We here at Big Dipper Productions are proud to present Tom Kenyon.
Tom holds a master's degree in psychological counseling with over 15 years of clinical
experience.
He is a registered counselor in the state of Washington and is a certified teacher of
whole brain learning.
Tom often teaches and consults with professionals in a number of fields including psychology,
medicine, education and business.
In 1983 Tom founded Acoustic Brain Research to scientifically document the effects of
sound and music on the human nervous system.
Today ABR is a recognized leader in psychoacoustic research and works with major universities
and independent labs in the scientific exploration of sound healing.
Tom is also the author of Brain States, a critically acclaimed practical guide to the
brain and its unused potentials.
The focus of his work is on the use of sound and language to facilitate altered states
of consciousness whereby one may access the more creative aspects of awareness and intelligence.
Hi, my name is Tom Kenyon and the video you are about to watch consists of two parts.
This first section was recorded in Anchorage, Alaska late summer of 1996 during a series
of workshops and seminars on sound healing and consciousness.
This is a topic that has been of great interest to me for the last 15 years both as a researcher
and as a psychotherapist.
I discovered in psychotherapy that I could greatly accelerate therapy by using sound
as a medium for my clients to reach deeper inside.
Sound has been used for thousands of years to assist man to reach those inner aspects
of consciousness.
I realized that this was a very important modality and in 1983 founded Acoustic Brain
Research to scientifically document the effects of sound, language, and music on consciousness
and behavior.
What you are about to see is an overview and a distillation of this information.
The talk begins with a map that was created in the 1600s.
I think this is a very apt place to begin our exploration because like the early explorers
as we turn our attention inward to those inner spaces we will need reliable maps to explore
deeper and deeper into the mystery that we are.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed exploring the territory.
It is both amusing and elevating at the same time.
Thanks and good viewing.
What you are seeing here is a map from 1605 A.D. that was created by a cartographer by
the name of William Blau.
What is interesting about this map is in terms of the unknown territories.
You can see that Europe is pretty well defined.
The Mediterranean, they understood this area pretty well.
As you start moving out to Asia it gets really bizarre.
There is this giant hump blob that doesn't look anything like it actually looks.
The same thing for North America and South America and they have actually water passage
right through this part of the country, the United States that doesn't really exist.
I believe that we are facing something similar in that we have maps of our reality that are
not really accurate that we have inherited through our culture.
That is part of what my work is about is I see myself as a map maker, a cartographer
of the inner world because the explorers, the real bold ones were able to go out and
explore this territory but the vast numbers of people were afraid to go into this unknown
territory.
In fact in the earlier maps like 1200, 1300 A.D. you will see they have serpents and creatures
and monsters at the edge because their belief was that literally if you went into the unknown
you would be devoured by all types of sea creatures and you might even fall off the
edge of the world.
Maps are what we go by in our life.
We don't really experience the world directly.
We experience things filtered through our perceptions and our beliefs.
Personal growth in one way can be looked at as a process in which we go into life and
change our maps.
If we don't change our maps we don't grow, we don't evolve.
What I want to do is give us a map for exploring the inner territory, what I call the inner
territory of consciousness and then we can step into that unknown territory more easily
and there are many riches there, many things of value and one of the things that we will
be doing is looking at how sound can facilitate this.
Sound is an ancient method for opening the portal to the inner world and science is now
documenting how clearly this occurs and we'll be looking at the scientific information but
I want to, before we begin that process, let's take a look at some ways of viewing experience
and the first map I want to look at is from an explorer of consciousness by the name of
Trojani from Europe.
He's considered the greatest living alchemist by many and he has a wonderfully simple model
that explains the territory very well.
He has two dimensions that he calls the horizontal dimension and the vertical and the horizontal
dimension is what you and I can see, what we can sense with our five senses and the
vertical is our inner experience.
What science concerns itself with is totally and completely the horizontal dimension because
it's about measuring and quantification and it has nothing to say and can say nothing
about the vertical dimension, the inner world because right now in the scientific method
there's no way to talk about this.
There are some movements taking place among thinkers in the sciences of a new paradigm
that will allow us to look at this inner world but right now science deals with the horizontal
dimension only and our culture deals with the horizontal dimension only for the most
part in terms of our cultural values.
The vertical dimension, the inner realms are not acknowledged as important and so we have
people who are achieving, trying to achieve fulfillment and a sense of well-being totally
on the horizontal dimension.
The background of my work is as a psychotherapist.
I've been working in this field for over 15 years and I have been helping people for quite
a while getting through blocks and barriers to their creativity and their well-being and
I've had several people come to me at the height of success meaning they made all the
money you could possibly make so to speak.
They had all the cars, all the houses, all the boats, everything that they could have
and they still were not happy and they could not find happiness on the horizontal dimension
and I guess that's the greatest myth of the American dream is that you will find happiness
on this horizontal dimension and it's clear that we find it in the vertical so we have
to do both.
I don't think that going into the inner world without paying attention to the physical dimension
is where it's at either.
I think it's a balance and as we start looking at the things that occur within our inner
world we'll be looking at the horizontal markers because things change as you enter into that
inner world.
The other thing that's significant about this from my perspective is that you cannot see
the vertical dimension.
You can only experience it but we can all pretty much see and report what we see on
the horizontal dimension.
So let me give you an example of this.
Early on in my psychotherapy practice I had a woman who was referred to me by a physician
who had advanced cancer and had gone into the spine and was very, very painful.
She was in constant pain for several months and no medications they gave her would do
anything to the pain so she was in agony and she came into my office and what I did was
to put on some music that I had composed that has a slow rhythm and sort of takes you inward
and we'll talk about how sound and music does that in a few moments.
So that's playing in the background and I talked to her about what is it, what place
on the planet did she find most relaxing and healing and immediately she said Sedona, Arizona.
So she would go out there often and enjoy this area in Arizona and so what I did was
to simply suggest to her that to close her eyes and go inside and imagine that she was
in Sedona again.
And as she started to go into that experience I said somewhere on the desert floor you'll
find a boulder that has healing energy and I want you to sit on that boulder, that rock
and let that healing energy go up into your spine.
Now if somebody had walked into the room and looked at the horizontal dimension, what they
would have reported, the only thing that was happening was some music was playing, a woman
was sitting in a chair with her eyes closed and some guy, me, was giving her some suggestions
that she was in another place.
But the inner realm, the vertical dimension was very different.
She was literally in Sedona, Arizona, experientially as far as her perception is concerned.
She was literally sitting on a rock that had healing energy and she could feel that energy
coming into her spine.
So after we had done this for a few minutes she opened her eyes just like all of a sudden
and there were tears coming down and she said it's gone and I said what's gone?
She said the pain, the pain was gone.
So she reached into her purse and was patting her eyes and she explained to me what happened
in her experience, the vertical dimension, the inner world was that she had been transported
to Sedona and it was as real as the room she was sitting in and for her the room disappeared
and she was fully and completely present in that area of the country, Sedona, Arizona,
on this healing rock and physically feeling the energy come up into the spine and as it
did the pain subsided and the pain was completely gone when she opened her eyes.
That's the power of the vertical dimension.
From a scientific standpoint all we could do is measure the horizontal but what's very
significant is she had no more pain and we know that there were major biochemical changes
taking place in her body as a result of something that happened on the inner.
So that's what I want to track as we go through this material today is both worlds, the vertical,
the inner and the outer horizontal and mark what happens significantly in the inner world
with what happens with the outer world, specifically our bodies, the physiology and neurology of
the body.
So a second map I want to turn to you that will help with our exploration is from the
physicist by the name of Baum and he's hiding, he does not want to come out of this piece
of paper here, Baum where are you, there he is, okay.
Baum was a very gifted theoretical physicist and he came up with two terms called the explicate
order and the implicate order.
The explicate order is what you and I see with our senses, again the horizontal what
science looks at.
The implicate is what you and I cannot see or experience with our senses but without
it the explicate would not exist.
So it's like I sometimes use the metaphor of a car when you go out to your car and you
get in you don't see the engine, the engine is implicate and another word for implicate
would be less dense.
So I'll swing over here so you can, less dense.
As you go deeper into the implicate order there's less mass.
So you look at your car, it's a pretty heavy thing, you open up the hood and you look at
the engine you're in the implicate order.
If you go into the engine you can see the pistons and the rods and that's less dense
than the engine which is less dense than the car and so you're going deeper into the implicate.
You can finally go down into the gases, the firing oxygen and the gasoline and that's
even less dense so you go deeper and deeper into the engine but you don't see the engine
when you get to the car but if you didn't have the engine you wouldn't go anywhere and
it's the same thing with all levels of creation and what science, specifically quantum physics
is finding is that the implicate level is infinite.
So it relates to our body as well because it's a strange concept but the deeper you
go into your physical body the more space there is until you reach a place in your physical
body where there's infinite space.
So if everybody would take one of your hands and look at it and begin to open and close
it very slowly and as you're doing this you're making something conscious that is normally
unconscious and there's a group of neurons called the sensory motor cortex that goes
from one ear to the next that maps this out and so that part of your brain is probably
more active now just from the action of opening and closing your hand.
Now as you open and close your hand imagine that you have what's called a kinesthetic
hand it's like a ghost image it looks exactly like your physical hand and when you open
your physical hand the kinesthetic hand opens and when you close your physical hand the
kinesthetic hand closes so when you open your hand the kinesthetic hand opens when you
close your hand the kinesthetic hand is closing.
So get a sense of both hands opening and closing, both hands opening and closing at the same
time.
And now this time leave your physical hand open, the palm of the physical hand stays
open but the kinesthetic hand opens and closes.
So the physical hand stays palm open but the kinesthetic hand is opening and closing.
So how many of you are experiencing the sensation of something opening and closing?
And if those of you who are watching the video, if you don't experience it yet, just keep
trying it and it will come through clearly, sometimes we have to train our awareness to
be cognizant of these things because it's very subtle energy.
But if somebody walked into the room and saw us all looking at our palms open it would
be a pretty weird thing to see, for one thing, but the other thing is that the horizontal
or explicate level, they weren't seeing anything.
Is the inner dimension, the vertical dimension, you're experiencing something opening and
closing, a sensation, so that's the implicate level.
So there's actually something occurring there as we go into the implicate level.
So the third and final map we want to look at, which will help us in our exploration
of these inner worlds, is something about mind-body healing.
And sound healing is a very wide area of technology and expertise, it ranges from what you might
call high-tech, meaning the use of specific frequencies to make changes in brain state
and even cellular changes, and we know that we can use certain frequencies to change physical
conditions in the body.
So that, we deliver those with frequency generators and there's a whole high-tech aspect to it.
Then on the other continuum is the intuitive use of sound, which is the use of your voice
and intuition, and that's more like what the shamans used to use in some of the ancient
cultures, and that's an intuitive use of sound, and that's what we're going to be exploring
today, is the intuitive use of sound.
And in that application, it's in a broad category called mind-body healing, so that we're creating
a healing in the body, and sometimes in the emotions, through something that occurs within
the mind.
So that's what mind-body healing is.
And I have observed and other researchers have observed that all mind-body healing is
accompanied by changes in perceived time and space.
This is crucial, so I'll say it again.
All mind-body healing is accompanied by changes in perceived time and space.
So in our culture, we tend to think of time as continuous, but it's not.
What we think of when we think of time in our culture is mechanistic time.
It's a clock ticks it out, one second after another, and that's mechanistic time.
But we have a whole other rhythm of time called biological time or organic time, which is
not mechanistic and is a very different world.
And that sense of time is very fluid and can change.
So have you ever had the experience where you're doing something, you're sitting like
in a lecture and it's so boring that time just crawls by?
Maybe you're not having that experience here, but I'm sure we've all had that experience.
Mechanistic time is continuous.
You know, it's been five minutes is five minutes, but when you're bored, your organic sense
of time, your biological sense of time is very expanded and five minutes can seem like
an excruciating hour.
So time is very fluid.
The research shows that time has a powerful impact on us, meaning perceived time.
A study was done with cardiac patients who had had heart attacks and they were admitted
to the hospital.
And psychologists would go in and administer a battery of tests to find out their perception
of time.
And they could divide cardiac patients into two categories.
Those who their sense of time would be more free, more less anxious, I'm in the hospital,
I'm just going to relax and I'm going to get better and things will take care of themselves
and I'm not going to worry about it.
And then we have the others who are like time is running out, I've got all these things
to do, I can't stay here, I'm losing time by being in the situation.
They could predict mortality based on this.
The ones, the second group, those who were time was running out, literally time was running
out for them because you could predict they would have a second heart attack and it would
most likely be fatal.
Just on perceived time.
So our culture in that regard is not very healthy in that we have all these, we're trying
to catch up.
A lot of us are trying to just catch up with things and we're hurried and hurried.
But it's our perception of time.
Time itself is not the problem.
It's our perception of time.
So the other thing that happens is space and space changes.
Well first of all, how many of you do meditation or relaxation on a regular basis?
Have you had the experience where you're meditating or you're doing progressive relaxation and
all of a sudden time seems sort of floaty?
You can't really tell how long you've been in, right?
It's a pretty common experience in meditation and we'll get to that in a moment neurologically
because something happens to your brain that makes that occur.
But that's a very common experience, that time gets more fluid and floating and that
is again one of the things that happens in mind-body healing.
Another thing that happens is changes in perceived space.
So for those of you who meditate and do relaxation, have you noticed where you'll feel more expanded
or there's somehow more space?
Right, this is also a common experience.
This is also, as a psychotherapist, I have found that this is bound up with emotion as
well.
I, several years ago, was working with a client who was referred to me by her physician because
she was in a deep state of depression and did not want to take medication for it.
So she came to see me and it turned out that her husband had died and for the last several
years, I forget exactly six, seven years of his life, she was his sole caretaker.
So she had molded her entire life around caring for this critically ill term, very long protracted
illness.
So her entire life had been focused on him and all of a sudden he was gone and she didn't
know what to do.
And in talking with her, I basically asked what her interests were and it turned out
she was a gardener.
And so what I did was to put music on again because music and the sound patterns that
would relax the brain, which we'll get into in a moment, and she started to go inward,
I had to close her eyes, and I suggested that she imagine herself gardening.
And I was going to talk to her, and she really wasn't supposed to pay attention to me, she
was just going to be in her fantasy of gardening.
So in terms of Trojani's model, she's in the internal vertical dimension, right, in
another space.
She's not really gardening from our perspective on the horizontal, but from the perspective
of the vertical, yes, she was gardening.
And I just told her a story of how when a plant gets root bound and you take it out
of the pot and you put it into a larger pot, there's a time when the plant is in shock
because there's more space and it doesn't know what to do.
But then it gets comfortable and it starts to send its roots out into the space.
So that's all I told her.
So she comes out, she opens her eyes, and she says, everything's going to be okay.
And her internal experience was when I told her that little story about the pot being
root bound and being in a larger pot, she knew that that was her situation, that her
husband had died and she was in a larger pot.
She didn't have to deal with him anymore.
She was in a larger pot, she was in shock, but everything was okay, and she could feel
herself starting to know what to do.
And that's the power of the deeper self.
And that's what the inner world offers to us.
And sound is a vehicle for doing that.
So the last model I want to look at here is about the sense of space internally.
Because as we start to go inward, there's more and more space.
And the deeper inside we go, the more space opens up.
So we want to understand that clearly so it's not scary.
Because sometimes the people don't know this.
When they start to go in and they sense this expansion of space, it can be a little overwhelming.
But it's really not overwhelming, it doesn't have to be.
It's just part of our being, because part of our being is space.
In fact, quantum physics has said that if you take all the physical matter that makes
up your my body, and put it, take all the space away, and put it in a pile, that pile
of solid matter will fit on the tip of a pin.
The rest of us is space.
So the Cauch snowflake is a mathematical construct that is very helpful to explain how this stuff
works here.
And basically how the Cauch snowflake works is each side, you divide it by half and create
two snowflakes.
I mean two little tiers here.
So you keep doing this, and they keep getting smaller and smaller, of course.
Well at some point, I am not going to be able to draw these.
Because the width of this pin is going to be wider than the width of the actual edge
of the snowflake.
Look, this would go on to infinity, right?
So you can see the principle here.
It just goes on and on and on.
What you have is something that can sit in the palm of your hand like a quarter, but
have infinite circumference.
That's mind boggling.
Something can, at the same time, be finite and yet infinite.
In fact, they've done studies where they will photograph an ocean coast.
You stand and look at a map of the coast, it looks like a curved line, but it's not
really that way.
Because the deeper you go, you have more of these things.
You have pebbles and rocks and sometimes beer cans and all types of things that are on the
coast that have changed the contour.
And when you look at all the contours, it goes into infinity.
So the same thing happens with our body.
The deeper we go in, the more space there is.
And that space gives us tremendous opportunities.
So what I want to look at next is how brain state changes.
In that, sound is an ancient tool for going inward.
Science, all that science is doing in some regards is documenting what has been known
by shamans for thousands and thousands of years.
We are also being able, through science, to be much more precise about how to take people
into these inner realms through sound.
But the knowledge is ancient.
When a mother has a child that's upset, what does she do?
She picks it up, rocks it, and sings.
And she's singing something that's soothing.
She just intuitively knows what will be soothing and it helps the child to calm down.
And so there's something that occurs in the brain, and so this is what occurs.
So brain state, what I'm referring to here is actually the electromagnetic changes in
the brain.
Brain state also includes such things as biochemical changes and hormonal changes.
In fact, in the last few years, it's turned out that hormones play a much larger role
in brain state changes than we thought.
But for our purposes, we can just say the changes as detected by an EEG.
So let's start with the bottom of the rung here, delta.
Most people experience this as sleep.
But some people experience it in another state.
It's called the fourth state of consciousness in which their body is asleep, but their mind
is awake.
That's a very distinct state of consciousness.
In delta, it's 0.5 to 4 hertz, or cycles per second.
And let me explain what that is real briefly here.
Well, I'll do it here.
If you stand on a pier, and you have ocean waves, and here's the pier, and you look out,
you can see that every wave has what's called a peak and a trough.
And so what you do, a cycle is from one peak to the next peak as the waves go through.
Now sound happens to be so fast that we have to do it in cycles per second, whereas on
the ocean, you would probably do cycles per minute.
And all sine waves have this characteristic, and sound, most natural sound, is a sine wave.
So delta is a very slow pattern, 0.5 to 4 hertz, or cycles per second.
The two are interchangeable.
And as I said, most people experience this as sleep is a deep state of inner awareness.
And if the nervous system is developed enough, that inner awareness is experienced as stillness
and full awareness.
And if the nervous system is not developed enough, what will happen is the person will
go unconscious and into sleep.
Then the next state is theta, and theta is an inward-directed state of awareness, meaning
that what happens in theta activity is experienced as real.
The inner reality becomes experienced as real.
Has anyone ever awakened from a dream, startled to find that you were not on the top of the
Swiss Alps, but you were in your bedroom?
Something like that?
Right.
So theta, what happens in your subjective experience, is experienced as very real.
And that's why it's a very powerful state for mind-body healing.
As the brain becomes more active, it moves into something called alpha, which is 8 to
12 hertz, or cycles per second.
And alpha is a mid-state, meaning that you are aware of the external environment, but
you are also relaxed.
And that's why it's used in biofeedback and stress management and accelerated learning,
because you're relaxed, there's not a lot of tension, but you're also able to pay attention
to the external world.
So I call the alpha-theta zone the magic window, because this is where transformational experiences
occur very often.
Then we have beta activity, our normal waking state, and then we move into something called
high-beta, which are really hyper-alert, probably on battlefields, things like that.
And K-complex is an interesting domain of brain frequency.
It seems to be the aha experience, when you're struggling with something, can't get it, can't
get it, and then all of a sudden eureka, the light bulb goes off, the brain peaks up to
keep K-complex and then drops back down shortly afterwards.
And then this whole new realm, I'll put a question mark, because it's so new, we didn't
even know it existed until recently, super-high-beta above 35 Hertz, and it goes up to 150.
And it's so new, we don't know what all the parameters are, but some of the anecdotal
reports from researchers indicate that people have things like out-of-body experiences,
powerful Kundalini experiences, which is Kundalini energy in Western terms, it's an electromagnetic
energy that runs up the spine and into the brain and opens up different energies.
And so people can have experiences like that in this higher range.
For entering the domain of what I call inner healing, this is the place where the action
is, the alpha and theta.
And so what we want to do is explore how this occurs, and what I want to do is play for
you a sample of frequencies to change your perception.
This is called entrainment, and what you'll hear are pure frequencies, and I'm not going
to pre-program you as to what happens.
After we go through it, I'll tell you what the frequencies were.
All I want you to do is to calibrate yourself, paying attention to how alert you are, how
relaxed you are, your muscle tension, respiration.
And then we'll play the tape, and it takes about two minutes to go through all these
ramps.
And just notice what happens, and then we'll talk about what happened.
So either close your eyes or stare at a point, and just notice what happens here.
And then we'll play the tape, and then we'll play the tape, and then we'll play the tape,
and then we'll play the tape, and then we'll play the tape, and then we'll play the tape,
and then we'll play the tape, and then we'll play the tape, and then we'll play the tape.
How many experienced a decrease of muscle tension at some point, a decrease in respiration,
more relaxed?
How many people felt floaty, spacey?
So this is what happened and then we came back up.
I started out at 13 hertz near mid-delta, beta, basically a waking state.
And then we moved down into, through alpha, down to 7 hertz in the theta range.
And then we went down to, down to 4 hertz, and then down to 1 hertz, bottom, almost near
the bottom threshold of delta.
And we hung out there a little bit.
What was that like being down there, pleasant?
Some people actually, most people experience it as relaxing as you move downward.
Some people do get irritated as they start to move downward.
And the research anecdotally at least indicates that they have, it's about suppressed emotion.
As you relax and let go of tension, where we're holding suppressed emotion tends to
like get agitated or focused.
So sometimes that happens.
But generally most people will experience going downward as more relaxing.
And then when you went back, we basically ramped back up.
We ended at 10 hertz, mid-alpha frequency.
So what was it like coming back up?
Yeah?
Oh yeah, right.
Back up to here.
No, Mr. Bell, don't make me go up there.
So the entrainment, the research on entrainment frequencies, and that's what this is, indicates
that when you pulse a sound at a given frequency, there's a tendency for the person to go towards
that window.
But they don't necessarily go directly to that point.
Like the mid-alpha frequency, 10 hertz, some of you may have had more mid-alpha frequency,
but some of you might have been at 12, some of you might have been hovering at 8.
So it changes.
And then this next thing I want to show you, and then we're going to get into the actual
experience of sound, well, before I show you that, let's talk about the relationship between
the body, the brain, and the mind.
We're one interconnected system.
So you notice what we were doing was playing a sound frequency to you, which changed your
brain state.
And as that changed, your respiration changed.
How many of you noticed the decrease in your calmer breathing?
You may not have been aware of your heart rate, but if your respiration starts to relax,
your heart rate also slows.
How many experience a decrease in muscle tension in those lower frequencies, right?
So there's a decrease in muscle tension.
And then awareness changes.
And how many people felt floaty, peaceful, spacey?
These are characteristics of going into that alpha theta and down into delta range.
So this is a loop.
And you can basically affect any of these along the way.
You can change brain state through changing your breathing pattern.
That's what pranayama does, an ancient system of breath control from India.
You can change it by focusing on the heart rate and slowing that down.
You can go to a good massage therapist, and when they work on you and relax those muscles,
everything changes as well.
And so there's a change in awareness in all these other parameters.
So the basic point is that we're one interconnected system.
We're not just a body, we're not just a brain or a mind, we're a complete composite of these
areas.
So the next thing I want to talk about, which is very important, is this is called a neuromap
here.
And what a neuromap is a recent technology that measures EEG activity and shows where
in the brain it's located.
And the way a neuromap is constructed is that you wear like a speedo swimming cap, and they
have little electrodes in it.
And it goes to a computer, and the computer knows where these electrodes are and then
gives a readout of the frequencies in that area.
And the reason I'm talking about this in this talk is that there is a misconception running
around in personal growth circles that is very misleading, and I want to address that.
And that is that if you ever hear someone, and that's a plane flying over.
That's a nice sound, actually.
Must be a Boeing.
So what happens with, in personal growth circles, they'll say you just entered alpha, or you
just went into theta.
That's very simplistic, because the brain never goes into one frequency.
It goes into many frequencies simultaneously.
So what the neuromap is showing is that over here is the theta range.
This is the alpha range, and this is the beta range.
And the white is the maximum activity for each of these.
And as you go down, the darker colors basically are the least activity.
And so you can see that we have here in the theta zone, there's a lot happening.
There are a lot of frequencies going on simultaneously.
This was from a tape called 24 Minute Nap that I developed.
What's interesting is, see that little white spot right there on the far your left?
That happens to correspond to a point in EEG mapping that corresponds to the crown chakra.
And so you're seeing maximum theta activity at the crown chakra.
And you'll see this a lot in mind-body healing, that the crown chakra shows maximum activity
in theta range when a person goes into a healing experience.
So there's some real interesting things that this shows us.
But what I wanted to show also is that even when this person is having an activity going
at the crown center that's very powerful, there's also, over here, activity in other
frequency ranges, including beta, so that we're a mixture, we're a composite.
The brain is pulsing in at all these different frequencies in different areas.
And the way science determines if you have more alpha activity is they do a statistical
average of all these points.
And you'll get a print out, and it will say alpha activity, say, 45 percent, theta activity,
15 percent, and so on.
And then you could say you have more alpha, but you can never say, from a scientific standpoint,
you have entered alpha, because the brain never enters alpha.
It's too complex.
Which is why sometimes people have experiences where they'll go into a deep inner state that's
very powerful, and then all of a sudden their foot starts itching.
And they get pissed off.
I never have an experience.
I always feel like I see light and angels and all happens to me as my foot goes to sleep.
And your brain is doing what it needs to do, because the brain scans for survival first.
That's the primary important thing that it's looking for.
So the brain is saying, what if a woolly mammoth comes in here?
We'd better be able to run.
So you're off in La La Land, the inner vertical dimension.
The brain has lost touch with where your body is, where your feet are, and it goes, help!
Where are the feet?
Oh, they're down there.
So when you're experiencing an inner experience, don't feel like, because you don't have a
total and complete experience, that you failed.
Because the brain is doing what it's doing.
We can, you can at one moment be in a deep experience, the next be fully aware of your
body, make an adjustment in your body, and then go back into the experience.
So I just wanted to clarify this point, because in personal growth circles, it really is misinformation
to say that you have entered a certain brain state, when actually we're entering many brain
states simultaneously.
So we're moving close to actually having experience with sound, which is really the focus of what
we're doing here.
But I want to make a couple more points.
One is, this is like the EEG laid out, moving from beta, waking state, alpha, the relaxed
awareness where you're aware of the external, but you're also relaxed internally.
Moving into theta, where the external reality fades and you are completely internally oriented
to the deepest state of stillness, which may or may not be experienced as sleep, depending
on your state of the nervous system.
It's generally speaking, it's been observed that as a person moves towards these lower
brain frequencies, heart rate goes down, respiration goes down, and muscle tension decreases.
That is why entering these lower brain states has tremendous health benefits.
And we could spend the entire time talking about the research that has indicated that
meditation and relaxation have immense benefits around stress and psychoneuroimmunology, or
the body's ability to self-heal.
Because as heart rate, respiration, muscle tension go down, the body can recoup its energies.
So basically, if you're living hyped up, up here agitated, running too fast, too long,
your body cannot recoup its energies.
And by periodically entering these lower brain states, you have tremendous health benefits.
So the last piece of the map, before we go into the territory together, concerns a part
of the brain called the RAS.
And what I want us to understand about this is that we receive sound through the most
primitive part of the brain.
And then it moves.
It affects other more recently developed aspects.
The RAS stands for a real long word, reticular activating system.
So that's why we use RAS.
It starts down here in the medulla oblongata, and it's a neural pathway that basically scans
for novelty, changes in patterns.
The brain is a pattern perceiver.
What the RAS does is to scan for new patterns.
Because if suddenly something moves over here, the RAS alerts the entire brain and brings
it up to a higher state, a higher brain state.
Because why?
You might have to move.
It might be a predator.
But if nothing's happening around, there's no changes.
Or if the changes are constant and there's no alteration in the patterning, the RAS basically
says to the rest of the brain, OK, you can calm down now.
And the brain sort of calms down.
So we do this turn on, turn off routine, and it comes to the RAS.
So sound, it was discovered by, we don't know who discovered it.
It was a long time ago in prehistory, where the shamans discovered that they could alter
perception using sound, using rhythm.
And basically, rhythm is one of the methods for doing this.
And now we can explain neurologically what's happening.
But back then, there was no understanding of electronics and neurology, but they'd had
a deeper or different understanding of this whole phenomenon.
And they developed a very exquisite technology for guiding people inward.
Research that has been done on shamanic drumming shows that when you do a shamanic drumming
pattern, there is an increase of theta activity that's been fully documented.
So the shamans knew what they were doing from that standpoint, from awareness.
So what I'm going to do in a moment is play something that I call Peruvian dream music,
which involves the shamanic drum.
And how this came about was, in doing workshops, I would sometimes notice that participants
were getting agitated and just from sitting for so long.
So in addition to moving, I would sometimes sing them this shamanic dream song.
And it takes you into a different brain state.
It takes you into the inner realm.
And that's what we'll be doing.
So one last little bit of information here about the RES concerns one of my favorite
stories in psychoacoustics, which is the study of sound, language, and music and how it affects
the brain, concerns premature infants.
And at a hospital in New York, a group of premature infants was played Brahms lullaby,
the stringed version.
And then another group in the same hospital were not played this music.
The Brahms babies, is what they were called by the nurses, turned out to gain weight faster,
have fewer complications, and got out of the hospital average of a week earlier than those
babies who did not listen to Brahms.
So this is pretty amazing.
And what's happening is it's through the RES mechanism, the rhythmicity of the lullaby
effect to the brain and decreased the stress hormones and so forth.
All these other things are going on, but it was the timbre, the tone, and the rhythm.
So what we're going to do then is move into the shamanic drumming.
And I'll start out with just the drum beat.
And then we'll do the lullaby.
And so what you would do is disclose your eyes or stare at a point.
Some people paradoxically go deeper inside if they stare at something.
So whatever works for you.
And focus on your breath as you have your eyes closed or staring at a point.
And begin to breathe in long, slow inhales and long, slow exhales.
Maybe you can just do two breaths here.
Thank you.
Ooh.
Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
Ooh.
Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
Ooh.
Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
Ooh.
Become aware of your breath, and when you feel ready, just slowly open your eyes.
So I often do a longer version of that, but for time's sake we did a shorter version.
But how many of you felt floaty at different times, right?
So you can imagine that going on for a long time where we would go.
So that ancient method of toning using the voice and shamanic drumming is a very good portal for entering that inner world.
The next thing I want to do is another method of using sound which involves the quartz crystal bowl and the voice.
And so that you'll know what we'll be doing, I'll be chanting what's called the chant of the archangels at first.
And then we'll be going into the chant of Chenreze, which is a Tibetan chant for the Buddha of Compassion.
And the prayer is that that compassion will go out through the world, compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for each other.
And then the final thing will be the heart meditation.
So as I mentioned actually before the video actually started out of UCLA and the work of Dr. Valerie Hunt,
we now know that the chakras are a scientific reality.
They've been measured and quantified. They emit light and emit color and sound.
And when you focus on a chakra, it is a vortex, and you can enter through that vortex into the inner world.
So what I'm going to suggest that we do as I work with the crystal bowl is that you put your attention on the heart center,
at the center of the chest, and that you keep your focus there throughout the sounds.
And you can just listen to the sounds and receive them that way.
And if you wish, when the heart center opens, you can go into that space with your awareness and enter an inner world through that.
And we'll be completing this video with that heart meditation.
And those of you who are actually listening or watching this video may wish to just sit in silence for a few minutes afterwards.
And those in the studio will take a few minutes of silence afterwards as well.
So make yourself comfortable.
So close the eyes or stare at a point.
So close the eyes.
So close the eyes or stare at a point.
So close the eyes.
So close the eyes or stare at a point.
And awareness at the heart.
So close the eyes or stare at a point.
So close the eyes.
Namaste.
This portion of the video is an inner journey.
One which we will be taking together using sound and visual images from around the world.
Some of these images are quite compelling.
There are several ways to watch this video.
If you're viewing it with other people, I would suggest that you ask everyone to be quiet until after it's completed.
Also, make sure you won't be disturbed for about 16 minutes.
You'll want to sit comfortably and focus on your breathing as you go through this experience.
Allow yourself to merge into the images as if you are actually there and feel the sounds entering you.
Merge with the sounds and the images.
This will allow you to access a deeper level of your consciousness.
You will also find yourself perhaps entering two worlds, one in which you are aware of yourself sitting watching the television
and another world where the images are guiding you into another level of awareness
and the sounds are opening up feelings and perceptions.
Except for a few percussive sounds and this harmonic drum,
the only sounds you will be hearing are those that I have produced with my own voice.
I will be using a method called toning, which I demonstrated earlier in the video.
In this particular section, I will be using something I call Peruvian dream music
to access deeper levels of awareness and consciousness.
I have chosen this for a reason.
This portion of the video is actually a calling and a prayer
to all of us to awaken to the sacredness of life and the interconnectedness of all things
and to the beauty and the majesty of Earth itself as a conscious living being.
As you move into this experience, allow yourself to realize that you are in control of this experience.
You will decide how deeply inside you go.
You can use this as a means to enter very deep places within yourself.
And if you choose, you can also simply view it as an interesting form of entertainment.
The choice is yours.
Enjoy yourself, have a good time, and have a good journey.
Thank you.
Amen.
You are, you are, you are
You are, you are
You are
I shall fear no evil
The rock and the stone
Will come for thee