Brutalize Me with Music
Besides the externship, the exams and the classes and the presentations, another task I have for massage school is a basic research project. I've never been a big fan of research projects, and that's mostly because I feel like it's just a summary of other people's work. You're essentially not allowed to offer any new research into the debate, you just sum up other people's work and deliver it concisely. So when I found out I would have to do one for this school, I was sort of nonplussed. However, I stumbled across an idea that has just been really inspiring to me, and I guess that's the key...pick a topic that fascinates you and you'll be eternally pumped to read more about it.
So, right now I'm researching music as a healing modality. I'm not really looking at music as an uplifting force, you know as something that makes us feel really good and is therefore "healing," though it certainly is that; nor am I looking at music as something that compliments and even improves sessions of healing techniques such as massage, though it certainly does that too. I'm really looking at music as the particular and essential force in healing an ailing body, mind, or spirit. And I'm finding some really amazing things.
My research led me to a woman named Laeh Maggie Garfield, an old-school healer who lived with a shaman for years studying all kinds of healing. She wrote a book about sound medicine, and in it she writes that we all have two songs that are wholly unique to each person. She says we each have a Healing Song and a Lifesong, both of which can be discovered through spirit-journeying, meditating, or drumming with a shaman. Apparently, if you learn your Healing Song and sing that over an ailing person while practicing some kind of healing art (in my case, if I sang my song while massaging you, for example), then the healing is easily a million times more effective, longer-lasting, and far more quickly delivered. She tells pretty incredible first-hand accounts of her experience with this. As for your Lifesong, that's actually a tune that is entirely your own-- the very song of your Life. I admit that I don't entirely understand the concept of the Lifesong beyond the fact that it encompasses you as an individual, your life, everything. It literally is you in song. So, singing it brings you power and centers you, but you have to keep it entirely sacrosanct as anyone wishing to do you harm could easily do so if they found out the tune of your Lifesong. Kind of amazing, but hard to believe in a way. However, in the course of this research, I've also read about these healers in ancient Greece who would sit with a sick person for a few moments, and in those few moments they would take stock of that person's energy and soul, and then they would play a single note on their lyre and the ailing person would be healed. Kind of like discovering the keynote in a person's Lifesong, I thought.
So those are just two of many examples of this idea that we actually hold music within ourselves, in our spiritual or energetic makeups, that we might not even be aware of, and that has a powerful effect on how we live our lives and even who we are. It's incredible to me. I know I'll only be learning more and more about this, and of course I'll keep you posted. If any of you guys have any thoughts about this topic or if you have any resources you want to share, let me know. Otherwise, keep singing, keep dancing, let your souls shine out healthy and glowing and beautiful.
So, right now I'm researching music as a healing modality. I'm not really looking at music as an uplifting force, you know as something that makes us feel really good and is therefore "healing," though it certainly is that; nor am I looking at music as something that compliments and even improves sessions of healing techniques such as massage, though it certainly does that too. I'm really looking at music as the particular and essential force in healing an ailing body, mind, or spirit. And I'm finding some really amazing things.
My research led me to a woman named Laeh Maggie Garfield, an old-school healer who lived with a shaman for years studying all kinds of healing. She wrote a book about sound medicine, and in it she writes that we all have two songs that are wholly unique to each person. She says we each have a Healing Song and a Lifesong, both of which can be discovered through spirit-journeying, meditating, or drumming with a shaman. Apparently, if you learn your Healing Song and sing that over an ailing person while practicing some kind of healing art (in my case, if I sang my song while massaging you, for example), then the healing is easily a million times more effective, longer-lasting, and far more quickly delivered. She tells pretty incredible first-hand accounts of her experience with this. As for your Lifesong, that's actually a tune that is entirely your own-- the very song of your Life. I admit that I don't entirely understand the concept of the Lifesong beyond the fact that it encompasses you as an individual, your life, everything. It literally is you in song. So, singing it brings you power and centers you, but you have to keep it entirely sacrosanct as anyone wishing to do you harm could easily do so if they found out the tune of your Lifesong. Kind of amazing, but hard to believe in a way. However, in the course of this research, I've also read about these healers in ancient Greece who would sit with a sick person for a few moments, and in those few moments they would take stock of that person's energy and soul, and then they would play a single note on their lyre and the ailing person would be healed. Kind of like discovering the keynote in a person's Lifesong, I thought.
So those are just two of many examples of this idea that we actually hold music within ourselves, in our spiritual or energetic makeups, that we might not even be aware of, and that has a powerful effect on how we live our lives and even who we are. It's incredible to me. I know I'll only be learning more and more about this, and of course I'll keep you posted. If any of you guys have any thoughts about this topic or if you have any resources you want to share, let me know. Otherwise, keep singing, keep dancing, let your souls shine out healthy and glowing and beautiful.