Zoom Zoom Zoom

Well, I thought for a minute I could upload my pictures from Dropbox but when I copy them on to this page they are gigantic and there is no way to make them smaller. So here I am again in the Land of Frustration! I have so many wonderful pictures of Holland- including a whole wall of hang pans that I so want to post. 

Oh well... I have been having many great sound experiences here, mostly of my own making. Shipping this weekend by teaching a two day workshop. It looks like we will have a reasonable turnout for it and I am looking forward to it. I have had two very nice three hour workshops that began and ended with Expressive Art Therapy and had a sound journey in the middle. 

Expressive Art Therapy is a three step process- Access, Release, Transform:

Access an image that expresses the feeling sensation on the body as it responds to a significant event or situation- possibly painful, but not neccessarily.

Release the image through an art form- visual, movement or sound 

Transform the image/experience with a new image that represents a calmer, less stressful response to the situation.

In the workshops I am teaching, the original trigger or challenging situation is released through the Healing Sound Journey which is followed by a visual art piece which represents the transformation of the event. I love the combination. It really feels like sort of a missing link to me. 

I gave someone a session today who had an extremely positive response to one of the workshops and wanted to follow up with a session to help anchor the experience. 

The time is flying by so fast- I can't believe I am leaving in a week and a half. Suddenly three weeks seems like no time at all.

Update From Holland

I have been in Holland for a week now- hard to believe I have less than two weeks left. It felt like I was going to be here for such a long time but now it seems to be flying by!

The days have been very full since I got here.

I wrote that this morning and then spent about 5 hours trying to figure out how I could upload so pictures to my blog. I installed Dropbox but haven't gotten any further than that. I did have a wonderful afternoon, doing a vocal practice from a class I recorded last January in the Bahamas with Siliva Nakkach. Along with it I did an Expressive Art Therapy exercise- basically putting the vocal exercise on a piece of paper and seeing what revealed itself. It was a very enjoyable exercise and I may incorporate some of it into this weekend's workshop.
Let's try this. At least you can see the pics on my Facebook page this way!

Days of Sound Beauty

A very musical day today. The first thing we did was go visit a handpan maker. Yes, that's right- handpan- what we in the states have been calling hang drums. They are not- I repeat, not- called hang drums. (I just found this out today.) And from what our new Rumanian friend, Claudiu says, he is one of the best makers of the pan in the world. He is also in such demand that he has closed out his waiting list. He lives less than 10 minutes from Paul and Jane! Paul and I brought Claudiu over there to pick up his pans that he had left there to be tuned and listened to both of them- a wide assortment of pans tuned to varying beautiful scales and tonalities. It was a wonderful way to start the day.

After we got back to the house Claudiu gave us a short concert and then several of us gathered for a Tensegrity class. After the class I gave a demo to one of the people who was there and then a full session to the person who had taught the class. Later on, Ralf, the hangpan maker, came by to drop off a couple more drums for Claudiu that he had tuned for him and played for us again, After that I gave him a short demo session as well.

I felt like I was immersed in sound pretty much from the minute I woke up today, and that was a good feeling!

Sound Pleasures

Woke up this morning to the sound of the hang drum being played in the next room. How sweet is that? I stood by the door and rather surreptitiously recorded a bit of it!

The first thing I did when I went downstairs was pick up my friend Ine's guitar and play the Devi Stotra.

After breakfast I went out for a walk through the farmland and enjoyed the funny squeaky sounds of the magpies dancing in the fields. I think they've gotten a bad rap. It seems as though I've always heard them spoken or written about in disparaging tones. I suppose they've done something to deserve that but I've only seen their beautiful black and white colours and heard the wonderful sounds they make and so far I have a very good impression of them!

After I got back to the house I went upstairs and listened to a couple of tracks by Jai Uttal on the sound table. That was a really great experience! If you want a really good meditative experience, listen to this track. If you want an even better experience, contact me and have a healing session with it on a vibroacoustic sound table! Even Jai said he really didn't realize all that was going on with this music until I gave him a session on the sound table with it- there are some beautiful low frequencies that you don't really hear when listening but that you feel deeply on a vibroacoustic table.

The house is very quiet- just the sounds of birds, the hum of the refrigerator and off in the distance there are trains- one to Berlin twice a day, and ones from Amsterdam to Soeste and back every ten or fifteen minutes. One tiny little train with only one car goes by, once a day I think- maybe twice? That's the train to Poland!

Sometimes it gets very windy because the land is so flat- there is nothing to slow it down. Other days I've heard the rain beat down on the roof. But today, just the birds, the train and the refrigerator- and the clicking of my keys on the keyboard.

One of the loveliest effects of the hang drum is the simultaneous sound of the fingers tapping on the drum at the same time is it is creating lovely tones and beautiful ringing overtones.

David Crosby Got It Right- Music Is Love

Guest staying at Paul and Jane's plays the hang drum. Got a sweet video of him playing tonight. It's all about music here. Paul loves music- bought a sound table from me 15 years ago. They have a sound healing room set up here. The sound therapist guest was synchronicity- and he happens to know a ton about hang drums and who the best people are to buy them from.

Tonight we watched The Intouchables- what a wonderful brilliant funny movie with the most beautiful soundtrack- music by Ludovico Einaudi, whom I had never heard of until two days ago when Paul was playing his music for me as we drove past fields and fields of tulips.

Speaking of which- it is so frustrating that only my "camera roll" is on here (my iPad) with one photograph. I have no idea why my photo stream is not accessible from my blog. Grrrr....

Well, I can post a great scene from The Intouchables anyway- not music by Einaudi however!

Meanwhile more people are committing to the various workshops I am teaching and several people have expressed an interest in private sound healing sessions- including Claudiu, the sound therapist who is staying here.

Everyone who came yesterday had extremely powerful experiences from the workshop, one of whom really seemed to have gotten a glimpse of "Home". I saw him today and he said the experience was still with him, so he plans to set up a private session. He was totally blissed out when I saw him.  today. The beautiful thing is not only how quickly music can elicit a deep and profound change within us, but how that change can stay with us.

Everyone knows that music is love...

Top Secret

Six people in workshop today that only one had signed up for. All of them had powerful experiences. It was the first time that I combined the Expressive Art Therapy with sound. It was good. (Really... can you tell I'm overtired?)

We had five of us at dinner and then Paul shared this great video with us. Still exhausted so this is it from me today. Amazing though- my days are so full that I was ready to fall asleep and realized I hadn't posted anything yet!

I think it would be fun to contrast this with a video of African drummers- the same level of precision with such a totally contrasting feel to it!

God Is Not Throwing Dice

It was a toss-up between this and "My Body is a Cage." I have had a full day of music and a certain amount of catharsis due to the songs my friend Paul was choosing for me this morning. Three in a row by Peter Gabriel- this one, then "I Grieve" and finally "My Body is a Cage". I finally told him I needed a break and couldn't spend the whole day catharting!

So, after that we did some ordinary mundane stuff, I cooked dinner and tonight I set up instruments for tomorrow's workshop on Expressive Arts Therapy and Sound Healing. I took a picture but sadly can't seem to upload it onto here. I have a friend I met the last time I was here who is also a sound healer and has a nice collection of instruments- some beautiful Himalayan singing bowls, rattles and flutes plus I brought a few bowls and a bunch of tuning forks and a couple of other small things. Paul and Jane have a Freenote they brought from me years ago and some other exotic instruemnts as well.
At the end of the day I had a very nice assortment of instruments that all sound really well together.

(My apologies that I can only post old pictures from this blog right now.)

 After getting all that organized Paul put me on their Somatron sound table, which he and Jane bought from me 15 years ago when they hosted me in Canada, and played "My Body is a Cage". Totally amazing and so nice to have someone give me a mini-treatment on the table. It has been a long time.

Oh, and one more crazy piece of synchronicity- someone called Paul today to make reservation for tomorrow to stay here via Airbnb. It turned out upon talking to him that he is a sound therapist and has a sound healing center in Rumania! He is coming here with his wife and child tomorrow and bringing a bunch of instruments with him! What are the odds that there would be two of us here at the same time? He was as blown away as we were when Paul told him that I was here and said that when these things happen it is clear, as Albert Einstein said, that God is not throwing dice.

That on top of the question Paul and I have been discussing about why I am really here, since no one was signed up for any of the workshops before I got here. Paul has said several times that obviously I am here for a reason- we just don't know what it is yet. Now people are slowly starting to come out of the woodwork!