My Sound Journey

I feel inspired to write this blog today about my personal sound journey as last night I found my gong wings! I facilitated my first SOLO! Group Gong bath. Have had so much help and support along the way and now I have flown the nest. I feel good and now the journey begins as I continue to learn each and every day. Looking forward to Gong master training in Poland in July!

I can't think of anything more beautiful than to literally see the stress lift from someone's face after a gong bath. It is like witnessing magic at work!

Photo taken from the Gong Workshop with Abby delSol, Tom Soltron and Don Conreaux in London May 2015

As a child I have always been mesmerised by sound although was never the musician. Did the usual, had a few piano lessons and a few guitar lessons but never connected with those instruments. As a very young child I even had a few cello lessons with an elderly German man who kicked me out for treading mud in to his home! LOL

If I visited any shop where something would make a sound I had to play with it and hear the sound even now as an adult which I suspect can be quite annoying for others!

My spiritual journey lead me to energy healing where I first trained as a spiritual healer in my local spiritualist church. I resisted this call to heal for so many years as for some reason unbeknown to me I didn’t really like using touch. I have surpassed that feeling although it has not been an easy one and now I am perfectly comfortable in making that connection when I work with healing. To bring sound in to my healing just seems so right and perfectly natural. Like a glove that fits perfectly.

I have always considered myself to have issues with rhythm and beat, always enjoying music but not letting myself go, never the dancer and I had a few lessons with that too!

Apparently as a very young child I was sent to ballet lessons and told the teacher that I thought it was a load of rubbish so she sat me out of the class until my mum came to pick me up! That was my last ballet lesson. I guess you could say I have always had a mind of my own.

Moving on now as an adult in the belief that I have no rhythm I never learnt to play an instrument although I loved the sound of the drum. Attended a djembe drumming circle whilst I was staying at Gaunts House and I gave it a go but never quite got it and still did not feel it! I was also privy to being introduced to the Gong at Gaunts where I had several gong baths which I loved. Never even contemplated that this would be something that I would do in any other capacity than being at the receiving end, still believing that playing an instrument was not me or within my capabilities.

Some years later at a weekend gathering called “rhythm of life” it got me! And you may be wondering why someone who believes they have no rhythm would go to a gathering called rhythm of life! That is another story in itself where I actually won the entrance ticket!  After many gong baths and being surrounded by the rhythm of life! It literally embraced my soul in a way that I could not understand or resist and I knew I had to enter the gong space.

After returning from a second gathering I knew I had to find my teacher. I found a few options including Sheila Whittaker who was holding a weekend intensive workshop in Devon not long after my return! I guess you could call that divine timing! I chose Sheila and found my first amazing teacher and headed off to Devon. The journey began.

I have only recently connected with the frame drum too and feel drawn to explore the shamanic path, something that I have felt drawn to for a long time although stepping back as I believed I needed to be a musician or needed to feel the beat or rhythm and thought that was not me! It’s incredible how we stick with these beliefs and hold ourselves back within them.

Although I never quite got djembe, the frame drum is a different story for me. When I pick up the frame drum, I am the drum and the drum is me. It’s like an old memory is surfacing, a space I have been in before like meeting myself again or resurfacing a part of me that has been long forgotten, dejavu!  Perhaps the sort of feeling one gets when they meet their soulmate or an old friend from a past life? Such a strange yet wonderful feeling and I feel a similar knowingness with the rattle although not quite as strong. I get lost in the drum and feel it’s healing energies so I now am exploring shamanism and have connected with the lovely Anthea who runs a Shamanic group in London.

Now gong is somewhat different, I don’t feel like I have known gong previously like I do drum or perhaps that feeling will come. Feels more like a new friend. One that will be a lifetime friendship and we will work at connecting with one another and our relationship will build from strength to strength. The more we meet, the more we will connect and get to know one another. With very brief moments when we feel as one. This I feel will become stronger and those moments longer.

So now the journey continues and I find myself deep in the world of gong and sound, meeting wonderful and amazing people along the way. Finding myself in situations that come from nowhere such as being involved in organising London events for Tone of Life (Abby delSol and Tom Soltron)  and Don Conreaux! Such an honour! Where did that come from? All such wonderful people, teachers and musicians. It just makes me laugh inside at how my life is flowing, I guess this is the “Rhythm of Life” I have entered the rhythm of life and it is wonderful.

I guess the moral of this story is to not get stuck in negative beliefs and sometimes those beliefs come from others and the box they have decided to put you in! Before we know it, we play up to this and become the box! These beliefs quickly turn in to fear and hold us back. If you want to try something go for it, like you have never embraced it before, like it is completely new to you! You may be pleasantly surprised, I was!