Sound Healing Interview

Barry Ebert and special guest, Zemirah Jazwierska talk about her journey with sound healing and crystal singing bowls. This podcast ends with a guided spiritual practice with calming music and affirmations by Zemirah Jazwierska.

Transcript

Well hey,

Welcome back everybody.

This is Dr.

Berry and today what we're thinking about is sound healing,

Sound immersion.

Excited to have my guest with me today,

Reverend Zamira,

One of the ministers at Mile High Church and she works a lot with sound healing with children and also with adults.

So welcome Zamira,

Glad that you're here today and tell me a little bit about how you got involved with singing bowls and vibrational healing.

Thank you so much for having me Dr.

Berry and getting involved with sound healing has been a little bit of a journey.

I was first introduced to music and playing the piano at age three and four and as I was a little girl we would always have fancy Thanksgiving dinners at my grandma's house and she had this kind of Victorian country house and we would all gather there and she always used the finest best china for Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas dinner and part of her finest china include crystal glasses and so while we would sit around the table my dad,

I can remember when I was really young,

He would fill those crystal glasses with different levels of water and then he would run his finger around the top of the glass to make a tone and he would experiment playing songs with those I guess making the glasses sing and making them tone and so it's kind of a funny way to get into sound healing but you could skip maybe 30 years into the future and I went to visit a friend in Mount Shasta and while I was there I wandered into a crystal bowl shop and pulled one off of the shelf and the second I began to make the bowl sing I could feel it like almost like every cell of my body was like vibrating with the sound and that was the moment like when the light bulb goes on and like it was I was awake and I was like what is this thing you know I have to know more about it and I didn't know more about it for quite a while but they started showing up as I was traveling I would run into these bowls and you know growing up as a musician I just felt drawn to to this sound but when I look back I guess sound healing has kind of found its way into my life in so many different ways throughout the years I used to chant in a kirtan band and I was a backup singer and it's just all those ways kind of came together and converged until I bought my first set of bowls and began to to really fall into that sound well that's great I you know I love the work that you do with kids and kids are really enchanted with the bowls just the way you were when you were a little kid too and I think you know when we look at ourselves as being vibrating atoms rather than dense beings I think it's really good the work that you do in terms of kind of tuning our vibration with you know kind of a higher a higher vibration and I think that's a lot of what the healing work is and so when you're working with people that might be going on some kind of a healing journey what's your process like what kind of intention do they bring to the work well I think that's such a key word that you brought up Barry is that word intention because as I've studied sound healing over the years there's even a really well-known sound healer Jonathan Goldman and he put together this equation that frequency plus intention equals healing so as we study in science of mind that the way that we the inner with which we bring to something or the intention that we have behind it is really the power that we give to it to support us in our healing and so it's really important that we're really mindful of what our intention is when we approach sound healing and immerse in the sound we just set that intention allow it to kind of permeate our space set our focus on it and then just allow the sound to do the rest because sound being vibrational is a harmonizing quality you just have to immerse yourself in it and it goes where it's needed yeah well one of the things I was thinking about is you know a lot of times I hear people say well after I work all day when I come home I just want to I just want to veg out I just want to sit down and watch some mindless show on television so that I don't have to think what's the difference between listening if they're gonna listen to one of your recordings that insight timer of singing bowls and of vibrations what's the difference going on in their mind and body and heart as as opposed to watching some mindless TV show well I think that's a really good distinction because when we're watching the mindless TV show I think our intention is to tune out is to kind of turn off and to really dissociate or separate ourselves from from really thinking at all and the difference with coming to a sound healing or a sound immersion where you just allow the sound it's that you're tuning in it's that you're really bringing your intention inside yourself and you're setting that intention but then you're also letting it go you know how we say in silence of mind we plant the seed and then we water it with prayer but we don't dig it up and check it out so it's the same like we bring our intention to the sound and we plant that seed of intention and then we allow the sound we trust the sound to move where it's needed and to harmonize if you will our body just naturally because our bodies are always seeking that balance that's our natural state you know that equilibrium so sound is very supportive in helping us get to that state yeah and I think you know one of the things that you you work on a lot is just a condition of stress that we carry so much stress in our bodies that we're we're not even aware of because we get used to it right we get used to operating at this level and keeping ourselves cranking all the time and we crank at a really high level and I think that when we when we think of ourselves as vibration this is an opportunity to kind of harmonize with something other than the then the hum of busy life around ourselves and kind of and kind of cut ourselves out of that herd for a bit absolutely it's really a chance to to allow the the sound to maybe give our stress to the sound maybe allow the sound to just naturally allow that stress to seep away and what I love about sound is that it's it in trains our brains it really works with those brainwaves that puts us naturally into a restful state and as we know when the body's in that out of the fight-or-flight that comes from that constant busyness or that constant stress then when we go into that restful state that's naturally rejuvenating it allows the body to move back into balance move back into equilibrium which is just the way that it it's always seeking that it's just sometimes stress gets in the way yeah so this sound just brings our brainwaves into that rest and rejuvenation state yeah how do you get how do you get kids going with this I mean if parents wanted to get their kids going with this and to do stuff with them how would they get started well it's really fun you know I actually brought it to rainbow day camp last week and we had so much fun in the that's the kids camp here at Mile High and we had so much fun in that camp in that I had each of them become a bowl master so I brought these these singing bowls and each one of them approached the bowl with reverence and they they got to make the bowl sing and we talked about how the bowls sing on different notes and that different notes respond to different parts of our body and that we can really balance like say our throat region or our stomach region by certain notes and so I had them holding those places and just inviting that sound to come and land in that part of their body so they just received almost like a little messenger a little a little male through the air of sound waves they received them by holding that part of their body so we'd put our hands on our throat and we would make the bowl sing that really responded to that frequency that sound that note of the throat the area of the throat or the stomach or the heart and they loved it I think what else I put a little water inside the bowl and when we made it when we would make the bowl sing they could see they could see the vibration of sound and the the water would kind of move and dance inside the bowl and they were fascinated to see that sound is vibration you can actually feel it you know you could see it in that way and so that was a fun way to just get started but I think just tuning in to a simple note even if you had a small bell I think the importance is making sure the sound feels good to your child you know and and helping them to tune in and see what feels good is really part of that mindfulness that we're helping we're giving in those tools to to to self-regulate to really moderate their own feelings throughout life so they're gonna tune in oh wow that feels good for me that's supporting me or that sound isn't quite feeling so great right now but that they get to really tune in and and see what works for them yeah and I think the other thing too is is for this is something that parents can do with their kids and it gives us all a chance to slow down and gives us all a chance to tune in and so it if you don't have if you don't have bowls I like just getting started where does where does someone get started where did where did where can they listen to sound healing stuff and and get things like in different lengths stuff like that you do some of that yeah well we have on our Mile High Insight timer there's some of the recordings of the bowls out there so if you go to the Insight timer app and and search for Mile High you'll see it in the selections there and I have a website kids relaxation you could find things there but I think the most important too you could use your own voice and you know we don't have to be all of us are sound healers you know and I think that's important for parents to consider too is that you don't have to have a you have to be a vocalist you don't have to be a musician but we all have we can make sound and we can breathe and humming actually is a very healthy place to start and everybody can hum right and they you know studies have shown that just humming five minutes a day can really boost our immune system it can get those really wonderful good supportive chemicals flowing in our body and that can be a great place for kids to feel their own vibration to make friends with their own voice and for parents too because I know like when I like it when my girls were little sometimes we would take car trips and they would be arguing in the back seat and I would simply start to chant the ohm sound just oh and I would say that again and again and and not only did it work as a distraction because they were like what is mom doing in the front of the seat you know like what's going on it would interrupt their argument but at the same time it's a very peaceful vibration and so I would be putting that vibration of peacefulness into the car and it did work you know they would start to feel like oh that's a different vibration than the vibration of the arguing that was going on but yeah if you want to find some of our things here at Mile High I'd suggest starting with our insight timer app and and check it out there yeah that's great you know we take in so much information from outside that I one of the things I like about your work is it it does give us an opportunity to go inside and to kind of get in tune with not only what we're thinking about but what we're feeling and and to just allow ourselves to relax and to let go of all that outside information that's coming at us all the time and I think in our homes it's really good to have take responsibility for the vibration that's going on in our homes and especially if we have children but I think for any of us to just to be conscious of the sounds that are going on in our homes to be conscious of the kind of energy that we have and what kind of intention are we setting for how do I feel when I walk into my home how do I feel before I go to sleep at night how do I feel when I get up in the morning what's the best way from my home to feel so I like that about your work as well thank you yeah I used to talk about being your own meteorologist kind of you've set the atmosphere and the tone for your home so that's what reminds me when I hear you say that yeah just taking that time to connect in whatever way that is such a vibration that's that that is naturally balancing I think for any of us and especially for kids and parents because you know there can just be so much going on so it's just great to take even just carve out those little times and if you can do it kind of in a in a predictable fashion you know it helps our brains to really calm down if it happens maybe the same time every day or in the same way every day or in the same space every day I think that's important because you're really setting that container and our brains are predictable organs so they they calm down they feel secure and they send that message that we're safe and that we're calm when when they can figure out what's happening you know when there's routine and the routine involves relaxation well I like that and also you know a lot of people say they have trouble meditating you know my mind is all over the place I have trouble meditating but I think this with the sound that's going on you just release yourself to the sound and you don't have to think about anything else and I think it gives us an opportunity to give our minds a break give our minds a rest and kind of give our vibration a chance to harmonize itself with with the sound of with the sound of a bowl and I think that there's a great gift in that and especially a way to kind of get us back on the horse in terms of meditating you know and just be because as a regular practice like you said and I think sound is a great way to do it because we take in so much so much text so many people talking so many opinions so many ideas so many narratives are going through our head to just have let go of that and be able to just tune into a vibration I think is a great thing it's a great gift and it's also ancient this has been going on for a long long time you know and I think that's why in ancient times they had bells that would would chime for different things and for different times and for different ceremonies but they but everybody in the village could feel the vibration right everybody resonated to that vibration everybody knew what was going on and I think there's a great there's kind of a timeless quality to a sound and to a bell like that that brings us comfort in its in its predictability but also in the way that it resonates through our body absolutely and I think it's it's you touch on a point that sound is universal you know it's like that that everything in the universe vibrates at a frequency everything is vibration everything is energy and so when we just give ourselves to the sound the sound goes where it is needed it's just a harmonizing quality and all we have to do is just bring our presence and and surrender really to it yeah yeah well I like the I like the simplicity of it I think there's a lot going on when we when we do sound healing and we kind of surrender to it but there's a simplicity to it as well all I've got to do is just find a comfortable place where I can just relax and let it move through me and so we're going to do a little bit of that now so I'm going to give you an opportunity to play some of your bowls and also to lead us in a meditation so appreciate you doing that if you're if you're if you're up for that will you do that for us absolutely thank you so much yeah delighted my life is filled with light and ease I feel deeply at peace I feel the presence of God's perfect vibration and light in every cell of my body I am deeply rooted in compassion I am deeply rooted in love you I have deep trust in the goodness of all that is I release all patterns that no longer serve me and I rest in the sanctuary of divine love within me I transcend old ways of being and open to my most loving expansive expression in life I am at peace you I want to thank you all for tuning in today I've had a great time here with Reverend Samira and we've all had the opportunity to experience this sound healing aspect and there are places where you can connect with it you can find them on the Mile High website but yeah drop into that healing vibration and take good care of yourself we'll talk again soon