I love music.
I love the way it can transport you to different places, different times, even change your mood completely. Not a day goes by where I don’t listen to music of some kind or another, and I’d say I’ve got pretty eclectic taste. I absolutely love classical music and we always have Classic FM or Radio 3 on in the car or the house. Classical music can help your relax and destress and that can be really useful on a stressful car journey!
Many of you will know that I have recently rekindled my love of playing and have picked up my violin again after *many* years! It was a real lesson in ego for me as, when I stopped playing during my A levels, I was reasonably good (I was working towards my Grade 7). When I picked it up again before Christmas…well, let’s just say it was pretty awful!
It took a while for the muscle memory to return and it’s still a work in progress being able to ‘hear’ the perfect pitch and tone – there’s no frets on a violin so you have to learn exactly where to place your fingers to get the perfect ringing note. Even just a fraction out, and it sounds terrible. It can be a meditative act in itself, repeating the same passage over and over until it becomes natural and tuneful.
Sound and music have become integral in what I do professionally now. I qualified as a Sound Meditation Teacher last year, which means I now work with quartz crystal bowls, the shamanic drum, the gong, even a rainstick, to help people find the theta brainwave state and learn to relax more deeply into their meditation practice. The bowls are all tuned to 432hz, which is a frequency that can help reduce anxiety and improve relaxation. Normally, instruments are tuned to 440hz, so when you hear the crystal bowls for the first time, they can seem almost ethereal, or other worldly.
Everything vibrates at its own frequency: the crystal bowls, essential oils, the chair you’re sitting on…even you! Once we start working in this place of frequency and vibration, it becomes so profound. I can immediately tell when I wake up if I’m not vibrating on a high frequency, and so I practise yoga, meditate, use essential oils, get outside in nature and yes, play music, to help my raise my vibration.
Sound can also help us switch off those thoughts that run through our heads when we are trying to relax and meditate. If you’ve tried meditation and given up because your brain is too busy to be quiet and still, sound meditation could be the answer. A couple of people I know had almost given up on meditation and then they tried the sound work. They were able to relax and switch off the ‘noise’ of their brains, because the vibrations of the bowls helped them find that mental stillness.
As you can probably tell, I am a massive advocate of meditation, sound work and the effects they can have on mental health. I’ll always be open about my own issues with anxiety and also how profoundly my meditation and sound work has helped.
If you would like to come along and learn more, we run a monthly sound meditation – click here to find the next one and book in.