Connections can happen in the most unusal ways. Perhaps, an orchestrated rendezvous in accordance with some greater Universal plan? In whatever way it happens, it becomes more customary everyday affairs, the more you lean into trusting your intuition. So, it was how this connection happened after moving into a new building in Chicago and meeting a maintenance engineer who “had” to connect his sister in Texas with the work of PureEsperanza! We instantly connected and enthusiastically share with you, her many gifts. Pascuala Miller (bio on our Community page) shares a part of her story here…
“Mexico City, 1968.
I woke up in the middle of the night for no particular reason as it often happened, and it always happened in the same way, even though I was not aware of it at that time. The room was bathed with a soft light and I could only hear the breathing of my siblings who at the time were only four. We all shared the same bedroom. I would just stay awake on my bed listening to their breathing and then noticing the sound of a subtle vibration, which little by little started growing louder and louder. I closed my eyes and my ears to stop listening to ineffable waves of sound pulsating throughout the entire room and my body. I was five years old then and uncertainty stopped me from opening myself to trust and embrace it. I know better now.
Much time has passed since my childhood, but those memories are still fresh in my mind, and are a reminder of how sensitive children are to energy, but unfortunately most people stop noticing the subtle energy as we grow up we seem to get lost in a big array of distractions. I do believe though that our ability to perceive energy is still in us, we just have to start paying attention to it. I consider myself to be an intuitive person, I have learned to trust my intuition and be guided by it out of many difficult times.
It has been my intuition who guided me to find tools that helped my quest to not only know myself better, but to better myself along the way. It was my intuition who led me to my most valuable tool: Meditation. I practiced meditation in different ways since I was a child because my favorite superhero was a man who had developed his mind through the practice of meditation. He was able to use the power of his mind over matter, his name was Kaliman you might have heard of him. Everything started like a child’s game, then books, places related to prayer and meditation, but it wasn’t until I met Venerable Buddhist Teaching Monks from Thailand that I started diving deeper and deeper into this ancient practice. I established my formal meditation practice more than 10 years ago and I learn more and more from it every day.
Now, going back to my initial story about energy I can tell you, now, that I can even connect to it at will and just feel vibration in my body. It enfolds me with a soothing and relaxing feeling that gives me a sense of serenity and clarity knowing that I am completely submerged in wellbeing! Maybe, that is why I immediately knew that Vibrational Sound Therapy (VST) was the part that would complement my practice of yoga and meditation.
Science has proven that everything is energy and it manifests in different ways. Sound is movement of energy and sound energy is produced when an object vibrates. We live in an era of information. Nowadays, we have an ocean of information at the palm of our hand. I invite you to research energy particularly about sound healing readily available.
Sound helps our wellbeing. There is one factor that we all know very well: Stress. Tension and stress damage our health. In the 1950’s Dr. Hans Selye researched the response of organisms to stress, demonstrating that persistence stress shows to be the cause of various diseases. This forms the basis of what we know about how stress affects our bodies (Selye 15. 87).
Twenty years later, Dr. Herbert Benson was a pioneer in stress reduction techniques in the prevention of disease, he coined the term “the relaxation response” described as “a physical state of deep rest changes the physical and emotional responses of stress” (Benson 37, 80)
The work of these two doctors support two elements that affect our overall health:
The stress response: our body’s response to persistent stress generates disease.
The relaxation response: our body’s response to deep relaxation brings us back to balance.
Sound vibration is expressed as a waveform. Sound waves are created as a result of an object vibrating and all objects vibrate a different frequency. All things vibrate including our body mind and spirit.
There are many different ways sound is used for well-being. VST is a sound- based relaxation technique, it employs Himalayan singing bowls. The application of sound waves into your body induces a deep state of relaxation. The immune system is at its best when we are relaxed. This modality can relieve stress and improve emotional well-being, a state which can open a pathway for clarity, focus, and healing. We all know energy, we don’t need a scientific explanation in order to feel it, just like we all know gravity and accept its existence. We just need to pay attention to how it sounds, how it feels, i.e. when something resonates with you, when you listen to your intuition/inner voice and develop our capacity to do this?
The best tool to learn awareness, in my experience, is meditation. Meditation moves your awareness from gross to subtle (body, thoughts, and mind states). Here is an exercise I practice with my students to start being aware of vibration:
Pause for a second and listen.
Listen to all the sounds around you…
Close your eyes and start identifying every sound that draws your awareness to:
Maybe birds singing…
The humming sound of the refrigerator…
Traffic….
People talking…
Children playing…
Soft music…
Whatever it is that you are hearing, detach from any preconceived meaning you have and just observe the effect it causes in you and give yourself fully to the experience. You might also experience thoughts, feelings or sensations arising. You might feel irritated by a certain noise or relaxed by a certain sound. Perhaps, your body starts getting tense, or maybe loose.
Whatever it is that you are experiencing just allowing it to happen without any judgement, not good or bad, nor right or wrong. It simply is. Allow it to be.
Now bring your awareness deeper into what is behind those thoughts, feelings, emotions, or sensations. Can you feel certain vibrations in any part of your body? In your mind? Or even outside of your body?
This is a good way to feel and begin to understand how everything vibrates.”
[Shutterstock Photo Courtesy: Chicago Morning Star]
