Creating Space with Sound

Hello, everybody. My name is Jean Mitchells. I am excited to be here with you today and share a little bit of something that helps me to relax and reset. I am one of many things, and the one thing that I'm sharing with you today is that I am a sound certified sound therapist. So I work with crystal bowls similar to these. I work with a lot of different tools and instruments to help people relax and reset. Working with sound and sound therapy or sound bath meditations are designed to work with your brain to help your brain relax.

Science wise, it helps your brain to rewire, create new neurons so that you can deal with anxiety and stress in a more calm manner. It works oftentimes with people that have Parkinson's disease. I've worked with patients that have cancer going through chemotherapy as a way to help them to relax their bodies and relax their minds. When you think about sound therapy or you think about meditation, only meditation isn't the absence of thought. It truly is about how much space can we create between each thought.

So oftentimes we'll go into a thought spiral. So that could be something as simple as, I have to go to the grocery store today, and when you say that to yourself, your next thought might be, and the dry cleaner and I have to get dog food for the dog, or insert whatever else might be on your long, busy list for the day. So what I try to do is think about every thought for simply what it is. It's energy. Energy that can be measured. You can go into an mrI tube. You can get the energy of your brain measured with each thought that you have.

And with each thought, you have an opportunity to spiral with it or an opportunity to recognize for what it is and then let it go. Easier sometimes said, than done. So when I'm having a day, having a moment, I will find time, even if it's five or ten minutes, to make a sound bath using different tools and bowls. So I have some sound bowls of varying sizes and shapes. I have sets that I use for large group sound baths. But I've discovered a fascination with a hand pan, which is the instrument that you see here.

And why I find it fascinating is there's really no right or wrong. It's really, for me, about playing. Now, some of you that have music backgrounds might wonder if there are notes and sounds and how you can play in combinations. And the answer is yes, you always have a grounding sound, which is sound that you can come back to. But what I love about sound, and what I love about a hand pan specifically, is I can focus only on this, and my thoughts are going to take a pause. They're going to take a breath.

I might get in my head about, did I do it right or wrong? Because we're human and we always feel like we need to do things better or more correct or more right. And when I sit down with the ham pan and I'm not great, I have a long way to go on my journey of learning. I find that I can zone out and I can zone in only to this, and I can just try to do something new, try to create. Am I going to go on tour with my hand pan? Not anytime soon. But I will use it in a sound bath because the simple sound will help people to relax.

It will allow your breath to connect, it allow you to breathe and allow you to let your brain go to a space that maybe it hadn't gone for a week or a day or a month, which is a space of nothingness and the space of everything at the same time. So I'm just going to simply play a little bit and have you listen. This works best if you have earphones in versus listening on a computer or listening on your phone without a headset. You'll hear the sound a little better and it allows you to focus in more.

So I'm going to invite you to take a breath. Three count in, exhale out, eyes open, eyes closed. Take a long, slow breath in. Simply exhale. Let it go. Go. And I'd love to hear from you how you felt, how you felt in your body, what you experienced in your breath, what you experienced in your mind. There are many sounds that we can use in the sound bath meditation. I will bring in different sounds with different videos to see how you respond, see what you resonate with. But the most important part about taking time for you is allowing your brain to take a pause.

So what works for you might not work for a friend, a partner, a colleague. But finding that thing for you that allows you to breathe, create space in between your thoughts, and come back to home state is really all we can ask for in a given day. So as I walk past the hand pan that sits in my living room, sometimes it's at the right height where my dog's tail will smack it when he's excited, feeling that energy, feeling that vibration just instantaneously helps me to find a calm. So I hope you enjoyed my little song for you that I probably would never be able to recreate again.

But I'm excited to explore this journey with you. Of meditation, of sound, of finding some time for you allowing your brain to relax once again. My name is Jean Mitchells. I'm here on Sundays for me time. I am here on Mondays for professional development and I'll be popping in with some videos and bringing you more stones. So I hope you have a great day. Please let me know in the comments what resonated for.