I am continually asking myself why I do what I do, why in other words I am devoting time and energy to music amid all the other possible meaningful ways of engaging with life. If I were to ask myself what gives me most hope about life, what makes life most worth living, my answer would include sound and music. I believe music and sound to be among the most potent technologies we have at our disposal to navigate what we are both individually and collectively struggling with on the planet. I am thinking of Jonathan Goldman's formula of Frequency + Intent = Healing. Though in the field of what is sometimes called sound healing, we might be familiar with the sense of intention in terms of personal wellbeing, what most resonates with me is the capacity of sound and music to mobilise the power of collective intention, to hold and to look after the complexity of life as it moves, yearns and churns.
To write about music and sound is to miss so much. Yet I am trying to weave together words that may evoke the way that music may also weave together different parts of life and the complexity of what it is to be alive.
I experience music as a precious moment to spend some time with parts of our human experience that don't always get noticed in daily life. Through music, I feel the cracks in the dominant narratives of life and I am drawn to delve into the deep and unknown places which are hiding or thriving away from the gaze of everyday experience. What are the parts of the body and brain that get exercised as we go about our daily lives and what are the parts that get neglected? Through music, a space opens up to restore balance, for some of these places in the body to have a conversation together in a way that builds bridges. I am curious about the many ways music restores and reweaves connection. How do we create and make space for these possibilities, amid a paradigm that may risk putting music in the box of entertainment and medicalise healing? To honour music in this way is to offer a pathway through the forest where (in this land) some of the more ancient ways of healing through music have been (nearly) forgotten. What would it look like to remember what music can do, and to cut new pathways through the (over)growth of modern life? Music invites us to pause, to re-member and connect more deeply with the body, the breath, and the ways the moment shows up in us. As we do that, if we can include in our intentions not only our own wellbeing but that of the whole of life, I see this moment as sending out ripples that can also reach those who are not resourced to do this themselves in that moment. Music opens up a window to a precious contemplative moment where things can untangle, where the answers can emerge from mystery and unknowing.
I'm interested to support people both one to one and in groups with reweaving broken connections and remembering what's worth being alive for, through music and the space that is opened up when we allow it. I create soundscapes for deep listening as a space where people can experience deep relaxation. I seek to support people in deepening their own relationship to music and sound with an intention of empowering and potentially disrupting embedded beliefs that music is only for some. I do this working with the voice and also with our felt senses as we listen. I work with music as a way to connect with the bigger picture of life including the elements and also a sense of purpose including in the face of trauma. I am interested to work in a way that welcomes those on the edges of life. Above all I am holding spaces for us to explore both individually and collectively how music can heal, and to allow the whispered and not completely forgotten ways it is speaking to us to be heard more clearly.
