Can we heal by hearing? What kinds of hearing bring about healing?
If you’ve ever sung, moved, or followed along to a song while going about your day, you probably know your own answer to these questions. There is something that feels good* about hearing certain types of sounds, some more than others. Music is one of the obvious ones. As are birdsong and the human voice. I find this worth thinking about more: this idea of healing as a thing that is sonic, sometimes musical.
I wonder about hearing and/as healing all the time in my curiosity about human vocality as a kind of inner work. “Inner” in terms of an inside also being an audible outside. The first question assumes that an experience of healing can be perceived, undergone, and identified through the sonic act of listening. The second question asks whether there are specific acts of listening that can engender a healing event, or an enduring continuation of a healing practice.
By “listening” I think I'm referring to a deeply visceral and meaningful sonicity distilled through the event of an audience’s attentive presencing.
02.01 Sonic, sometimes musical
I go about these concerns in my own practice as a singer of improvisational material, drawing on my experiences of singing with other kinds of musical listeners: singers (as part of choirs), musicians (on stage and in the recording studio as part of project groups), and teachers (as a student of classical Western voice traditions). Everything I learn, test, and feel as a listening singer, I funnel into the unprecedented moment of the sound journey session. To me the primary task is to stay with the trembling, tenuous sensation of leaning or leaping into the newness of the moment.
I’m hearing several things as I do these sound baths. Such as, the color or line in my head that compels me to produce a certain note or tone. Or the sensations of tightness or softness, spaciousness or smallness, that I feel in my vocal tract as I attempt to materialize what I hear inwardly. Outwardly, I follow the structured layers of looped vocals emanating from my amplifier, and my partial projection of my participants’ listening presence—whoever and wherever they are, regardless of what they themselves must actually be experiencing. When I'm on Zoom I’m keeping tabs on the chat box, internet connection, Mute button, etc.
What I listen to the most is the simple feeling of singing itself. It's this sustained inner-outer audibility of the voice in song, not just sounding a certain way but feeling like a certain vibration in the body.
A parallel listening happens in the participant as they attune to their own visceral and imaginal responses during the session. After the session is when we get what it was all about, as my participants and I take turns sharing and verbalizing what we've individually experienced. That too is its own kind of collective improvisation.
These threads of listening weave into a reciprocal practice between me (as the main sound-maker) and them (as the main sound-holder). In relinquishing control and allowing receptivity for a good moment of time (30 to 45 minutes), we listeners practice our ways of meeting the unprecedented in and through ourselves.
02.02. Two listenings
Maybe this idea about hearing healing will make more sense when you read the following two participant responses.
Some context: both were attendees of my free monthly offering on Zoom. Ava Gonzales** attended the June 13 morning session, and Kathleen Largo participated in the July 30 evening session. Both are Filipina writers by profession, with their own spiritual and healing trajectories—which might explain some of the clarity with which they’re able to communicate their experience of “listening” as I'm trying to make sense of it here.
The physical and symbolic registers of healing were familiar territory for these listeners. And yet they were also visiting different terrain for the first time: for one thing, there was the novelty of doing this from their beds and sofas, through a laptop. It was also their first time to hear my version of a sound bath. (It’s only been six months since I started offering this to the public.)
“Bed-ins for Peace (Amsterdam, 1969)”, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. We might think of a Zoom sound bath as a bed-in: using the bed as a platform for existing differently and gently in the world
It was also completely new on my end. Ava’s session on June 13 was my first official free monthly Zoom. As with the majority of the in-person sessions I had done up to that point, I came in with no preset theme to influence my musical improvisation and meditation instructions. Yet, at least five people in the 19-person session said they “saw” the same thing: roaming a forest of some kind. Ava was one of those who experienced this spontaneous visualization of a forest, among other things.
The session on July 30, a few weeks after that first session, was different in that I experimented with a preset theme. In keeping with the astrological symbolism of Leo season (midsummer in the northern hemisphere), I introduced solar imagery in my guided meditation, and circulated a Jennifer Guidi painting from her Heliocentric series for the requisite social media posts. Kathleen’s subsequent narrative of her participation could be said to have been pre-determined, or at least influenced, by my decision to hew to the solar themes of light, fire, and the darkness that results from too much brightness. What I find more interesting is how this outer structure of stimuli could still contain an inner experience that was just as idiosyncratic and personally meaningful as Ava’s “random” and eerily resonant session. In fact, Kathleen had decided to make time for this Zoom as a birthday gift to herself.
Kathleen, 31 July 2021
Hi Anjeline! I waited til this morning to organize my thoughts and feelings about last night's sound healing.
I laid down and wrapped myself in a blanket. I felt like my body was on fire especially in my feet. My hands were on top of my solar plexus the whole time, except towards the last part where I had to put them down with palms faced open. It was as if the sound energy healed me as my inner vision turned purple, reconnected me to earth, and then reminded me to share in the light so I wouldn't have too much of it or too little. There was fear at first, but I had to shut my own ego and let my mind wander to the community you have built last night. Then before I knew it an hour had passed!
I also really loved what you said about darkness. We recently left a flat that had a lot of natural light, in exchange for a bigger space where we could assign individual workspaces. It's dimmer now in our new place but it leads me to actively pursue light by opening the windows or stepping out of the house.
I had no expectations. I went to sleep feeling rested, then I woke up and felt like anything is possible! It was a wonderful experience and the energy was indeed fiery, in a sense. I definitely felt more stable afterwards.
Ava, 14 June 2021
Being with you and those who answered your call was a sublime experience. The energy I felt was similar to the first session I had with my health mentor, Susana M. Balingit, M.D. Only this time it was stronger and longer. Maybe because there were many of us posting our intentions simultaneously. And maybe because after more than a decade of eating clean, my body can now accommodate more energy and light. I recognized the sensation instantly as a healing frequency and tried to emit it to the others wandering about in the same prehistoric forest, which is where I felt I was.
The energy was a spiral going through me and lifting me up, as if I was a marionette being gently held up by light. After the tears that were neither sad or happy, I felt a tingling in my ears, as if someone had rung my inner Tibetan singing bowl. I heard/felt it fading until I realized the connection had been cut and I opened one eye and asked "what happened?"*** I realize now of course, that the question was addressed to no one in particular and was not just about that moment in this lifetime.
Like the message of a dream meant specifically for its dreamer, the symbolic aspect you identify as part of healing creates an intimate space between the healer and the one being healed. It is within this intimate space where mind, body, and spirit are restored simultaneously and genuine wellness is embodied.
In ancient wisdom traditions, wellness was not just the absence of disease. It was not limited to something merely physical that can be detected by a machine and measured so it could be given the proper dosage of the appropriate pill until it disappeared from detection. The inflammation, tumor, or mass may disappear but until its underlying cause is addressed, it will keep recurring, sometimes even returning with a vengeance after it had seemingly been vanquished.
Our ancestors believed that at the heart of any illness is an inability to nurture and honor the relationships we have with our natural environment and other sentient beings. Recognizing our interconnectedness is part of remembering who we really are and is what will lead us on the path meant for us. That session with you restored the interconnectedness that ancient wisdom traditions revere, which is why healing occurred on all levels, not just the physical.
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NOTES
*Feeling good is just one aspect of healing, though. Sometimes the intensity of a healing event can border on unpleasant.
** My friend Ava Gonzales is a writer and teacher. She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Cosmic Anthropology from the Asian Social Institute, where her dissertation "Illness as Encountering the Sacred" earned a Highest Distinction merit. An autoethnography of her personal experience of illness, it focused on how the practice of eating a plant-based diet of local whole grains and vegetables can nurture, nourish, and restore health to survivors of autoimmune diseases. She’s written articles on her healing journey through plant-based food here and here.
*** The audio connection had, in fact, been cut at that moment—meaning to switch off my video, I mistakenly pressed the Mute button on Zoom mid-song.
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SESSION OFFERINGS
My monthly free sound baths are welcome to anyone who could use a deep dive inside a bubble of intimate collective listening. The next one is on September 30, 8:00-9:15 pm (GMT+8), using this Zoom link. The passcode is 507278.
Bimonthly in-person sessions are available if you’re in Hong Kong. I’m happy to find a home in Ascolto Studio in Sheung Wan, which hosts my sound baths every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month from 5:00-6:15pm. The next ones are on September 11 and September 25.
My books in September and October are open for private sessions: in-person if you’re in Hong Kong, and on Zoom if you’re elsewhere. To book, send me an email at anjeline@protonmail.com or a Whatsapp message on +85256017540.