LOVE ANGELES

Music as Medicine: The Healing Power of Sound

Source: Intent - The first of our five senses to develop in the fetus, and the last to fade as we pass from this world, is our sense of hearing.

Throughout our lives, sound  is a magical, mysterious medium that surrounds us, moving, inspiring, evoking, enchanting and healing us. Sound is a gateway to our heart wisdom, a vibrational bridge to the ineffable, and medicine for our soul.

We are vibrational beings, and the health of our mind, body, and spirit is influenced by our environment, and the sounds we are exposed to. Music has the ability to bring us into our heart center, bypassing our busy minds and clever intellect. Sound, offered with the intention to heal and uplift, creates a vibrational bridge to the ‘now moment’, where all healing occurs. Music can slow down and equalize brain waves: music with a pulse of about 60 beats per minute can shift us from the beta waves of ordinary consciousness to the alpha waves of heightened awareness and calm. Music and sound therapy has many physical health benefits that have been documented in recent scientific studies, ranging from reduced blood pressure and heart rate, to increased energy, stronger immune function, and an overall sense of peace and well-being.

The miraculous power of sound to bring healing and inner harmony has been known for centuries; Pythagoras used 'musical medicine' creating combinations of sound to eliminate inner dissonance, and alleviate so-called ‘passions of the mind’. Hippocrates-the father of Western medicine, took patients to the healing temple of Ascelpius, and used music to restore inner harmony.

Modern day applications of sound healing are vast and varied, from music therapy, drumming circles and kirtan, to the use of instruments such as quartz crystal bowls, didgeridoo, gongs and tibetan singing bowls. I experienced a transformative sound healing session with Gong Master Don Conreaux and his amazing gong therapy while I was performing at the mind body spirit festival in London, England in 2005. Seated among his vast array of gongs, the powerful vibrations and low, reverberative tones evoked a deep emotional and physical response. Master Don's 'gong bath' was  a uniquely transformative experience, which led me to further explore the science and art of sound healing.

In May 2007, I enrolled in the Soundwork Practitioner Intensive Course at Toronto Sound Source, facilitated by pioneer sound practitioner and multi-instrumentalist Gary Diggins. This course of study deepened my passion and respect for sound as a healing modality, and I began to lead workshops on the healing power of sound. Gary and I are founding members of the Canadian Association of Sound Practitioners (www.soundpractitioners.com), a coalition of musicians, teachers, therapists, and performers who respect an ancient principle: sound, when expressed with purpose and artistry, can promote individual and group well-being.

I call these Nada Yoga - Sound Healing Workshops , “Awakening The Heart”. We are at a pivotal time in human history where it is essential that we awaken our heart wisdom - the qualities of the Divine Feminine - including compassion, intuition, love, forgiveness, patience, tolerance, and kindness.

Our world at the moment is turbulent, noisy and chaotic. It is also peaceful, beautiful and serene...it is a study in contrasts and choices. We have the ability to choose the soundtrack of our lives, to surround ourselves with music that literally raises our ‘joy vibration’, and prompts us to dance and sing our blues away.

In her book, 'Women Who Run With The Wolves', Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, "To sing is to use the soul voice. It means to say on the breath the truth of one's power and one's need. It is to breathe soul over that which is ailing or in need of restoration". Our world is ailing, and many souls are in need of restoration. Your own personal healing journey beckons. Listen deeply to the whispers of your heart, breathe soul over your prayers…and sing…drum…sound…howl.

Pam Gerrand is a singer/songwriter/sound healer/speaker based in Stratford, Ontario. She finds great inspiration in the poetry of Rumi, the joyful presence of her dog/guru Henry, and the authentic voices of her children, her greatest teachers. To experience the fruits of her inspiration in the form of words, music, meditations and musings...visit www.pamgerrand.com

The Power of Questions

Tony Robbins explains the power of questions - change the questions you ask yourself and change the direction of your life. Tony's message: its not the events of your life that determine how you feel and act but, rather, the meaning you create from your lifes experiences. Learning to ask empowering questions - especially in moments of crisis - is a critical skill that will ultimately shape the meanings you create, and therefore the quality of your life.

Live the Mystery

Source: Intent.com - How willing are you to live in the mystery?  How willing are you to live the mystery?  Or another way to ask this question is how willing are you to allow the mystery to live you?

You see, you live in mystery. Or, better said, you are a living mystery.

Very few people are ready and willing to accept this mystery. The mind wants to figure the mystery out, seeking to grasp and hold onto the mystery.

The mind asks: What about this? How do I? But what if? How does it work? What will happen when?

And there is nothing wrong with these questions.  Yet the deepest longing of your heart and soul, the deep yearning for truth, cannot be grasped and understood – it can only be experienced.

I heard a story once that a great scientist (I think Einstein) said: “God doesn’t play dice with the universe”.  With the advent of quantum physics, another leading scientist reveled: “God not only plays dice, but he throws the dice where no one can find them.”

This is simply a way of saying that we are part of a mystery that cannot be explained, that cannot be understood, that cannot be grasped.  But it can be experienced. The mystery can be revealed; you can literally experience a revelation; you can experience the revelation of the mystery. 

In my experience, the fastest way to experience this mystery, to live this mystery, is through the heart.  When you live from the heart, you transcend the mind.  For many people, the mind serves as a barrier to the experience of truth.  Not because the mind is bad, not because the mind is wrong, but simply because the mind has been conditioned, trained, away from truth.  The mind has been conditioned to have all sort of beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and assumptions.  And none of these beliefs can show you the mystery of reality, the mystery of life, because this mystery can only be experienced directly.  It can be experienced not through thinking, feeling, or doing, but rather through surrendering.

It is natural, almost inevitable, to be afraid of living the mystery because living the mystery means seeing that you are not in control.  For those of us who like to think we control life, or at the very least control ourselves, surrendering to the mystery can seem daunting, overwhelming, even unbearable.

Yet the truth of the matter remains – we are part and parcel of an incredible mystery.  And we do not control the mystery.  It is when you are willing to surrender to this mystery we call life that true beauty can begin to reveal itself.

So take some time this week to reside in the heart.  Reside in your heart and see if you can let the mystery guide you to an experience of your exquisite nature.

Sarah Maria, author of Love Your Body, Love Your Life, outlines her 5-step process for helping you feel great in and about your body. Her work embraces the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, for true, lasting healing. Purchase your copy, begin to love your body today. Visit: www.sarahmaria.com, www.breakfreebeauty.com.

Masood "Moose" Ali Khan

Living in the Spirit of Love Angeles, you don't even have to be within her city limits for her cosmic dots to connect just as they're destined to do!

Just before the holidays, I met a man named Moose -- handsome fellow -- on a shoot in Las Vegas. Within two minutes of meeting one another we were chatting about the wonders of yoga and meditation, go figure? When I later found out that Moose also went by the name Masood, I realized that we had been in the same room together a few months before, when our brother Andrew Zenoff stopped through LA, performing at Santa Monica's Bhakti Yoga Shala. That night, a friend had pointed Moose out to me and mentioned how beautifully he played a relatively new instrument called a Hang. I had never heard of it before (invented in 2001) and was interested in finding out when I could here this bloke perform!

Moose is an amazing soul who lives for the harmony of all people and the planet. The scope of his education, background and world travel is extraordinary (read more about it here) and what I love is that he is truly one of the most humble people you will ever meet.

Moose and his wife Alyson Khan, host regular yoga classes with music in Santa Monica as well as yoga and human & universal energy workshops and week long retreats all around the world. For more on Alyson's classes, check out www.yogawithalyson.com

Moose says:

"The best way to experience the Hang is in a intimate environment like a yoga class where the quiet surroundings allow the harmonic overtones of the Hang sing like angels. Enveloping the listener in a blanket of love. Sometime with other instruments played together with the Hang these subtle vibrations can be overshadowed, but it can also expand the combined sound of the voice or other instruments to an unimaginable experience.

Everything that exists is energy in vibration; people sometimes believe an instrument can have a healing effect. I believe this to be only part of the understanding. What is very important is the intention and focus of the musician to communicate the full combined frequencies for the listener and for the listener to extract on an energetic level what information is needed to evolve spiritually and allow healing to be achieved. Therefore healing occurs as the persons alters a suppressive dysfunctional pattern in their life or thought pattern.

The best way to heal and evolve is to awaken the energy centers of the head and body and harness universal energy through a practical and simple technique that can be practiced daily and without assistance.

It is vital to humanity to learn this understanding to deal with and overcome the future challenges. This is part of the basic and advanced MEL/HUESA course that I teach." Please ask me for a free treatment and if you are interested to learn."

Enjoy the video clip below from Masood Ali Khan's latest album entitled The Yoga Sessions:

FYI: Loneliness Spreads in Social Networks

Source: CNN Health - Have you ever felt cut off from other people, even if there are plenty around you? Maybe you felt all alone in the world, but you were making other people feel lonely without even realizing it.

New research suggests loneliness can actually travel from person to person, spreading up to three degrees of separation. That means if your neighbor's cousin's friend is lonely, you may have a good chance of being lonely, too.

The results, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, were also mentioned in the recent book "Connected" by Dr. Nicholas Christakis at Harvard University and James Fowler at the University of California, San Diego. The book explores how happiness, obesity, smoking and a slew of other behaviors and habits are contagious among groups of people who know one another.

John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago who has written a book called "Loneliness," teamed up with Christakis and Fowler to study the effect of this phenomenon in social networks.

The authors focused on data from the Framingham Heart Study, which has followed thousands of people in Framingham, Massachusetts, since 1948. The loneliness research looked at the second generation in the study, which includes 5,124 people.

In the heart study, researchers kept in touch with participants every two to four years, asking them about depression, loneliness and other issues. They also kept a record of their friends. This allowed Christakis, Fowler and Cacioppo to look at the subjects' social networks over time.

If a direct connection in your social network is lonely, you are 52 percent more likely to be lonely, the researchers found. At two degrees of separation -- a friend of a friend -- it's 25 percent. At three degrees, someone who knows your friend's friend, it's 15 percent.

By helping lonely people on the periphery of a social network, "We can create a protective barrier against loneliness that will keep the whole network from unraveling," Christakis and Fowler wrote in "Connected."

The results are surprising because "we think of loneliness as something that affects a person who is by himself or herself," Ed Diener, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in an e-mail. He was not involved in the study.

But it makes sense that the way a lonely person behaves could influence others, and those people could respond in kind to more friends, social scientists say.

"If lonely people act out behaviors that alienate others, some others will learn to enact those same behaviors, sometimes in reaction against the lonely person," Diener said.

Loneliness is defined as perceived social isolation, and it's not based on the number of people around you, Cacioppo said. Evolutionarily, it was important for early humans to know how many peers they could count on, work with and survive with, as well as who would betray them, he said.

"That's why the quality, not the quantity, of relationships is what's related to whether someone feels isolated or feels satisfied with their relationships," he said.

Cacioppo's earlier research says people have different baseline levels of loneliness, meaning some people have a greater need than others for social connection. From that perspective, it follows that someone who is highly sensitive to disconnection would more strongly promote lonely feelings in the network, he said.

Both lonely and nonlonely people prefer nonlonely people, and sometimes the lonely are even harsher to others who feel disconnected than the nonlonely people. This helps leave the lonely people with fewer friends, Cacioppo said.

In the social network study, mood did not affect how loneliness was transmitted, he said. Participants were asked how depressed they were, and this did not seem to affect whether they passed loneliness along the network.

The study also found that loneliness spreads much more easily among women than among men, citing the idea that women may be more likely to express and share emotions, as well as the observation that there may be greater stigma associated with loneliness among men. Happiness, by contrast, does not seem to have gender distinctions in the way it spreads, according to Christakis and Fowler's research.

People who are lonely may be motivated to seek social connection, increasing the likelihood that others around that person will be exposed to loneliness, the authors said.

Loneliness spreads more quickly among friends than family, but this finding may be limited to older people, as the average age in the sample was 64 years old, the authors said. Cacioppo, though, said the pattern generally makes sense because the cost of leaving a friendship is less than cutting off a family member, so people are more likely to isolate themselves from friends than close relatives or spouses.

Although these effects are stronger in person, they also have implications for online social interactions, he said.

"If you have an important friend and they are really grumpy and say nasty things on email, you may walk into the next room and be grumpy to someone else," he said.

The findings have implications for communities, Cacioppo said. City planners and policymakers should consider interventions such as sidewalks that allow neighborhood residents to interact more in public spaces, so that if someone is feeling down, others can help bring that person out of it.

In terms of therapy, it's important for lonely people to understand the condition and what it does to the brain, he said. Those who are lonely tend to view things as more threatening, and if they understand that, they can help themselves temper such strong reactions.

"We can correct our tendency to want to act grumpy to others," he said.

Diener said the research is important, building off of the "Connected" authors' earlier work on social networks.

"This series of studies shows us that we don't just live in individual worlds, but are influenced often in unconscious ways of which we are not aware," he said.