Bend Into Balance: Lisa Tynan, Founder of Step into Stillness

In this episode of Bend Into Balance, Adriana Marino sits down with Lisa Tynan, founder of Step Into Stillness, a certified sound healer and yoga teacher based in Bend. Lisa shares her personal journey from Montessori educator to sound practitioner, exploring how meditation, music, and mindfulness helped her navigate ADHD and ultimately led her to create a practice centered on stillness, self awareness, and healing through sound.

Together, Adriana and Lisa explore the experience of sound baths, the science behind brainwave states and the nervous system, and the growing role of sound based practices in wellness. Grounded in both personal experience and emerging research, the conversation highlights how Bend’s evolving wellness community is embracing new ways to help people slow down, reconnect, and find moments of calm in an increasingly busy world.

More at: stepintostillness.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Hello, my name is Adriana Marino, and I am host and producer of Bend into Balance, Powered by the Source. Today I'm really excited to be accompanied by Lisa Tynan from Step Into Stillness, who has a musical gift for us in a few minutes. Lisa, thank you so much for being here. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about you?

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Yes, thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm a certified sound healer and certified yoga teacher here in Bend. I teach both adult and children's yoga and I do sound bath events throughout the city.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

I've noticed that recently, you know, picking up the source, there are more and more offerings of sound baths. You know, what is a sound bath and what, you know, what does it provide for its participants?

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Yes, good question. So sound baths can really use any type of musical instruments. I know some people in town even use their own vocals and guitars. You might find Native American flute. Um, I specialize in using metal and crystal singing bowls as the predominant instruments in my sound bath. And really, if you think about that term bath, what you're really doing is you're bathing in sound. So as these sound frequencies and vibrations are washing over you, you're really immersed in a total soundscape.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

Okay. And what does this provide for the participants? Like what is this experience about?

SPEAKER_02 1:42

That's a good question. So it can really vary depending on the participants, their own um past experiences, what they would like to get out of the event. So I've had some people who just find it very relaxing. It's an opportunity to rest and restore, rejuvenate, and some who say it's almost like a psychedelic experience. They have different visuals, different colors. They might feel like they're having an out-of-body experience or even floating around the room. And it can also be deeply meditative. So it really varies person to person.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Wow. Um, so before we get into, you know, more or less what the soundbap does and how it works, can you tell us a little bit about your own journey, Lisa, how you got into this?

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Yes, absolutely. So I don't have any formal training in music, but I grew up in Chicago and I grew up in a household where music was always on. So my parents loved listening to blues, jazz, uh, REM, talking heads, so lots of music. And being from Chicago, Chicago is such a musical city. So I grew up um in my adolescence, really involved in the house music scene and dance music scene in Chicago, and also going to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. So today I love everything from house music to Philip Glass to Miles Davis. So quite varied. And with that love of music, um, what really actually sparked this journey for me is meditation. And so I was always interested in Buddhism and meditation. I was actually raised Catholic. And although I didn't feel a strong connection with the Catholic Church per se, I was very interested in pursuing a spiritual path. And so being interested in Buddhism from a young age, when I graduated from college, I had the opportunity to go to Japan and teach English in Japan. And it was when I was living there that I began learning more about Zen Buddhism. I got to experience going to some of the Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples and experiencing some of those ceremonies for the first time. And it was very eye-opening. So I went on from there to traveling to New Zealand, where I worked at a Tibetan Buddhist retreat center. And I was the gardener there and also the person who did the hospitality and changed the bedding and everything. So it was through the WOFI program and workers on organic farms. And um, that was a really eye-opening and really transformative experience for me to get to be part of this Tibetan Buddhist retreat center and just learning about different cultural practices and different types of Buddhism and trying to kind of find what the path was for me. So um, fast forward from there, I moved to Berkeley, California to pursue my Montessori teaching credential and became a Montessori teacher. And there were just so many opportunities living in the Bay Area to go participate in different Zen centers, different um Buddhist places. There were lots of monks that would come and do different Dharma talks in the Bay Area. So really immersing in that. But the thing that I found is that um hard as I try, I really struggled to meditate and to really quiet my thoughts. And I remember even sitting in one of those Dharma talks, and the monk was saying, imagine that your thought is like a cloud floating by you and just let the thoughts float by you like clouds. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, my thoughts are like race cars. And I have 10 race cards in my mind zooming across. And so um it was, it was a struggle. It was a struggle for me to get the type of practice that I really wanted in my life. And um when I moved to Bend, I moved to Bend in 2013 to start a Montessori school here. And um at the time I, or I'm sorry, not at that time. Yeah. Um, as I was, as I met my husband and got married to my husband, and we were having some struggles in our relationship, I began to realize that I had ADHD. And so it was um about six or seven years ago that I pursued getting an ADHD diagnosis and found out that I did in fact have ADHD. And um, it kind of sent me on a path of then figuring out how to navigate my life and structure my life in a way that I could have a very flourishing relationship with my husband, that I could be very successful in my work, but also not have to take medication for ADHD. How could I keep all of my symptoms under wraps in a way that I felt that I could function at the level I wanted to function? And that included meditation and realizing that this was an obstacle. So um I did my first vipassana meditation retreat, which is a 10-day silent meditation retreat about four years ago now. And that was a huge life changer for me. So um I often call it meditation boot camp. They just force you into it. Uh-huh. Well, um, you spend all day meditating for 10 days. You take a vow of noble silence and you are meditating with breaks from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. Wow for 10 days. So that's kind of how I see it as and um through doing that, it was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I can but also one of the most rewarding and transformative. Uh-huh. I finally felt like I was able to develop a meditation practice where I feel like despite my background and you know, all my exploration of my 20s and early 30s, I never felt like I had really meditated before. Okay. And I had this great moment where finally I was able to do that. And when I got back from the meditation retreat, um, I struggled again at home because then life comes in, all of the things we have to deal with, the emails, the phone calls, the that, taking care of family members. And um, even though I would try to do a daily morning meditation practice, it was hard to quiet the noise. So I often kind of describe my form of ADHD as very uh heavy on the H, capital H for hyperactive, where I feel like I have a strong life force. Like um, my body almost cannot contain the amount of energy that I have. That's you can see how that can be tricky. Um and so uh after when I was experimenting with how am I gonna work this into my life in a daily routine, I started listening to um different singing bowls on Spotify. So they had different like Tibetan singing bowls that you could listen to the playlist. And I noticed that if I listened to that before I tried to meditate, I actually kind of primed my brain and helped me to drop into that much more easily. And um, it was about that same time that my husband and I were traveling through Arizona and I was able to go experience a sound bath in Arizona.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

Oh, for the first time.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Yes. Okay. And that was with um a lovely woman. She had just six crystal singing bowls and she played them for over an hour while we laid there. And it was a pretty powerful experience for me. And um, that ability to feel like, you know, time ceased to exist. Yes. And I felt like I was able to drop into a deep meditative state similar to what I had experienced in the vipassana meditation. And I left that experience knowing, kind of just knowing that this was my path. Sometimes you have that love at first sight moments, and you can have them with, you know, instruments version of differing things too. And so I just knew that this was something I wanted to incorporate into my life.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

Okay. And this was four years ago. And all of this time, then you had never met taken any medication for the ADHD.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

No, I have an Adderall prescription, but I take it very rarely because I really think at this point I've managed to successfully keep my symptoms at a manageable level so that I feel like I have way more patience, way more clarity, way less impulsivity and reactivity in my life. So yeah, I definitely feel like I'm in a very good place. And I do attribute the musical instruments that I play every morning and the meditation to that.

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Can you tell us what your day looks like then? So this is something you do practice on a daily basis?

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Yes, absolutely. So I usually wake up in the morning, then I do have a delicious little latte or cafe that I make. And then um I in our spare bedroom, I have my instruments set up and I'll spend sometimes 30 or 40 minutes playing the instruments. So before I ever played publicly for anyone else, I began to amass a collection of crystal bowls and metal staining bowls. And I just played for myself every morning for about 30 or 40 minutes. That's also how I learned the skill and I developed the confidence. And then after that, I do have um different books that I like to read, like Ram Das and um John Cabot Zinn, Jack Cornfield, maybe read a few quotes, and then just gets me in a very good primed position to then sit down and be able to meditate. And then I do try to meditate for 20 to 40 minutes every morning.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

Oh wow. So, in what moment did you decide to share your gift with others?

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Yeah, I was a little shy about it at first, just playing for friends and family. And um, during COVID, actually, I was doing a lot of just free yoga in the park for friends, just very casually friends getting together to do yoga, um, especially with the studios being closed. Sure. And so I started bringing the singing bulls out when I would do that and playing them in front of friends, getting really good feedback. And it was around um this time too, so about three years ago, that I decided to pursue. I already had my children's yoga certification, being a Montessori teacher. Sure. So I decided to get my adult yoga teacher training duck. And um, I had a yoga practice for about 20 years. I've been doing yoga since I was 18. So that coupled with the teeth teaching was just a very natural fit for me. Yeah. And cumulatively, all of these things, the sound healing instruments, the yoga, my background in teaching just came together in this really beautiful way.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Yeah. And so in what no, it sounds like it all flows so organically, all the skills that you're bringing. And in what moment did you decide then to like, you know, make, you know, create, step into stillness and be more active in this sound healing space?

SPEAKER_02 12:36

That's a good question. I was working for a nonprofit. I had sold my Montessori school in 2021 and um was working for a nonprofit. And it just was a not a great career fit for me again with the ADHD, having to be on Zoom calls for sometimes four or five. Oh my goodness. For anybody at a desk. Yeah. And um, you know, I I actually had a friend who um I talked with who was a life coach and kind of got to the point where I decided I wanted to redesign my life. So I took the plunge back in September 2025 to leave that position with the nonprofit. Okay. Back into the classroom, both teaching children's yoga. So I teach children's yoga in the school systems and also at a few of the studios around town, Free Spirit and Haspa, and then doing adult yoga and sound bath and just combining that as really my passion.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Yeah. And how what has this given you given back to you, you know, since you've been dedicated to this music space, you know, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Well, and I think, you know, often we call this sound healing. And I think that um it can be very healing for some people. When I really think of my own story and experiences with it, the meditation and the meditation retreats that I've done have truly been healing. The more I deepen my meditation practice, and I see the sound healing instruments as having given me many depths, which I want to go to in a moment, the scientific benefits, please. Yeah. Um, but I would say it's an aid to that. I see it as a tool or an assist in helping me deepen my meditation practice.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

Okay. It's like a means to an end.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Kind of, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

And talking about meditation, what has meditation meant to you? What how do you expand your health and wellness through meditation?

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Good question. So I think that first and foremost, we all live in a very stressful world. There's so much going on, so much that's trying to compete for our attention at any given time. And um, we're just stressed as a society. So meditation is an opportunity for if anything, even if you don't quiet your mind and have no thoughts, to just give yourself a little reprieve and give yourself a moment. So even if you sit there and just spend your time processing what happened for the day, that's okay. Um, but for me personally, what I'm very curious about and interested in is the um sense of self, the sense of the self, the I, you know, that ego, that I with the capital I that you often refer to in Buddhism. And um in Buddhism, we see the self as an illusion, right? So we have this consciousness and we have this ability to tap deeply into our sense of present awareness and realize that we are not our thoughts, that we have this narrative running through our mind all of the time, but we can actually take a step back and be the silent observer of our own thought patterns and of our own mind. And when we're able to do that, it does help with emotional reactivity. Yes, it helps um not be swept away by your emotions because you're able to actually observe it from afar a little bit, which is incredibly incredible relief. That alone, yeah, you know, really brings a lot of relief to our lives.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

For sure. Um Do you want to get into a little bit about how the sound healing works and what uh the benefits are that you just hinted at it?

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Um, so first I want to talk about brain wave states. So brain waves are rhythmic rhythmic electrical impulses generated by our brain's neurons, and they can actually be measured with EEG machines. So there are five main brain wave states that our brains go through during the day. So the first one is delta, and delta is measured at anywhere from 0.1 to four hertz frequencies. And actually, infants, so children between the age of zero and two are in a delta brainwave state for most of that period of development, which is kind of fascinating, huh? So it's often called the unconscious mind stage. And actually, it relates to being a Montessori teacher. Uh huh. Maria Montessori often talked about the unconscious mind in children. Yes. So an adult, that is that deep sleep state, that preep state that we experience. So we do still experience moments of being in a delta brainwave state. And next is the theta brainwave state. So theta, and the next one, Alpha, I'm going to talk about, is what we're able to help participants tap into when they're experiencing a sound healing session or a sound bath. So theta is four to eight hertz. And um, similarly with child development, that is what children between the age of two and six are typically in. A four to eight hertz brain made state. And it's known as the subconscious mind. It's actually the mental state that we are in when we meditate. So they have done different experiences with monks, with Buddhist monks, where they have had them hooked up to EEG machines when they're meditating and notice that they're going into the state of brainwave state, which is really fascinating. And so the next one from Matt, the alpha brainwave state, is kind of what's known as the flow state or creative state. So when our creative juices are flowing, maybe we are rock climbing, mountain biking, creating a beautiful painting, music. So we're in that um flow state, and it almost seems like time just dissolves around us and we're really in the present moment, and that's between nine and 13 hertz. Okay. So again, that's what some people experience and tying into what I was talking about before during a sound bath session. So next is beta. And beta is it kind of has a wide range, 14 to 30 hertz. And that is what as adults, our brains are in for most of our waking hours. Okay. And there's a benefit to this, right? Because it's the analytical thinking brainwave statement. So it's what we need when we're driving a car and our taxes and answering emails. Yeah. So multitasking, doing it. Absolutely. Yeah. Very helpful in a way, but it's it's that point in which we're doing a lot of thinking. And then the fifth one is even higher. Gamma is a state of super high arousal, but it can also be a state of agitation. Sure. It can be in a state of being in anxiety, experiencing anxiety, and that is anywhere from 30 to 100. Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

So huge range there.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Yes. So what I, you know, in learning about this, I kind of theorize is that we spend so much of our time as adults in that Veda and even gamma hyper-aroused brainwave state that then when we go to sleep at night or we go to do something like meditate, it's difficult to do so because of the gap. Yeah, we have trouble just quieting and quieting the brain waves. And so when I was going through this journey on trying to find kind of brain hacks for myself with ADHD and with ADHD, I had come upon binaural beats. Okay. Now, binaural beats, some of your listeners may have heard of, um, is a really cool scientific phenomenon. So it's an auditory illusion created by two tones of different frequencies that can be used to actually alter brain wave states. So it can actually be a hack that helps to drop your brain into one of those delta, theta, or alpha lower brain wave states. And it does it through a phenomenon called brain wave entrainment. So brain wave entrainment is when your brain hears those two beats that are very similar and they perceive a third phantom beat. Oh wow. So I've brought some of my instruments today and I'm gonna do a quick demonstration for you on what that binaural beat sounds like. So I have here one crystal bowl whose frequency is 218 hertz. Okay. And then I have another bowl I will play after with a frequency of 216 hertz. So 218 minus 216, that's a two hertz difference. Yeah. So I'll go ahead and hit the first one first. Okay, you can hear how they're both they're both an A in the third octave note, but you can hear how they're kind of the the frequencies are kind of bouncing off each other.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

So that can help participants during a sound bath to drop into a much um lower brain wave state and brainwave frequency. And um, you know what I just love that I kind of tie into this too is again, my background in early childhood education and child development, I had just recently. Read Michael Pollen's new book, A World Appears, which is all about consciousness and our sense of self in the world. And what he notes in this book is several researchers studying consciousness and studying development in children have found that children actually have what's called lantern consciousness, where they don't have a fully formed sense of self until they're about 18 to 24 months old. And even beyond that, it doesn't really fully solidify for children until about five years old. Oh, wow. So kind of if you look at what I discussed about the brain waves, it all kind of fits in together our sense of self, consciousness, and the ability to really tap into something that allows us to go deep within ourselves, deep within that present awareness and start peeling back the layers. So as adults, we have what's known as spotlight consciousness, according to these researchers. And it's again very helpful because this form sense of self, this I that we have, allows us to separate past, present, and future. It allows us to again think analytically, but it also comes with a lot of baggage and a lot of things we don't like in the world, because it's that sense of um associating so much with our thoughts and identifying with that author voice that's in our heads that um Ramdas described it as life being like a tight-fitting shoe, right? Or um some Buddhists describe it as a cage that you're in. And so really exploring consciousness here and using these beautiful instruments as an opportunity and aid to do so can really help us learn more about ourselves, help us explore what's possible within our own minds.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

So I wanted to share a few other healing benefits of the musical instruments. So one other thing has to do with our vagus nerve. So our vagus nerve is one of the longest-running nerves in our body. It helps to regulate essential bodily functions, involuntary functions like heart rate, breathing, and digestion, and facilitating communication between your brain and your organs. So it's part of the parasympathetic nervous system. And what also happens, particularly with metal and crystal singing bulls, is when we're playing these frequencies, when these vibroacoustics are rising up from these instruments, they're actually stimulating your vagus nerve. So they're stimulating that parasympathetic, that that rest and digest part of your nervous system, which is why people can find these experiences to be extremely relaxing.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

How does that happen? Because I mean, I know the vagus nerve into the rest digest, and we can often stimulate it by humming, by singing, by deep breathing, you know, when our diaphragm pushes on against that vagus nerve. How does it happen with sound when we're quiet and still, maybe not humming?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

I mean, yeah. Well, the vibrations from sound waves can physically travel through the body, and the vibrations, like I said, stimulate the vagus nerve. And they do it also by um actually getting into your cells. So they actually literally get into where our cells have a lot of water and plasma into there, and they're actually affecting them. So there was a great study by Kyoto University that the study was done in 2018. The research came out in 2025, the findings published that sound healing can improve cellular function. That's a major thing really need. And it had great research on um fat cells and cancer cells and lots of different benefits. So, really fascinating research is starting to emerge. But I think it's important to also point out that um science, we've discovered a lot so far, and science doesn't know everything yet. And so there's a lot still um that's a little bit shrouded in mystery that they do not know, um, especially when it comes to things like this, just like how Michael Pollan points out in his new book that scientist scientists still can't even agree on what consciousness is, let alone prove whether or not consciousness exists or whether there's a physical place in the body in which consciousness resides.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

So yeah, so a lot of fascinating information.

SPEAKER_03 26:32

Um and a big field that is just developing. It's just beginning.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

I think so. And I think as more and more people are interested in this, and we do have more measurable tools like EEG machines that didn't have a hundred years ago to measure these things. I think we're going to learn in the decades to come a lot more about sounds, healing effects on the body, about Reiki, about meridian lines, and all of the other healing modalities that still are somewhat on the fringe.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Do you know if they're using sound bath, sound healing for you know terminally ill patients?

SPEAKER_02 27:10

I did see one documentary, I forget what it was, but they actually, yes, were using it in a few studies. And it was particularly people in a chair that it kind of looked like a lazy boy chair. Yeah. And they, so it wasn't live instruments, they had specific frequencies that they had identified that they were experimenting with to see if they would do specific things, like to see if they would have an effect on certain cancer cells. And so far it sounds like the research was actually fairly promising.

SPEAKER_04 27:38

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned vibroacoustics. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that too, because it's not just with outside musical instruments that we can do this, but we can generate different sounds within our own body with humming, with chanting. And there's a lot of um, I wanted to talk a little bit later in a program about the different cultures that have used sound healing over time. Yeah. And um, yeah, there's there's a lot of ways that that has been used to stimulate the vagus nerve, to kind of um activate that parasympathetic nervous system, and especially that chanting of ohm, for example. So that chanting of ohm is seen as this really pure tone that um generates a lot of awareness, a lot of healing within the body.

SPEAKER_03 28:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Do you want to play something from yeah? I would love to do what you have here. So I just have a few more little things that I'd like to show you here. Yeah, these instruments. So, first off, we've got a harmonic chord, and what I'm going to play for you is a harmonic chord that's an A major. So it's A, C, and E. And another thing to note is a lot of these bulls are um each one is a specific instrument that is associated with a specific chakra. So you can actually do chakra balancing or chakra cleansing housing metal or quartz crystal singing bulls. And um, the A, for example, that I'm gonna play is the third I, C is the root chakra, and E is the solar plexus.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

So I'm just gonna show you real quick what that sounds like.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Beautiful. It's so subtle that it it reaches us so much.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Thank you. And now I'm gonna go ahead and just play for you for a few minutes.

SPEAKER_03 29:42

Okay. So this is what one could hear in one of your sound baths, Lisa?

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Absolutely. And I'll also be incorporating some of the um seed kinds that I've brought, which are called policies.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

It's an instrument from Indonesia. Mingo B Indonesian policy, and so you can see.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

One thing that I find so interesting about these instruments, Lisa, is that hearing them so close to my body, I feel the sound waves. I I feel the energy kind of like gently arriving to my body. You feel those ripples, different from most music. Why is that?

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Absolutely, isn't that incredible? Yeah. So um when I'm playing these bowls, and what I brought today is an assortment of five of my or six of my quartz crystal saying bowls is when I when the vibrations are starting around the rim of the bowl, it's kind of creating this nice little container for it to rise up, and those sound waves are really rising up out of the bowl. And um, if if you kind of pay attention with your ears, you'll notice that it's actually more than one tone. So there's almost like some bowls have two tones or even three tones that are rising out. So, for example, this beautiful sea bowl here. If I were to hold a tuner over it, it is vibrating anywhere between 275 and 280 hertz frequencies. So you're getting this five hertz frequency range where it's it's creating those vibrations, those sound waves are bouncing off each other and rising up into the room. And again, as we discussed, you know, our body, if I fill one of these with water and I play the singing bowl, that water is gonna start dancing around. It's going to start to move and to vibrate, and our bodies are filled with fluids that are responding to that.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

Wow. So you believe that the healing happens? The one, it drops us into the parasympathetic state so we can be in that rest digest state. Similarly, parallelly, it's also putting us into another brain state. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:26

So so there's the um brainwave states that are going on here. There's the vagus nerve and our parasympathetic nervous system, and there's also the chakra system for those that um do choose to, we don't have a lot of scientific evidence of the chakra system. But again, as I said, there's not scientific evidence yet of everything. Uh-huh. But um the more I do focus chakra meditations, the more I do notice within my body different energy centers. And I kind of see it as energetic meridian lines, so to speak, that can be in or out of balance. And when I play the bulls and when I do focus on particular notes where I might be feeling a little bit energetically stuck, I do feel that shift a bit internally. So I do think it can be used in that way. And that's why I use it as a tool coupled with um different chanting and yoga postures in helping aid in chakra balancing. So I do also want to mention just kind of as a little disclaimer that I don't want to mislead anyone using the term healing. Again, as I said in the beginning, I think that it really um each person is different and may experience different benefits, maybe no benefits at all from doing a sound bath. Yeah, but I think it's an interesting thing to just everybody can try and see how it resonates for them personally. I will also mention that there are some people who for whom a sound bath, particularly with singing bowls, might not be good. And that's if you have any sort of severe, moderate to severe hearing damage. Okay. So it's not recommended if you have a hearing aid or if you've had a lot of hearing loss and hearing damage because those sounds that you heard um can be a bit intense and it can actually um not feel great to your eardrum. Got it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

How do you see your path continuing to evolve? Where do you want to take, you know, your gifts?

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Yeah. So right now um I've been expanding to collaborate with Durant um practitioners around town. So I have been doing some lovely acupuncture and sound bath collaborations with Mark Montgomery from Bend Community Healing. And we found that that is a really nice pairing to have participants first go through a little bit of movement. We do a little blend of some yoga and qigon movement, and then have participants settle in for acupuncture while I play the singing bowls. And um I'm also working with a few Reiki practitioners in town, um, Pine and Prism, and also a fellow teacher at Nama Spa, Amy Mew, will be doing an event this summer at Smith Rock, which will be a Reiki and sound journey. So there's lots of opportunities to pair it with different things and different modalities. And I know, you know, it's been used, sound sound healing has been used with different rituals for a very long time throughout history and throughout different cultures. Can you tell us a little bit what you've discovered in your studies? Yeah, absolutely. So um in Native American cultures, Native American flutes are often used in different rituals and ceremonies. Um, African rituals in Latin America, for example, with cacao ceremony, oftentimes cacao ceremony is paired with flutes, shells, and different sorts of rattlers. Um, ayahuasca ceremony is predominantly paired with vocals and chanting, but also with um they have dried leaves that they sometimes shake and different rattlers as well. I had the privilege of participating in a few kirtans when I lived in the Bay Area. And Kertan is an Indian ritual where you chant for very long periods of time. So it's predominantly vocals and those uh vibroacoustics, but you could be chanting for anywhere from one to two hours. Wow. Um, our instructor, or the person who led the curtans, he had told us about one he went to in India that lasted 24 hours. Oh my goodness. What's really interesting that happens, and um I think kind of the parallel with a lot of these different cultural traditions is that when you are um having these repetitive beats or these rhythmic patterns in music, whether it's generated vocally or through different instruments, it almost puts you in a trance-like state, which is kind of like this transcendental sort of um bliss body, the subtle energy we start tapping into, again, related to that present awareness that we can also experience through meditation practice. And um, being a music lover, I'm a big fan of Fela Kuti. And um, Fela Kuti has this present in his music too. So if you listen to a lot of fella, he's got very repetitive interlocking rhythms that anchor the listener into a trans-like state through slow, deliberate layering of the instruments. And his songs can go on for sometimes 10 or 20 minutes. And with this, it really um helps for the listener. You you can get a meditative focus and it also can break down the barrier of time a little bit. And it's interesting because that's what I hear sometimes from participants of Soundbass is they'll say, Oh my God, I can't believe that was an hour.

SPEAKER_03 39:49

Yeah, like 10 minutes. Why do you think that happens that we just lose notion of time? I remember when you invited me to your event at Hanai Center, I also had that same sensation. I fell asleep and I didn't know where I'd gone. It was like I had traveled in time and place. It was a beautiful experience. Why? Why does that happen?

SPEAKER_02 40:07

Yeah, I mean, I I wish I knew. Uh-huh. There might be the mysteries of our world. Again, yes, being somebody who's very science-minded, you're looking out for those answers. Yeah. But I do think that um there is something to be said that this is a common experience that people have. And it's not just from um the metal singing bowls or crystal singing bowls, it's not just from one particular instrument, but this can be present in lots of different music, and it can also be present in music like fella cooties.

SPEAKER_03 40:39

Okay. Okay. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

And just a little history, too, on the singing bowls. So, um, in terms of the metal seening bowls, the metal seeming bowls have been around the longest. So they actually, um, it's often a uh misstated thing or a myth than they are Tibetan singing bowls. They actually originated in Persia about 4,000 years ago. And they were first used as bowls. Uh-huh. They were actually just serving dishes and used for food storage. And it wasn't until about the 12th century that they began being made by um metal craftspeople in Nepal and India and starting to be used for Hindu ceremonies. So the first original metal singing bowls were used in Hinduism. And in Hinduism, it's believed that the universe was created through sound, which is really neat. So a lot of these bowls being used in different rituals and one chanting om. And then from there, 12th to 16th century, is when metal singing bowls spread to other countries throughout Asia, including Tibet and including Japan, where they're actually called Rin bowls. And those rin bowls are used in meditation and different temple rituals. Okay. And um, for the crystal singing bowls, the ports, crystals, yeah, um, they actually are a modern invention. Oh, really? So they were an innovation accident uh-huh invented by software companies in the 1970s. Which I think they never expected. Yes. So what happened was actually GE, General Electric, and other um companies that were trying to manufacture software chips and solar cells, had melted quartz crystal and kilns to make what's called a crucible. So a crucible is a blacksmithing term. And they were trying to use them as crucibles to melt down silicone for making the computer chips and the solar cells. And it's important to remember quartz crystal, it's used in watches and clocks and in electronics because it's a great conductor, it's very precise when it comes to these different frequencies. And it was kind of discovered by accident by sound practitioners that oh, these crucibles that these uh the companies made um produce these really beautiful pure tones. And so now today, the majority of crystal singing bowls that are manufactured, and there's lots manufactured in the US and Canada, and also overseas, um, they are predominantly made for the sound practitioners who use them. But and and they're great instruments, but they're not an ancient or sacred instrument. They're validable. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 43:34

I think your engineers in the 70s. Wow, what an interesting backstory. Yeah. I love these because I think that happened and that can provide such a different purpose from what it was intended for.

SPEAKER_02 43:44

Absolutely. And I brought one of my pink bowls today that is um actually melted down rose quartz. So you can melt different um precious gems and minerals with these bowls. So um quartz crystal singing bowls can vary in price anyway. From a $100 bowl to up to $100,000. And some of those bowls that are up there in as high as the $100,000 price range are blended with melted gold, melted omics. I've seen ones with amethyst, jade, all different types of crystals. And they all produce beautiful tones, and you get those kind of multi-layered tones, and it seems longer, the kind of higher quality it is.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

Yeah. Wow. What are typical comments that you might hear after a sound bath, Lisa? People who have participated in your spaces, how do they feel afterwards?

SPEAKER_02 44:40

Oh, good question. Um, honestly, I usually let everyone have a little space after because people are usually coming out of such a deep state that um they almost look kind of as if they've just experienced a very intense massage. They they look a little bit, they're looking around the room like, yeah, a little spacey. And so um I just want to give them a little bit of time to process. Yeah. But those who are, I get people coming up to me after who do want to ask curious questions and ask about the instruments. And they often say, um, while they're laying down, it sounded like there were five of me in the room, or it sounded like sound was coming from, they couldn't believe that I was just sitting in one place, for example. And they really felt that washing over them sensation. Yeah. Um, again, people have said that they feel like they it has created visualizations for them, colors might arise, different sensations in the body, um, that feeling of timelessness, of kind of losing track of time and the experience. And also, people do get so deeply relaxed that some from time to time I have people who fall asleep during the sessions, which is fine too. And that could just be, you know, we need rest at them. Yeah. And our body sometimes, when um I had a meditation teacher tell me that oftentimes people fall asleep in meditation too, because when we um have that moment of stillness and the opportunity to quiet the mind, sometimes the mind, if not trained, doesn't really know what else to do but go to sleep. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 46:11

But isn't it true that even asleep, those, if you will, those therapeutic or the, you know, the beauty and the power of the sound bath will still work on the body, even if the person is asleep?

SPEAKER_02 46:21

Yeah, I I would theorize that that would be true because as we've stated, that it has these benefits on your cellular structure and your ability to just have these sounds go deeply into your tissue.

SPEAKER_03 46:34

Wow. You know, and going back to your story, I often find it interesting how many individuals, their own individual story, what happened to them, has brought them into a path of health and wellness where they want to share it with others. And, you know, going back to your diagnosis of ADHD and wanting to cope with it in a very natural way, in which you're not necessarily dependent on medication, which has other side effects. Like how can you come full circle with, you know, the gift that you have brought to Ben through your sound baths? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

And I think that I would be remiss if I didn't, you know, really highlight being a Montessori teacher and just a teacher at heart, how much this has played in for me because as a teacher, particularly in Montessori, we really believe in following the child and we see ourselves as guides, right? More than just the teacher who stands in front of the classroom and teaches at people. And as an adult educator, and I really consider when I'm doing yoga and sound bath events, that's that's my role as an educator. And I really want to see myself as that guide and that that facilitator who's holding space for others and creating a safe container that others can come into and have their own experience. And that's why it's very important to me that I don't tell people what I think they're going to experience, but I let people feel that they have the freedom to experience whatever is going to come up for them in that moment and know that it's a safe space to do so.

SPEAKER_03 48:07

Yeah, that's beautiful. Have you found that the more you do this, the more profound effects it has on your own well-being? Good question.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

I think that um I think it's hard to tease out this versus the meditation practice because I do continue to also go deeper in my meditation practice. I just came back from completing my third silent meditation retreat. My husband joined me this time, which was really lovely in Washington County. And um I think where I'm getting with it is um, it's funny, I I thought, you know, years back on this path, that I would get to some point where I would get to this deep translate state in my meditation and my ego was gonna completely dissolve. And what instead I've realized is a much more even and a much more subtle way that it has trickled down into every part of my day. The way I uh approach people in the grocery store, the way I move through the space, the way of somebody I meet out on the street is being difficult. How I'm going to approach that situation and choose not to um give into reactivity.

SPEAKER_03 49:21

Yeah. It sounds like you really have tapped into that freedom that we have, that we always have that choice of how we respond to everything that happens to us. Absolutely. And many of us don't take that pause to say, you know, how am I gonna, how can I best respond here? You know, we tend to react. I mean, that's the beauty of tapping into that, you know, rest digest state. The more we can do it, the better we can take that pause when things trigger us.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

Absolutely. And that's why I named my business Step into Stillness, because I really want participants to know when they come to my events, they're able to step into a place of stillness. And um, it's also taking a step toward that. So I often say in my classes that stillness is not the presence of or the absence of movement, it's the presence of peace. Yeah. So it's finding that opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 50:13

Well, thank you so much, Lisa. This has been such a gift to have you here with your music and the voice. I really appreciate it. If somebody wants to find, you know, any of your sound baths, how can they find where you're playing? Yes, I don't have a permanent location right now.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

Rather, I work with different studios and places around town. So in the summertime, you can actually find me um at a lot of outdoor venues and doing outdoor events. Those can be found on my website, stepintostillness.org/slash events. And during the fall to spring, so September until May, I predominantly use the Hanae Center. So you can find me there at Hanae, and that's also on the um Hanay's website. And I'll be doing a few upcoming events, one with Pine and Prism on Tuesday, June 2nd, where we'll be doing a Reiki and sound journey from 6.45 to 8 p.m. That's $35. And then I'll be doing um a few other great events, the one at Smith Rock late in June. That will be Reiching Cacao ceremony with another practitioner. Okay. Thank you so much, Lisa. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.