My Journey of Embodied Awakening: Part 3

February 2, 2025

This is Part 3.  Click here to read Part 1. Click here to read Part 2.

The Healing Power of Sound and Music

My relationship with sound and music expanded profoundly during my awakening, bringing deep healing and transformation.

As an experiential therapist, I have integrated music, sound, and dance into most of my group work over the years. Personally, movement, music, and song have been a gateway to a deeper connection with myself since I was a child. In dance, I allow music—or even silence—to move through me, revealing a dialogue between the seen and the unseen. Looking back, it is no surprise that this pathway of knowing provided new avenues for exploration during my recent awakening.

Exploring Acoustic Technology for Healing

In 2017, I began using modern acoustic technology to facilitate psychological and physiological healing. The program I use, The Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP), was developed by Dr. Stephen Porges. Rooted in his research on Autism and the autonomic nervous system, this emerging technology gently influences the nervous system through auditory pathways to recalibrate the pathways that support us in social engagement.

The SSP consists of a five-hour protocol featuring specifically filtered music designed to enhance cues of safety in the body. As the nervous system attunes to these cues, it shifts the body out of a defensive state into states of exploratory orientation and safety. From my observations, this process significantly influences our ability to sense more safety on the outside and the inside influencing our interoceptive cues, our perceptions, and our interpretation of our interactions. Many of us do not know what true safety feels like until we begin to experience it at this deeper level.

Before the onset of COVID-19, I had spent a year or two studying the effects of SSP on clients, combining it with Internal Family Systems and touch (Transformative Touch™ and BASE™) to support healing in the attachment system. I also used it in conjunction with Somatic Experiencing® and supportive touch for clients struggling with eating disorders. My observations led me to research, refine, and develop my own protocol for delivery to work with preverbal and in utero states using sound. Sound is one of the first sensory systems to develop in utero and I found that it can take us into these experiences very easily.

Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science

Between 2020 and 2021, I enrolled in energy and sound healing courses to explore sound medicine from multiple perspectives. I trained in Elieen McKusick’s Biofield Tuning®, a framework that uses tuning forks to “comb” the energy field around the body to release stuck emotions and tension. I found that it worked very similar to Somatic Experiencing in that it allowed for coupling and uncoupling of stuck patterns. As my vision channel or intuition and ability to track client experiences deepened, I gained a clearer understanding of the healing principles behind all methods of healing that interact with the subtle body, mental body, emotional body, and gross body.

For six weeks, I wrote about my insights, often waking at 3:00 AM to record them. This effort eventually became the SE-SSP Manual, a collaboration among five seasoned Somatic Experiencing Practitioners (SEPs). The manual quickly grew to 45 pages but barely scratched the surface of the SSP-SE healing experience. We intentionally excluded discussions on attachment and bonding, deciding that this subject deserved its own manual in the future.

During this time, I continued to refine my ability to trace connections between various healing modalities, including Somatic Experiencing®, Safe and Sound, Internal Family Systems, Biofield Tuning, and the principles from more ancient practices of sound journeying. This exploration validated for me, the intersection between ancient healing traditions and modern scientific methodologies. I recognized similarities between shamanic journeying, sound journeying, and Western practices such as Stan Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork and David Grand’s Brainspotting.

I have been facilitating group healing circles using sound since 2019, which also has allowed me to further develop my perspectives on group healing dynamics.

Inner Child Healing As the Doorway to the Emotional Body and Higher States of Consciousness

As my own personal journey deepened, I found myself drawn into the realms of the transpersonal—through the pathway of the emotional body and the inner child.

In indigenous and mystical traditions, healing the adult requires tending to the inner child parts. This work involves retrieving lost soul fragments—parts of us that have become dissociated due to neglect, abuse, shame, illness, accidents, trauma, or pain. Many ancient traditions refer to this as soul retrieval, a process in which reclaiming these lost parts leads to greater wholeness and self-realization. The healed inner child becomes our guide, allowing us to trust our Divinity and approach the unknown with curiosity and courage.

Inner child work invites us to develop compassion for our childhood wounds so we can release the emotional burdens they carry. As we unburden ourselves, we create more space in the body, expanding our perspectives and allowing more joy, love, and light to enter. This process quite literally makes us more en-lightened.

Healing Through Compassion for the Inner Child

As my own personal journey deepened, I found myself drawn into the realms of the Mystery—through the healing of the inner child.

In mystical traditions, healing the adult requires tending to the inner child parts. This work involves retrieving lost soul fragments—parts of us that have become dissociated due to neglect, abuse, shame, illness, accidents, trauma, or pain. Many ancient traditions refer to this as soul retrieval, a process in which reclaiming these lost parts leads to greater wholeness and self-realization. The healed inner child becomes our guide, allowing us to trust our Divinity and approach the unknown with curiosity and courage.

Inner child work invites us to develop compassion for our childhood wounds so we can release the emotional burdens they carry. As we unburden ourselves, we create more space in the body, expanding our perspectives and allowing more joy, love, and light to enter. This process quite literally makes us more en-lightened.

The Power of Receptivity and Yielding

I have come to understand that our current spiritual and psychological evolution is asking us to recalibrate our autonomic and central nervous system as part of our inner growth.

Yin represents the spacious stillness within each of us. It is the void from which all creation emerges and the wellspring from which yang energy—action and impulse—awakens. Within yin lies boundless compassion, providing the nurturing space necessary for self-healing.

As I healed childhood wounds and surrendered to the void, I deepened my connection to this primordial yin energy—what I refer to as the “energy of the grandmothers”. Many of us are now hearing their call, awakening to ancient wisdom and finding creative ways to bring it forward. In my groups I have watched countless individuals awaken to this yin energy as it opens from the depth of the feeling body - second chakra. Today, I have softened into my role as an activator of this process and can confidently hold the space for those who start to awaken the feeling body through sensations, images, sounds, and inner knowing. My role is one of a conduit and guide for connecting and navigating between the seen and the unseen.

Many refer to this expansion as an initiation or an invitation into the Mystery of right brain consciousness. This is the domain of pioneer’s like Stan Grof and those studying right brain processes in their ability to engage us in our preverbal womb experiences, the archetypal realms, and transpersonal Mystery. In these deep theta states we access our self-healing capacity. In developing more comfort in this ancient knowledge I have witnessed soul retrievals, felt the presence of the elements (earth, water, fire, air), heard the song of the soul through modern acoustics, and watched individuals connect with their inner child, the ancestors, and the archetypal realms as they embody more and more of their light.

Sounds That Heal

A few years ago, I began to listen deeply through my multi sensory channels like many song writers and artists. I noticed song lyrics and music play while my clients listened to the SSP. Sometimes it was The Beatles, other times James Taylor or Elton John. Over time, I compiled a list and developed a perspective on the process. When I shared these songs with clients, I noticed they provided additional healing opportunities as the client was taken into deeper levels of emotional connection and inner processing with themselves while listening.

I later tested this out in my Biofield Tuning sessions and discovered that song lyrics can be similar to seeing colors or getting impressions - they offer extra insight and guidance from deep within the clients own physical and energetic system. A began to explore the ways in which we can access our soul’s database to gather this musical information in what is referred to as akashic realms - or the etheric body.

Songs access the limbic brain and take us deep into our emotional world. Song lyrics can also be thought of as collective stories that allow us to experience universal emotions that connect us to the larger holographic frontiers.

In ancient Aboriginal cultures, songs carry the stories of the land and its people, allowing them to navigate using songlines—energetic maps embedded in the landscape. I view the songs that emerge in the sound journeying as Songlines for the Heart—information from our inner guidance designed to help us process unexpressed emotions.

Similarly, there are ancient cultures that give children a birth song—an energetic blueprint received when the child first becomes a thought in the parent’s mind. This signature frequency serves as a lifelong reminder of their essence. In sound journeys, we invite the restoration of this birth song, reconnecting individuals to their Authentic Self.

A Journey That Continues

I trust that my story will continue to unfold in magical and unexpected ways. For now, this section of my evolution has brought renewed energy and opportunities for me to teach clients how to access their own inner healer.

Each time an individual restores their inner child, they reclaim their wholeness. As more of us rediscover our own Divinity (birth song), we weave our unique frequencies into the greater tapestry of life, creating more coherence and harmony—both within ourselves and in the world around us.


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