Episode 2011-19

It was our pleasure to spend this episode of Light Transitions Radio listening to and speaking with Alana Woods. Her work on sound healing is important in these times, as we all must focus on deep listening – and hearing the music of our own souls.

Light Transitions Radio presents a dialogue on individual & planetary change with host Robert Davis

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Part 1

Part 2

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Email Alana Woods directly to order this CD.

1. Music Medicine – Sample
   

Easy to read and understand with useful diagrams and illustrations and music suggestions.

Here is what some reviewers have said:

Congratulations goes to you for your splendid book. It is the finest comprehensive outlay of data on the subject I have ever seen. I speak from the heart with genuine admiration for your text. It really should be in university classes on the subject. It will be invaluable during their training and professional practice, to shore up their own sensitivity and Perception. - Lois Parker, Ph.D., English professor, Texas

I would highly recommend your book to anyone interested in learning principles of choosing music to assists therapeutic change. Your explanations of several types of music-based therapies showing effects of music on emotions, brain function, and physiology are textbook clear. The addition of historical persepctive as well as personal stories make this a fascinating read. Congratulations!
- Joan Pritchard, RN, Music Therapist, Arizona

Finally we have it! More than theory, beyond thesis, this primer is a synthesis of Alana’s knowledge and experience. Alana shares distilled and integrated thoughts surrounding sound and healing in lay language that echoes in the soul like our mother tongue.:It flows. This book and CD are like a crystal clear stream refreshing, nourishing. We may not step into it at the very same place each time but each time there is something new. I anxiously await volume two! - Betty Butler, MA, CMP, Ct, Heartside Theraharpist, New Mexico

Alana Woods, classically trained in piano and harp, also has a background in the healing arts, as artist and musician, and was formerly a Unity Minister. She has studied with leading pioneers in music healing and consciousness, evolving her own work. Traveling and teaching the the US, Greece and Ireland, her workshops included the effects of music and sound on the body, brain, and consciusness. Her home is in the Sandia Mountains in New Mexico.

Interwoven throughout this book and attached teaching CD, are highlights exploring the uses of prescriptive sound. There are example of different approaches taken in western and nonwestern cultures to utilize the amazing power of sound to bring health and wholeness. The author uses her own personal journey to discover and harness music for the purposes of healing. As well, she gives insights into establishing clarity as to why, what and how the elements of sound, rhythm, melody,harmony and form, when produced naturally, electronically and acoustically, serve to affect the mind-brain body systems for the ultimate purpose of enhancing wellness. Both ancient and modern approaches as well as current methods and resources in exploring future trends and programs are given, in the development of a new science of music, as it relates to healing.

Fran Stallings*, storyteller, says stories themselves have a special power. They compel us to “hear and attend and listen” in a way that other forms of speech do not. Some stories, told by some tellers, spin the web almost from the first words spoken. The human brain has a special affinity for story form. There are multilayered motifs in stories, and if they are emotionally meaningful in content, they help a person focus concentration inward.They teach you how to listen.

Sometimes a story entrances because of what it doesn’t say. Many people have fond remembrances of listening to radio before we had TV, and the delightful imagining we did in our mind as we listened. The most powerful stories attempt some sort of answer to deep questions in life.Live storytelling is much more potent than recordings, and the addition of the Celtic harp accompaniment adds another dimension of listening enjoyment.

Storytelling is a “medicine” as seeds of healing are planted gently, under cover of fantasy or entertainment. And the seeds will germinate only in its own time. The tales I share are transformational. They create a sacred space. I have shared these stories to dying persons, mentally challenged children, new age centers, churches, and a university class. Storytelling is especially valuable as an activity in building community.

Note: This is from from the National Storytelling Journal Spring/Summer 1988, Fran Stallings website is www.franstallings.com

The Story of Jumping Mouse: Introduction

The Story of Jumping Mouse: Part 2

Over the years my piano lessons instilled the structures of music into my psyche. After practicing my assigned lessons, I learned to sit for hours playing the piano intuitively, giving voice to all my moods nonstop. Usually I would start playing heavy base tones, with angst, sometimes singing, they poignant sad tones, not leaving the piano until I felt more peaceful and flowing and the music would be more delicate. My piano sat by a big picture window, facing out to tall old pine trees and an expanse of green lawn. A long radiator in front of the window gave me warmth in winter.

I always hear music in my mind, without playing an instrument. It varies from classical symphonies, popular tunes with messages, to hearing waves of sound in nature. This music has been my constant companion in life.

Playing music, I now realize, was a profound therapy for the whole family, as well as for me. At least I assumed it was as good for them as it was for me, because we lived on a big farm and I was the only one who brought music into our home the 20 years I lived there. My mother was a former school teacher and insisted we all have a lot of disciplined “duties” daily,one of which was for me to practice my piano every day, summer and winter. As a child I didnʼt like all the practicing, but as an adult I am eternally grateful for this discipline as I learned music structures very early and it was my lifeʼ s work.

In the late 1970ʼs I went to the Bahamas. One morning I awoke with energy rushing through my body and out the top of my head. New doors opened in my mind. Right after this I went to visit a friend who had been saving a book and music recording to give me. As I went to bed that night I played the music by my bedside and was amazed at the journey it took me in my listening mind. It was like a movie. I was traveling through space, surrounded by syntilizing waves of color, and flying over mountains in exotic lands. Up to that time I had no idea what music would do except sooth my emotions. It was transpersonal. After this experience I searched out several pioneer teachers who knew about music in a deeper way. tom Kenyon, renowned sound healer, Dr. Arthur Harvey, music professor specialized in healing music for different patient populations , and Dr. Helen Bony, music therapist and guided imagery and music, a specialized therapeutic way of working with clients using classical music. In 1973 Dr. Bony wrote a book called “Music and Your Mind: Listening with a New Consciousness”. This was the very book I was given that put me on my journey with music in healing. Working with Mr. Kenyon, Dr. Harvey, Dr Bony and several others, I ultimately developed my own research projects and quickly began receiving invitations to speak about what I was learning. I traveled around giving music workshops for several years. Later I developed the harp and took one to perform in my presentations.

In the late 1980ʼs I was invited to teach at Atsitsa, an European Holistic Center on the Greek island of Skyros, a couple hours out of Athens by air. For two weeks I taught a course called “The Magic of Healing Through the Arts” which included music, mandalas and rituals in the olive groves up high in the mountain on the island, then in the evenings around a big bonfire I did storytelling with a little lyre I had in my suitcase.

Waking up in the early morning on this Greek island was a vast sound bath, with the sounds of hundreds of little song birds, some roosters and sheep with bell swaying back and forth on their necks as they made their way to the feeding pens. We ate outdoors under a thatched roof dining area. Fresh fish from the ocean and vegetarian dishes were part of the delicious menu.

After the classes I flew back to Athens and traveled for two weeks around Greece. I met some wonderful Greek women who were in the arts in Athens and they were very interested in my subject. They wanted to gift me with something special and asked what I would like. I told them I would love to experience a temple site that did not have tourists around it.They drove me two hours outside Athens to a deserted temple ruin and thoughtfully left me to wander around on my own for a while.

I walked around inside the old temple with its musty smells and dusty rock floor then followed a trail in the woods to a deep well where I sat to meditate. Hours alone allowed my mind and heart to open. I began to feel the history of the area, and who had lived there. The idea that kept repeating in my mind was that Paracelsus would give “music prescriptions” to his patients for both physical and mental disorders. I remembered my childhood experiences at the piano and how much music had uplifted my spirits and healed my emotions. The idea intrigued me, and I made an intent to focus on Music Medicine. It was an idea whose time had come!

According to one massage therapist in Colorado: “Today’s massage client is no longer the innocent first-timer. Instead, many are downright angry with themselves for having spent huge amounts of money on “Certified Professionals” only to receive a mediocre treatment that may have felt good at the time but had no lasting value. Many of these same people were disappointed with expensive spa treatments that featured pampering and fluff–with a glass of wine as part of the package!”

Sitting among the gentle hills of the Georgia mountains in Lakemont, Ga. is a white-domed research labratory called INTERDIMENSIONAL SCIENCE. A remarkable man, Peter Kelly (who passed away in May, 2004) left, as part of his legacy of genius, a psychoacoustic device which he perfected over the years called the BETAR (Bio-energetic Transduction-aided Resonance). It is a geodesic dome in which you lie down on a transduction table suspended in the middle. A series of speakers surround you as the music plays, and you are bathed in exquisite sound. Some people have said they hear the music as if it came from inside their own body. Many people have been healed of physical and emotional challenges “riding the Betar”.

For all its technological sophistication, the BETAR is primarily a device for delivering sound and vibration to the body. Pure sound. It has been known for centuries that sound and music affect the body’s energy field in dramatic ways. There is much work going on around the country right now quantifying scientific measurement of the human energy field. The Betar’s Grand Salon has a built-in biological scanning system which picks up the energy field of the body and reads it. Then it documents the effects of the music and sound on the energy system. It is possible, with this, to develop “prescriptive” types of music or sound patterns that can be played to individuals with certain conditions through this table.

For further information on the varieties of models using this technology of the BETAR, or where to locate and experience the BETAR, please see the Links page.

Healing sounds naturally occur in nature. Taking walks in the wilderness, or parks or countryside in quietness, without talking, just listening and breathing the freshness is very healing. All creatures of the earth emit their song, aloud or silently. Ants and spiders sing, termites whistle, flies scream and birdsongs flapping their wings.

Think about it! The song of birds, trees in the forest, waterfalls, rivers, mountains….all have their own perfect harmonious sound. When we hear perfect rhythm…there is an opportunity to let it adjust cellular structure, electromagnetic fields. It makes the mind alert and free of tension…and the result is that nature then harmonizes the cells of the body. All this happens when we walk in nature, naturally allowing the healing activity to operate. Bird song is a necessary awakener of plants in nature, in the Spring. The sound of the birds sends electrical currents that are received by the plants and trees, and this stimulates growth of leaves.

What makes us drawn to music is that our whole being is music; it is our mind, and our body, the nature in which we live, the nature which has made us, all that is beneath and around us. It is all music, and we are close to all this music and live and move and have our being in music. - Inayat Kahn, Sufi master

“All nature is song”, Carlyle said. “See deep enough and you see musically, the heart of nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it.” Music is of the Soul, and as the Soul responds to the things of itself, it always responds to music. And every individual Soul has its individual musical key, certain music appealing to it to a greater degree than any other music”.

Studies show there are more connections to our life through the sound environment than was thought in the past. We are continuously surrounded by sounds and influenced by them every moment.

1. Electrical currents transporting energy for the telephone, electric wiring in houses, appliances, the refrigerator, clocks, computer, TV…anything plugged into an electrical unit.
2. Sounds from transmitting stations, sounds of the traffic, airplanes, reconstruction teams of buildings, factory machines, crowds of people.

Sound and music patterns deeply affect the brain, mind and body. Since sound is nonverbal and preconscious, we are affected subliminally by sounds beyond the sensitivity of the nervous system. But they are as real as anything else in the world. All the cells in the body have vibratory properties and are capable of being sound receptors.

The choice we make of listening to music should be as discriminating as the type of foods we choose to eat.

When the music begins the body listens.