Madison Mindset the Podcast
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Madison Mindset the Podcast
323 ~ The Magic of SOUND w/ Allison Bagg
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Hello Magical Human & welcome back to Madison Mindset the Podcast 🪬
Join me for this beautiful conversation with Allison Bagg. Sound has the remarkable power to heal us by connecting our physical bodies with our vibrational essence, creating coherence between our hearts and minds. Allison shares her expertise on sound healing, helping us understand how frequency works and why certain sounds feel so deeply resonant to us personally.
Enjoy the beautiful Sound Healing Session at the end of this episode 🙏🏼
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Website: https://www.abagg.com/
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Madison Mindset 🧚🏼
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Hello Magical Human and welcome back to Madison Mindset, the podcast. In this episode, I have the pleasure of interviewing Alison Bagg. I found Alison on Instagram and absolutely vibed with her sound knowledge and the way she embodies sound and creates sound. It's so, so beautiful, so I feel very honored to be here in this interview with her and to be able to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it and learn a little bit more about sound healing and about yourself.
Speaker 2:Alison Bagg is a sound healer, breathwork facilitator, intuitive guide and artist based in Los Angeles. She utilizes a plethora of modalities to help clients ground into their bodies, establish strong boundaries and open portals to the magic and abundance within. Certified in gong, crystal alchemy, singing bowls, planetary chimes and tuning forks, alison aims to bring together both hemispheres of the brain in a beautiful marriage of spirit and science. Everything is vibration, after all, and by tuning ourselves like instruments, we can activate the healer within, reprogramming both the cellular and energetic forces within. At the end of this episode, alison guides us through a really beautiful sound bath practice. It is absolutely beautiful and so calming, so please enjoy that.
Speaker 2:If you're driving or if you're busy at the moment, please listen and keep yourself safe, if you can make space to relax and find a quiet moment where you can lie down or sit and be still, that would be wonderful as well. Perhaps save it and come back to the end of this episode when you need it. Thank you for being here and enjoy the episode Love. And enjoy the episode Love. Hello, magical Human. Welcome back to Madison Mindset, the podcast. I am here with beautiful Alison. I am so excited to welcome you to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having me. What a treat.
Speaker 2:Of course. Of course. I have really loved your sound healing stuff on Insta. I've been on there and been like going through it oh, you just feel so good after going through it and all your beautiful instruments and there's so many instruments I've never seen before. Like even then you just showed me a new bowl. I've never seen before. It's really cool.
Speaker 2:And I love sound healing. I do so. I'm a yoga teacher and I do sound healing once a night and I use, you know, singing and different instruments. I have a small collection of instruments, nothing like what you've got, but, wow, people love it. They absolutely love it, like everyone who tries. It is like I love this. Don't know what this is, but I love it Don't know how it works. So I thought, because you just have such, you've got experience with this and you've got such amazing knowledge, I would love to know more about what you know. But before we get into that, let's meet you. I want to know who you are. How did you get into all this stuff? Where are you in the world? Just introduce us to you. We'd love to know a bit more about you. This stuff when are you in the world? Just?
Speaker 3:introduce us to you. We'd love to know a bit more about you. Yeah, well, that's so great You're bringing sound into your yoga class. And that's exactly how I first discovered a crystal ball was hearing it at the end of a yoga class in Shavasana and it just transported me completely and I was already very into yoga. It was very much part of my life in a ritual. But once that kind of came over me, I would just look forward to every yoga class where I could just hear that sound, even if it was only for 30 seconds at the end of the class, and so it was seeded into my being.
Speaker 3:At a very young age I was into yoga when I was like in high school and from LA, which might set the tone for why I was already doing yoga at that age and kind of already immersed in the wellness world and interested in kinds of holistic healing from a young age train in yoga and I've done yoga nidra trainings, which is yogic sleep, but never a true full like 200 hour yoga training. Yet it's definitely something I'm seeking and I kind of have a vision of going to India or Bali or somewhere and really being immersed. But I just kind of found sound through the yoga. But then it deepened. On a yoga retreat I went to Iceland actually and it was one of those pulls when you're like not quite sure why you're being drawn somewhere. It was just like this, knowing that I had, and I do feel that there's portals and places on earth where we feel really drawn to. Maybe it's a past life remembrance, maybe there's just some divine appointment there waiting for us. But this was Iceland for me.
Speaker 3:I went alone, didn't know anyone, didn't know any of the people holding the retreat they were all based in the UK and I met my sound mentor on that retreat. She was one of the sound practitioners holding space and I was so blown away I just felt instantly like resonant with her and so I went on her retreat next, which was to Egypt and that was all about sound, and then ended up taking her training. So it was kind of this unnatural, this natural unfolding, and I was just kind of following my curiosity. And they say when the student is ready, the teacher appears. So that's kind of what happened.
Speaker 3:But yeah, just kind of never had a very clear goal in mind with any of this work. It was just kind of this natural unfolding, this organic process of following the curiosity, following the breadcrumbs. And then, when I returned from my sound training, I had a few people ask if I wanted to hold a sound bath and I was like I guess I could. So I started just answering the call and slowly but surely got more instruments, got some gongs, got some drums, made some instruments. And here we are today.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, you said made some instruments.
Speaker 3:Well, I've made a drum and I always encourage my students to make instruments because you can make a shaker. It's a really beautiful. Even if you're not a sound facilitator or, you know, even for you in your yoga class or if you're working with people as a therapist or whatever it may be, even just in your own art practice. You can kind of collect some sand, some pebbles you can use um, you know, you would use a hide, technically like an animal skin, but you could do a vegan uh, you could find like a vegan way to do it or even some sort of old leather purse or something like that, and make a little shaker, make a little rattle. You can make a feather wand if you go on a walk and you find some feathers from birds. There's certain ones that won't make a sound, like owls are very silent when they fly, so theirs wouldn't really sound too interesting perhaps. But you could seek out a different or many feathers and kind of just see, stick them into a stick of bamboo, make a little bow on it.
Speaker 3:Whatever you want to do, and you can make instruments, and I think that's something I like to encourage people to do because it's so fun. And also what I like to do is when I'm just out in the world, traveling or whatever it may be. I like to repurpose necklaces or anything really that I could use as an instrument that makes sound. Even just rubbing a wood floor has such a nice quality and feeling to it. Rubbing a wood floor has such a nice quality and feeling to it so you can find so many things out there that have, and if the sound kind of moves you and if you feel delighted by it, then that means it's a sound healing instrument.
Speaker 2:That is amazing. I love that because one of my like, I've got many different interests, so I struggled to. I'm one of those. I was always trying to refine and be like just pick one thing, maddie, just pick one thing and do one thing. But that's just not me. I've got to do everything, all the things that I love to do. But you know, buying instruments, I was like, oh, my goodness, the crystal bowls, they're so expensive. And I was like, oh, what do I need to do? So I kind of lent more towards your natural things, you know, like the wood sticks and shakers and that kind of stuff. And I did actually buy a vegan drum. I have no idea what it's made out of, but it's beautiful. I love that idea of actually collecting things. One of the instruments I love to find in nature is the fallen branches, especially off gum trees in Australia, those dry leaves. When you shake them, oh, they're beautiful and they last months.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so good. It's fun. It starts to open you up to vibration and to deep listening and to hearing sounds in nature, and a Shakapa is like a shamanic instrument. It's when you collect fallen leaves in the jungle and then layer them on top of each other, and then it creates this beautiful sound that introduces wind, and so I mean you could make it's called the bambaca if you use bamboo to do it. There's many things you can do and it becomes a really fun kind of way to just engage with the universe and the world and then open yourself up as remembrance of your vibrational nature too. So it's a fun thing. I always encourage people to start to listen for the instruments that might be calling to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. And I love that for two different reasons. Like one, the creativity of people actually going hey, let's make an instrument. You know, that is so much fun, especially with you know, ancient times, like people would have had to have made instruments. If you were going to have an instrument, you had to make it. And then, too, like it connects us to the idea that sound healing is natural.
Speaker 2:It's not, you know, while we do have all these beautiful new tools, like sound itself comes from everywhere and it's healing as it is. So it doesn't have to be a fancy crystal ball, although it can be. It's completely your, yeah, what feels good for you. So I love that. So I'd love to know more about frequency and how it works. I think this is something that people maybe there's a disconnect, especially in the West. I find people are like wait, what you're going to? Like it's nice to hear, but how is that actually doing anything? So can you teach us a little bit about how frequency works and how all these different instruments are supposed to be healing, as we use the word healing?
Speaker 3:Right. Well, I like to think about going back to just the idea of music. Like, sometimes, when people think about sound healing instruments they might be silo it away from just music in general, but we all have been moved by music. We know how healing music is, how it's this universal language we all speak and when you even listen to a beautiful singer's voice, even in a language that you don't know, you are moved by that. You know that feeling, and so this is like some intrinsic language that is universal across time and space. It's also this you know, we can listen to a song that was recorded in the 60s. We don't have to be in the room when it was recorded to still feel the power of that and that energy that is imbued within it, that just lives. I call it inside the hologram, so it's outside of the time-space bubble, this linear idea of time, and we can always tap in. And they say that before we even spoke, we sang and we used music. So this is the way we start to remember that sound music, whatever it is, is healing and it is evocative. It's connecting us to our emotional realms, to the more subtle layers of being. So it kind of allows us to deepen our experience, as not just this physical form and maybe even a lot of us are not even in the physical form, we're more in the mental realms, as a lot of people in the Western world are kind of moving through their lives in their mind and the ego and and their action is based off of keeping themselves safe, because that's what the mind is seeking. But sound encourages us to drop into the body and drop into these other layers of self, the emotional realms. It is also kind of an astral experience because sound puts us into kind of a dream state. So it drops us into slower brain state rhythms which then are mirrored when we're in dream sleep. So we can drop into theta, which is dream sleep, even delta, which is dreamless sleep, and alpha, which is more of creative slow rhythm, not as slow as those other two but still a slower rhythm than our active beta brainwave.
Speaker 3:So music starts to invite us into the unseen realms a little bit. It starts to invite us to hear what's unheard, to make audible the inaudible, and that's why it's been used across culture, across time and space to express our emotions, to bring people together in community. Not only does it individually kind of drop us into this trance state, but it does it collectively. So then we're all brought into this brainwave state in which we're resonating and vibrating on the same frequency and we're able to then feel each other more and feel the heartbeat of the community. So it's used for ceremony, it's used for celebration, and so sound healing is just reminding us of this fact and how, across all continents, there was instruments being created, as we just talked about, from the bones of animals, and so a lot of people will talk about how these instruments also are the spirit of our past coming through in song, of our past coming through in song.
Speaker 3:And when we drop in with a sound bath or a sound healing experience, it's really just using the intentionality for healing to occur in this space. Or maybe the intention of the practitioner is for grounding or for release or whatever the intention might be, but just amplifying that frequency that's already found in music in song, with a really clear intention. So that's really the only distinction between a sound healing experience and going to a concert is just the intentionality of the facilitator and maybe also of the group of the people coming together so you can have an equally very profound and moving experience at a concert, and I always say choose your own adventure, find what moves you. If you want to listen and dance to Brazilian music at home, that is such a healing journey to go on. You don't need to necessarily go to a sound bath, but if you do find a great facilitator that you enjoy and that does hold space in that way for you to drop in and remember your own vibrational nature, to listen for your intuition very, very healing to open the throat, open expression, maybe even realize you're feeling something that you didn't know was underneath the surface, and then, through song or through expression, it starts to move a little bit. So frequency is just the way that we describe different hurts, which is the way we measure sound. So, like within the sound healing world, there's lots of different schools of thought around the best frequency or frequencies that are more healing than others. And I always kind of throw that out and say whatever moves you, whatever you connect with and wherever you feel that in your body, because I don't necessarily subscribe to the idea of like certain notes that you might find in a set of bowls as associated with certain chakras Sometimes they're sold as chakra sets but I encourage people to instead notice where the sound lands and where they feel an opening or warmth or tingles or whatever it may be, a memory arises. It might not be in the body, you might evoke something else. So to not be so rigid with the idea of like certain frequencies being for this part of the body or for this type of response, it could be something that's really unique to you and there's a lot of people that are starting to explain this from a more scientific perspective.
Speaker 3:Even just the idea of using sound in medicine it's very common. I mean, we've heard of the term ultrasound and this is using sound for imaging. So sound is already used in the medical field. We use sound to break apart kidney stones, so sound can be used for destructive means, to like break something apart. This is the same principle as like if an opera singer shatters a glass by singing really loudly and then breaking the glass, they're just finding the resonant frequency of that glass and then amplifying it. So we do that with kidney stones too, so we can find frequencies within the body and then amplify them.
Speaker 3:There's so much potential here with cancer cells. Even during COVID people were looking for the resonant frequency of COVID, the virus, and seeing if we could eradicate it or bring it into harmony with the rest of the body. So there's a few different resources out there to kind of find your own home note and home frequency, which is something I like to talk about with my students and clients. But I think find whatever resonates with you, if it's a Beatles song or if it's going to a gong bath, those are all just parts of this same spectrum of sound as medicine. Wow.
Speaker 2:I absolutely loved that. And that thing I did not know that about kidney stones that is so cool, Wow. So if we can do that with kidney stones, it makes sense that we could do that with other things. Of course, it's just about finding it. So what you said about, did you say home note? Yeah, your home note your frequency.
Speaker 3:What does that mean? So there's a few ideas about. You know, not every sound is for everyone and even though there are some like universal frequencies that people talk about within the sound healing space, like one that gets thrown around a lot, is the Schumann resonance, which is this frequency that the earth emits. It's one of many that the earth has and specifically it's 7.83 Hertz, and this frequency is below our range of hearing. So our range of hearing is said to be 20 to 20,000 Hertz, and it's just like the visible light spectrum, like we know of Roy G Biv, and then we have infrared light and ultraviolet light outside of that. So it's the same with sound. We have infrasound and ultrasound, and just because we can't hear it doesn't mean it doesn't affect us. So it starts to open us up to vibration as not just what we perceive but something that is affecting us all the time. And in fact, when we meet someone, we might meet their vibration, their electromagnetic field, before we really meet them. Our bodies are communicating, the electromagnetic energy of our fields are interfacing, and we know this when we walk into a room and we're like the vibes are off or this feels so good in here. So that's already starting to invite us to notice what resonates with us and that helps us to start to discern what feels good in my body, what feels good around me in my field and what doesn't, and then that can help us to start to determine like what even is my home note, like what is the safe kind of grounded sense of me that can be expressed vibrationally. So there's a few people that are looking into this I can name. David Gibson is someone who he's a physicist but also kind of a mystic, and he talks about the home note a lot and he actually sells this software called Voice Analysis where you can have someone speak into this microphone and then it goes through the computer and it finds what notes you're not using and just like we're told to eat the rainbow, like it's ideal that you're using all different notes and that you have this like wide spectrum of sound that you're expressing with. But maybe a sound has like kind of vibrated out of your life. Maybe there was a refrigerator humming next to your bed as you slept as a child and then now that frequency it's not in your you kind of like it fried the system a little bit and you, or maybe someone used to yell at you in a note and now you don't use it anymore. So it kind of spits back what you don't use, gives you a little CD or an mp3 and has you listen and vocalize with that or work with that sound to start to weave it back in.
Speaker 3:And a way that I like to invite students to kind of think about what their home note might be.
Speaker 3:It's basically finding just the sensation of safety of this place in which you feel really secure, and maybe it's you're talking a little slower, a little deeper.
Speaker 3:Maybe for me I notice when I'm facilitating and you might notice this too too in a yoga class, especially like a yin or restorative class, when everyone's settled and the room is kind of stilled and people are starting to drop in, maybe you notice your voice even shifts or changes as you start to lead people throughout the practice You're dropping into a slower brainwave state, you're dropping into your home note and then you exude that and you invite everyone else in the room to maybe meet you there in that space of safety where they're finding their home note too, a way you can kind of seek it is sometimes we'll have people vocal tone, which just means kind of using different vowel, sounds like A-E-I-O-U and then going up and down in like a scale, and then landing on a sound that is just like easy to evoke without much effort and just feels really natural, like you could just be there for a while without a lot of just pressure or feeling like tense.
Speaker 3:And then another way is maybe envisioning your beloved or your pet and then maybe placing a hand on the heart and just inviting yourself to say I love you and seeing what kind of sound comes out as you say that and feel into that.
Speaker 2:Wow, this is so, so cool. I haven't heard any of this before. It's amazing. I love the idea of you know, having you know that I don't know what that test is that you just mentioned. You know speaking into microphone. You find all these notes that you haven't that you're not using. That's so interesting, that people you know if they get you know yelled at by their parent as a kid in a particular note and they just eradicate it Like that is so interesting that that happens. I don't even know how that would happen, but it's obviously so unconscious.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we place fear on it. Part of this is like a soul retrieval.
Speaker 3:It's like a remembrance, it's like an integration of aspects of self we may have left behind, left in a memory, in a space, in an environment. So I think what finding your home note really does is it's a remembrance of your authentic self.
Speaker 2:And is it always singing or a voice note? Or can you find your home note in something outside of you?
Speaker 3:home note in something outside of you. Yeah, I mean, I think, like David Gibson also talks about this as an average of like your metabolism and your heart rate and your brain waves. So like your heart has its own pulse, your brain has its own pulse. Those are measured with an EKG and EEG respectively and they're never quite aligned. I mean, heart brain coherence is something maybe people know and talk about now, but a sound bath and music in general is one of the most powerful and quick ways to create coherence between the heart and the brain. And so he kind of is ascribing the home note as maybe this like chemical equation of all these aspects of yourself. Even in the podcast what is it? It was so popular the telepathy tapes, if you've heard of it before, it was like very big in the US.
Speaker 3:There's an episode I think it's episode five, where this teacher talks about a student, a nonverbal student, as they developed their relationship and learned to communicate with each other nonverbally, basically asking her to bring tuning forks into the room medical instrument actually, but they're used, like for so many purposes. People use them in sound healing, um, and then also, like police, use them to tune their laser gun. I mean they can be used for so many things. Um, musicians will use them to listen for, to find a note and then sing it. So tuning forks can be used for so many things. But, um, this this student asked the teacher to bring in tuning forks to help them find their home note. Really, I mean, they don't know if they said it exactly in those words, but basically what the student then expressed was that there was two different tuning forks that they resonated with. One was for their body and one was for their soul. So it's also maybe this way to bring soul into the body or create coherence between the body and the spirit, or something like that we're talking about, maybe with the idea of the metabolism and the brainwave and the heartwave, this frequency of the body.
Speaker 3:But then there also might be a sound where it's like this is my soul note, and maybe that's something when you hear an instrument or you hear a chord or you hear a melody. I mean, it could be many layers of this, and maybe it's something that also changes throughout your life. As you get older, as things change, the density of your body changes. So I think whenever you feel moved and also soothed by a sound, there's a resonance there within your field or your body, where it's like this, feels like me, I can land here and I think that's what you know. Hopefully a good sound journey might offer or invite in, so not necessarily having to express or make the sound, but also just be enveloped by something that invites that sensation within. And that's also why there's so many practitioners out there, because not everybody is for everyone and not everybody is going to resonate on the same radio wave as someone else, and so to honor that and also keep listening for that resonance when you arrive at it.
Speaker 2:This is incredible. I love it. I'm learning so much right now. I love it. I've always, always, loved sound. There's just something about it and you know that goosebump feeling you get on your skin with a certain note, that like ooh, like your whole body feels like it's cool or something. It's very interesting, it's so good. So can I ask about the different instruments that you know? You see the sound practitioners using.
Speaker 2:I've had very basic training in sound healing and I basically go off feel alone and hope and it seems to work for some people, which is nice. You know, again, you're not going to resonate with everyone, but I would love to know, like, how do you know what instruments to use? Do you have a routine or do you literally just go with the feel? And what are some of your favorite instruments to use and have you noticed anything with that? What does one instrument bring something to people? Can you see it or can you feel it? I'd love to know more about how you, what it feels like, because many people have been in a sound bath, especially people who listen to podcasts like this. They've probably experienced some level of sound healing or are definitely curious to experience it. What is it like on your side. What instruments do you use? What's, what do you do?
Speaker 3:Well, just to go back to that idea of the tingles that you feel when you listen to beautiful music or a voice or something that's called musical frision, and not everybody feels that. So I always tell people, if you feel that then music is medicine for you and you it's something to move towards, it's, it's, it shows me that there is like music is a superpower. For you it is a hypersensitive kind of area, maybe your clear audience in some capacity, which is, you know, being able to hear for intuitive kind of hits, and so for anyone out there and for you as well, if that is something you experience, then I always invite you to explore sound as a deeper medicine. But yeah, for me I mean, I have musical frisson too. So being moved by music has always been part of my life and I've always been like a curator. I would like burn CDs for friends and always seek new artists out there, and I always like dated musicians but never thought I was one. But isn't that the case that a lot of times you kind of mirror aspects of self within those around you and then maybe it starts to come online or you know, you might outsource these abilities to other people around you until you finally start to embody them yourself. So I'm grateful for the musicians around me that kind of cultivated this awareness that I was a deep listener and that I am a musician.
Speaker 3:Although the instruments I play are pretty easy and foolproof, which I love, I think there's a really low barrier to entry for sound healers. Just because a lot of the instruments are easy in terms of technique, it doesn't mean it's easy to do and it doesn't mean that music theory does play a role. But of course you can just follow your intuition and let that lead you and then maybe if it calls to you to go deeper with theory, then it's always there for you. But for me it was just kind of it started with the crystal bowls, which I think are a great gateway for a lot of people. I had a Tibetan metal bowl before that and would just kind of have that around the house and then was gifted a crystal bowl and then it kind of just they suddenly start to duplicate around you, which is a really funny thing that happens. Which is a really funny thing that happens. But I also love gong. It's just a little more challenging and in terms of just what it does it's kind of a confronting sound. And then, more and more, as I just go down the path, new kinds of things will come through, like the flute and I love the drum and the harp, and a few different types of instruments will come through.
Speaker 3:So what I like to share is that each instrument is a portal, it's a pathway into an element. Maybe you're inviting in wood, maybe you're inviting in crystal, maybe you're inviting in metal Not just that type of element, but also earth, air, fire, water, ether. So each instrument is kind of invoking a new expression and it's something that I like to call tonal painting, so we can weave together all these textures and create this beautiful blanket that we can get wrapped in, and I like to work with a lot of different instruments for that reason. But you could equally play with texture and tonal painting with just one instrument. There's many ways to play the bowls, so you don't have to necessarily sing them, you could chime them, you could play with different wands that evoke a different texture too. So even just the timing of how you play it can invoke different things. So it's definitely an intuitive process for me, although I always noticed that what I liked to receive was more of a musical experience. So I think also noticing what you enjoy and then maybe that can inform what you want to share.
Speaker 3:So I always sought mentors that were more musical in their approach and now I really enjoy music theory and sacred geometry and the different ways in which the sounds are informing each other and creating shapes and creating you know these harmonies and what that means. It's all numerology, it's really. It goes very deep. But before that I just would hear and listen and be like I like the sound of that, I don't like the sound of that. And the first time I put together a set of bowls I was just in this house for like five hours. I got to play and just kind of cultivate a set and came home with these amazing bowls. I didn't realize what I'd done, what I put together, until later. It was all through ear and all through kind of the feeling that I felt. But now I know that that set it had perfect fifths, it had fourths these are all kind of music theory terms for just the intervals of the notes. And now I know that this is something I enjoy and when I put together sets I think about this. So that part came later. It was just an intuitive feeling and I describe this to my students a lot in terms of like. The intuitive feeling is the feminine approach. It's like spirals and circles and just noticing how things land in the body and what you're moving towards. And then music theory is more linear and more masculine, so it's putting the theory behind things, but they're both great approaches and they both get you there. So it's putting the theory behind things, but they're both great approaches and they both get you there.
Speaker 3:And something that started happening to me as I continued down the path. You know, at first I knew I had certain combinations of things that I really liked together and I would kind of stick to a script, in a way like a narrative that I liked the idea of I would still think about texture and tonal painting and a narrative that I kind of established where there was maybe a crescendo moment, a peak moment of sound, and then bringing people out of that towards the end. But I didn't really stray too far from maybe this, yeah, this formula that I established early on in terms of like what went together. And then, as I started to continue to offer sound, I started to hear the sound of the next instrument or the bowl that wanted to be played and instead move towards that. So I kind of now I consider this a type of Claire audience, which I didn't think I had that ability or that gift.
Speaker 3:I think we all have all the clairs.
Speaker 3:If you're unfamiliar, like clairsentience or clairvoyance maybe is one we've all heard of, but there's all different types of clairs and it's just different ways we perceive intuition, and so I think of this as a clairaudience, like even when people are composing music in their heads.
Speaker 3:That's a clairaudience type of intuitive hit. So that's been really fun for me to just kind of listen for the next sound that wants to come through and also just knowing what my intention is for the space or what the people in front of me are kind of requiring or needing, and listening for that, and then what instrument would be the most appropriate. Or if I want to move the energy in the room and shake things up, maybe I would reach for an instrument that kind of moves energy. That would be a gong or a drum or a rattle or something that kind of shakes things up, instead of maybe something that would be more grounding or calming or kind of lull people into a droney space like the bowls, or even something that's warm and comforting, like the harp. So I like to pull from different things, thinking about the elements, thinking about the intention of the group, also what I'm feeling and listening for and picking up in the space, and also just save some room to play and have fun with it.
Speaker 2:This is so interesting. So what kind of spaces do you hold? Do you have like classes? Do you do one-on-one? I'd love to know what you do, what you offer through sound to the world, especially so anyone who's listening could maybe find you and, you know, do a class or something if they're curious about learning more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I offer new moon and full moon sound journeys every month, so two a month virtually. So that's always really nice for like a global community to be able to drop in. I really enjoy being able to lay in my own bed or be in the bath and listen to a live transmission in that way and kind of cultivate community through that. So I've been doing that since COVID really, and I just continued on because I enjoy it and it's fun, and every new moon I do breathwork and then sound. So breathwork is another modality that I like to weave in and I find it's really supportive to open us to the sound in a deeper way. So that's always available to whether people are in LA and want to just be in their own space and enjoy that, or in Australia or somewhere else and they can drop in and then, yeah, I'm all over.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm actually global. I attend a lot of retreats and I facilitate retreats and I also travel a lot on my own and then like to seek out studios and see what kind of offerings we can co-create together. So I like to bring my bowls and just see where it takes me. But for the most part I am just based in LA and I have some regular experiences that I facilitate. Like I have a breathwork and sound journey every month at this tea house in LA, this late night tea house. That's a really beautiful space. I like to seek environments and atmospheres that aren't maybe traditional meditation or yoga studios, even though I do like that too. I just held a sound bath last night at a yoga studio and I love that and I do some regular stuff at meditation studios here in LA. But if I can maybe find a space that is an art gallery or some other community space that has kind of this other unique atmosphere, I find that that's really interesting for people and it can also open people in new ways, so I love that as well. Yeah, so I also will do some coaching, one-on-one work with people, virtually or in person, to go even deeper and kind of map the body and feel into a very specific energy or work through maybe it's past life healing, maybe it's you know, we never know what might come up. So when we work one-on-one it can go a lot deeper. But in general I really love a group session and of course that's going to have a very different experience than a one-on-one.
Speaker 3:And then the thing that I love the most of all of this is education, is teaching. So I host workshops all over about the science of sound, about energetic hygiene, just different ways that we can work with sound. Maybe, of course, we'll have an immersion with sound as kind of a way to cap it all off, but also just educating around how we can weave these tools in, just like we were just talking about. We'll get the home frequency or home note and I lead a training twice a year about sound. It's a three-month training. It's held virtually and we start on the equinox, so it'll be every March 21st and September 21st will be the next one, and this is just a really beautiful portal.
Speaker 3:I think of it more of as a mystery school rather than just a sound training, although it is focused on sound. But we go into a lot of depth around being trauma-informed, the art of holding space, working with our own relationship to our bodies, to boundaries, to sound, sound, and then technique and lineage and the history of all the instruments and how. They're all different portals as well, so all kinds of stuff to be found out there in the world and continuing to just find ways to put curriculum together, because that is really my favorite thing to do and I find that that's how I get to stay a student forever is to also be a teacher, and that's when you really learn what you're teaching. So it's such a joy and pleasure, beautiful.
Speaker 2:I would love to do one of those three month trainings. It sounds amazing and I'll put all the links to your work and your socials and everything below so anyone who's listening you can have easy, easy access to go and find stuff. So go below. But before we finish up I want to ask if you would be willing to do like a five minute sound experience for the people listening. I don't know if maybe someone who's listening to this a lot of what I get, a lot of the comments, are people struggling with stress and pressure, feeling anxious about things and feeling a little bit lost in the world. So I don't know if you'd be willing to do something.
Speaker 3:it was just one instrument or something so people can have an experience yeah, let's do it for those and for you as well, just using this opportunity to just maybe close down the eyes if it feels safe to do so, maybe taking some deeper breaths here and just noticing what's here. Now I like to explain sound as a mirror, a reflection of this current moment. So, even though we work with sound, it's really an invitation into stillness and silence. So we first start there Silence, the birthplace of sound, and just noticing the breath as it moves through the nostrils, maybe noticing the body in space, noticing the mind, and just inviting all the thoughts to pass like clouds in the sky. And just inviting all the thoughts to pass like clouds in the sky.
Speaker 3:Are we the one thinking? Are we the one listening? Maybe all of it? And from this place, collectively, let's just exhale out all our air, inhale through the nose, let it go with a sigh, two more like this Big inhale filling the belly, the heart. Hold at the top, sip in a little more air and let it all go. Last one, maybe deepest breath of the day, the week, the month hold at the top, sip in a little more air and let it all go, just noticing how three deep breaths, some vibrational exhales might have already started to relax the body, the mind, how effortless and easeful it can be to surrender. And I invite you, even though we're not necessarily in the same physical space together, to not just hear sound today, but also feel it.
Speaker 3:Let it provide a deep tissue massage for your cells, for your muscles, for your bones, continuing to breathe, maybe feeling the earth holding you, supporting you below no-transcript so, so gently returning to your breath, deepening the inhale, lengthening the exhale, noticing what you notice as you come back into this space, maybe remaining in stillness or beginning to introduce a little light movement, twinkling fingers and toes, rolling out wrists and ankles, getting back into the body in whatever way feels most supportive, maybe noticing and listening for the sounds of the waiting world coming back in saying yes to this now moment, and I thank you so much. I hope you're feeling a little rested and rejuvenated with just this short little journey and thank you so much, madison, for having me thank you, that was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for that. It really felt so special. Thank you so much for that. It really felt so special. Thank you so much. I'm really hoping, really hoping, that these new moon and full moon immersions are working with my time zone. Poor Australia, I've always left out.
Speaker 3:I actually have family in Australia, so I I think about you guys. I love the coffee culture, the food, it's just so good. Well, the good thing is, I mean, if you can't make it live, that's okay, because you'll have the recording and you'll have access to it forever. So I always make sure to include that and send some journal prompts or some other things with it in case you can't make it. And I always trust that you listen at the exact right time. Maybe if you were there live, it would have landed differently, but then you know you listen the next day and maybe I mentioned something that resonates deeply because you just had an experience that it, you know. It just feels like as if it's really meant for that moment. So I always trust the divine timing of when people drop in.
Speaker 2:Perfect, I can't wait. I can't wait to join in. Thank you so much, alison, for being here, for taking part of your day. I really appreciate it and I had the best time talking to you, so thank you. Yeah, thank you.