you say that that's your favorite instrument?
Do you have a favoriteinstrument?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I mean, I think my favorite instruments are gongs.
I love them.
I watched your video about thegong thing.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
You didn't bring the gong Not today.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
No, no, yeah, I've got.
I'm thoroughly obsessed.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
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 ownfrequencies.
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 (07:43):
Yeah, yeah, there's definitely.
So the gongs, they're reallyexciting.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So in my background gathering it seemed like there
was one of your instruments isastrologically connected.
I guess it's the gong.
Do you want to tell us aboutthat?
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, I can go over it like a like, briefly.
Yeah yeah, so gongs are handmade, they're hand hammered, and
some of the gongs are calledsymphonic gongs, which means
they're for a symphony or anykind of music or not.
And you could use one of thosein a sound bath as well, but
(08:42):
it's not tuned to a specificfrequency, it's just tuned to
sound however the gong maker hasdeemed to be gong Versus.
They have another set of gongscalled planetary gongs and these
are based on the orbitalproperties of each planet and
(09:02):
they've translated it into afrequency and then the gong
maker, you know, hand hammersthe gong to be that exact
frequency and it's tuned withlike an orchestral tuner so you
can see exactly like the Hertzof those gongs.
So if you think about,astrology is based on the
(09:23):
planets and what's happening inthe cosmos, and these gongs are
now the sound of that planet.
So when Mercury is inretrograde right, right, that's
a popular one, right?
Everyone's always talking aboutMercury retrograde you can then
listen to Mercury as afrequency, as a gong.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Is that by pulling in data from telescopes I mean
that there's a whole lot oflistening, for you know, in
space profession, rightlistening for signals and things
like right.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Well, this is more based on the orbit of Mercury
and then translating that into asound.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Okay, so that's data that's becoming yes right,
what's the glue?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Yeah, it's like a Swiss physicist like came up
with the formula, got it andthen.
So it's interesting, becausenot every gong necessary, like
Jupiter isn't the biggest gongright.
It's a 28 inch gong.
It's a gas giant.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Just a bunch of iron, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
So it can be a fun way to.
I mean, I like using the gongswith astrology just to give
myself different themes as aplayer, different ideas of, like
, what's the intention of thesound bath, you know?
Okay, mercury's in retrograde,so let's talk about what's
happening with that and then doa as an astrology based sound
(10:55):
bath.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Have you ever been asked to do a sound bath?
That's Well, that's reflectiveof something that's happening
astrologically, like notcentered on a person, not
centered on a planet, but on,like, the collective things.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Oh, yeah those are what I do, okay, okay, yeah, for
my for my live streams, for myon-demand community.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I'm always doing these astrology, just the
collective, yeah, what'shappening in the sky and what
might it mean?
And then I give a little likeastrology talk and then we like
let it all go and just let thesounds that come in and and give
you the gifts.
I love it.
Yeah, astrology I took a longtime to come, come into.
(11:45):
You know like I used to thinkit was absolute bullshit and I
lot of swear is okay to swear.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I am happy to have a groundbreaking episode.
I get to mark it.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Or I could not swear but, I, usually just you know,
not really.
I just kind of felt like it wascoincidental, like yeah, if you
, you know, you know Mercury'sand retrograde you look around
for like things going wrong andyour phones break, yeah, these
kind of things.
Right, it's a pre-dispositionRight like where it's sort of
like self-fulfilling process.
Absolutely yeah so that's how Iused to feel and when I started
(12:24):
playing the gongs a lot.
Every once in a while, I havethis feeling.
I'm like, you know, I reallyfeel like playing Jupiter, you
know, and I have no idea why.
Like, but I'm gonna just bringit.
I bring Jupiter.
And then always there's likesomeone in the crowd was like
you know, but it was happeningenough times and I thought, okay
(12:49):
, you know, all right, I'llstart 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, andpair it with the astrology, it
became a real fascinatingadventure.
(13:10):
So my favorite thing aboutgongs is their unpredictability.
So, unlike all these otherkinds of instruments, the attack
and the decay of a note, right,is pretty predictable.
When you play a guitar, you youdidn't you know what the chords
gonna sound like, right, youknow, you know, when you play a
(13:34):
gong, because of the resound,which is the ability for a gong
to spontaneously emit a soundwithout you doing anything.
So there's like a almost likeskipping stone and water effect
right yeah, there's like abuildup that happens and then
(13:56):
all of a sudden you've donenothing and a huge wave of sound
has just echoed back and it'sso powerful, it's so fascinating
to because you're it's a inalso to play a gong in a healing
manner.
It's very intuitive.
So it's all about you know, ifyou were to watch some of my
(14:21):
live stream videos, you'd see mejust you know, throwing away
different mallets becausethey're just not the right, my
intuition saying like, nope, notthat one, not that one, oh,
this one, oh, here it is, thisis, this is the mallet.
And then you're trying to sortof, you know, figure out and
read the gong, and what does itwant to say today for this group
(14:43):
, for this moment in time?
And then it'll change.
You know, like so it's very itchanges 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
(15:06):
.
Like you know, really fluffy andsoft and sometimes they're
really hard and more like an eggshape, right, yeah?
So there's a lot of differentmallets out there and that's
just.
I think that's the most it's.
It's just this wild ride thatyou never know and sometimes you
know I've done very similar.
I've been playing for so longyou could say I've done like
(15:28):
2000 of the same, pretty muchthe same connection with the
gong.
I'm trying, not to say hit, I'mtrying to reduce violent
language, making contact, we'reconnecting with it and I will
connect on that 2001 connectionand it'll be completely
(15:50):
different, you know, becompletely different, which is
just a very addictive.
It's so fun, it's extremelyaddictive.
So a first, let's listen, yeah,because a lot of the time we
(16:32):
have these preconceived notions.
You know, especially crystalbowls, they represent chakras as
well, right, so chakras areenergy centers that are in the
body and people might have thisidea in their minds about, like.
I'll just give an example that'svery common it's like, oh, I
(16:53):
want to work on my heart chakrabecause I really want to partner
and I want you know arelationship, and and then we do
this sort of blind sort ofacoustic listening where we have
you, go through each one andjust write different notes about
how you felt and it always endsup the the one that you really
(17:14):
resonate with is.
It tends to be the note thatyou really resonate with tends
to be different than the one youthought the chocolate, the
chakra you wanted to work oninteresting doesn't necessarily
match with the actual bowl thatyou should start with, because
the bowl you want to start withis the one you want to play the
most is that a manifestation ofthe, the tug of war about the
(17:42):
intellectual brain and otherparts of the?
brain, yeah, right, likeintellectual versus intuitive,
right?
So intellectual has a totally aplan, and intuitive brain is,
you know, you're it's not even abrain, but like the intuitive
body, yes, and the mental body,the intuitive body, it just has
(18:04):
so much more to give you, somuch more knowledge, so much
understanding, vision.
I feel like our intuition is.
It's hard, though, to getconnected to it in the world we
live in.
It's really tough, and I thinkthat's one of the biggest
(18:27):
benefits of sound healing is,you know, because of the way the
instruments, the way theyaffect our brain waves and how
they slow them down, we're ableto access more of those
intuitive understandings, justlike when I am, you know, taking
people through the training andthey're discovering the bowl
(18:50):
that they should work with, thenote.
It's the same kind of thinglike they.
It just opens this other partof yourself and I think it's the
easiest way.
I've done a lot of wellness, youknow you name it, I've probably
done it and I think this is themost accessible way to reach
(19:12):
these different states of youknow, whether it's just pure
rest and relaxation or it's moretheta brain wave state, with
sort of creative insights,understandings.
It could be more of anemotional healing yeah, you
never sort of know whatadventure you're going to have.
(19:34):
But of all the wellness tools,I mean there isn't one out there
where you just lay down andlisten and you don't have to do
anything else right, it feelsalmost luxurious.
Yes, there's a, there's a lot,even as someone who has a deep
(19:55):
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 sodeeply relaxed and meanwhile
you're hearing all these soundsand, of course, our bodies, that
(20:16):
on a physiological level we'revery connected to sound, you
know, as as animals, and itaffects us in a really deep way.
So just to be able tocompletely rest, lay down, be
really comfortable, have yourlittle eye pillow over your eyes
and your blankets and your, youknow it's not about like
(20:38):
wearing Lulu lemon pants, youknow you can wear your pajamas
right and just sort of layingdown and then hearing these
different instruments in thisvery immersive way whether it's
live and in person or online youcan get very similar
experiences actually.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
How did you get into this work?
Speaker 1 (21:01):
That is a great question.
It's kind of a we have to goback in time, you know, to like
2009.
And at the time my father, whowas an MIT graduate, he worked
for Hewlett-Packard for you know, 35 years as an engineer.
(21:22):
He was a very intelligent man,a very interesting man and
unfortunately he became mentallyill 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 asone of my best friends and then
(21:43):
the next day, like he was gone.
And so it was this very extrememoment in my personal life, you
know, where I was just reallyafraid for him.
It was very hard on the family,it's really hard to see someone
so unwell and not be gettingany better, and it's just the
(22:09):
whole system, for mental illnessis really not conducive to
actually helping people.
So I was undergoing just thisroller coaster of very extreme
anxiety and depression.
So I was feeling I didn't knowat the time, but of course I
know it now like the grief oflosing my dad, like he was here
(22:31):
but he wasn't here right as aparent anymore.
So that sort of deep grief,depression and then this very
high anxiety of for his safetyand all the things that were
happening in my personal lifeand it just kind of the stress
started to really accumulate andmy nervous system just never
(22:53):
got a chance to recover becausethe intensity of his experience
was just getting more and moreextreme and I just like I just
found myself just in this reallydark place and I was trying
everything.
At the time I was like allright, you know, I'm going to go
to yoga classes and I'm goingto do Reiki and I'm going to do
(23:15):
acupuncture and I'll do Westernpharmaceuticals, like I will do
anything to get myself justfeeling back to normal.
And it's also was a veryisolating time and I think a lot
of people understand this combonow after COVID, like the
(23:36):
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 nowexplaining sort of what happened
to him and it was very hard atthe time.
And so it started to affect mywork life and I was working at a
(23:58):
corporate job, I was notperforming well and I took some
unpaid leave.
I couldn't drive because myanxiety was too much at the time
.
I wasn't sleeping, I wasn'teating, I couldn't drive.
So I like walked to a yogastudio and at the very end of
class, which I was like sittingin Shavasana and I was just like
(24:21):
for those of you you don't know, shavasana is the very last
pose where you relax, andnormally it's my favorite pose.
But when you're that anxiousyou can feel that post can kind
of make you feel worse becauseyou're like, oh wow, I can't
even just relax for a couple ofminutes on the floor.
So I was sort of feeling alittle angry and the person just
(24:43):
played a crystal ball.
I'd never heard one in myentire life and I just had this
immediate reaction where it waslike my whole body exhaled, you
know, like a sense of like likejust calm, and I don't know I
(25:05):
even, like had this sort ofvision.
I've never had any kind ofvisions or anything I wouldn't
say I'm.
I felt like this vision of justsort of like kind of gold sort
of energy and just this sense oflike deep relaxation.
So gold, I had this sort ofgold energy in the sense of like
(25:27):
really deep relaxation and hope.
Right, it was like a beacon oflight.
Like you know the story ofPandora's box.
Yeah, well, they say.
Actually, when you look at thetranslation, it was probably
more like a vase.
It's one of those vases that isvery skinny at the bottom and
(25:48):
wide at the top and there's atheory that she didn't
intentionally, not actually openanything Like.
She put the vase down and thevase fell over.
And then all these you know thelatter, you know these, these
horrible things you know wereemitted from this vase that they
say like under the lip, iswhere hope was still like still
(26:13):
sitting there under the lip, andthat'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.
So I walked up and I was likeyou know, hey, what's this white
salad bowl?
(26:34):
You're playing because I didn'tknow what it was.
And she's like, oh, it's thisthing called a crystal ball.
I'm like, great, where do youget them?
And she's like Florida.
I'm like, okay, which oneshould I buy?
And I just bought three.
Five days later they'redelivered in the mail.
I just start playing them everyday for myself and I would just
(26:59):
play for like 15 or 20 minutesand then I would take a rest,
like just I'd get sleepy, whichyou'll find out later.
If I'm going to do a littlesound bath, we'll get a little
sleepy.
And I would just sort of knockout, 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 youknow, and I I had, I was living
(27:23):
in an apartment in LA and I hadneighbors, you know, beneath me
and I had to write them thisletter.
I was so embarrassed, I waslike, um, so I'm going to buy a
gong, I'm wondering why can't Iplay this gong?
And they're like, oh, you canplay, you know, when we're still
at work, so anytime, you know,weekdays, until 6 30 PM.
(27:47):
And so I had my little routineof playing my gong and my bowls
and I slowly got better, eventhough my dad's story got, you
know, way worse.
I mean, he eventually died ofhis illness in a really tragic
way.
I'm sorry, Thank you, but youknow, my sort of inner
(28:11):
conditions changed and then Igot really interested.
You know, I sort of like myfather, I have like that bit of
a science mind, you know, and Iwas like what is happening?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Why is this working you?
Speaker 1 (28:24):
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 andthey started to notice like wow,
melissa, you seem so muchhappier.
You know, because I had had,you know before, sound healing.
I was like sunglasses, giantlime headphones, 9 AM to 5 PM,
(28:49):
you know, just all day.
Just I want to disappear, Idon't want to talk to anyone, I
just can't, I can't do it, Ijust I don't have any extra
energy for anything besides,just like the basics of my job.
So, beautiful, yeah, and so itwas fun to just you know.
These people were like hey,what's going on with you?
(29:10):
And I'm like I was soembarrassed, I was like, oh my
God.
I always say I'm like areluctant new.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
You didn't want to tell them Healer.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
I'm like a reluctant sound healer.
Yeah, I was really embarrassed.
I was like this is so weird.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Is this like a how much time wise?
So you said this started in2009, as when?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
As when, my dad was sick, I started doing sound
healing like in 2012.
So, yeah, I mean, I have beendealing with anxiety and
depression for two years.
When I stumbled upon that yogaclass and then I'd say I was
starting to feel better, withinlike six months, you know, I was
really doing a lot better and Iwas very committed to my
(29:55):
healing practice.
Yeah, you know, monday throughFriday, not Saturdays and
Sundays because my neighborswouldn't let me.
But yeah, my friends at workwere just so intrigued because
they could just sense like therewas a difference, you know, and
I was like oh, I'm doing thisweird thing with sound and it's
like I play these balls andthey're like well, we want to
(30:20):
check it out.
And I'm like okay.
So that's how I started.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
That's beautiful.
I'm sorry for your loss.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Thank you.
Yeah, it's a difficult journey,but my dad gave me a lot of
gifts.
Like I wouldn't be here withyou, I wouldn't be here with
your community, I wouldn't behere performing soundbats at,
you know, all over the Bay Areain Portland.
So, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
What was his name?
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Ron.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Let's honor him for a moment here.
Yeah you, the bowls were yourfirst instruments, and then came
(31:33):
the gongs.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yes, yes, the bowls were my first instrument.
They're really.
The bowls are, I feel like, arewhat set the stage in your
brain to then move to the gongs,which then are more ethereal.
They're going to take you intosort of deeper parts of your,
(31:56):
you know, into your worlds ofspirituality and emotions.
But the bowls are pretty like,they're very forward, they're
very straight on, they're headon.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And each bowl is astrologically connected.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
The bowls are connected to the chakras.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh, okay.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
What's kind of interesting about them that
maybe your listeners would beinterested in too is that the
bowls are heated to 4000 degreesand then when they're created,
when they're created they'recreated, you know, by machines.
They're not chiseled fromquartz rock, right right they're
.
You know they're created bymachines.
(32:41):
But it's not so exact or aperfect process.
It's very imperfect and as thebowl cools it becomes a note.
So it's not like themanufacturer goes.
I'm going to make a 14 inch Dcrystal bowl.
(33:01):
Okay, okay.
It's that that bowl happened tocool to the note of D, wow.
So, in a way, right, if you'regoing, it's like it's like they
choose their note, you know,they, they decide.
And then, if you can thinkabout, like, where the notes
(33:23):
could fall unlike a piano whichhas the white notes, right, and
you're just to go all the way upthe scale and each note is, you
know, tuned to a certainfrequency Well, these ones can
be a little bit sharp, they canbe a little bit flat.
So the way that they interactwith each other is very
(33:45):
different from Western music,right.
So like you could playdifferent combinations and
because one might be reallysharp and one might be really
flat, they might get together ina really different way.
That actually sounds prettygood, but in Western music
theory they maybe wouldn'tnecessarily get along.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
So everybody's set of bowls is a little bit unique.
Oh, they're completely unique.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yes, this is why when you know one of these babies,
if they're, they're highlybreakable, right it's, it's just
very it's like a big wine glassor something.
And when you lose one, I meanI've been trying for years to
replace the C sharp that I had.
(34:32):
I even know what frequency itis, but I haven't found a bowl
that's cold to that note yet.
Oh my gosh.
So they're very much like inyou form a relationship with
your instruments.
You know, if you're a healer,you're definitely really getting
(34:53):
to know them really intimatelyand they're, they're like your
family.
You know, these are my little,my little babies.
I got three little babies overthere.
Thank you, this is a laundrylist question.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Sound healing is a powerful tool for doing things
like balancing and restoringyour digestive system or your
metabolic system or reproductivesystem, metabolizing and
integrating emotions or trauma,reducing insomnia, increasing
high quality sleep, releasingflash insights or inspiring
(35:30):
people with creativity,balancing and soothing
overworked chakra.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Chakras, chakras, chakras, chakras.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
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
(36:00):
what's drawing?
Speaker 1 (36:01):
them?
Well, definitely, I mean.
Maybe our first question is why, Sort of why, does sound
healing manage to do all thislaundry list of things and more?
Yes, and you know how is thatpossible.
And you know, as we talkedabout, traditional sound healing
is done when you're, you'relaying down, so your
(36:22):
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 theenvironment to be very
supportive of the nervous system, the props that you use, you
know how to make your bodyreally comfortable.
So if the parasympatheticnervous system is relaxing,
(36:42):
right, and it's just getting abreak, a lot of those things
that we're talking about on thislist are what start to just
naturally heal right, becausethat's it's in charge of all
those things, right.
And then on top of it, you'vegot these slower brainwave
states happening.
So people will find, as theymove with sound healing not move
(37:07):
, but as they are listening tosound healing their brainwaves
are drifting into these slowerstates.
And a lot of that just has to dowith the qualities of the
instruments themselves and justthe subtle difference in the,
the volume of the crystal bowlsjust sort of leads to a sense of
(37:30):
monoreal beats, right.
So, feeling like there's soundkind of going in and out of your
a lot of people call it verycircular, and this is true
online or in person.
If it's mic 12 andprofessionally you have a mix,
somebody's doing theprofessional mixing, like I do
your live stream is going to getthat quality too, and so it
(37:53):
sort of it seduces the mind intothese quieter states of
meditation.
So when you combineparasympathetic restoration and
meditative states, often you getall the benefits of meditation
too, without the pain, right.
Like have you tried meditatinganytime recently, like you're
(38:16):
sitting there, you're seated,you're in pain, your body's not
happy and you're going throughthis entire you know laundry
list of just different thoughtsand then you're upset at
yourself for having the thoughtsbecause you really are supposed
to not be thinking.
And it's like this verypunishing kind of feeling.
A lot of people in the firstfive years of meditating don't
(38:39):
feel that good.
Right, it takes a long time tobuild that muscle.
Meanwhile, with sound healing,your, your mind's focused on
sound and it's listening andit's becoming more and more
relaxed.
You're getting a little bitsleepy and you just enter those
meditative states very passivelyand that's where you can get
(39:02):
those flash insights, you canget visions, you can fall asleep
, you can snore.
Some people really knock out.
They have never heard me playthe gong.
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
(39:22):
need because you know we're verysleep deprived, as you know, as
humans, and so those are thethat's the why factor of how you
get all these differentbenefits from just laying down
and listening.
And then, as far as what'sattracting people, a lot of
people are just feeling reallystressed out and they're just
(39:45):
looking, they're desperate forways to relax where their mind
really feels that sense of calm.
Because sound healing like onceyou understand how to get under
the noise of your own mind, liketo get out of your own way,
when you understand the pathwayto silence, it gets easier and
(40:09):
easier to get there and thesound healing is a way to
establish that path into silence.
And then you become meditation,becomes much easier after doing
sound healing for, like, I don'tknow, 10 minutes three days a
week, you're going to be able tomeditate a lot easier, you know
(40:32):
, within a few weeks Totraditional meditation, I mean,
will become easy.
And then, as far as the peoplethat I'm hoping to like work
with I know that was a questionI saw in our conversations was
like, well, who do I likeworking with, and it's fun to
make it clear like, right now,what I really want to work with
(40:55):
is just I want to train othersto be professional healers and
especially I want to diversify.
You know the world of healingright, 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
(41:16):
more diversity we see out therein wellness, the easier it is
for people to feel welcomedright, to feel welcome, to feel
like it's safe.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
They see themselves, yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
They see themselves and you know, like many aspects
of many wellness segments, youknow sound healing.
I was driving down the five tocome here and there was a huge
billboard for crystal bowlscalled crystal tones.
By the way, they're expensive.
I have other ones you shouldbuy that are not there, but
they're very high quality.
(41:49):
Anyway, they're most expensiveones out there.
Right Right, they're cataracts.
So on the billboard is this youknow, white, blonde woman, and
I'm just like I'm.
It's my mission to try andchange that.
Yes, and I really am alsoseeing a lot of.
You know, you can literally goon Amazon right now and deliver
(42:10):
your crystal bowls to your housein two days, and there's a lot
of people who are callingthemselves sound healers, but
they aren't necessarilyunderstanding how sound works
with the nervous system and thescience behind it.
And you know I've developed amethod over the last 10 years
about my specific soundbaths andthe formula that I use to,
(42:35):
really because I am so I justwant to get everyone healing
right, and so there's a.
It's a very mixed field rightnow that I'm seeing, and so I'm
just really excited.
Last year, I launched um.
I've been doing trainings for along time, many years, but I
finally had the courage and toend the investment of time to
(42:58):
create an actual certificationprogram.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
So just like you get certified in yoga and it's 200
hours.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
I have a 200 hour sound healing certification
program Because I wantlegitimate professional healers
out there in the world.
So that's my, that is my goalto change you know the way to
change wellness as much as I can.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Okay, this is the first.
You haven't done this in yourpodcast yet.
No, I'm not, you're a soundbath, I'm bl yeah.
I know.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
So again, our listeners want to take a moment
to find themselves into theirbedroom or on a couch.
We can offer that your nervoussystem, a nice, comfortable
(44:04):
position with a lot of support.
I'm taking a few deep breaths,taking it all the sounds around
us.
I'm hearing some sounds like wepeople living above the space
(44:27):
and we're just going to includethat along with any other
airplanes, traffic and horn, andwe don't need ideal cave
silhouettes to achieve deepstates of rest and
self-connection, again taking anice deep breath in and as we
(45:12):
have this little mini soundbath,just inviting the sounds to
carry you into somewhere new.
Right see, if you can invitethe sounds to carry you into a
brand new place inside.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
You, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you you
(56:53):
.
Speaker 1 (57:19):
You, you, you, you, you, you, you you.
(57:48):
You.
You, you.
(58:10):
You.
(58:34):
You, you, you, you, you you.
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