The sounds around us can be harmful – or helpful – to our mental, emotional, and physical health. Loud noises such as sirens and heavy daily traffic can trigger the brain’s threat response, and this can damage our well-being in the short and long term. Yet when we mindfully choose to bring soothing sounds into our lives, the benefits can be tremendous. Whether you enjoy the gentle flow of a song melody, the sounds of nature, or a singing bowl, the healing power of sound awaits you. Today, I’m joined by a renowned pioneer in the world of sound and music medicine, Professor Jeralyn Glass, for a soothing journey into the healing power of sound.

Topics discussed include sound, healing, music, hearing, television, TV, news, social media, crystals, alchemy, singing bowls, ancient healing practices, meditation, cancer, stress, threat response, cortisol, medical doctors, science, frequencies, chakras, yoga, primordial sound, energy, sacred spaces, anxiety, stress response, music, relationships, communication, and sound bathing.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). Additional informational is in the show notes.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert is offering medical or psychological direction or advice; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

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Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

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Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend 

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

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Connect with Prof. Jeralyn Glass:

Website:  https://www.crystalcadence.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crystalcadencela/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crystalcadencela/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeqJQkuTKj6u8ZiUAFGVC3w

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Heal Your Body, Mind, and Spirit with the Power of Sound

Using the Power of Sound to Heal Your Body, Mind, and Spirit

The sounds around us can be harmful or helpful to our mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Loud sounds such as sirens and heavy daily traffic can trigger the brain’s threat response, which can damage our well-being in the short-term and long-term. Yet, when we mindfully choose to bring soothing sounds into our lives, the benefits can be tremendous. Whether you enjoy the gentle flow of a song, melody, sounds of nature, or a singing bowl, the healing power of sound awaits you.

In this episode, I’m joined by a renowned pioneer in the world of sound and music medicine. Stay tuned, we’ll focus on this real-life question. “My husband constantly listens to the TV with the volume way up. He watches endless news programs and shows that feel disturbing to me. They’re loud and often violent. I’ve tried to get him to use headphones, but he says they ruin his experience. I try to get him to understand that the volume, noise and negativity are affecting my health. He says it’s nonsense that I’m just too sensitive. What do you think?” That issue is the focus of this episode. Please note as this episode may contain sensitive information, reader’s discretion is advised. If you need any information on this topic, please see the links.

I am joined by a tremendous special guest, Professor Jeralyn Glass, who is a Sound and Music Medicine Pioneer, and the author of the wonderful book, Sacred Vibrations. Professor Glass will be sharing her experience on the healing power of sound. Welcome to the show, Professor Glass. It is such a joy to have you with us.

Thank you, Dr. Carla. I’m just delighted to be here.

Appreciating Ourselves As Our Own Unique Human Instrument

Thank you for joining us. Before we launch into this wonderful topic, can you tell our readers just a little bit about what makes you, you?

In terms of sound and music medicine, I like to talk about each of us being our own unique human instrument. Perhaps, Dr. Carla, you are the flute and perhaps in this case, I’m the cello. Each of us does have our own unique vibrational frequency, our own unique vibrational signature. What makes me unique? I’ve been in music since I was four years old, and music has been the passion of my life.

I started singing lessons when I was eleven. I think music has guided everything I’ve done in my life and the passion for sound and how music connects us heart to heart. I think that that’s something that’s very unusual about it and that it’s really the language of humanity. That’s certainly one thing that makes me a little different than others.

Thank you. It’s so you, clearly. Professor Glass is in her teaching studio and behind her are an array of gorgeous crystal singing bowls. What magic. I want to pop in and somehow touch all of them and hear them go make their wonderful noise. I don’t even know. It’s not a clang, it’s not a bing. Do you mind taking a minute and just playing that sound so that our readers can into the session with us and get a sense of how beautiful that singing bowl magic can be? Here we go.

This is just magical.

That’s a little sample. It’s in the key of C major and it would correspond to the chakra system.

While you’re coming back to your seat, C major, I wouldn’t have known, but thank you. As I was sitting, even though I’m a pretty calm and even-tempered person, I could feel as you played some of the notes, my body was just going into a calmer state. Especially the third and fourth one, I don’t know what it was about those particular singing bowls, but something in them felt really extra good to my spirit, to my energy. Why would that be?

The third note I played was a C note, the fourth note I played was an F note, and the fifth note I played was a G note. C is a very grounding sound and perhaps that just felt very good in your body. There’s so much to say about it, but I’m going to say that when one hears the sounds of the crystal alchemy singing bowls, it’s like your mind goes. Plus, if you can see them visually, you go, “Those are so beautiful,” just like you said.

What happens is that the sound is so pristine and so pure that your mind stills in that moment. Your mind comes to a pristine focus and suddenly, you say you feel deeply relaxed and you feel very calm. Partly it’s because the mind is not thinking. You’re allowing the music to activate you at the very cellular level. To go along with it, what I played for you has to do with the structure of music, with the music theory. I played a very particular structure that helps to create a safe container that one can really deeply let go and relax.

How Singing Bowls Are Crafted And Designed

I felt it instantly. I’m sometimes a little circumspect about things. I know at the beginning of a yoga class, I don’t tend to do it, but often the instructor will hit the note of the singing bowl and bring us into the present. There’s something very unique here, something very pure. I’m fascinated. I have another question for you. I’m a little off topic here because I know we have our question to get to, but I’m curious, do you make your singing bowls?

I don’t make them. They’re made by Crystal Tones, which is in Utah. I have a big studio here. I personally curate sets for people. I personally curate exactly what you said. I really like the third and the fourth note. We talk about why you did and what that means and there are so many aspects. What is the alchemy? These bowls are infused with precious metals, precious gemstones like amethyst or ruby, emerald, substances of the earth like charcoal or frankincense. As I said, metals like gold or silver and then minerals of the earth like of vanadium.

Those substances get infused in the bowls and fired at higher temperatures, so they’re called alchemy singing bowls. I love to curate. There are over 600 bowls here in my studio and I love to curate individually what feels good to you because in music as medicine, it’s not a one size fits all. You might like to listen to Beethoven and somebody else might like listen to Ella Fitzgerald and jazz. Somebody else might like to listen to Pharrell’s Happy. Music is a very personal choice, what inspires you, what you love to listen to. It’s the same with the bowls.

It’s so interesting that you are saying that because I know ages ago, I had my own eclectic taste. I didn’t even realize what my taste was. Somebody that I was talking to once said, “You like blokes with guitars.” I said, “That’s what I listened to.” I listen to tends to be the male voice and they’re playing soft guitar sounds and tends not to be a lot going on in the background or not too much, but mainly just the male voice and guitar. I thought, “What an astute observation. I had never made it myself.” Of course, I listen to things beyond that, but I do notice that music that is appealing to me has a lack of a sense of cacophony.

Does that mean like James Taylor or Cat Stevens or what? What does that mean for you?

Exactly. James Taylor, Cat Stevens, a lot of John Hiatt’s music, Jack Johnson’s music. Yes, that’s my taste.

Okay, so bloke with a guitar. It’s not necessarily about a particular key or about a particular poetic verse or whatever it feels like. It’s more about just that gentle strumming of the guitar and of course, whoever the artist is. They have their own vibrational signature. They have their own unique energy that emanates through their sound that appeals to you. Feels good on your nervous system.

Creating An Environment To Deal With External Noise

Absolutely. I’ll use myself as a guinea pig. There are certainly sounds, and I really identified with this question where I remember growing up and my dad would have the news on super loud and he’d listen to his stations. I’m very sensitive to noise. Fingernails on a chalkboard kind of thing to certain sounds. Sound is very important to me. If I’m working, writing, I can’t have sound in the background, not even gentle music, because I’m that susceptible to it.

I would imagine nowadays where it’s so busy, often, we’re coming from a place of having so much going on internally and externally. When we add in the factor of noise, it’s a big stressor. What would you say when it comes to how to create an environment that is almost the antidote, now we’re at the question, the antidote to that external energy, that noise? It’s sound, but to certain people, it becomes noise.

There’s an energy in that noise. That noise can feel aggressive, frightening and it’s threatening in some way. If you’re in a relationship with someone, you want to have them respect that. You want to have them feel like, “I hear you, I hear that’s uncomfortable for you. I can’t do it with headphones,” but perhaps for the two hours that I’m watching television, perhaps the partner can go into another room and she can put headphones on and she can listen to music that she loves.

It’s the energy of what one feels through sound that can be very debilitating for people. I know I’ve experienced that same thing. It’s like I need to get away from those sounds. They’re very aggressive. It’s not that your system is too sensitive, you feel sound. One of my dear friends is a great five-time Grammy award-winning musician, Victor Wooten. He talks about, we don’t always only hear sound with our ears.

Every single part of us, our eyes hear sounds, all our organs hear sounds. It’s not just, “I’m going to just put my ear headphones on and just block my ears.” It’s not about that. Especially if you are a sensitive person, which many of us are, then sound has an effect on you. This whole topic now of music is medicine. Sound is very powerful, Dr. Carla, as you know.

Professor Glass, I have never heard what you just said and I want to repeat it because it’s so big that we don’t just hear sounds with our ears. I never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. I was doing my morning run hike and a tractor went by and there was a piece of pavement and there was something clattery really loud about that type of tractor. It had treads on. I remember thinking, “I need to stop because this is disturbing my piece in this place right here, right now.”

It didn’t feel as though that noise was entering far more than just my ears. It was entering my system. It was my very cells. The way that you said that we hear, which is why your book is Sacred Vibrations. I now just got that on a deeper level. We can have sacred vibrations and we can have what I experienced, which is the antithesis of a sacred vibration.

Think about when you’re listening to music or when someone even says something and you get goosebumps. What’s that about? It’s not that you heard that piece of music that reminded you of this just through your ears, your whole body is reacting to it. Think about music where music, you’re listening, you’re feeling the music. You’re not just hearing it, you’re feeling it and you want to start to dance. The music makes you want to move your body. It’s not just happening in your ears.

You are so right. That’s why when you feel moved to dance, you feel moved because your ears are picking it up. This is so fun and so wonderful. We can imagine, looking back at the question, so they’re taking in this sound. Their partner is listening to news, we don’t know what their political orientation is, if they’re the same, whatever the news is, disturbing what the content is. It also sounds like they’re getting some of the visuals of it.

Even if they weren’t completely in the other room, the idea that this is actually affecting their body on a cellular level. I really appreciate the part where you said maybe this person can put on headphones and go into another room. I do have to say, I have encountered this very issue across different genders, but with couples who say, “This person can listen at this level and I can’t. We each want the other one to be the one to put headphones on,” because neither person wants to put on the headphones.

That creates a completely different energy because some people don’t like that feeling of sound canceling headphones. It feels like, “You are the one causing this. You’re the one bringing this “negative energy” into the home. Why should I be the one who has to put on the noise canceling headphones?” It then becomes a relationship issue.

Yes, and communication. When you listen to some of the things that the person described on TV, there’s an energy that comes through those sounds or there’s an energy in people’s voices. Even if they’re just talking about the news and they don’t show video or something, there’s an energy of fear. There’s an energy in our culture right now, very intensely, of fight or flight. “If I don’t do this, I’m going to be harmed,” or this agitates them.

Something in that moment, you’re producing cortisol, your breathing gets more shallow, you get frightened. It can simply be from the tone of somebody’s voice. If someone is yelling or someone is in a panic, that will affect you. If you don’t have a bigger space where one can go into another room and you both don’t want to wear noise-canceling headphones, that’s a discussion. As you said, that’s a communication and relationship. How loving can I be with my partner?

If you’re in a partnership with someone, it’s not just about, “I’m taking my space and I’m going to do what I want because that feels good to me.” Sound is a powerful sense, Dr. Carla. It’s a powerful sense. It’s not just music we’re talking about, and not just about healing frequencies, but sound and energy in general. Will you respond to those?

Absolutely. As you are painting that picture and you’re talking about the activated threat response, when we sense that there’s something that’s not good for us, this fear, these images, the tone that come through TV shows, many movies, we don’t realize it because sometimes we get engrossed in it, I know the news, they want you to be engrossed. They don’t want to talk about feel-good messages because people don’t watch that. People get really captivated by the scary stuff.

What’s happening to our culture, as you said, we’re living in this climate of fear. We’re living in this climate of chronic anxiety. We’re feeling threatened at every turn by something, by an actual threat or a perceived threat, or a potential threat. We wonder why our blood pressure is high. Why is our blood sugar high? Why is our heart rate high? Why is our anxiety through the roof? It is all of these things that are affecting us often unconsciously.

As you’re saying, sometimes it’s just the noise. When people are talking to me in a session about, “I can really feel my anxiety rising,” I slow down with them and I say, “Tell me about the rhythm of your day. Are you waking up to general sounds? First song I hear every morning, Louis Armstrong, “What A Wonderful World.” I play it every morning. I do my blessings, I do my gratitudes. That is the opening to my day. I make sure that I’m setting the tone for my day in that way. Before that, it’s pretty much silent.

As I’m going to bed, my husband and I have an agreement that electronic devices and news and all that, because I’m not a news person at all. I get my news just through the written word because it’s so much flatter. It’s not as stimulating. You don’t have the images, you don’t have the sounds. I’ll listen to a podcast where, again, very neutral tone to get my news. I do it in moderation.

I’m setting up my day to be as peaceful as possible and staying informed. When we don’t subject ourselves, and I mean this seriously, when I say subject ourselves to social media, YouTube, news, all of those things later at night, then our brain can wind down. We cut ourselves off at 6:00 and because we have a bedtime at 9:00 or 10:00 or 7:00, if bedtime’s 10:00, to give your system 2 to 3 hours to start winding down, calming down, listening to the music that is in your breath, that’s in the air, that’s in conversation, that is in a singing bowl.

How Singing Bowls Are Played To Achieve Healing

I just want to lead into this piece about singing bowls because I have no idea. I will look for some research for people who are interested because we know the power of sound. The power of sound in healing, in forest bathing and being in nature. Think about going to the ocean, where you’re washed in the sounds of nature. I have a device for my office that plays like an ocean sound when somebody is waiting or whatever. People always say, “Where did you get that? That sounds so good. It sounds so delicious,” because it’s very calming. We now have apps for that.

There’s nothing like a singing ball. Can you talk about how someone might use that and maybe this individual who wrote in, but all of our readers, to create a more fluid routine where you can get these doses because actually, you know what I’m hungry for right now? I’m hungry for you to play your sounds again, because that was so lovely. I was like, “When is she going to play them again?” I can imagine that there’s a bit of not an addictive quality, but to where you want it again.

First of all, to answer your first question, I’ve created a lot of music. We have an album called the Crystal and Sounds of the Earth. There are 3 different tracks that are 22 minutes on it and one has the ocean and the seagulls and the dolphins and the whales. One has land and one is about air. There are 3 different sets of singing bowls, 3 different combinations of notes. They’re all tuned to 432 hertz. That’s a beautiful album to just have on.

Someone wrote me and said, “We used that in our yoga class and it was deeply relaxing.” Take a listen. As I mentioned before, that’s the key of C, that’s a C major scale. Now listen what happens when I mix lower notes in that scale on higher notes. I would just invite you to close your eyes and begin to allow your breath to slow down. Simply notice how does it feel in your body when you hear these sounds. They are of the earth, crystal pure quartz is of the earth.

For me, they’ve changed my life. The sounds have changed my life. It’s important I think that everybody integrates some kind of prayer or meditation or stillness, as you said. That’s one of my favorite renditions of that song, “What A Wonderful World.” I listen to that often too. What is it that calms your nervous system? Do you prefer a song with words and you come right into that groove of, “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”

Do you come into that groove or do you like something like I just played, that’s just ethereal, but very grounding sounds? The point of working with the bowls is also that you could hear that this was very grounding. The sound is also grounding, but a little more centering in the body. The sound is also very centering in the body in this sound. The higher sounds are more expansive.

In comparing it to like a chord in music, I have the root of the chord, the middle of the chord and the top of the chord. What those sounds are helping me to do is ground myself and feel a sense of stability, center myself, feel like I’m at home and safe in my body and then expand myself to be open to the divine, the cosmos, the spiritual aspect of life, the aspect of life that’s beyond what we can see.

I’m following you. Before I ask you a question about the chakras, which you mentioned earlier, I’m pointing as if you know exactly what I’m pointing at, the large opal one in front of you, closest to me and the blue one to what would be your right, could you play those?

The one that has the dolphins on it?

Yes. I thought they were dolphins. That sounds like dolphin music. What about this one here?

All of them are incredible. That’s a combination of pink gold and phenakite. This one with the carved dolphins is a combination of aqua gold, so gold that’s fired until it turns blue and then the carving of the dolphins,

Each one is so different.

This is a D note, this is a E note. As I went up the scale, this is an E note, this is correlating to your solar plexus chakra, and this is correlating to your sacral chakra. We can work with them in terms of it depends who the audience is. If people are open and know about the chakras, the energy centers of the body, then we can work and speak about that. If they’re just open to listening to music, then it’s a whole other thing. Just take a listen. Here’s some beautiful, relaxing music. I don’t have to talk about energy systems or chakras.

If you’re interested in chakras, then I can tell you I was working with the root chakra, the heart chakra, the throat chakra, the third eye and above the crown. Music meets you where you are, and I think it’s important that people can experience the crystal singing bowls as a form of music rather than, “That’s just out in the woo-woo. I’m not into that.” I’ve played them for so many medical doctors and I work with cancer patients and hospice patients and Parkinson’s and veterans and children.

I’ve played them for doctors and they’ve said to me, “What did you do? What was that?” One particular doctor just started crying when I played one of the bowls. One particular doctor had pain in his knee and it was gone. It’s like, how do you want to meet people? Where does music meet you? I think for me, an important part of the medicine of it is how do you feel safe? How do you receive it? It’s going to be different than person watching the news that needs that louder, aggressive energy in his life. It just depends. He may respond very well if I played something like the deeper notes. He might think that was very cool.

It’s interesting, as you are doing this, Professor Glass, and you are talking about two things I’d like to lean into for a minute. One, music meets each person where they’re at. That’s so important. Another really simple, yet profound statement. The other piece about physicians is sometimes, we’re so into the science that we need to see the researcher, we need the pill, we need the latest methodology. We forget that sound healing has been around for as long as humans have been around.

People have known to go sit by the river. People have known to retreat from sounds that are threatening. People have known to gravitate toward quiet when they’re not feeling well, those softer sounds. As you said, woo-woo, as some people might think it is, all you need to do is experience sound. How does it feel when you have a siren coming at you? Does that feel good? Does that feel calming? How does it feel to listen to a singing bowl or a bird, a river gently flowing by. It feels soothing. Something in our system says, “Ah.”

I was just watching an interview with Dr. Jane Goodall. She said her place of peace was being out in the wild, just having that stillness of nature and then connecting with the animals, whether it was a tiny bug or the chimps or whatever. For her, there was something about the piece of nature. What I love about the bowls is that they are crystal, they are quartz, they’re coming from the earth. There is something super grounding about them. You put the different alchemies in, and of course that changes everything or the different notes or the different tunings.

For me, essentially, this is music. That’s why my book Sacred Vibrations is for each of us, what brings that sense of stillness? What brings that bigger sense of connection to God or the universe or nature, however you want to call it? Every human being needs that sense of quiet, that sense of a space that’s safe, where you can renew, where you can revitalize, where you can rejuvenate yourself. For me, music has that, it offers us that.

Tapping Into Our Own Sense Of Quietness

I’d love to pause here because this takes us back to the question where you said we need that stillness and sense of connection. We need that sense of quiet. I think that this is the big piece of what the question is bringing. It sounds as if the husband is used to it, for whatever reason, whether he grew up with it, whether it drowns out his inner voice, whether it drowns out childhood trauma, whatever it might be. I’m not saying all TV is bad, all loud things are bad, not at all. When we let that take over our lives, we’re not able to be quiet, I think that’s a sign often if we’re not able to pop into a place of quiet.

And the quote when you were talking about Jane Goodall and how nature was the wild was her happy space. I remember being on a safari and I’ve never felt so peaceful in my life. I could have just sat there all day, listening to the crackles of nature, watching whatever magnificent animal came by. There was no sense of time. There was so much stimulation just in the sounds of nature, so much peace.

When we forget that nature, that just being present has so much to offer us that we don’t need to be distracted by television, by noises here and there. We don’t need that. It can be scary for people to let go of that. It can be scary if people who are used to being busy and stressed and hearing all of this negative news. It can be scary to let go of that. What’s that song? “The Sound of Silence.” I can’t think of who that is.

Simon and Garfunkel.

Of course, Simon and Garfunkel, another one of the ones that I really like, because again, it’s those really soothing tones in many cases. Those sounds of silence. I think that even though your singing bowls aren’t silent, they invite us to be silent. As you said at the beginning, which I didn’t realize until I was talking to you, they stopped the noise in your mind.

They quicken you. In other words, I remember when I very first heard them many years ago, I was with my mother and I was like, “What is that?” It has this pristine sound that has all these overtones. It’s not a metal instrument, it’s not a wood instrument, it’s actually crystal. The words that came to me at that moment were just, “It’s exquisite.” There was some part of my being that knew those sounds like I recognized, which is wild.

There was something very soothing and safe and ancient about the sound. I don’t know if you know Anita Moorjani, who wrote Dying to Be Me, she’s another Hay House author, and she had a near death experience. She told me when I played for her, she said, “Jeralyn, those are like the sounds that I heard in my near death experience.”

Also, I’ve had times with cancer patients. One cancer patient was a traditional meditator. She knew how to meditate in silence for 28 years but she’d never meditated with music or with sound. She said afterwards, “Jeralyn, I don’t even know how to put it in words, but I’m no longer afraid of death because I’ve heard the sounds of heaven.”

There’s something very ethereal, and yet at the same time, they’re grounded sounds. They’re solid sounds. I always say to people, “It helps you to bridge heaven earth. It helps you to bridge the scene and the unseen.” For many people, that spiritual talk might be too woo-woo. We all know that when you are out at night and you look up at the night sky, and there’s this sense of wonder, or as you shared being in the Serengeti in Africa, there’s a sense of vastness that you recognize.

I’m just a tiny part of nature. If sound and the environment and crystalline sounds can give us that sense of wonder and awe and expansiveness like when we look at a night sky, it’s like that brings us to that sacred or holy or divine place of stillness. Every human being, I believe, needs that in order to be truly healthy and to have a strong sense of, “I am a whole human being.” It is a medicine.

As you said, there’s many people that are like, “I need more sound, I need more activity. I’ve thrived more in this high powered, stressful life. I like the TV to just come at me like that,” but I think true health and wellness comes from being able to integrate, as you said, listening to “What A Wonderful World” and finding those vibrations of gratitude. The place where you can just be still and allow sound, allow nature to fill your cup instead of turning to an aggressive television show or whatever. It’s such a personal choice. It’s what do you need? What feels the best for your system? Back to the question, if you’re in a relationship, hopefully, you want to find something that bridges comfort for both people.

I think that question that we raised earlier about, is there something in you, maybe in the husband that is afraid of the quiet of afraid of quiet within, afraid of stopping the noise? I think it’s really a cultural issue now where people are afraid to put down their phones. As they’re getting ready for bed, there it is, they’re still scrolling, they’re still looking. They wake up wondering why they’re anxious.

I believe that healing sounds, even if it’s the sound of our own breath or a singing bowl, if we try to infuse our days with them, how we go to sleep, how we wake up, that generally sets the tone for our days. It really can in a magnificent way. If we learn little things like your singing bowls to be able to literally, no pun intended, set the tone for waking, set the tone for going to sleep.

If you’re blessed enough to have access to one in the middle of the day, if you’re working at home, maybe you could have one there. Maybe you could have one on your desk at work. Who cares if people think it’s woo-woo? Woo-woo is fun. It was good. I think that that’s a really important way to look at it as well.

How Sounds Can Empower Your Chakra System

Just one more piece on the chakras, I’ll give an overview and I’d like you to overlap over my overview. Readers, if you don’t know the chakras, we often think of them in rainbow shades, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. They run from the root chakra, which is the red grounded place, up through your spine to your second chakra, your third chakra in the solar plexus, your heart chakra, your throat chakra, your third eye in the center of your forehead and up to the divine.

It’s ancient. The idea of chakras has been around since ancient time. It’s simply a way to visualize. As you were saying earlier, sometimes you need something that feels really grounding. Sometimes your solar plexus, that power center, needs an oomph for a reminder of how powerful you are. Sometimes your heart is hurting and needs some healing.

Wherever you are, as you said, music meets you where you are, and that’s why now I understand when you were at the beginning and I was like, “That was yummy,” and you said, “That’s what this one was hitting in you.” I was like, “Yes.” Much like food, when we get something that’s yummy for the palate, it sounds like these get yummy for our auditory and spiritual palate and emotional.

Remember, not just auditory for really when you experience a sound bath, which is why I think it’s called that, it’s like you’re being bathed. Every cell of you receives the sound if you allow yourself to open to it. This kind of sound with intention is a full-body experience. It’s a full experience. I was talking with one of my practitioners and she was just saying, “So many people will say to me, ‘I could feel my grandmother, or I felt my father, or etc.’ why is that?” It’s because the sound with its very ethereal, yet grounding qualities, helps to bridge these worlds between the scene and the unseen, heaven and earth. The medical doctors that I expressed was like, “Why am I crying?” This is a medical doctor.

Just different experiences with the cancer patients playing a particular note. Let’s say I was playing a note in the lower chakra at the sacral chakra, and I didn’t say that to the cancer patients. She raised her hand after and said, “What was that? It went right where I just had my chemo.” She pointed to her lower abdomen. It happened to be a D note, it corresponded with her. Dr. Carla, in that situation, somebody else might’ve said, “I really felt that at my throat.”

There’s no one prescription, there’s no one size fits all. You think about it in terms of the music that you love and the music that others love. The person that maybe felt that D note at their throat chakra might have had an original wounding in their lower abdomen, but it worked itself out in their life that they can’t express themself easily.

They feel it here in their throat, but the original wounding may have been in the lower abdomen. It’s like we don’t look for one-to-ones. When you describe the seven chakras in the body, these are the energy centers. Yes, there are corresponding notes to each of those chakras, but again, the cancer patient was definitely a one-to-one, but somebody else might’ve said, “I felt it here.” It doesn’t make them wrong. It’s just how does energy travel through our body? Where does it get blocked in our body?

Once again, to your audience member, she might be feeling rejected and sad and her hurting, her heart tensing up because her husband is not listening to her and he is just saying, “You’re too sensitive.” She’s saying, “No, I feel the energy coming from that screen and it’s frightening to me. It makes me contract.” How do we work through our differences? How can music be that medium that helps us to find coherence and harmony and unity rather than what we see so often?

Pointing the finger and getting into conflict. I love how you got to the root of that question, which is what I, too, believe is there. It sounds as if she doesn’t feel like she’s being listened to, that she’s being considered. That the energy that’s important to her is being poo-pooed because she’s too sensitive. We are all sensitive beings. It just, are we drowning out our sensitivity, or in her case, she is wanting to be able to be at peace with her sensitivity and have a peaceful surrounding atmosphere.

Get An Appointment For Prof. Jeralyn’s Singing Bowl Sessions

By communicating with the partner and the partner, getting it and honoring it, and maybe finding a way where he listens to his news, let’s say she’s out gardening or she has to run errands, or maybe he sets up a man cave in the garage where he can listen as loud as he wants. Maybe he’ll see this episode and decide that maybe he wants a singing bowl to experiment. On that note, as we prepare to wind down, A, I would like to know if you have any other points that you’d like to cover, but B, for someone who can’t visit you to find the right singing bowl, how would you invite them to go about that very personal process?

Thank you. I have clients all around the world, so it’s done on Zoom with a stereo microphone. It’s done here in this little studio. I bring the bowls from the other room and we talk and share because there’s so much to the science of it all. There’s so much, as I said earlier, with the structure of music. You go to our website, CrystalCadence.com.

I chose that name for the company many years ago because working with the crystal in structure and then cadence is a very important structure in music. We’re working with the science of sound and the theory of music. It’s not just a random sound. It’s not that. It’s really built on a structure that is really resonating with you as an individual. You can make an appointment on CrystalCadence.com.

We have a couple of really neat things. This was the first thing that I published with Hay House. This is our Oracle Deck. For people who like Oracle decks and like that, this is the first of its kind that has a QR code on the front of the card. Once you choose your card, you put your phone on there and there’s all kinds of beautiful photography and sacred geometry. You put your phone on that QR code and then it takes you to the sound of your card. It’s very interactive, very fun.

Readers, the cards are gorgeous. As Professor Glass said, on one side, they’re beautiful to look at, but when you hold that card up, that’s very small, elegantly done QR code will actually give you the corresponding sound. That’s incredible.

It was very fun. We made a special edition. We had these little pouches made. It has the Sri Yantra symbol on it. We had these pouches made in Italy, and you can order a special edition that has a crystal in it, whether it’s an amethyst or selenite, for example, this is one of the amethysts and that makes a beautiful gift. That all went to help women in need. It went to support a 501(c)3 that I was very proud of. This is the book, Sacred Vibrations, that you mentioned earlier. Just so you can see, the cover is an image of an F note. F would be a note corresponding to the heart chakra. This is a high F, meaning it’s way up here in octave five.

This is the image that when I recorded the bowl, there’s an instrument called the CymaScope, created by John Stuart Reed, a British acoustic scientist. This shows you what does the sound looks like made visible. If our bodies are approximately 70% fluid, imagine what you said to me at the very beginning when I’m playing the bowls for you.

Each of the bowls makes these gorgeous, sacred geometric shapes like snowflakes. Every single one is different. As you feel the sound and allow the sound not to be heard just through your ears, this is what’s happening in the fluids of your bodies. When I play for a cancer patient and they give me their feedback, or a veteran who suddenly says, “I can’t believe it, I’m so in a world where there’s no stress. I’ve never been that deeply relaxed.”

One way to show it to you is that, that those sacred shapes are happening in the fluids of their bodies. That’s what happens with the crystal bowls. When I first started recording them, we have a couple of albums. Me being a singer, there’s an album called Vibrance. There’s an album called Forever Love, and you can check all that out. They’re on all the music platforms and then on our website, Crystal Cadence. It’s like all those sacred shapes, when you combine them also with vocals and you combine them with other instruments, it’s a different experience for listening to music.

Thank you. I do have a question on the Oracle cards. You showed the bag with the symbol on the front and you said what it was, but I don’t know what that is.

This is the Sri Yantra. It’s a very sacred symbol coming from ancient India, but it’s really about the wholeness of life. I am just going to say it as simple and easy like that. There’s a lot to read about it online, but it’s interconnecting shapes and sacred geometry. That’s what I’ve chosen for the symbol of the sacred science of sound. That’s an extension of our branding that I’m teaching over basically 150 hours of different trainings and experiences. What does a medical doctor want to receive from the bowls? What about somebody who wants to train to be a practitioner? How about children that want to just have relaxation? There are all different aspects of what you can do with the bowls, how you can integrate those into your lives. I feel really passionate about that.

Also, we created a YouTube channel, so it’s Crystal Cadence by Jeralyn Glass. There are over 200 meditations. There are songs. There are Christmas songs that are integrated with bowls. There’s a song like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” integrated with bowls. We have three loops. There are three two-hour loops. My son participates with me in all of this. He’s like, “Mom, we’ve got to get this music available to anyone who has internet connection.” It’s so healing and transformative for people. You can fall asleep to the sleep loop. There are all different kinds of music and things to explore.

We also offer what’s called a member’s portal. If people are really interested in exploring deeper with me, we meet once a month and there’s a special members portal with all kinds of conversations with scientists, musicians, energy medicine practitioners. There’s like a library of six years of conversations and then special meditations for the portal every month. It’s pretty cool.

Music Is What We All Need

Professor Glass, you are very cool. The work you do is very cool. It has been such a delight and such a rich conversation that has taken us in many unexpected directions and all of which I appreciate. I love the term woo-woo, because for some people that has a negative connotation for me, I think woo-woo has been around. Woo-woo is primordial. It is who we are. It’s okay to dip your toe in woo-woo and see if it feels good and proceed it at whatever pace feels good to you. It’s so important to open our hearts to quiet, to sound, to music, to really being more in touch with who we are without the noise. It’s really okay to let go with the noise.

I think one thing I’d share a lot is what I learned from my singing teacher when I was very young. Take the question mark off your back. If you don’t feel comfortable with something, we need to speak up and speak into it. If you’re in a healthy relationship, then you need to be able to communicate. It’s going to unlock triggers and it’s going to unlock all kinds of stored energies and stored traumas.

That’s what sound and music as a medicine can help us with. I always felt as a young singer, music is love. That’s what music is. When you’re listening to that male voice singing with the guitar, it’s love for you. It feels comfortable, it feels safe. We want to find music and sound vibration that helps us feel safe, held, comfortable, and the ability that love flow easily is what’s healing.

What a wonderful note to end on, that idea, the truth that music is love, sound can be love. That’s what we all need, and I completely agree with you, if we have a sense of safety in our lives, a sense of which is what this poor audience member does not have, does not have that safety, and that we have a right to ask for safety.

We have a right to have conversations that create a safe outcome, a jointly designed outcome where both people can feel safe. I love the piece where you said, take the question mark off your back and bring it into the room. It’s okay to talk about things. It’s not just okay, it’s the key when we have conversations, we’re willing to be present with authenticity and love and unfamiliar things. It’s beautiful. Professor Glass, thank you for being with us. It has been such a pleasure, such a joy, and so much wisdom. Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

To our readers, thank you, as always, for joining us. It is such a pleasure and privilege to share time with you. This is Imperfect Love.

Important Links

• Jeralyn Glass
• Sacred Vibrations
• Dying to Be Me
• Oracle Deck
• Crystal Cadence by Jeralyn Glass on YouTube
• Jeralyn Glass on Instagram
• Jeralyn Glass on Facebook
• Crystal Bowls Consultation/Purchase with Crystal Cadence
• Mental Health and Relationships
• NAMI Helpline
• Sound Healing, Theory and Practice
• Dr. Carla Manly’s Website
• Dr. Carla Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Manly on TikTok

About Professor Jeralyn Glass