Yoga and sound are very much intertwined. There is chanting, there are mantras and of course a very intricate sound system linked to the chakras. Sound is a great healer and plays an important role and calming and balancing mind and body. Traditional cultures sing while working. Some of the songs are designed to make the work easier – the rhythm may help the digging motion when working in fields. Songs are part of everyday life as well as special celebrations. Western culture has done away with song during everyday life to a large extent. I am convinced that this has lead to a number of problems with hearing, speaking, voice projection and the way we feel about ourselves.

Sound Therapy is a very powerful tool and healing modality for a huge variety of seemingly unrelated problems. The beauty of sound therapy is that it has been evolving and growing over the past 25 years or so. Therefore a large amount of testimonials and empirical evidence is available that show its effectiveness. A lot of the original work was done by Dr. Tomatis and you may have heard about the Tomatis Method.

Rafaele Joudry is one of the world’s experts on sound therapy. She has been winvolved with it and studied it over the past 20 years. You can find her at:

www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/soundtherapy

It all started many years ago in Paris when she met one of the doctors who studied under Dr. Tomatis.

Rafael’s mother had problems hearing in a crowded room and was extremely sensitive to noise. When sound therapy was established in Canada her mother was one of the first clients and had great results.

Most humans are what is called “right ear dominant” because the sound travels faster along that pathway than from the left ear (the heart is “in the way” so to speak) and the sound takes longer to reach the left ear.

Left ear dominance leads to all sorts of auditory processing problems. This difficulty in making sense of sounds and what is being said leads to things like stuttering, difficulty expressing thoughts or feelings, dyslexia and it also seems to play a role in Asperger’s syndrome and autism.

Interestingly enough we can only reproduce sounds (whether this is singing or speaking) that we can physically hear with our ears. We also have to be exposed to these sounds.

Due to some technical difficulties we only spent half an hour with Rafaele. She has a lot more to share and we will invite her back.

The first half of the call is a discussion amongst Charly, Lenore from www.outrageouslyhealthy.com , Liz from www.thewaytoblissnow.com and myself about mindset, how to stay in control even when things are not going so well.

The second half of the show is our interview with Rafaele Joudry. Click on the player below to listen.

 
You find Rafaele at:

www.stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/soundtherapy

Flower essences are amazing healing substances. They are energy medicines made from flowers. There are many different types of flower esssences nowadays. The Bach Flower essences were the first ones to be used extensively throughout Europe and then the rest of the world. Dr. Edward Bach lived in England during the middle of last century and was a pioneer in this field.

Many different ranges of flower essences have been discovered and developed over the ensuing years. Today there is a vast choice available. They are sourced from different environments all over the world.

To understand how flower essences work and how they should be applied, we first need to look at the underlying philosophy explaining health and disease:

• Mind, body and emotions are interrelated and interdependent
• We are made up of energy
• Energy equals matter, the only difference is that rate of vibration
• Thoughts and feeling have a higher vibrational rate than our dense, physical body
• Negative emotions are a major contributor to disease by being held inside our body, then being distorted by not being dealt with or expressed
• Held in emotions cause blockages and eventually disease in the area of the body they are held in
• Every physical problem has an emotional counterpart
• One way of addressing the various emotional and health problems is to find the right energy and then creating balance in the overall energy system of the body
• Flower essences are one of the tools available to us to restore balance and harmony in mind and body

 To get a clear understanding of the flower essences, we need to consider the following:

• Each plant has its own rate of vibration or energy
• Each part of a plant (roots, leaves, stems, flowers) has different rates of vibration
• Flower of each plant has the highest vibration or highest expression
• The highest vibration of the plant will bring out the highest expression in humans
• Flower essence drops contain the qualities, energy and beauty of the flower they are made from

Annie Meredith has been involved with Flower Essences for nearly 30 years. She has been a practitioner using Traditional Chinese Medicine and flower essences. She is also a lecturer and was touring the world  teaching about the Australian Bush Flower Essences.

Recently she created her own range of essences especially for female problems and issues. They are called the “Spirit of Woman” Australian Wildflower Essences. She has also written a book  entitled “The Essence of Woman”.

 Annie shared lots of valuable and interesting information with us. To listen to the full interview please go here:

Annie is giving away a free e-book called “Flower Power” which contains lots of  information about Flower Essences.  Go here  Spirit of Woman Essences to get your free copy of the book and find out more about these amazing essences.

Till next time

Connie Your Yoga Partner

from

www.yogainahurry.com

Barbara Searles is a talented massage therapist who practices integrative massage – and we were honored to have her as our guest on the Stretch Your Mind and Body Talk Show.  Barbara spoke at length about using massage as therapy instead of remedial work. Unfortunately most of us wait till we are in pain before we seek help and make time for ourselves.

Massage is a wonderful tool that anyone can use to maintain their health and wellbeing – and not just use when things go wrong. Massage is great for nurturing yourself, human touch is soothing and calming, no matter how stressed out you are.

Your body is a finely tuned engine, and it is necessary to keep up the maintenance – so it makes sense to receive regular ’services’ – massage is one way of providing that regular service and looking after your body.  Regular doesn’t have to mean weekly, bi-weekly or monthly either…. it can mean 3 or 4 times a year.  The thing is to make the appointments BEFORE you feel you need the therapy. (more…)

Last week Charly and I interviewed Paige Haines, an energy healer who is based in Brisbane, Australia. You can find Paige at http://www.emergehealing.com.au 

Paige’s specialty is “Reconnective Healing”. She comes from an engineering background and was struggling with a chronic health issue herself. She couldn’t find any relief for 2 years. Then she came across reconnective healing and it held the answer for her.

Since then she has become a healer herself and her passion is helping people who are on the brink of a breakdown, have chronic fatigue, depression, chronic pain or suffer stress and burnout. During the healing session she works with energy and sometimes information that is relevant for the person having the healing comes through and Paige passes it on to the client if they are willing to hear the information.

That brings us to the question: what is reconnective healing? In simple terms it is energy, light and information that comes through. When Paige is working it is coming through her hands and the sensations vary quite a bit. The person having the healing can experience a variety of things or nothing much at all. The effectiveness of the healing is not dependent on how many sensations or experiences the client has. Some of the most profound healing occurs when the session itself was quite uneventful.

I had a session with Paige a couple of days before our interview and it was quite an unusual experience. I had no idea what to expect as I had never healing from a distance or reconnective healing before. I was lying (with my eyes closed) on my back in my lounge room in Sydney and Paige was in Brisbane (about 1000 km away).  I had all sorts of sensations and a few times I was very tempted to open my eyes to check that there was nobody there actually touching me.  I felt very relaxed afterwards and had the most colourful dreams that night.

To listen to the full interview, go here:

Paige also has a free report and audio available on her site: http://www.emergehealing.com.au

Till next time,

Connie

Your Yoga Partner

from

www.yogainahurry.com

Many years ago I did a workshop with Chris where we did chakra toning and spent a whole weekend exploring our voice. I have very fond memories of this weekend. Here is an article he wrote recently:

THE GENTLE VOICE
By Chris James

We ARE all born with beautiful and in–tune voices, and it is possible for us ALL to return to the full expression of this instrument that can express truth and beauty within us.Remember that your body is your instrument. When a wooden musical instrument is first built, tuned, and played, the wood will align and reform within its structure to this ‘in-tune-ness’. Conversely, if the instrument is played out of tune, or not played at all there is no opportunity for harmonious alignment.It is the same with our voices. If we are not expressing our truth, what is the vibration that is aligning our bodies? (more…)