The Emotional Digestive System : Relating to your emotions and internal systems of healing

Originally posted last year on Medium.com, and deeply edited for clarity.

Estimate for read, 25 mins. It’s meaty. And I’m damn proud of it.

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MY APPROACH…

Through journeys in healing the self and working with others seeking similar, I’ve formed a high level model about how this all works and I aim to share it across numerous posts, videos and digital media.

My primary goal is to de-fluff and mechanize the emotional system as much as possible so anyone and everyone can help themselves in less time than it took me and others who had similar challenges.

These ideas are directed to be free of dogma, religion, etc… They’re practical and actionable. Zero fluff, ambiguity and “spiritual elitism”. I don’t like the word ‘spiritual’. Far as I know, it’s meant to mean “the path of connecting to your most authentic experience of being”, which is oftentimes years and years of work. And certainly not a path exclusively accessed by meditating every day, mastering yoga poses and the typical stuff you hear around divine this and that.

Everything I share has been boiled down to what can produce consistent, repeatable results. Before deploying techniques to others, know that I have been King Lab Rat in the process and if a datapoint is shared without this process, I’ll label this clearly. 

My goal is a long game and I aim to make my mark here serving those who want the most impactful ideas and tools I can find and create to serve their own desires in whatever path they choose.

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THE PRIMER : OUR BODIES ARE A DIGESTIVE SYSTEM FOR THE EMOTIONS

The first thing I want to delve into, is how our issues are represented in the physical body as tangible sensations (what we call pain or physical discomfort) and/or medical ailments, mysterious or otherwise.

The learnings I’m sharing to follow were absorbed across working through and with various old-world disciplines, master healers and personal experimentation over the years.

Self-assumed spiritualists / seekers will often refer to these representations as ‘Heavy energies’ or ‘Negative energies’. Sometimes ‘blockages’ (not necessarily the digestive kind), sometimes ‘Low vibrational frequencies’… even if these terms are inaccurate semantically, you will hear these as continual reference.

Regardless, the objective of these terms is to describe an expression of emotional energy that we have not yet learned to see, feel, accept or process.

These energies often emerge in the body when our mind, body and energy connection is re-wired to cope with something that has been judged as a painful, difficult or ‘bad’ experience… with the goal of bypassing the feeling that wishes to be avoided.

Once the re-wiring is complete, a new coping mechanism exists. Now with the new mechanism created inside the person, when they experience a pattern of events that triggers the feeling or pattern that was judged as ‘bad’, the newly installed circuitry/plumbing creates new mental and emotional pathways that protect the person / you from feeling the true emotion we originally judged as bad… and we don’t experience it anymore.

Typically, that bypass will embody itself as a feeling of numbness, emptiness, agitation or disconnection of some sort, in place of where the original ‘judged’ emotional experience would arise. This replacement is seen as less [insert negative quality here] than the original emotion. This is a coping mechanism – which is easier to comprehend as an installed piece of living software within you.

For example, if you went through feelings of powerlessness during experiences of abuse, you may have created mechanisms around feeling empowered in ways you understood at the time of creation.

So if you were a child when you built your mechanism, the level of wisdom you have at the time is limited to that child’s mind. The mechanism you build could be fairly crude, where you choose to code yourself to get very angry quickly to give yourself the illusion of empowerment. If you still have such a mechanism in adulthood, observing adults may think you’re quick to anger or bi-polar, or otherwise. Often, this crudely designed mechanism is created because anger is understood as a kind of strength-giving feeling in the physiology. This would logically – within the mind of a child – be seen as a form of empowering yourself against a threat.

In the event that the emotional process does not get sent down a bypass, you’ll experience the emotion in the intended way in your body. From that place, you’ll receive an experience of understanding, and receive experience in the mind, body and spirit. This is the true digestive product of the body in the experience of emotional processing; EXPERIENCE POINTS.

I’m kidding. But only slightly…

Based on these experiences, I conclude that our body can be viewed as a digestive system for the emotions, where the end nourishment is wisdom, awareness and growth. This process also feeds and benefits the intuitive / psychic senses, but I’ll delve into that in another article.

Ultimately, it’s a shame that we’ve not been taught how to navigate or relate to our emotional senses in this way, and society still regards emotional experiences as largely invalid or wasteful, probably as they are yet to result in making anyone money.

There’s more to go into solely on the digestive system concept. I plan to, but this article is already long enough and the aspects below are pretty damn important.

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PROOF OF HOW WE PROCESS AND STORE EMOTIONS

Want to validate this on yourself? Sit somewhere you can focus and recall a point in time where someone upset you. When you remember that time, you will feel a sensation of some kind somewhere in the body. 

As a shorthand guide, pay attention to temperature, character of motion and speed of motion, of the sensation.

You may feel warmth, or light coldness and numbness. Possibly intense heat or what we call ‘searing pain’. You may experience a subtle buzz, a prickliness, a throb, pulse, tense stiffness or tightness as character of motion. These characterizations of motion may come fast or slow at various levels of intensity. 

If you sit with what you see as pain and observe it, in a way a wine taster might attempt to experience the qualities of a wine  – more savoring and experiencing over judgement – you’ll see that what you regard as pain is more of an aggregate of intense sensations hitting you at once.

Here’s a direct flow of how this typically plays out, using a typical case…

1. Catalyst : Someone recalls a person or some event that brings up anger.
2. Sensations Arise : The body presents a sensation of heat, with a rapid, deep, stabbing pulse of low to high intensity, on the left side of the chest. It’s not a heart attack; it’s what we would describe as ‘searing pain’.
3. Reflex : Immediately, a person would retract from it, distracting themselves elsewhere, mentally or practically, and/or numbing themselves from its existence. “Tickle” and “Itch” sensations are the most popular sensation aggregates that inspire one to have a “pull away” or “remove” reflex.
4. Ready to De-bug the Process : If a person chooses not to pull away, and they observe the sensations as if sampling a wine, chocolate or otherwise — meaning they experience the intensity and qualities as-is, without resistance being allowing to label the sensations as ‘bad’ or ‘problematic’, ‘evil’, ‘painful’… the sensations lose their sense of threat, and oftentimes, will move to another part of the body or change in place.
5. Energetic Releases / “Energy Pooping” : When these changes manifest, one may typically experience a range of energy release manifestations, including but not limited to…
   1. Burping, farting, coughing, yawning, half-yawning, phlegm, vomiting, crying, screaming… or that strange defensive laugh that happens in awkward situations.
   2. This is the body’s method of releasing energy materially. This is the emotional digestive system working for you.
6. Next Layer and Deepening : Often, a release leads to a mental realization, and/or a full cathartic release. Following that, Part 2 of this series of experiences will be what emerges, and the cycle repeats, though at a different layer of the issue, or associated issue tied to the source of the problem.

Shamanic, Ayurvedic, Buddhist and otherwise ‘invisible world’ systems all over the world know these ideas well. If you’ve experienced an energy healing of any kind, it’s likely you can recall either having endlessly yawned, cried, vomited, resisted or felt a euphoric buzz as if you took a drug.

Every one of these systems I’ve encountered has a common thread that personal healing is at the core of a human’s personal and environmental evolution, with the goal of finding and becoming the authentic self. This focus is considered a foundational stone to mastering the systems in question, with specific benefits in the development of intuitive abilities as well.

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THE WRONG WAY TO GO ABOUT IT

A lot of belief systems — I mean general ‘life’ ones — seem to drive the idea that when you’ve found an underlaying issue, or thing controlling your behavior under the hood, the most effective and efficient approach should be to laser focus into it, and zap it out, rip it out from the roots, commit it to fiery death and so on…

When I first started, this approach made the most sense. It seemed to embody the value of courage; a value often aligned with aggression in movies, attacking a goal head on. 

Thing is, stored energies in the body are more complicated than a cause and effect problem like, a stain on a tile floor, or ripping out weeds with your hands, where you can action a purely practical solution toward it, or task it to a robot (theoretically).

Through my experiences receiving guided self-healing, and guiding it in others, I’ve observed time and time again as much like communicating with a limited AI/Artificial Intelligence.

When directly approached, you’ll see and feel emotional energies in the body become adaptive, multi-layered, dynamic and complex. Try to get aggressive with particular sensations and watch them hide, deceive, create numbness or distract you.

It can be challenging, and requires an accepting, non judgmental approach. Thankfully, there’s some consistent patterns I’ve been able to note and feel across my journeys.

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THE PATTERNS…

For those desiring an approach where they can be a recipient or participant rather than lead, there are many effective ones including meditations, shamanic tools like constellation group-work, yoga, QHHT, massages with energetic work, sound healing, acupuncture, ecstatic dance, plant medicines, energy transmission healing…

All of these modalities, and others not mentioned will work at varying levels of impact per the individual and the part of their journey they’re at, but between them all exist effective key factors urgent to embrace:

1. Loving intention is the key
Loving focus, compassion to the self and patient understanding is central to open the door of possibility for the most effective transformation of an emotional problem.

Violent, driven, aggressive attention has never succeeded in completely healing an issue, far as I know from my own experiences; as a facilitator and as a patient. I’m open to being wrong about this. So far, this idea stands consistently true in my explorations.

Consider that your emotional issue is you as a young kid. Would berating this kid cause the kid to cooperate, or to rebel and tell you where to shove it?

 

2. Feeling the hidden emotion
Feeling the emotion hiding under the physical sensation is when the healing truly begins on the physical level. Intellectualization through therapy helped me a little to share those understandings with others, but rarely did it ever complete a healing work.

‘Knowing’ is not enough. If it was, we could read books all day and never have to face anything on an emotional level. The deepest wisdom I received followed after I gave myself permission to feel what I wasn’t allowing myself to feel previously. Healing requires feeling. There is no avoiding this.

 

3. The Frustrated Revisitation aka “Damnit, I thought I dealt with this!”
As you get further in self-healing and wisdom, your perspective on your own existence and life will change and evolve. This perspective will mean you can see new angles on old things and solve old problems with deeper impact.

Evolving perspective for people committed to evolving themselves, is a natural unavoidable result. It’s also why the path of self-discovery is paralyzing for many, as it is a continual abandoning of what you know, gifting you with a reward of new eyes… often hiding behind a stepping into the unknown.

Losing the safety of comfort is often terrifying, particularly when the face of the reward is a video-game loot box where the reward looks like it will replace everything you’re attached to with someone selling you on benefits of inhaling a turd sandwich sprinkled in glitter.

Eventually, some find exhilarating comfort in the acceptance Tai-Chi of consistent change, as if in a video-game with quest markers being every ‘negative’ feeling, cueing into deconstructing one’s own delusions as the meat of the quest.

At first occurrence of a revisitation, it may appear like you’ve gone down the wrong path. “Why is this coming back? I was done with it? Am I wasting my time? Am I a failure? …”, 

Truth is, this is normal. Deep traumas I’ve had to deal with in myself were maybe revisited anywhere from a handful to a dozen times. They may even return again.

Remember this; How can you heal it without feeling it? And how can you feel it truly unless you’re now able to recognize that feeling… which often comes with experience and prior healing awareness.

 

4. You’re Ready, or You’re Not
Choosing to be ready, doesn’t always work. Sometimes we want to be ready to face something, and it’s our frustration speaking for our impatience, trying to force it out. 

The hint to you, that it’s out of alignment, is when you have that intense hope and aggression as the driving force toward healing it.

“I must get rid of this! I hate it!” You’ll notice that this is a symptom as described in ‘Feeling the Hidden Emotion’. It’s important to highlight this phenomena as part of the common trickery we can play on ourselves.

 

5. Coping Mechanisms : We Designed Them to Protect Us
These mechanisms are often birthed from a belief, spawned at the moment of a trauma, from the lego bricks of what our wisdom at that time understands.

So if you were 5 when you designed a coping mechanism to protect you from a bully, aka “bullying energies”, that programming code comes from the level of wisdom of a 5 year old.

Oftentimes, we still hold these mechanisms in our 30s, 40s and so on until we begin working on ourselves meaningfully.

Easiest way to understand this:

You begin with a perfectly optimal emotional circuit. It receives an input of energy, and creates an output. But your circuitry lives inside a human body that feels the energy circulating around in the form of sensations of varying intensity… to the point of overload. You are likely to have been birthed in a situation you were unable to escape (dependent on parents in the infant to teen years). In that condition, it is extremely challenging to change your outer space if something doesn’t align with your needs… but you can change your inner space! If you don’t like how it feels, you have the power to rewire that circuit, or write new code to engage with that circuit. This will allow the energy to now pass around and through things you have labeled that you like and don’t like. As result, you have now become a programmer!

Keep in mind, nobody tends to hire programmers/coders who are 5 years of age. But the code and re-wiring crafted by our young programmer selves, live inside us un-checked and riddled with bugs throughout decades of our living existence.

Imagine how much code and re-wiring kids from rough backgrounds could have written within themselves… Consider the mental health ‘conditions’ and diagnoses could be simplified as code designed to bypass a mass of complex chaos they suffered in their environments.

Now consider that what or “who” has to be ‘ready’ to release a trauma, is the mindset, the code, ‘the spirit’ of the kid who wrote that code. Would you force a kid to do something difficult if they were tense with anxiety, or would you help them feel safe first? Even if safe, a kid might still opt to avoid their big bad. Patience, acceptance, and loving empathy are needed to play in this space. Be gentle and eventually, the kid spirit who programmed the protective tech within you, will learn to let their guard down, often through the boundaries they understood and lived by at that age. If your young coder felt disempowered and abused, give them/you love, gentle trust and freedom. If they/you felt ignored and unloved, give them/that part of you acceptance and ears to vent.

It bears repetition — In my experience, treating trapped energy like a scared kid, or small animal who’s unsafe, hiding, needing safety and established trust is the only way that appears to consistently succeed at completing a healing. Hunting the energy as if you want to kill it, will make the energy hide further. Yes I know it sounds weird. Try it and you’ll see.

6. We Are Many Versions of Ourselves in One Body
In the goal of healing the self, be comfortable relating to yourself as if you contain multiple awarenesses in the same body. Generally, versions of yourself across ages will be met and conversed with. Many feel uncomfortable with this idea, as I did when first embarking on this quest.

Once you’re able to see your issues in this way, it becomes much easier to work with them to transform the energy and heal it within you.

If you’d like to see a wild visualization of this idea, here’s a clip from Doom Patrol, where all of Jane’s ‘selves’ live in a place called The Underground; a location in her psyche where the selves either argue or work together to decide what to do, and which self runs the show…

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EXERCISES THAT CAN SHIFT STUBBORN ENERGIES WITHIN YOU

There are a wealth of techniques out there to clear these energies, varying in efficacy relative to the heaviness currently ready to release.

What yielded best results for me, and what I typically suggest, is going with gut feeling toward a technique, even if it makes little logical or practical sense. This idea seems commonplace among other explorers I’ve discussed this with.

The suggestions below vary wildly, and have all helped me at some point…

• Exercising in target heart rate zone — Exercising for at least 40 minutes, above the active heart rate for your age and weight range. Here’s some data about that.
• Exercising for muscular growth — Exercise that pushes you outside your physical comfort zone of any kind, as long as it doesn’t come from a place of self abuse; an unfortunate pattern that can emerge in the world of body sculpture.
• Energy Work — A focused energy work or ritual from another to clear something specifically targeted.
• Yoga — The variety known as ‘Asana’ Yoga. This form specifically targets parts of the body believed to store specific kinds of emotional energy. You don’t need to know that information at first. If you simply know where the sensation appears in the body, you can use the Asana corresponding to it. Here’s a decent list of exercises and associated benefit claims — I have sampled a few, and noted shifts in my mood, but have more exploration to embark on here. I’m sharing a full list I’ve found online for your own self-exploration: https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/hatha-yoga-asanas-and-their-benefits/
• Acupuncture — Be picky with a practitioner. Definitely go on reputation from people who have had multiple visits, so you know there’s consistency in the quality. 
• Sound Healing — It works. When it’s the real stuff. Daniel Coates, is one of the most effective sound healers I’ve worked with. If a man (or woman) can make a sound and it makes blockages in your body feel like they are physically dissolving, they are the real deal. The Integratron is another reputed sound bath location, which I can also vouch for.
• Breathwork — It’s trippy in that we breathe all the time, yet when given focus and intent, it’s an incredibly powerful tool. So much so, Wim Hof proved by using Breathwork, you can re-wire your system to adapt to freezing temperatures and walk up a snow-covered mountain in your underpants without getting hypothermia. It’s also a great tool for transforming energies within, and he has a free to download app for mobile phones, with a few free techniques accessible.
• Shamanic Journeying— This is a broad toolset rather than singular tool, but if you apply it to working on your multiple minds / selves, it’s the most powerfully connective and effective tool I’ve personally worked with, from a facilitator, toward a client and toward myself… though it can be a challenge to do it for yourself.
• Sweat Lodge — Heat coupled with ceremony and a space filled with people intending to release heavy energies has consistently served successfully for me as a participant. I highly recommend it. Be picky that the facilitator has the kind of vibe you feel comfortable and safe in. I experienced one facilitator who was snippy, abusive and edgy to the group, but the heat of the lodge was still effective and I’d attended enough to self-drive my experience while being able to ignore this man’s bitterness. My two favorites are Rahelio‘s in Sedona, and a Temezcal in Pisac, in Peru by Natalia and Nadal Grace.
• Constellation Healing — A ceremonial practice where a person is placed at the center of a space, and multiple people surround them and what has been often called their ‘morphogenic field’. This field can be loosely defined as a ‘ radiance’ containing their current underlying emotional data, and the belief systems driving it, dating through their ancestry. Yes, I know that sounds strange. Attend one and you’ll see it work and be just as floored as I was, provided it’s a solid practitioner, like Hazel Williams-Carter based in Los Angeles.
  The people on the outer circle intentionally connect with the central person’s ‘field’, and without prior knowledge, this group of strangers play out the key trauma playing out in the forefront to this person’s psyche. Cue crying, hugging, releasing, wisdom… the whole emotion purge buffet. It’s amazing and requires some bravery as you might end up sobbing heavily / deeply man-weeping in front of complete strangers.
• Plant Medicine — These vary wildly. Wachuma (San Pedro), Ayahuasca, Peyote, Mushrooms, Hape, Marijuana (in a ceremonial context, it can assist transformation), Iboga, Sananga… and many more exist to help shift your perspective. I’ve found the odd plant medicine helpful, though I must stress that if you feel drawn to work with one, choose your facilitator carefully. While going through the plant journey is powerful, integrating is a critical phase and where experienced Shamans – ones who are empathic and know how to reflect and hold a space – are most valuable. Taking Ayahuasca in someone’s tiny apartment in West Hollywood away from nature, is most certainly counter to the optimal experience. The experience to seek is connective and among nature, such as a wild jungle, out of town retreat center or similar, set across a few days with caring souls watching over your stages of emotional breakdowns and breakthroughs, so to interject when needed.
• Automatic Writing — Typically I’ll turn off my phone, light a candle and tell everyone to leave me alone for a bit. Then I write while visualizing the energy from wherever I feel heaviness in the body, come up the arm and out my pen. And I write from the perspective of “I’m feeling this”, and all I’m doing is declaring “I’m feeling…[x]” until a story unravels. If your brain gets involved – you feel a light tension outward from it trying to control the narrative – it’s probably a protective energy and should be given room to speak from a place of empathy and understanding, to reach a feeling. If you are writing from purely feeling, you’re working from the correct space within.
  
• Emotional Alchemy – This can seem a daunting technique for those who tend to avoid feeling. It’s a skill to be developed with discernment. Those who have typically experienced severe trauma have learned to do this without realizing as such. In short, it’s the art of feeling a thing you’ve labeled painful, and knowing how to transform it energetically into a fuel to drive you forward. I have most commonly seen and exercised ‘alchemy’ using break-up pain, rejection, rage over betrayals, and even grief over a death… When utilized correctly, this is one of the most powerful and empowering transformation tools out there; to turn lead into gold… pain into strength… or even pleasure…

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TECHNIQUES TO TRY

To give you something to play with, here are two accessible techniques from my personal pool:

TECHNIQUE ONE : BREATHE AND VISUALIZE

This one’s level of efficacy is down to how much personal noise can interfere with your brain. As long as you can be patient with yourself, and understand that the mental distraction is an element of protection / coping mechanisms trying to ‘protect you’, you’ll do great. The key is to stay patient, and allow frustration to be acknowledged but not stay, if it arises. If it’s too overwhelming, use TECHNIQUE TWO (scroll down) to lift you out of the noise, then come back to this.

This entire process combines deep breathing, visualization, and awareness of physical body sensations.

Preparation : Create a place of comfort that is completely safe from intrusion. For the heaviest stuff to arise, you need to feel completely safe. If you’re uncertain what that feels like, quick fire a question to yourself, out loud, “do I feel safe?” and if you get “no”, ask “why?”. The first statement your brain gives you is more likely than not, the truth.

This technique of self-dialogue is another way to get past the thoughts that are hiding things from you in aim of your designed self-protection — not the ideas that ‘really’ protect you, but the ideas you thought protected you when you coded these patterns years and years ago.

Once you have your safe zone for doing this, begin…

Breathing: In breath to the nose and Out breath from the mouth. Mouth is left open about an inch for the entirety of the technique. Eyes are ideally closed. Visualizations are timed with breathing.

1. Starting Breaths — First, breathe in and visualize the breath as white light in liquid gas form. As the white light comes in, visualize and feel it fill your body from bottom to top, like you’re a bottle. About 3 to 7 breaths should shift you considerably to start. Or you can do this until your body feels like a filled vessel.
2. Observe The Discomforts — Now that you’re likely feeling a little buzzy, scan your body for the most potent arising physical sensation.
3. Pick One And Spend A Moment With It — Now you’ve chosen a sensation, observe it’s qualities and sit with it, exploring the sensations briefly, like you’re appreciating qualities of a wine, pizza or fancy chocolate.At this stage, it may change as you observe and give you a release (coughing, sneezing, watery mouth, phlegm, burp, crying, etc…). If you do, perform this process until it stops transforming.
4. Send The Discomfort White or Gold Light — When the energy somewhat sticks around, visualize white light with the breath in, to fill the area of discomfort of that energy. Visualize the white light traveling to that area, in time with a SLOW breath in (breathe slower and deeper if you feel there’s a blockage that’s stubborn, as deeper slower breaths help deepen the connection).When you breathe out, visualize the discomfort traveling up the breath from the place where it rests in the body. It may color itself a certain way in your minds eye, meaning you might have the in breath or out breath visualization naturally change color.Trust it if it feels like your intuition guiding you (I’ll cover the mechanics of that in another post, but in short, you have your own internal software and language forming your intuition and the more you play with it, the more it develops).
5. Focus, Relax and Remain Detached To An Outcome Of ‘Fixing’ — Be aware of urgency or aggressive impulses to change it and observe them without reaction and let them pass.
6. Result — You will either progress and receive images tied to the memories or feelings that energy represents. Or releases through the mouth / nose / etc… Or lightening of the sensation with nothing else.It varies pending your body and spirit’s state of readiness and safety to release the energy. Trust what you get and if you get the big release, great. If you get the light release, also great. It’s progress. Keep going or continue the effort another day.
7. Additional note : ‘Havening’ during a heavy release — If you have a heavy release, sometimes we’re afraid to let it flow as part of us is afraid of re-traumatizing ourselves. If you feel a heavy wave coming, try ‘Havening’. This is a technique taught to me by Hazel Williams Carter. Simply do this — when a heavy energy arises, take your finger tips and gently pass them over your forehead slowly, from the center, outward to the sides. Then top to bottom over the cheeks. Then over the inner and outer forearms. It should feel very gentle, motherly and nurturing. You’ll notice that the heavy release energy shifts and flows, but with less violence. You will not subvert the energy release, rather you give it safety to transfer into its truest state and the energy to flow freely.

Aftercare

Hit this link… www.soulhardware.com/aftercare

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TECHNIQUE TWO : THE TONAL MEDITATION

Sound healing on yourself tends to uplift rather than give you the deep energy clearing experience of Technique One, but for uplifting the self from a murky place, this is a consistently powerful tool.

Sound as a healing technique is noted and recorded as having seen popularity among ancient civilizations. Now in the 2000s, it’s making a comeback. ‘Sound Bath meditation’ is a thing that tangibly changes your state. This technique allows you to give yourself a sound healing meditation, and that’s even if you consider yourself a terrible singer or vocalist of any sort.

The following technique was taught to me in two different forms. One was from Shaman Durek and the other from Daniel Coates. Both versions are solid. I tweaked the version I share based on the 7 Greek vowels, which work well for me. 

The tonal efficacy seems to be part-dependent on the attention of the mind focusing on the linked area of the body listed. This helps to fine-tune where the area vibrates. 

It’s entirely possible that the effects will be different across a those who are a natural tenor, baritone, falsetto or otherwise. I’ve shared the various versions partly for that theoretical reason as I’ve yet to study enough of a sample of people to test this.

The point to all this: Try these out and use what works for you. Or, vary the sounds to find your range.

Daniel Coates demonstrates his take on the technique in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpfiVsCVsWU

One final note: If during the sound tonings you struggle with a particular area, that area likely contains a blockage. You can continue to work on that area with the tone and you will eventually feel lighter. If you’ve worked this technique correctly, you will feel like a tuning fork which has received a sturdy whack.

Now… the technique’s steps.

Setup : Get comfortable in a position you can stay relaxed in for around 20 minutes max. The key is to be able to stay in that relaxed position and hold a vocal tone. Put phone on do not disturb (the moon icon in iPhone) and on silent. Tell everyone to leave you alone. Or do this in the car during your commute; although this is suboptimal, it still works.

Repeat each tone 5 times. When you’ve practiced this to where you feel confident with it, you can increase the numbers that you tone.

1. Focus — On the center of the scalp (Crown).
   1. Tone — Aaaah — Like the “A” at the end of HA! But hold the tension of the throat at the back and you should feel the tingle on the top of your head.
2. Focus — On the center of the forehead (Third Eye).
   1. Tone — Eh — Like the bridge between the E and G in Egg. Ehhhhhhh. Hold the tone while focusing on the front center of your forehead. Tone should feel like it’s vibrating around the circumference of the throat, as it enters the mouth.
3. Focus — The center of the throat (Throat Center)
   1. Tone — Ayyyy — Like when Fonz would say “Ayyyyyyy”. Or how we articulate the letter “A” (if you never saw the ancient show Happy Days). Hold the tone at the front of your throat.
4. Focus — The center of the chest (Heart Center)
   1. Tone — Eeee — Like the end of “Bee”. Eeeeee. Should feel a vibration at the front of the central chest. Between the pectorals or breasts.
5. Focus — The center of the solar plexus (Solar Center)
   1. Tone — Orrrr — Like the bridging “Oh” sound between the R and T in ROT. Sort of like a sound we hear monks make.
   2. It’ll likely have bass and feel like the back of your lungs are vibrating too, possibly feeling like a gourd living in your body.
   3. Chances are you’ll naturally make a circular shape with your mouth and your solar plexus should vibrate in the center.
6. Focus — Sacrum, aka the area under the navel by two inches and inward (The Sacral)
   1. Tone — Youuuuuu — Like the “U” in “Ulysees” or Unicycle”. Youuuuuuu. Focus low down, below the navel.
7. Focus — The tailbone (The Root)
   1. Tone — Ouwww — Like the O in “O.M.G”. Or like you are articulating the letter “O” by how it is named.
8. Focus — The entire spine (Spine)
   1. Tone — The classic OHM. Sounds like “HOME” but said slowly and deeply. Feel the O, the bridge sound and the M all slowly roll together and hold the “Ummmm” at the end.

Once you’ve gone through all this, you should feel significantly lifted from when you started.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU USE A TECHNIQUE SO MUCH THAT YOU PLATEAU?

This is common. Just like using the same exercise in the gym to develop a muscle, eventually it will become accustomed and adapt. Energy can appear to behave the same. You’ll have to switch techniques so energy can enter your body in a “new” manner. Luckily, there’s many tools to choose from, far beyond the scope of this piece (though I may attempt to cover that in another one).

Cycling new energy and techniques is a thing I’ve done to continue having shifts and evolving.

The ultimate learning I’ve encountered on this journey — Your healing journey is your’s alone. No two are the same, but you will have shared stories with others.

FINAL IMPORTANT NOTE

Trust your guidance toward what works for you. Learn how to distinguish gut feeling from fear reflex (some struggle with that at the start, as I did) and if it’s fear, make sure to check yourself so you can lovingly heal and transform that fear into wisdom for that precious exp.

The key reward I find returns over and over, is the layered experience of valuing yourself. I’ve found the more I dig into the truest ‘me’ that exists, the more I value myself and the more I value my existence and ability to live. It’s a beautiful feeling and that’s why I share this stuff. I end up enjoying moment to moment existence, feeling continually further away from prisons I had accepted for my mental experience, and this of course allows happiness to feel less bound by expectations. It’s a truly fucking great feeling. Shouldn’t everyone be able to feel that way?

 

Any questions or requests, feel free to message me in the contact page.

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Massive thanks go to Eric Oesterling, Michael Wilson, Mike Wilson, Sofia Samrad, Jasmin Schweizer, Cory Lewis, Lindsey Barber and Mark Smith for their feedback and extra eyeballs upon this formerly abundant typo obstacle course.

Also thanks to those who contributed to my experiences leading to this knowledge base; those people (who I’m not endorsing necessarily, but am giving respect to…) include and are not limited to : Shaman Durek, Satya Narayan Goenka, Hazel Williams-Carter, Deborah Stellamaris, Rachel Stavis, Saranam, Colby Rebel, Swami Sankarananda, Keri Ports, Emily Condit, Chris Drew, Daniel Coates, Griffin Ced, Joe Weiss and Jen Soska.