The Whole Music Experience

Photo by Patricia Herlevi So often with sound healing or the concept of healing with music, an assumption that healing music must relax us rears its head.  Healing comes in many guises and each of us needs different types of healing.  We might need to boost our immune system, or boost our energy/vitality, we might need music to help us focus better or to relax from a stressful day. This brings up one of my favorite concepts and that is purposeful music.  As we grow more conscious of how music affects our soul-mind-body, we build a music tool kit with multiple purposes.  Often I suffer from headaches and so I choose relaxing music, even drones without melody or audio sound scapes.  Some times I could use a good sound healing session with crystal bowls and tuning forks and other times I need to dance to West African drums, Brazilian samba, or need to get my body moving to something hot and Latin. The purposeful music concept visited me twice within the ...

In-Tune with Neptune (The Outer Planet Returns Home to Pisces on April 4) Besides researching and writing about music, I practice astrology as a hobby. I tend to favor watching the trends caused by the outer planets, Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus because these planets stay many years in a sign. Uranus stays around 7 years, Pluto and Neptune around 12-14 years slowly transiting a sign. In fact, since the discovery of Neptune during the Victorian Age (September 23, 1846) the planet has only made one round of the zodiac, starting and ending in Aquarius. On April 4, Neptune transited into its home sign, Pisces. I find this significant because I work in a field that is governed by Neptune and I also have this large and beautiful planet smack on my MC/10th house of my natal chart (career). So it’s no accident that I discovered the healing power of music since Neptune basically rules my chart. Incidentally, I think its fate that I write this article because Neptune was discovered whe...

Music Consciousness in the Work and Market Place Seattle, photo by Patricia Herlevi So many times I walk into a business or shop and leave immediately because I don’t enjoy the music playing in the store. In some cases, I’ve heard NPR or some other news source blasting from a radio. In either case, those shops lost my business because I felt unwelcomed by the audio choices. I’ve been blasted with heavy metal at an Aveda beauty school (Seattle), I’ve had to listen to 70s and 80s pop music getting my hair cut at other beauty schools and also strangely enough waiting for a counseling appointment and ditto for a naturopath clinic. Nostalgia is a dangerous thing and drum machines pattering away do not provide a healing environment. Some lyrics might trigger painful memories. This is why massage therapists and other energy healers provide either silence or soothing tension-free music to their patients. All of the above scenarios portray unconscious music/audio choices that might...

Music as Magnetic Law of Attraction The topic of applying music to lifting vibration is not new to me. I’ve been using music to lift my moods all my life, and consciously since 2005 when I came up with the concept for my book Whole Music , and 2 years before I launched this blog. Then a few months ago I noticed that jazz vocalist Trish Hatley began a project combining affirmations with music to support the law of attraction concept. The other day when I played a Rough Guide compilation for the music of Bolivia, I had this image of the bombo drum and flutes in my mind’s eye and I found this music profoundly uplifting. This brought me to the idea that we all have different genres and instruments that lift our vibration. Perhaps the Andes music doesn’t lift your vibration, though this would surprise me. I’ve never seen a passerby frown when encountering street musicians performing Andes music. Just like I’ve never seen anyone frown around the music of Bob Marley or Cuban son. ...

The Pleasures of Indian Ragas My introduction to Indian classical ragas was a humbling experience. It was 2003, I had just started discovering music from around the world as a music journalist (making a transition from alternative rock to world music) and I attended my first Indian classical recital. Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma (santoor) and Zakir Hussain (tabla) headlined at the King Cat Theatre in Seattle. A few thousand Indians filled the theatre to the brim, and only a handful of Anglo-Americans were in attendance. I sat next to one, who thankfully was an expert on Indian classical music. I received a comp to attend the recital if I reviewed it for World Music Central and my own website at the time Cranky Crow World Music . So I sat down waiting for the recital to begin. The musicians tuned their instruments on a carpeted-covered platform on the stage and then dove into the Alap section of the raga. Only I couldn’t tell when the tuning of t...

Vibration Series: PT Three—Tuning in to Your Musical Self The way it works with Whole Music is that I need to experience concepts of music in my life before presenting them on the blog. I also wait for information to either crop up in my subconscious (including nightly dreams), or through synchronicity (I receive an album in the mail, or find the information I need on the internet). The latest information for this 3-part series focuses on tuning into yourself and asking yourself what your musical needs are at any given moment. Lately, I’ve been feeling a lot of anger and powerlessness. I realize I’m not alone in feeling this way, but anger, especially the kind that rumble like a volcano ready to erupt, frightens me. Here I am talking about spiritual concepts to others and going on about world peace, when I feel this darkness inside my body. I have felt bombarded with bad news from every front which has also left me with a feeling of hopelessness. So having felt this way, I deci...

Distinguishing Low from High Vibrations PT 2 So now that you've unblocked your chakras, you'll want to hang out in a higher vibrational environment... I know that I’m in sync with the world when a CD that arrives in the mail matches exactly my energy level and vibration. This happened to me recently when an advance copy of Mamadou Diabate’s “Courage” arrived in the mail (I’ll review this CD in February). And since I was contemplating my essay on vibration (high and low), I thought that the recording came at the perfect time. Not only that, I enjoy griot morality lessons. Not long ago, I thought of vibration in a dualistic way. You have high vibration which equates to love and low vibration which equates to fear. Now, when I talk about low and high vibration, I’m not talking about bass and piccolo. I’m talking more or less about negative and positive energy, but again, I’ve learned that there’s a lot more to it than raising your vibration by showing up in a high vibr...

Lifti ng Vibra tio ns (Series) The 7 Chakras I decided last night at 2:00 a.m. to write a three-part series on lifting the body’s vibration through the use of music and sound. Granted, I’m not a sound healer so if you wish to delve further into clearing chakras and balancing your aura with sound, I recommend visiting a sound healer who will teach you self-healing and balancing chants and use vibratory instruments such as tuning forks to clear stuck energy from your chakras. In the first essay of the series I will discuss the 7-chakra system of the West, the only one I’m familiar with and comfortable mentioning. It’s also the simplest to understand because it only involves 7 energy centers starting at the base of the spine (root chakra) and stopping just slightly above the head (crown chakra). The first 3 chakras refer to the material realm (root, sacral, and solar plexus), the heart and throat chakras refer to the bridge between the material and spirit realms, and the thir...