Now, this blog is going to be a little bit different to my usual ones! Today I am posting about some interesting healing work that another living food enthusiast here in Cornwall is up to.....
I was recently blessed to have the opportunity to experience a sound healing session with Ruth Allen. I’ve known Ruth for some time now, we both have a passion for living foods and supporting and empowering women on the journey of pregnancy and mothering.
I’m assuming that if you’re reading my blog, that you have some interest in raw foods or health foods. So I think it’s relevant to mention that Ruth has been exploring the potential of a largely living foods diet for over twenty years, she is a yogini, a counsellor and a very intuitive and sensitive woman. Along with it comes a deep honesty and integrity which I so deeply appreciate and admire. I first came to meet her through email and we conversed on and off for many months before we actually met in person at a raw food event. My impression of Ruth is that she is a free spirit with an amazing capacity for love and compassion.
Ruth has recently started offering sound healing sessions from her base in Perranporth. Ruth has been in the healing field for many many years and it was magical to experience her weaving and integrating the sound healing sessions into the other modalities of her other healing work. Ruth explained that what unfolds during each sound healing session is very different as the frequency produced by the bowls effect people differently. Each person brings something unique to the session. The client is an active part of the process.
Some of you may be wondering what sound therapy is all about and what the theories are about how it’s thought to work. Sound has been used for healing purposes for thousands of years as a tool to improve health and wellbeing. Try thinking of your body not as a whole solid body, but as tiny particles of energy that are linked together. Think about the things that happen as you go about your day to day life. Your experiences and the stressors that you encounter have an impact on these energy particles. It is thought that these stressors that we encounter create lasting change in the energy flow in our bodies, creating imbalance and illness. Sound vibrations, such as that created through crystal bowls or Tibetan singing bowls is one way that these imbalances can be shifted.
Auditory vibrations can be very powerful. I am sure that almost all of us have experienced feeling uplifted or saddened by certain pieces of music. It’s those pieces of music that evoke a deep feeling within us that we tend to remember the most. It is believed that we react to sound vibrations at that energy level in our body.
So, on with my experience.....
I found the sound healing session to be really amazing. Over the years I had heard of singing bowls and of them being used for healing but had never experienced it and, I certainly didn’t know what to expect. I arrived with no expectations and totally trusting that whatever unfolded was meant to be.
Ruth has created two amazing healing spaces, both absolutely gorgeous yet very different to each other. One is smaller and nest like and the other more spacious and light. The larger space was where all of the Quartz crystal bowls were set up, there were several in different sizes ranging from really small to very large. Quartz crystal bowls are considered to be one of the most powerful sonic instruments available, producing profound and powerful resonant frequencies. The crystal bowls aside, my
doula self couldn’t help but see how both spaces perfectly reflected the ideal environment for mothers to birth in ~ safe, protected and peaceful. We need to feel safe, protected and calm when healing too. I found the space that had been created to be perfect.
I was fortunate enough to experience some time with both the crystal and Tibetan bowls. The vibrations produced by the crystal bowls were amazing. As change occurred in the vibration of the sounds being created, different parts of my body would be affected and feel the shifting of energy in a different way. I could literally feel the vibrations flowing right throughout my body and feel it working from the root chakra upwards. Having the Tibetan singing bowls placed on my body during the session was quite extraordinary.
During the session it was as if the supportive therapist had disappeared. He had to still be there as he was producing some of the amazing healing sounds from the crystal bowls, but it felt as though he was no longer there. It was as if he had melted and become part of the sound vibrations. Ruth was wonderfully in tune and allowed me to go deeply into my own process which was absolutely perfect.
My experience of the sound healing session on this occasion was that it was very gentle but carried on over a number of days. It took me on a meditative journey of symbolic visualisations. I can think of times when such a session could have stimulated a very different experience within me. There is a very powerful potential for this sound vibration healing work to move significant energy blocks and I'm sure the sessions could stimulate a significant shift, in a similar way to the breathwork healing sessions that I am trained and experienced in. Whenever I try any new type of healing session I commonly experience a ‘slow burning’ effect where the change actually occurs in the times of stillness and silence following the session. Then if I return for further sessions later my response is much quicker.
I found that in the week following on from my session, my personal healing process carried on. It felt like my cells were vibrating for days afterwards (in a good way!) and my body and mind were showing clear signs of detoxification. I have come out of the experience feeling focused and motivated as well as feeling cocooned in a very loving space (despite being insanely busy!). I think it would be very fair to say that I also found the healing session to stimulate further opening of my heart.
I'll be back with another post soon to show you all of the lovely sweet chocolatey things that have been happening in the Raw Faerie kitchen in the lead up to Easter.