S8E3: Sound Healing with Natalie Brown

Dive into the world of wellness trends in events! Dr. K here, and I am pumped to be back with another episode of the Experience University Podcast! In today's episode, we discuss the realm of wellness trends within the events landscape, accompanied by the insights of Natalie Brown. Natalie, a Sound Healing Practitioner and the visionary behind the Sound Heals Academy, joins me to explore the transformative power of sound in enhancing well-being during events. Throughout our conversation, we navigate the intricacies of both challenges and opportunities that event planners may face when integrating sound healing experiences. Tune in as we unravel the positive impact sound healing can have on the event landscape.


Today we are discussing:
Introduction (1:20)
What is Sound Healing (2:22)
Wellness Trends in Events (7:20)
Incorporating Sound in Events (7:57)
Sound Healing and Plant Growth (13:06)
Strategic Use of Sound in Events (16:40)

Connect with Natalie:
SoundsHealStudio.com 
Sound Heals Podcast
Facebook & Youtube: Sounds Heal Studio
Instagram: Natalie Brown, Sounds Heal

Visit the Experience University website for more information!
www.experienceuniversity.org

Connect with us on our socials!
Facebook: Experience University
Instagram: @kristin.malek

Transcript

Dr. K:
You are listening to the Experience University podcast: Season 8 Episode 3.

Speaker 2:
Welcome to Experience University where we aim to educate, inspire and empower individuals who wish to design transformation. Now, your host, Dr. Kristin Malek.

Dr. K:
Hello, hello, everyone, all of my friends, as I say on my podcast, “Hello, hello, my friends.” We have such an incredible, amazing guest today, Natalie, who's here with me. Natalie and I met when I went through one of her trainings, and I was like, “You have to be on the podcast. You are absolutely incredible.” And I'm so excited for everyone to get to hear from you today, Natalie, and all your expertise. This episode, I wish I had listened to it years ago. This concept has changed my thinking and the things that I can do with events. So thank you so much, Natalie, for being on the podcast today.

Natalie:
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be with you.

Dr. K:
Absolutely. For everybody that's listening, and on the podcast, Natalie is a practitioner of many hats, but how I know Natalie is she's the lead teacher for the Americas for the Sound Healing Academy. And when you hear that, you might be like, “What is sound healing?” So that is gonna be the first question for you, Natalie. I know why you're on here. You know why you're on here. No one that's listening to the podcast or watching this on YouTube, none of them know why you're on here. I mean, maybe some, I don't want to generalize, but talk to us about sound healing and the science and things behind it because people don't know.

Natalie:
Absolutely. Yeah, sound healing. It's a great question to ask, and I get asked that question a lot. Obviously, what is sound healing? What is sound therapy? I always answer that differently depending on who's asking. So I'll try to describe it a few different ways but generally to kind of back up a little bit how I got into sound healing was from my musical background. First, I'm a performer, a violinist, and then second, an educator. I was a high school orchestra teacher for 14 years.

So music is my background, and music and sound have very much to do, obviously, with what sound healing is. I would say generally sound healing is the use of sound for health and wellness. So maybe we could think about what sound healing is not. There's certain sounds and music that are really irritating to us. I mean, think of your alarm clock in the morning, or a siren or something that's just really irritating and kind of grates you the wrong way. But there are certain sounds in our lives, we might not necessarily be aware of it, but they're really soothing. Maybe it's the sound of the rain or the sound of the ocean. There are sounds that help us relax and help us get to a more chill state. Right. And then of course, there's music that we use that affects us in different ways. There's music we listen to that really energizes us. There's certain music we listen to that would really pump us up to work out. It's not going to be the same type of music we listen to at night to fall asleep.

So we're actually already using music and sounds all the time to affect change in our lives. So sound healing is really the purposeful and intentional use of sound to create change, both physically, emotionally, mentally and beyond. So, just generally, a few aspects about how it's used is there is the vibrational use of sound. So sound is produced in a wave and the deeper tones have a kind of slower, deeper waves. So there are actually sound instruments that are used on the body for deep tissue massage. And then there are other sounds and instruments that are used to create emotional change and kind of uplift people when there's depression. So it's just a wide variety of how people are using it.

Generally, the science has to do with what is happening with that vibration, that sound wave, and how can it be used on off the body or maybe in a more kind of auditory experience to shift brain wave states, binaural beats, brainwave entrainment is a huge thing. Maybe some people have heard of that, but brainwave entrainment, our brain waves travel in waves obviously, right? And so the majority of the time in our day, we're going at a pretty fast speed, right? You can kind of think about when you're multitasking, you're doing this, you're doing that. “Oh, I'm worried about that.” You've got your list going on. We're at a pretty fast brainwave state of beta or high beta brain wave. But we can use the purposeful use of sound to slow that down to really destress ourselves. So in a very broad sense, sound therapy, sound healing, the number one benefit and use is relaxation, stress reduction, and relieving anxiety. So that's a start of what this field is.

Dr. K:
I love that. And I know that it's so broad, and I think that was such a great overview. In fact, how I ended up even looking up sound healing and finding you and coming through and doing the level one and soon to be the level two and three, I'm very excited about, I was at a specific training, it was an intensive workshop. We were at, I would call it a retreat center, but it was really kind of like a giant Airbnb. There were 20 of us there, and we're going through all this neuroscience stuff for the brain and the word and energy and all of those things. They decided at the end of that intensive that they were gonna do a sound bath.

And it was the very first sound bath I had ever done. I had never been exposed to it. This was in Utah. They were doing it outside. It's right before sunset. We're all on blankets in the lawn. It was kind of combining two different things. It was really a meditation. It was a sound bath. But then the people would walk around, you have your mask on. People would walk around and they were playing instruments over the body as well. So they had like their main setup, there were three of them, they were playing instruments, they were doing meditations, they would get down and use their voices in your ears, and it was really in-depth, and I found myself crying, and I was just releasing so much stuff. And now that I know more about epigenetics, I'm like, “Wow, there's some stuff released right?” There's power in here, and I started deep diving on the sound and the science and the sound waves which all led me to you.

When I was sitting in your introduction of talking about all the science in agriculture and in all the different industries about sound. I said, “Why are events not using this properly?” We use literally every other sense. I've been to so many events that are like” Here's your aroma zones. Over here in this zone, we have intensive things, so it's gonna be peppermint and over here, it's a relaxing thing, so it's gonna be lavender,” but nobody's using sound. It was like a sound bath was brought in as an extra that they were offering their attendees to come in and relax, but it wasn't used strategically throughout the event. And I really want you to speak to that of using the sonic environment and how to do that because I think that will be a game-changer for people that do that.

Natalie:
I completely agree, and there's such a range of what people can do, like you said. What I find so valuable about sound meditation, right? That was your first experience. You had a sound bath, you were bathed by sounds, and you're in this beautiful place, is that, people that try to do mindfulness and meditation find it kind of hard because the instruction is to clear your thoughts, right? Just like empty your thoughts. That's very hard for people because usually things are popping in and our minds are just going. The great thing about sound meditation and a sound bath is you have a point of focus, right?

Anytime you get distracted, you start making your list for later, you can just keep bringing yourself back to the sound. So sound meditation, it's kind of one spectrum of this, you know, one side of this, but actually sound is used for events for corporations, all kinds of scenarios for team building, and getting people in sync. One very popular use in many settings is drum circles. So you get a team of people that probably don't normally interact in this way, and you have somebody facilitating a drum circle and people just get in sync, they have fun, they kind of work out any aggression they need to by playing drums together. Even with using music as a soundtrack for your event, you can very much shift the energy of your event.

What kind of atmosphere do you want when people walk into your event? It's not just the appearance, it's not just visual, but how do you want it to feel? Some musical choices, the whole range of really kind of energized music, very soothing, Zen, relaxing music. You can create a soundtrack that really encompasses the journey along the way of what your event is trying to present. As you're watching movies and TV shows, music is very impactful, right? If you turned off the music in a scary movie, it probably wouldn't be that scary. We have the sounds and music going on all the time, but it can be used in a very strategic way to encourage and shift people's moods.

Most people's afternoons you have the afternoon crash. You haven't had enough caffeine. So maybe there's certain music that can get your energy going. Some people do movement or different activities in the afternoon to get their energy naturally going, but you might not want to play kind of sleepy dreamy music in the afternoon when people are already kind of having that later in the day fatigue. So just something to think about as you want to perhaps in between presenters or as people come into a new conference room space, whatever it is, could there be some sonic cues to lift people's spirit or inspire them before whatever the next presentation is? That's just an example.

Dr. K:
Absolutely. I think that pairs so well. We joke in the event industry all the time of like, “Let's get rid of the sugar and the afternoon break.” Why are we always putting carb-heavy things for lunch and for our afternoon, which is gonna make us exhausted, but we don't think about the sound. Now, I can already hear, I can already see, I can already feel what everyone on the podcast is gonna be like. They're gonna be like, “Ok, cool. We'll have a soundtrack, we'll make sure we have different sounds, and that'll be a running theme.”

But I would love it if you talk a little bit about frequencies because there's so much stuff. I automatically go to the plant study and maybe you can share an overview of that. I'd heard that before sound healing but hadn't given it a lot of thought. Now being in healing training, I'm like, “Wow, there's so much power to that” because I can hear people's objections already. Like, “Well, I can't be playing music while I'm talking. I can't be playing music while I'm giving an important presentation. I can't be doing these things.” It would just be a clip before a speaker, so maybe you talk about frequencies at large versus just the songs or the sounds.

Natalie:
Sure. Yeah, that's a great point. I think that is very true. I think, you know, in most scenarios, it would be a transition. When I did a TED X talk here locally what they had is and every time that you walked out of the presentation, like in between things, in between events, there was a live musician, a local musician, playing in the lobby or whatever it is. Yes, I do agree that during presentations, it might be more distracting. You do really need to consider when you need a focus point when there's a moment that sound would be appropriate, but it's not always appropriate. When it comes to frequencies, there's so many great studies about frequencies and how they affect us and, of course, plants.

One of my favorite ones, I'm from Iowa, and this particular company and discovery was from a farmer in Iowa. What was happening? Originally his farm was in the middle of nowhere. You couldn't even see the neighbor down the way. Eventually because of industry got growing, industry was just encroaching on his farm. You know, things would get closer, just like everything expands. He was no longer out in the middle of nowhere. There was a lot more traffic; there was a lot more things happening in industry. He was suddenly kind of an urban farm. And as that happened, he noticed that just his crops, his plants weren't doing as well.

Could it be pollution? Could it be this, could it be that. What he realized though, in the morning, for example, nature wasn't as present. He couldn't really hear the birds chirping in the morning or as often. So it occurred to him to introduce natural frequencies and play them for his plants.

He would have a large speaker, and he would project 5000 Hertz in the morning. Hertz is just a scientific term for a sound wave. 5000 Hertz means that sound wave moves 5000 times a second. So that's a pretty high pitch. We can hear up to 20,000 Hertz just so you know, that's the example there. He would play 5000 Hertz in the morning for the sound of birds, and then 2000 Hertz in the evening with this for the sound of crickets and other kind of natural frequencies like that.

It ended up impacting and helping his crops so much that he started this company that's called Sonic Bloom. They sell these speakers for farmers, for urban gardens, rooftop gardens, greenhouses, and just playing these natural frequencies. People report 50 to 500% increased plant growth after using these devices. So just that example alone, and there's thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of examples of how people use frequencies, natural frequencies that are already in nature that we need. So that's just one example of how somebody's doing that.

Dr. K:
I heard that example through something in my job in Nebraska Extension with agriculture and some of their research with cover crops and Sonic and all of this. So it's so cool, 1) that you're the teacher for America, and you're in the state right next door to me, and 2) that it's in Iowa, because I don't think a lot of people think of Iowa as like maybe more on the, I don't want to say innovative or fringe side. So it's so cool that we have such incredible resources that people aren't even talking about.

We're wrapping up now because we like to keep our interviews 15 to 20 minutes. This isn't meant to be all-inclusive. Natalie here has her own podcast. She has a Ted X out there. She's going to share all that information with you. Natalie, my last question for you is if you had one takeaway, one thing to think about, one thing that our listeners, event planners, event designers, experienced designers, professionals, students that are looking to get into this industry. If you had one tangible tip as it comes to sound and events and experiences, what is that tip?

Natalie:
That’s a great question and a really broad question. What we're realizing now is wellness is a global trend. Obviously when it comes to events and tourism and all kinds of things, hotels and resorts and retreats, wellness is a massive global trend, and sound is at the forefront of that now. It is a blossoming field. So if you as an event planner, whatever capacity you are in, can explore how this could be integrated into your event, you're going to be really kind of at the top of what's happening in these wellness trends. So it might mean something different for everybody. You know how mindfulness or sound meditation comes into your events. It might just not be applicable.

But are there ways that you can bring in sound frequencies? There are a lot of presenters that can talk about all aspects of this. From Neuroscience, there's inventors, there's psychotherapists, there's all kinds of researchers, dolphin researchers, there's all kinds of people that have specialties that have kind of this extra flourish of sound in their background. So people are really bringing this into their work. So depending on what your event is, could you have that person that, a special keynote speaker, that performer, that brings a little bit of this into your community because it's a very vast field, it's a widening field. I think exploring it is really going to be an asset to what you're presenting.

Dr. K:
Oh my gosh, so good. It's so funny because now I've spent so much time with you, and I'm looking forward to spending so much more. I'm like, “I want to ask you about this. I want to ask you about that. I want you to tell this scientific fact. I want you to tell this data point.” There's so much that this podcast could probably be the longest podcast that I've had on the podcast in 7-8 seasons. I'm telling you when I talk about curiosity and open-mindedness and I'm a NLP master Practitioner, I'm Reiki Certified. I'm all of these from total science, practical, analytical to the fringe and everywhere in between.

I will tell you this sound, going on the rabbit hole of sound, has fundamentally changed so many of my routines throughout my day. What I'm listening to in the morning, what I'm listening to in my workout, what I'm listening to in the afternoon, how I'm incorporating at my events, what I'm doing in my retreats. What hertz do I need to support the objective I'm trying to reach because we talk about changing mindset behavior, and then we talk about the five senses, incorporating all the senses, sound is so often left out, or it's a thought, like, “Oh, we should get all our attendees to put together a playlist. We'll have an open crowds first playlist” or “Oh, we're gonna ask our attendees their favorite song,” which I'm guilty of. I use that question all the time. “What's your favorite song?” I put together a playlist and then I play it. I was never thinking about how the hertz impacted the mindset and behavior change, and it was such a life changer.

So everyone that's listening, if you have any respect for me at all, which I hope you do because you're listening to our podcast, please check out sound because it's for real. Such a life changer and Natalie, seriously, we could talk for hours, we could talk for days about this and you have such great content, excellent content. Please tell my listeners how they can find you, look you up, what to follow all the things.

Natalie:
Absolutely. Thank you. There is so much more to say; we'll have to do it again sometime. My website is SoundsHealStudio.com. My podcast is Sounds Heal Podcast. I'm on Facebook at Sounds Heal Studio; Youtube: Sounds Heal Studio, and my Instagram is Natalie Brown, Sounds Heal.

Dr. K:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Natalie. We will do this again. I will have you on in a future season, and definitely incorporating you into our events, and your frameworks and all the things. It's absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for making the time, taking the time, today, for all of our listeners. I appreciate you.

Natalie:
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2:
Thanks for listening to the Experience University podcast. Stay tuned for our next episode.