For the Love of Creatives

#049: Becoming By Subtraction: When Music Rebuilds A Self With Sean Patrick Maher

• Maddox & Dwight • Episode 49

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What if the most profound shift of your life arrived as a single instruction: turn around and face the amp? That’s the moment Sean Patrick Maher describes—when a wave of sound churned grief through his body and out into the open, setting him on a path from musician to creator to founder of SomAlive Technologies. We dive into how sound becomes touch, how intention becomes architecture, and how community brings the meaning that sustains both.

Sean Patrick unpacks the Z5, a vibroacoustic platform that lets you feel music as pressure and pulse. We talk about brainwave entrainment, nervous system regulation, and why altered states are not escape but precision tools for safety and release. He shares the practice of “future memories,” where a client’s own voice and words are recorded beforehand and woven into the session—so your subconscious hears a trusted frequency, not a generic affirmation. The result is a coherent experience that pairs science with art and coaching with somatics.

We also challenge a favorite self-help myth. Instead of stacking habits and chasing outcomes, Sean Patrick argues for subtraction: release resistance and the system reorganizes. Language matters here. “I want” keeps you wanting; “I am” invites you into being. From there, we zoom out to what actually fuels the work—community. Returning to Western Massachusetts reminded Sean Patrick that proximity to people who care isn’t a luxury; it’s regulation, purpose, and creative oxygen.

Expect a conversation that bridges creativity, trauma release, and practical spirituality. If you’re curious about vibroacoustics, brainwave entrainment, somatic therapy, and the psychology of change, this one threads them together with clarity and heart. Listen, reflect, and consider recording the sentence your future self would say—then let sound help your body believe it.

Enjoy the episode? Follow the show, share with a friend who needs a state shift, and leave a quick review to help more curious minds find us.

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SPEAKER_01:

And it wasn't until I came back and visited some friends and spent some time. And I mean, I get back and I'm invited to three parties, and I another friend's like, come over and perform music for this contact improvisation jam. And oh, by the way, I've got this project I'm working on. Can you come help me with this? This even, you know, just all this, like right when I get here, all this integration of people, just you know, in this these interactions. And I realized how much it shifted how I felt, and it opened up all this creativity. I felt inspired again, you know. And so for me, whether or not that community is specifically integrated with what I'm what I'm working on, the fact that they exist around me serves what I'm working on because it gives me the juice, it gives me the meaning almost. Like I that the meaning has to be about people, the people that are important to me. Hopefully, a family one day as a greater community, even. But that is so crucial to me. I can't do it without it. And honestly, what's the point?

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to another edition of For the Love of Creatives podcast. I am your co-host Dwight, joined by co-host Maddox. And today our featured guest is the wonderful Sean Patrick Mayer. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_02:

Great to have you, Sean Patrick. So just you know, for the audience's benefit, Sean Patrick and I have known each other for You're so good at this part. January of 17. Um, so it soon will be nine years that we have known each other. We met through an organ, a global organization called the Mankind Project, and we found quick just friendship like that, and we have kept up with each other over the years and had different forms of relationships. Sean Patrick coached me for a period of time, and quite wonderfully, I might add. And um yeah, so um it we've been leading up to this for almost nine years, and here we it only took us nine years. Only took us nine years. So let's go, let's go ahead and uh actually I'm gonna give you a moment to kind of tell the audience who you are and what you're about. Just just a clip notes version of you.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Um, condense who I am in the infinite of what I and who I am, and in a short intro, got it. Okay, let's do it. Um I guess um, yeah. So my name is Sean Patrick Maher. I am the founder and CEO of a company called Somalive Technologies um that is focused on somatic sound therapy. So we're using sound waves, vibroacoustics, and uh brainwave entrainment to create experiences of healing, wellness, and transformation. So that's the main focus of my life um at this point. And that's an accumulation and kind of an amalgamation of everything that I've done previously, which is musician, um, touring musician, facilitator, coach. Um I've uh I was the founding member of two wellness centers, and I um co-created a music festival, and I've just done a lot of weird and interesting things. I think what I would sum up about sort of who I am is I guess I follow where I where my heart guides me, like where I feel called, where I want to be, what inspires me. And I stay pretty true to that. And I live sort of a gypsy life in a lot of ways. Um yeah, that's that's maybe like a very quick 10,000-foot view of what I'm doing in the world.

SPEAKER_02:

You do live a little bit of a gypsy life. You have um I've lost count on the number of places that you have been for a period of time, moved to and stayed sometimes for a little while and sometimes a little longer. And um I I never know where you're gonna be when we jump on a zoom.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you want to take a guess?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I don't have a clue. Austin.

SPEAKER_01:

Nope. I was in Austin last week, though. I am in I'm in western Massachusetts right now. I'm in a little cabin right by the river. My dear friends have this beautiful cabin here, and I'm staying in this cabin and doing some things around here. But funny enough, I leave in about a week for about two months of travel and experiences.

SPEAKER_02:

You know what they say about lives of the rich and famous.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know what they say, and I don't know what that is. When I tell people that I'm moving around a lot and I'm kind of nomadic, and you're like, oh, that's so cool. And I'm like, wow, you just you know, it's not as glamorous as you might think, but it is, but it feels good to me. It's it's kind of what well, it's it's also out of necessity. It's kind of like just what's called of what I'm working on right now and where I need to be.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and the the the part of what you're doing right now, the company and the sound stuff. I mean, some of the stuff you listed off at first glance may not really sound all that creative, but I think everything that you have done has been extremely creative. Like in your current role, you started off creating, literally creating sound, am I right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, for most of my life I've been a sound, what I've always considered to be a sound artist. Some people would call that a musician, but I have always liked using sound as an abstract art form. And so the same way a painter might use abstract painting, I like approaching sound and the exploration of sound, kind of painting time with soundscapes and movements and quality and texture. I I think of sound in a textural kind of place. But yeah, I like that's kind of where it all started, and then it became an actual physical product and then a methodology and all these other things.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and and I don't really think musician covers it too well. It's sort of like, but it it just it doesn't do what you do justice.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't well, and yeah, just from what you've shared, there seems to be so many other layers because you you uh stoma alive. I mean what you've put together is using sound as one aspect of of healing and of you know allowing the the body to be better able to do what it needs to do to to to um draw the resources it needs for more complete healing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well said, absolutely. That's that's spot on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, let's take a little memory walk back to the beginning when you were just a wee child. What how did creativity show up in your life? When did when did you kind of have this aha moment where you knew you liked to make or create things from nothing?

SPEAKER_01:

It's really interesting. I I don't really know, to be honest. I I kind of had a I mean, I think any child, I think children are incredibly creative to begin with, just pretty much across the board. They're always so inventive and so curious and making up little worlds. I think I used to love playing with my little army, army G.I. Joe guys, the little plastic ones that are you know static, they don't move or anything. And I'd create these whole worlds, and then I upgraded to the ones that had it all kind of the mobility. And I used to create these like little storylines and these explorations of these worlds and these battles and things like that. So I remember doing some of that as a kid, but I I think also um I think I went through a big phase where a lot of that kind of got pressed down. I think I went into a space of a lot of fear, there was a lot of like kind of chaos in my upbringing. So the sense of safety to really like express in the fullness of the creativity that wanted to pour through, I think got kind of pressed down a little bit um within me. Like I chose a suppression. And um, and then I I think it it was really a few years later, there was always like these bits and pieces. I would do, I would get really into one little pathway for a little while, but I didn't really get into like creativity in a really kind of direct and robust way. I don't think that happened until my early 20s, probably, is when I started really. I remember, I remember I was doing a ton of different types of art. I was doing photography and painting and music and all this stuff, and I and I was doing videography and all this stuff, and I realized at some point that I didn't want to be an artist, I wanted to be a creator. That was that was kind of the word that came through. So I wanted to be a creator, and of course I didn't know what that meant. So so it was kind of a a process of me moving from the the natural proclivity of creativity towards you know the dip where it didn't feel real available, and maybe I did other things until it kind of resurfaced. And I feel like once it resurfaced, it never went away, it just changed forms.

SPEAKER_00:

Sounds amazing. Were there any particular awakenings that you had? I mean, you you kind of marked your 20s as being the point where you were called back.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Was there a particular story or yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a story.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, well, so to give a little context, so yeah, I had a bit of a chaotic upbringing when I was 16-year-old, my brother passed away. So I was in a pretty bad place within myself. I was didn't know how to manage that kind of grief, didn't know what to do with it. And I was getting really in a bad way with drugs and things like that. And so there were there one of the times when it really emerged was actually around the ninth, my 19th birthday. I had gone to California to get away from some space and some things that I was getting too far into. So I went to California to live with my dad for a little while. And while I was there, I bought a bunch of music instruments and a new mixer, mixing board, and that was when I first started producing music. And I still have some of those tracks, and every now and then I'll listen back and be like, it's not, I mean, oof, but it's not bad, you know, like interesting, terrible mix, but interesting. Um so when I came back from that, I started really performing in bands, and I had already been performing in bands a little bit, but I got really serious about it in my like around 2021. And you know, the thing that kind of sent me on the journey of the work that I'm doing right now happened about that time. And that was uh, that was a I'll share it quickly. It was um I was perform well, I was I was in a still in a pretty bad way. I was going to college at the time and I was playing in this in this band, and I lit we had a band house. We all lived in the house together, and the jam room, the music room, was my room. So I'd sleep on the floor between the kick drum and the wall. That was my like little, I'd roll a little pad out, sleep for the night, and then in the morning I'd roll it back up, put it in the closet, and we'd have space to make music. And but I was like, I was having a real rough time, and I remember this this voice effectively, this woman's voice coming through. And she basically said, I I kind of liken it to the voice of God, a form of God, an angel, something like that. And she basically just said, You're gonna heal or you're gonna die. You know, if you, you know, it's choice is yours, you get to do, you know, there was no judgment. She just said, It's up to you. And for whatever reason, that night I decided I would heal, not knowing what that meant. And it was the next day we were performing a show, and and the um the voice came back, and she said to turn around and face your amplifier during while we were playing music. And I did, I turned around in this one specific moment of this one specific song, and uh I felt the sound waves enter my body and churn up a lot of grief and just churn all these things forward, and then when it got to about my throat, it just burst out of me and I just burst into tears and had no idea what had happened to me. But I went home that night and started to try to find out, and that's when I discovered there was this whole concept of using sound as a healing modality, and so my creativity from that point on sort of took a turn towards purpose. The creativity was up until that point, it was just purely like kind of whatever wants to be there. From that point on, there was always this, it was always like through a lens of service or transformation or you know, evolving consciousness or something like that. And so yeah, that's that's that was like probably the biggest turning point of my life. And then there were some other crucial ones along the way, but that one really took me on my journey, like sent me on my journey, rather.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you're fortunate to have such an awakening moment. I mean, something that profound is is almost I'd say it's a modern equivalent of what we see in in uh biblical stories. I mean, you you got to experience your own burning bush.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm I'm curious, Sean Patrick, because I I think that I I can look back now and see that my life started being service to others as early as 13, but I didn't have a language for it. Back then I couldn't have said, you know, oh, I'm I'm here to have impact on the planet, or I'm I'm here to, you know, I couldn't have said any of those things.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But it was it was happening just naturally, you know. And I'm wondering for you, was it, I mean, were you aware on that conscious level back then, or is it like me in retrospect, where you now realize, you know, you you were because that's a very young age for anybody to be focused on service to others.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that you're absolutely right. That is a very young age to do that. And I don't think I had the awareness of it. It was the I think the closest thing to that is I started having it was around that age where I started having people say things like, I really like talking to you, or you're really nice to talk to. Um, which is, I think, one of my creative gifts is my ability to have explorative conversation that kind of draws things out of people in a certain way. Um, and it just comes fairly natural to me. So, but it but it certainly wasn't conscious. I think I was too jammed up trying to find my own place. I think I I think I was too in the like into the shadows of my own ego trying to find its way in this life to really know to really even have a bead on the idea that that I was going to be focused more on service. I think that came later. Um, and in fact, much later. I think I think ultimately that didn't come until, you know, even within a few years after that kind of awakening in my early 20s.

SPEAKER_02:

I must have had some little inkling though, because I was telling Dwight a story either this morning or yesterday, I don't remember which now, about helping out in the family business at age 13. And my dad would say, Son, you can't spend that much time with every customer. And I was like, But but daddy, I can't not. They need me. You know, he didn't understand. But they would they would they I'm 13 and they would be telling me like serious, laying serious stuff on me. The customers would. Yeah, and and I was just tuned in and listening, and so I had some kind of uh, you know, this because I because I said, Daddy, they need me. I knew that it was yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

It was there already, it was there already for you. Like you had that built in. And I I would imagine that if somebody I would imagine maybe my mother or somebody that knew me then would probably be able to reflect something to me, but I don't think you know, part of the question was how conscious was it? Um and that for for me wasn't terribly conscious at the time.

SPEAKER_02:

It's always fun to look back and at the things that we were present for us, but we were unconscious of.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I mean, I I actually like the idea that our greatest gifts are so well, one of our greatest gifts generally is so simple or so second nature for us, so so even first nature for us that we don't even see how powerful it is.

SPEAKER_02:

We don't we don't see it as the gift that maybe those around us see it. Yeah, I always think though the magical part of it is when you've been doing it unconsciously, and all of a sudden you have that aha moment and it becomes conscious, and now you're doing it with intention, and that's such a powerful and magical moment. You know, you've just been naturally doing it, but now all of a sudden it's like you're aware and it puts it on a whole different level in so many ways.

SPEAKER_01:

I like that. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. Yeah. And I've been I've been kind of doing some of that lately, trying to bring some of my work. When I started building a curriculum for training people how to do the processes that I do with the Z5 and the methodology, I it forced me to look really closely at every little detail and how detailed every little thing that I do in a session, and Z5 experience session is so specific and it's so oriented in a certain way in a certain framework. But once I started to unpack it, it's like, wow, so much to this. And then I come across the parts that are just so natural for me, and it's like, well, how do I teach this? How do I teach somebody something that I didn't learn? I call I had a gift and then I honed the gift, but I didn't learn the gift, if that makes any sense.

SPEAKER_02:

It makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and you you have an opportunity to learn it in ways that just weren't there for you because I'm I'm pretty sure that you're probably going to go through some iterations where as you cycle people through, you're going to discover all of the different ways that you may need to relate it to, you know, the way that people are wired, you know. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and and we teach what we most need to learn. So as you are teaching, you will I mean, I feel sometimes like I grow more than the per than the student does. I mean, I'm teaching and I'm getting more out of it than they are.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, one of the things that I I we have this conversation frequently, how I I'll be going into some type of tutorial, whether it's a video or it's a written tutorial or something that is a how-to. And and how I'll read it and I'll go, wow, this was written by somebody who already knew how to do it. And they didn't write it for people that don't know how to do it. They wrote it for people with who would know how to. And it's like that's not a conscious thing. They don't do that intentionally. But, you know, it's like being in a room of people that have a certain jargon, whether it's coaching jargon or or psychiatry, psychology jargon, or or you know, 12-step program jargon. And we just expect people are going to understand what we're talking about, and to them, we're talking a foreign language. So I guess, you know, my my input would be as you learn how to teach this, you know, look at it from that angle. Because we have a tendency to try to teach it the way we already understand it, not the way. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. I'm only smiling because uh I one of my greatest challenges. I say I say that. I don't know if it's totally true, but it's a story I make up is one of my greatest challenges is how to um how to share my ideas simpler, like in a simpler way, in a in a streamlined like how to market. Let's just let's just call it like let's just say it's called marketing. You know, the idea that I have this big lofty thing. And so when I talk about it, it might come off in this very specific way, but it's really hard for me. But but if I'm talking to one person, I feel like I can really convey what I'm trying to say. But when you when I'm trying to get it down into like a sound bite or something, or something simple, simplified, it's it's a little bit more tricky for me. I think I I like, well, for one thing, I do like to kind of wax poetically. I like to get kind of you know, uh whatever, whatever this is. I like to get the yes.

SPEAKER_02:

Um yes, I would call it it's it's some kind of flowery language.

SPEAKER_01:

Flowery, that's it. That's my favorite. I love it. My favorite books are these these books. Sorry, this is an aside, but I'm gonna say it anyway because I want to share it. Uh my favorite books right now for the last several years are books written from about 1920 to 1940, and they're like spiritual mysticism books, specifically Christian mysticism, which is very fascinating. And they're so beautiful. That not just the not it's like what they're sharing is such a beautiful approach to understanding the mysticism of spirituality, but the way it's written is just so glorious and gorgeous. You have to, you have to really like absorb it through your whole body. It's not just a mental process. And I love that. I love anything that merges kind of all my fields and I and and uh swallows me up in a certain way. And I have to, I have to really open myself to really getting the deeper energy that's kind of coming through, even if it's just words, it can be done in a way that that inspires something deeper.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm intrigued by you being drawn to that specific period because it actually straddles two different eras in the world's history because it's squarely between the world wars. Yeah. Right. Yeah and you know, and the Great Depression in the roaring twenties. And uh yeah, that's that's interesting. We'll we'll need to vibe on that a little bit later. I'd love to.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. No, one of the things that I have always really appreciated about you is that you express yourself in a manner that I don't I can't recall any man I've ever known in my life, straight or gay, any man that expresses themselves quite the way you do. You you just have such an openness. And I don't know, I guess what's coming to my mind right now is that you you have a comfort in your own skin that is a little bit rare.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm hoping to make it less so.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I like that idea too. We need more, we need more men like you. We really do. Yeah, the world would be a better place if we had more men like you.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's very sweet of you to say. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean that. I mean, yeah, you know, you you have always um just held a really special place in in in in my heart since we we met. We just connected on a level that is just rare, and there's just a comfort level there that is just so hard to to find. We s we search our lives through our lives sometimes and never find it. And I definitely I I scored when I met you in that regard. There's just a comfort level. I don't ever have to be anything but just me when I'm in your presence. Such a gift that you give to me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Maddox. That it's very sweet to receive, and I'm so grateful to be able to serve you in those ways of um having you feel met in a way that allows you to just be whatever authentic, as it's written right above your head there. Whatever authentic part of you happens to be emergent in that moment. Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

With me, you never know.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's it's interesting that you're having to peel the onion of having to deliver a message to to reach uh those that are that you're going to be in front of without really knowing who they are. I mean, you you called it marketing, but what raced in my mind was an experience that I had where I got to be in the presence of slices of uh different uh people from all over the world. And I'm thinking specifically of what it was like to go on the journey uh from uh being a regular person to being a soldier in in basic training. And yeah, I could pick any one of the specific modules, but specifically drilling ceremony. Any person that's off the street would not know how to move or execute as a unit. And it looks really scary and sloppy because they're slinging around weapons. And somehow within the space of a very short time, it goes from looking like an ungodly awful mess where people are running into each other to being as highly skilled and coordinated as any Broadway number, or uh dare I say, it's like uh you can look at people who've gone through the process and all of a sudden they're carving up a field like they're Janet Jackson's uh backup dancers for the Rhythm Nation tour.

SPEAKER_02:

Or or synchronized swimmers from the 20s.

SPEAKER_00:

But it but that comes from through a process of making it so that it doesn't matter where people came from. And I'm thinking of the people I cycled through with. There were several soldiers who cycled from the language learning um base in Lackland, uh, the Lackland Air Force Base. And so you had a lot of them for whom English was not their first language. Uh, you had people from American territories, you had people from foreign countries, and you had people from all over the country. So it didn't matter if they were from West Virginia or if they were from Guam or if they were from the Middle East. We had to figure it all out. And there were times when that was really challenging.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. I bet. And I'm curious for you, what was what do you feel like is the sort of keystone, you know, that that allows for that cohesion to emerge?

SPEAKER_00:

The the beautiful thing is that despite all differences, there are so many more things that we can draw on that we have in common. And we just have to be open and willing to embrace those things. Because it could very well be that something that's ingrained as a cultural norm that you find particularly offensive. It's just because of something that was that was um shown to you growing up and you have to embrace that. Not everyone has that training. And so you you gotta be willing to go outside of what you know.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I I think it's human nature when we get in a room full of people or anywhere where there are other people, it I it is just our we're wired to look around us and and see differences. It's the first place our mind goes. We we look at how people are different than us. And I've been having a conversation. Dwight and I both have been having a conversation about it's okay to notice all the ways that people are different from you, but then take it one step further and look for the similarities because they're there. Yeah. They're there if you just open your eyes and look for them. They're not as easy to see as the thing because we find our differences mostly on a physical level, what the eye can see.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And the similarities are often things that can't be seen. So you have to get in a little bit closer and see with that third eye.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Feel with your senses and find those similarities. And it's a game changer.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It somehow makes the differences kind of just melt away and they're unimportant.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, especially in a world that always has been. I mean, we like to think that this is like somehow special. Um the division, you know, that's happening now, but it's it's not. It's it's always been like this in some form or another. But I think the difference is our ability to perceive it and see it so boldly and speak to it. You know, there's like a certain way that we've moved into a place of consciousness where we can see that what we're doing. We can look at it, wow, we are really in this divisive place, and so it makes it more pronounced. And I had this experience years ago. It was during a very uh volatile election cycle. And it was the first one where Donald Trump was coming into office. He wasn't in office yet, he was just, you know, people, but just the fact that he was running, it was just creating this incredible division. And I remember listening to my cousin's very conservative talk, and listening to my friends who were very liberal talk, and we would get in these conversations, and when we would drill down, it turned out that they both had the same wants. They both wanted the exact same thing. They wanted to feel safe, they wanted their children to grow up in a healthy place and feel good, they wanted them to be protected and provided for. The difference was not the core want or need, the difference was how they believed we would get to that place. And so I took the bold step of making a post about it. There's been a few times in my life where I was like, could have done without that. Um because, you know, even me in trying to say such a thing as we're actually more similar than we are different. At the core, we actually want the same things. It's amazing how how strongly people will just cling to believing that everybody's just so different, or they're out to get them, or they're those people over there are the problem and they're bad and wrong. It's like, you know, there it's so much identity that comes up into it. You know, it's almost it's almost scarier to let go and live in that space of surrendered vulnerability in a certain way. It's it's like this illusion of control to look at the differences. And I think it's a really beautiful opportunity that we have here to consider that if we're more similar than we are different, then what's possible there? What's possible if we stop, as you said, kind of paying attention or looking at the knee-jerk reaction differences, but we dig deeper and we actually seek to find the similarities. We actually put attention and intention into that.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, when when will we just realize that we are all the human race? Every single one of us. I don't care where you're from or what you look like or what language you speak. We are all human beings.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I can't believe that that's not enough to bring us together. You know, I've often said, you know, all we just need is an extraterrestrial invasion.

SPEAKER_01:

I think Bill Clinton said this too.

SPEAKER_02:

And and and then maybe we'll get our shit together and work together for a common cause.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm sure they're working on this false flag attack that you're right. So that's yeah. Anyway, I'm not gonna go there. We're not going spiritually. No.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, let's let's let's let's steer back to um your journey. And I I'm really I'm really intrigued by how you had some incredible experiences, you know, getting to be a part of a band that is um there's something special about that because uh I think you you really have to learn to team, learn to compromise, learn to get along. Uh and you know, just having carrying with you the the gift and the learnings that came from uh dealing with with music and with uh with sound as a medium.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh and it seems like you've gotten to explore some incredible things, uh a place that's kind of uh something that I'm discovering. Um, and that is um uh just how things work within the body or how to be in touch with the body. And you know, just full disclosure, um something that that Maddox and I talk about very often because he's very oriented toward how he feels and how he thinks. It's something that's very hard for me to grasp uh because I've had a lot of experiences that made it uh very unsafe for me to um be anything other than uh stoic or to uh present in a way that is uh as devoid of emotion as possible.

SPEAKER_02:

I've never we've never talked about this aspect of it, Dwight, but do you suspect that part of what you're describing is you went through so many things that made you unsafe. What was it hard to inhabit your own body for the just because of the safety issue? You know, that disassociation thing that we can do sometimes where we're not present in our own body?

SPEAKER_00:

Um there were probably there were a lot of moments where I had to I I definitely had to be somewhere else to be I had to be someone else. I mean when I was uh when I was dealing with um all of the all of the um incredible pressure that came from having to hide in plain sight during don't ask, don't tell and being interrogated on a daily basis by a defense intelligence agent. That was really tough because I knew that the the reason that I was in that room was because they'd done their work and they had me cornered. They'd talked to everyone I had ever known in the the prior decade, and they knew that there was uh an issue, but the problem was they couldn't do anything about it because they needed me to self-disclose. They needed me to say that yes, I'm a gay man. Yes, I've done gay things, and um I knew enough to uh uh get in touch with my own uh resources to uh mount a uh counter defense and um that was yeah, that that was uh an intense time for me. Yeah, sounds like it sounds very intense.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But um I again I I I really wanted to just kind of see how it is that you you got to explore what it was to um investigate how it is that you could um use sound uh to heal the body.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean I have gone through a lot of phases with my own body. Um I think I was pretty jammed up when I was young, didn't have a lot of access. I think I've always been a very sensitive person, and so when I'm in environments that are unsafe or volatile or you know, just not in my highest, I tend to you know just hold on to a lot and and and then I'll disassociate as well. So I've had to, you know, I've had to work with that a lot, but I think it's been just a natural progression because I, you know, I've studied a lot of different orientations to healing, um, a lot of therapeutic models, um, a lot of relational models, a lot of you know, kind of psychedelic models and um and a lot of movement-based stuff. I'm I'm really into I love to dance and I love sport and I love you know movement in my body. And it's just really such amazing medicine for me that it really helped me to begin to see how you know distinctly linked everything is, that nothing exists in a vacuum, the idea of just purely talk therapy or or just purely like run it out, you know, or or whatever. You know, there's there has to be an integration of all these pieces. And when I started working with sound in a deeper way and having a better understanding of how I was impacting, you know, myself and others' experience through the types of sound journeys that I would create or using my voice or all these things, but then I started pairing it with these coaching protocols and these processes and these state changes, and I started to, you know, it kind of started to emerge as this thing. So, you know, part of the this product, it's not just music, it's actual sound vibration. So you're laying on it and it's and it's vibrating your whole body with these sound waves, and it's not like a subtle thing, it's like being massaged with sound waves, and there's so many aspects of sound specifically that support healing. You you know, there it takes a little bit of extrapolation, um, which I'm I love to do. So I I generally, you know, I've there's a lot of scientific information and research that shows all these different aspects of sound. And then if you just extrapolate it, usually just about one step further, you can see how all these things pair together and create a perfect environment for releasing trauma or opening up the body or getting the nervous system back into regulation or moving energy out that doesn't need to be there anymore, all these different pieces. And it's really just been a journey, um, a continued journey. I'm I'm always still discovering when when I made the Z5, one thing I said about it was that this product was the infinite, I mean, I'm sorry, the finite part of this whole thing. But the the the sound experiences, the kind of creations that we can make to alter brain states and alter the nervous system and alter consciousness and emotions and thinking patterns and even our spirituality in a certain way, it's absolutely infinite. There's no limit to the capabilities and the discoveries that can be made through that process. And that really excites me. I need something that I don't get bored with.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it it sounds amazing. I I as you're describing this, I'm just thinking about how it's kind of the uh inevitable next step with certain things because I know that for years we've used sound in the way that we tell stories. Right? I mean, no one will ever forget what it was like to watch Psycho and hear that uh particular track that they played as the shower curtain came down. You know, we we know what it's like to um to be to be moved by a soundtrack in a movie. And whether it's uh a singable Disney tune or it's one of those things that's uh uh giving you that heads up that something bad's about to happen in a flasher. Like we we get to experience that, but then there's another extreme where we see sound applied for things like um using supersonic sound gun to break up scar tissue. Yep. And you know, I I can see how this is definitely along that continuum. This is um applying um it's uh applying the science, and this is uh this is really something to to be proud of. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. It's definitely a mixture of science and art. I I call it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I was just thinking about how music, whether it's you know, my favorite dance tune or soundtrack to one of my favorite movies, it just has the ability to literally transform, you know, my my state of being as I I listen to it. Um yeah, it it I I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that, but in this conversation, I'm really like thinking about how I can just hear some of the soundtrack for The Chronicles of Narnia, which is a movie's movies that really, really touch me on a really, really deep level. And um, sometimes tears will just stream down my face. Just and I've heard the song a million times, and I've watched all three of the movies so many times I've lost count. And yet it still moves me every time. It's not diminished in any, if anything, it's maybe gotten more intense as I go farther into it. Um, but yes, yes, it's it's very transformative.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, what what you're ultimately describing is an altered state, you know, it alters your state. And we we usually sub, you know, kind of uh reserve that term for meaning kind of like a you know, kind of out of it altered state. But really, all it means is it's taking your state from one and putting it into another, right? It's altering your state. So what you're speaking to is what is one of the core reasons why this is so powerful and effective, because we are impacted by sound and music in such a way that you know we can measure the impacts of, but we can't understand it to begin with, if that makes any sense. It's kind of like electricity in that way. We we can measure electricity, but we don't actually fully know what it what the heck is this.

SPEAKER_02:

I I think that there is an element of memory involved. Of course. This is just coming to me right in the moment. You know, if I laid on your sound table and listened to vibrations that I've never heard before, yes, there's no memory attached to it.

SPEAKER_01:

Correct.

SPEAKER_02:

It's just what it is in that moment. But in that moment when I'm just completely enveloped in, say, one of the tracks from the Narnia movies.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, it's the the memory of the scene and the scene, how the scene emotionally impacted me in that moment. And it brings it, it puts me right back in that space, yeah, with a pretty significant amount of um intensity.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. It's it's really well said, and it's actually an important point because what we're intending to do is create such a new state environment, such a new altered state experience that it opens up a space for a new world to emerge within you. And so we actually spend a lot of time in the in the full methodology process that I have, it's about a two-hour long session. And for the first hour, hour and 15 minutes, we're exploring things that are happening, kind of a coaching kind of dynamic. But what we're doing is we're trying to find something that we can take and seed into that moment. So when we're in the Z5 experience, after a couple of minutes, you know, you're kind of getting into it, you're feeling it. This is new. I don't know what's going to happen next musically or vibrationally or anything. But eventually your body will let go and your mind will let go and you drop into these states. And in those states, you're open to any suggestion. I mean, this is an amazing place to be when it's used with reverence, respect for what we do. But what we do is we don't we don't do it for you. We we facilitate you doing it for yourself. So when we're doing the process of trying to find where you want to be, what what future memory do you want to create? Is what we're kind of exploring. And not only is it up in here, but we have you find it in your entire body, and then using your body, you transmit that through your voice. You're just sending your, you know, we we have this idea that we're saying words, but we're just saying like it's just all sounds and noise and shape, but we have agreed what these shapes mean. So we can use words and language and we transmit them, we record them, and when you drop into that state, we send that back in and we start to repattern your subconscious belief patterns with your own words. We're basically sending subliminal messages into the music, but they're yours, they're your frequency, your words, your ideas, your feelings, everything. So you get to create a future memory from that experience.

SPEAKER_02:

With these future memories, is there an element of manifestation here?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you could say that. You could definitely say that, and it can be used in that direction. That comes down to the orientation of both the individual participant and perhaps the kind of angling of the facilitator. So, but yes, it's definitely manifestation in a certain way.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and and I want to say with a clarifier, because I think there's a lot of the world when you say manifestation, people think of the new house, the new car, the new job, and the big income. And I'm talking about manifestation on a deeper level, like like, you know, saying, wow, I I want to, because a lot of our conversation is about becoming, I want to become X, Y, Z.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I I want to be somebody not negating who I am now, just wanting to grow and be more than I am now. And so it's a manifestation of a more of a being rather than a getting or receiving or yeah, just much deeper level.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and I would also just to offer something, you're actually what you're manifesting there is a want. So you're manifesting the want to be something. It's a it's a subtle difference, but what you're saying to the universe, let's say, is I want. And the universe goes, Great, I'm gonna keep you in a place where you want, not in a place where you be. So it's a you know, and then this is one of the fascinating things of this process of like how we speak to ourselves, how we speak to in our prayers or our manifestation or our intentions, every little detail really matters. And so when we say, I want that new car, then the universe says, Great, I'm gonna give you lots of opportunities to want that new car instead of or if I want to be this, that, and the other. You're gonna get an opportunity to get exactly what you said. So it could be more like, so I'm I'm I'm just kind of going down this rabbit hole because I I have a little bit of a fetish around this because I do it all the time with my clients. But it's it's an important piece to remember that what what I what I like to focus on is not about let's have something be different. What I generally want to invite my clients into is release resistance out of their field. So moving into what I might call something more akin to a non-dual state. The typical approach for somebody wanting to manifest something is that they don't appreciate or want what they have. It's a subtle thing, and it's not always 100%, but there is usually a subtlety of resisting what is. And resistance in the field doesn't yield. You know what I mean? So we when we're resist, when we release these pieces of resistance, then our bodies, our minds, our hearts, the field around us that is creating all of this world finds a better way to do it because we are not, it's just reflecting us all the time. So if we're not pleased with what we have, it's not about us doing more, trying more, manifesting more. It's actually about clearing the pathway for something to move more organically and more holistically.

SPEAKER_02:

I I don't know where I got this, but for many, many years I have believed that when it is when I'm completely okay with where I am right here and right now is when it's okay to be someplace else. Love that.

SPEAKER_01:

Love that.

SPEAKER_02:

Which is another word way of you know what you said about letting go of the resistance and just being okay with what is.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, absolutely. It's perfect. Thank you for exemplifying what I said earlier about my long-winded form in the marketing language.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, this is amazing. You know, we are starting to run a little thin on time, and there's still two more things that I really want to get to before we wrap up. And so we may have to cliff note it, but in and you can speak to this in whatever time frame you want, whether it's your your whole creative journey, whether it's back at the time with the bands, or whether it's now with your your sound technology. But how does community play a role in your creative journey?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a great question. Um well, on one hand, I would say I really love I don't like creating alone. I love creating with people. So community vested and focused on a singular goal or a mutual benefit of some sort, there is a way that I absolutely adore that. Um so if we're looking at creativity like very specifically, I would say that my favorite thing is to create with other like minds. The band was an emergent experience. The people who came online and came on board to help me with Soma Live and the Z5 was all emergent. None of this, I mean, I was taking steps, but I would take a step towards something. But the thing that would actually come in to do to solve the problem that I was trying to solve would be from some angle that I could never have guessed. And I'm so grateful for the who, the who that made it all happen. But something that I want to speak to about community more specifically is my experience over the last couple of years when I was really deep in the startup phase of this, of this work, and I was I had moved away from my the one, there's one, there's really one place that I feel the most community, like held by a greater community, and that's actually in Western Massachusetts. And I had been living here for about four or five years, and when I got the initial kind of push, you know, the funding to kind of go for Soul Alive as a bigger thing than just this project, I moved and I went to California and then I went back to Texas. And during that time period, I didn't have much community. And it wasn't until a little ways into there that I started to realize that my health was starting to go downhill, my just general joy was starting to deteriorate. Um I didn't know total, I knew I was stressed, but I was like, but this this seems more than that. And it wasn't until I came back and visited some friends and spent some time. And I mean, I get back and I'm invited to three parties, and I another friend's like, come over and perform music for this contact improvisation jam. And oh, by the way, I've got this project I'm working on. Can you come help me with this? This, you know, just all this, like right when I get here, all this integration of people, just you know, in the scene these interactions. And I realized how much it shifted how I felt, and it opened up all this creativity. I felt inspired again, you know. And so for me, whether or not that community is specifically integrated with what I'm what I'm working on, the fact that they exist around me serves what I'm working on because it gives me the juice, it gives me the meaning almost. Like I that the meaning has to be about people, the people that are important to me. Hopefully, a family one day as a greater community, even. But that is so crucial to me. I can't do it without it. And honestly, what's the point? Honestly, what's the point?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my god, so well said. You get a gold star, you get five gold stars.

SPEAKER_01:

I love gold stars.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, you're doing it right. Um, wow. Well, you know, for the for the long-winded stuff you did earlier, you just made up for it. Perfect. Okay, so the the last point that that I want to touch on is you you are where you are now, and you can look back, you know, to see who you had to be, who you were that got you where you are right now. And we've all heard this. What got you here won't get you there. And so I guess my question is, you know, what we we make pit stops. I I think that life is very much like a race car track, you know. You don't ever it, you just keep going. You just keep going around, but you you make pit stops from time to time. And a pit stop is maybe a maybe you reach a certain goal. You have this goal and you get there. But if if we've if any of us have ever gotten to the goal, we'd realize that it lasts about anywhere from 10 minutes to two weeks. And then we're like, well, is that it? You know, and we're we're looking for the next thing. It was just we're we're wired for that. So, you know, pit stops, and then we we move on. So what is your next step? And who will you need to become? Not what will you be need to come need to become, who will you need to become to get to that next pit stop?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, great question. Great question. So what the next pit stop is, at least in the ways that I imagine it to be, but I also know that I set my vision or my intention and my imagining of what it can be. And then I leave a lot of room for it to show me what it's gonna be because I have a very feeble uh mind and idea of what I think it should be. And so my imagining though, what I what I would love to see, what I would love to see is Soma Live taking off and impacting many people, having, you know, serving from this very high kind of exclusive level, so to speak, that we're at, this kind of high-end level. I want to really serve the practitioner work and bring that out into the world. And I want to even bring in some consumer level products, but I really want to see more and more people have this transformation. I want to, I want us to steward somatic sound therapy as a professionally recognized methodology and intervention for healing and transformation. That's the goal, that's what I want to see. I'm looking forward to the who, the next whos that will come in to support the next step because we're we we feel like we're at that edge where we're ready for the next step where it's about to take forward. So I'm really excited for that. To answer the question of who do I need to become? I love this question because I recently um was at an event and I heard this amazing man speak. His name is David Bayer, and he's kind of like a Tony Robbins kind of guy, but a little bit a little bit softer, a little bit sweeter. Brilliant. Uh very, very brilliant. I just just just the kind of man that you just kind of fall in love with, you know. Um if that's if if you're into these types of like spiritual, but also like mindset, really focused. Things that just really beautifully said. And something that he spoke really struck me. And I've been kind of mulling it around up until that point, but I didn't have the words for it. And he said so many times when we are moving down the pathway of life, and we're wanting to, you know, paraphrasing obviously in my words now. Yeah. Um, when we move down the pathway of life and we're moving on to the next thing, our general, like interestingly enough, what we generally think of is adding. We need to become this, I need to do this, I need to start. I gotta get my cold plunge, and I gotta get the supplements and I gotta do the thing. And while those are all so beneficial, the things that usually keep us back are not going to be solved by adding. It's actually going to be solved by subtracting. What do we need to let go of to become more of who we truly are? Because that's what this journey is all about, anyway. And so for me, in my life, it's more about letting go of the parts of me that I put into place thinking they were supposed to be there, thinking that they were necessary for me to become X, Y, and Z, or just as a protective mechanism, an antiquated process to protect myself in some way that we like to call something like self-sabotage or whatever name we put on it. But so for me, it's like I'm I'm interested in becoming just who I truly am on a spirit level, on a soul level, the expression of my authentic self in whatever way that presents, and trusting that anything else that I try to shove in there to make myself be something else is adding resistance to the system. So I'm removing all that resistance and saying, I'm here for this life, I'm available for what wants to come next. I'll ride that wave, I'll surf that wave, and I'm excited for it, and I'm grateful for it, and my life is amazing, and I wouldn't want any other one. So um so I'll just keep surrendering and keep putting down the things that I don't have to carry anymore to become more of who I am.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, you're you're calling out something that I think it's one of those unconscious things again, you know. Like I will set um, I'll set an intention. Like I'm I'm real big on intention bracelets and intention necklaces, and I've had several, and and it's always just one thing at a time. You know, my my first one was a bracelet that said the word believe on it, because I set this intention that I wanted to fully believe in myself. I realized that I didn't at that moment, and I wanted to believe in myself. And I wore that bracelet, but were there things that I had to let go of in order to believe in myself? Absolutely. Did I consciously focus on those things? No, I didn't. And I might have gotten there faster if I had. You know, I might have found that belief faster if I had. I mean, anything that we want to be, we got to look at what stinking thinking we got on got going on inside of us that's keeping us from being that. You know, my latest thing is audacity. Necklace right here says audacity. I want to be bold. And um, you know, there are definitely things that I've had to release and let go of. And it hadn't necessarily been easy, but I haven't really thought about it consciously or focused on. And so the beautiful part of this conversation, I think, is realizing that when we can decide what we want to be, whatever it is, believe or uh audacious, uh audacious, yeah, then the next question is what do I need to leave behind? What do I need to release? What a great question. And really write it down and start to let it go.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And there's a wealth of things out there that are about letting go and you know, help us do that. But we can also make it way more complicated than it needs to be.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we'd love to do that. I totally agree. I think writing down is a amazing thing because it's easy, you know, because it what I'll just say is it's so easy to be in the groove of who we've been.

SPEAKER_02:

I I love what you're saying though about just being myself. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a different way to look at it. But you know, at the same time, that self that we be, we we fully get to decide what that is.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, in many ways, yes.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I I think the only and I I think you have a handle on this because of all the work you've done. But I think that for a lot of people to say, I want to let go of everything that keeps me from being just being me, myself, they don't know what that self is.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And that's where the the tricky part comes in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

You've done a lot of discovery work to discover who you are on that inner level. I've done a lot of discovery work, but the average bear probably hasn't.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, let me help. Come see me for some Z5 sessions.

SPEAKER_02:

There'll be a link in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01:

Beautiful. Oh no. You know, but seriously, you know, it's like I think you're absolutely right. There is a sense of discovery, discovery and finding. And and uh, you know, sometimes it is easier to find what isn't first. You know, we tend to find what's not quicker than we find what is. And it's almost like um, well, it's like you know, a sculpture in a certain way, you know, we're we're we're cutting away what isn't to find what is. So I think a great place to start for anybody that is curious about what is, is like what truly feels open and fluid in the body, you know, like when a certain experience is happening where somebody speaks to you in a certain way, or when you're in a certain environment, you're listening or whatever, listening to a certain type of music, whatever it is, like if it feels good, like if it feels truly good, healthy good, like open, if you feel yourself opening more, it's probably a really good sign. If it feels tightening, if you're if you feel uneasy, if you feel like there's if you consider that your body is just a channel of energy, and you feel like there are spots in it where that energy cannot flow, there's resistance in that space, it's probably something to take a look at.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yes, the body keeps the score as the book says keeps the score, Cecil Vanderko. I was at a party. We were at a party, Chris, a birthday party slash Halloween party last Saturday night, and I was having a similar conversation with a woman at the party, and I said, you know, it's a shame that most people don't really understand that you get to be anybody you want to be.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

This thought that we got dealt this kind of this, you know, hand of cards and we can't change it is bullshit. We get to be anybody we want to be. And she said, But how do you know or figure out who you want to be? And nobody'd ever asked me that question before. And in that moment, it was like, you know, that voice you said that spoke to you? It just came in and it gently just whispered right in my ear and it came right out of my mouth. And I said, I this has never come out of my mouth before. And I said, You just look around you, there's examples everywhere. You look at this friend over here and you say, Wow, I love that about Joe Blow. Yeah, what is it? Well, he's he's really, really compassionate. He's such a compassionate human being. I want to be compassionate. Now you've figured out one aspect of who you want to be, and you just continue looking. There's examples all around us where we can say, yes, instead of saying, yes, I want that Lamborghini, yes, I want that five-story house, you say, Yes, I want that courage, yes, I I want that sense of belonging.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'd love to feel good than have things. I'd love to enjoy this life. That's kind of my foundational thing. Does it feel good? Does this make me enjoy my life? Like there's plenty of suffering. I can do that all day. Everybody's, we're all so good at that.

SPEAKER_02:

But I I've been studying art and taking art classes, and one of my instructors said focus on the things that bring you joy. It was so simple.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It doesn't matter what it is, focus on the things that bring you joy. It could be some things. It could be people, it could be, it could be anything. Travel, it could be certain locations, it could be certain food, it doesn't certain songs. Focus on things that bring you joy. And I I it just hit me. I thought, oh my God, that is so fucking simple.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. And whatever you focus on amplifies. So here you go. And when you know, so when you focus on the good, the good gets better.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna keep doing that.

SPEAKER_02:

Sean Patrick, this has been amazing. I knew it would be. I had no doubt. You you brought the goods, baby.

SPEAKER_01:

Great. I'm so glad.

SPEAKER_02:

Anything that you would like to say or any words of wisdom you would like to impart on our listeners before we wrap?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I think I've droned on enough, but I just want to thank you both, uh, Maddox and Dwight. Thank you so much for having me on. Maddox, you know, I love you so much. And you know, we've been in each other's lives for all these years now, and I'm so grateful, and I'm so grateful to be here and be on your podcast. And Dwight, it's so amazing to meet you and uh really love your energy. But I just want to thank you both for having me on here. It's been really sweet to have this conversation.

SPEAKER_02:

I love you too, my friend. You have brought so much into my life. So grateful for our friendship.

SPEAKER_00:

And we're looking forward to uh getting to spend uh a lot more meaningful time with you in years to come.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely.