Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello, this is Blair Stanislao with the Happy Lion Center. Welcome to our podcast, mystical and Infamous, where we have playful and easy conversations about anything mystical, getting to the heart of all things, strange and weird. Join us in a bit of magical tomfoolery, spreading the alchemy of the world. And now we invite you to enjoy the show. I didn't, and now we invite you to enjoy the show.

Speaker 3: 0:26

Hi everyone. My name is Kami Cote and I live in Missoula, montana. I am a Reiki master and a sound therapist and I'm going to be joining Blair today to talk about Himalayan singing bowls and most likely we'll talk about Reiki and working with sound therapy both. So we're going to start off our day with probably about a five-minute singing bowl meditation. I always like to talk to my listeners the people that come to events and that are listening to me playing is that there's oftentimes external sounds that happen. So, for example, I'm at home today and it's very warm in Missoula Montana, as it is throughout all of Montana, and I've got a window open and an air conditioner going and I have a dog and all of these different things, and so I do like to just talk about how there could be external sound past the instruments that I'm playing, and sometimes it can be just like oh, there's a noticing of that. Sometimes it can seem a little bit annoying any number of things like that, but the most beneficial opportunity that you can have is if you can allow that to be part of the soundscape. So, for example, a car might drive by. Does that sound like the ocean to you, or can you help that sound like the ocean to you as opposed to a car driving by. So all of those different things can be really useful when listening intentionally to sound. This happens everywhere. It happens in nature. If you happen to be outside listening to the birds, there's nowhere, generally even on the highest mountain, that you would go, that you're not going to have some other sound that's going to come by, other sound that's going to come by. So it's really part of the meditation of bringing that sound into our awareness and either letting it go or having it be part of the soundscape. So I'm going to play right now for just about five minutes and then we will talk in more depth about sound, especially so sound with himalayan bowls. These are bronze, no-transcript practice and all of those variable things. And just to communicate with Blair, I have it so that you won't get cut out if you turn on your sound.

Speaker 3: 10:21

So part of one of the wonderful things about providing sound healing and sound therapy online is it's definitely not an exact science and Zoom has its little challenges with suppression of sound and all of these different things that happen. For anyone that is out there that is really interested in learning how to work with sound. There are some special settings in your Zoom advanced settings that you can go on to to get to original sound and that way Zoom doesn't suppress your background sound and it can then make it so that you can play music live. Essentially, the challenge with that is is that when you do that, you can kind of almost hear a pin drop around me, especially, I don't know why. My microphone, I guess, is a especially a good microphone. It's not an expensive one, it's just a Yeti blue microphone, but I've, you know, heard and heard from people that it picks up the sound really well and of course, with that being said, it's also picking up sound all around the room and beyond. And then also, if you are working with sound online and starting to try and figure that out, if you, for example, I had my original sound on during the time that I was playing, but now that I want to have a conversation I've got to shut that original sound off and it's actually really easy. It's just kind of learning where the settings are, how to do it turn it off and on remembering all of those things, where the settings are, how to do it, turn it off, and on remembering all of those things. So actually that was some of what we were here to talk about today is, I teach singing bowl courses and I specifically teach in person and online, and so not only do I teach about the, only do I teach about the techniques that you can learn and incorporate into the work, into sessions that you're doing.

Speaker 3: 12:32

I always like to say that sound therapy is a amazing modality on its own, but then it's very easily combined into other session types or other modalities. So, specifically, I work with Reiki and sound. So oftentimes I combine or most times, actually, I combine Reiki and sound sessions, but then it can also be used. I have a lot of students that come and take trainings, that are massage therapists, that are yoga teachers, that are, you know, different modalities, that they want to incorporate sound in to their sessions. My experience was that when I started adding sound to my Reiki practice, it doubled my clientele.

Speaker 3: 13:20

So this was back in 2015, when I first started to professionally move into the sound arena, and so it's been, you know, nine years and 2014, 2015, I guess. So you know, like that timeline, nine, ten years and people really wanted sound therapy in their lives and I did a lot of learning, I did a lot of working because I live in Montana. There's not a lot of teachers here. In fact, at that timeline there was no teachers here that were teaching, you know, like sound with singing bowls or sound with these various instruments, with singing bowls or sound with these various instruments. And so I initially started take with an online training and it was one of those trainings that was started off as a free training and then it was like take this three month training and then take this year long training. So all in all, I ended up studying with that particular company, the Sound Healing Academy, for about a year and a half total, and that training was wonderful and comprehensive.

Speaker 3: 14:32

But what it really made me understand and know is that I really wanted to work with teachers in person and specifically live teachers. The program is set in Europe, and so I you know it's kind of like all these different things, and so with that then I started to find teachers that I really wanted to study with and specifically found a gong teacher and a singing bowl teacher and a voice teacher and all of these different things. So I was really interested in multiple instruments. What I found through my time was that that was what I was the most interested in. I really liked the metal instruments. There was a certain type of for how to explain it. It's really hard to put it all into words sometimes, but I found this welcoming type of energy with the bronze instruments. They seemed energetically warm to me, welcoming to me, and you know why, I don't know, it just was.

Speaker 3: 15:39

And so my path and journey started with a man named Jeffrey Torkington who ended up traveling to Missoula and as a long time. We spent a long time traveling together and I arranged a lot of trainings for him and studied and taught alongside of him for a couple of years. And then we were moving towards what ended up becoming the pandemic, and he lives and works out of Mexico and he ended up not being able to come up here for a while. And he then said you know, you've studied with me more than any other student. You may as well start teaching these courses. So that's what led me into teaching the singing bowl courses.

Speaker 3: 16:29

So that's just a little bit about me, my history. I have been one of those people. I I like to study, I like to go in depth, I really like to and I can, you know, afford the time and the effort and all of those things to to be able to, uh, go deep, and so um spent lots of hours and trainings with lots of teachers and now teach on my own, and I love it. Um, so just a little bit about the bowls in general. A lot of people are curious why I say Himalayan bowl versus Tibetan bowl and really they're kind of interchangeable. However, the reality is is that the bowls are made in the Himalayas.

Speaker 3: 17:20

So what happened in history was around 1970, a woman named Nancy Hennings and a man named Henry Wolf created the first New Age audio album, if you will, tibetan bells, and it had a lot of the Tibetan iconography I can never say that word quite right, but the Tibetan icons, the symbols and that kind of stuff on the cover, but there were actually no images of bulls on it. However, people realized that it was the bulls when they listened, and so that's really a part of what started. This perpetuation of the Tibetan bulls or the Tibetan bells was that CD that won a Grammy back in the 70s, which is pretty cool that actually the bulls are not made in Tibet and there really isn't any history that's specifically connected to Tibetan Buddhism, for example, or even the country of Tibet. Now let me just say because I don't want to go through the whole history spiel in this little podcast here but let me just say, like there has been sound used in Tibet, certainly, and perhaps they had a little bell I will have to pull one out here in just a minute but they had these little bells called tingshas and dorges. They had instruments, but it wasn't so much the singing bowls and the evidence-based finding, that information through people traveling to Nepal and to the Himalayas and also into Tibet. So, at any rate, the teachers that I work with have, kind of like, created this like platform desire to really put it out there that these are actually the Himalayan bulls, and so we've been working with trying to perpetuate that versus the Tibetan bull name. So hopefully, hopefully, that makes sense. I know people are always really curious about that and why why I call them Himalayan bulls versus Tibetan bulls, and that really is what it comes from.

Speaker 3: 19:49

The bowls are made out of bronze and they're made out of 80% copper, 20% tin. A lot of the bowls are like this, they're just kind of plain, and this one is not an antique, though it has had. It's been around for a while, probably since 2012. And it has a patina on it that has made it look a little antique-y, if you will. So that's one of the things that I do like to mention to people is you really have to be conscious about your buying when you're going out there and buying in the world, because a lot of times people can say that a bowl is an antique, but is there really anything that can prove that?

Speaker 3: 20:39

How do we know? You know all of those types of things, and I'm not saying that they're not because we do get antique bowls in. There's some things that you can do to check them. Typically, they're sound. You know various things like that. However, there is not like a certificate that comes with them that says you know that guarantees that it's 150 years old, or anything such as that. So things to think about and know. Let me get a little bit of the doggy hair out of there.

Speaker 1: 21:11

Was the quality different? Is there some reason to get an antique, one other than you like? Old things right.

Speaker 3: 21:15

Sometimes yeah, I mean sometimes people are just antique collectors. Sometimes people, like, think that the sound is just slightly richer. And I do have some antique bowls in my collection, and then I also have some newly made bowls in my collection. So I find that they all are, you know, work, and primarily, what we try to do with our sound is we try to harmonize the sound. So we want the bowls to all sound good together, and so that's our primary goal. And if that means that this newly made bowl sounds better than the antique bowl, then so it is, and vice versa, if the antique bowl sounds better, then we'll go with that one.

Speaker 3: 21:57

So another thing that I thought I would show hopefully it will show up, oh yeah, so this one in particular has a Tara that's engraved on the inside of it. So sometimes you'll find bowls that have engravings on it. So in this particular case, this is a goddess, a Tibetan goddess, and so what has happened over the years is they started to realize that that was what our Western world wanted, was the icons and that kind of stuff. So they did start engraving those things into the bowls, and now you can get engraved bowls with all kinds of things, anything from the Taras to Shiva, which is one of the Hindu deities, that you can get feet engraved in them like actual feet. You can get like the flower of life, like all kinds of different things. So it's kind of cool.

Speaker 3: 22:56

You know that there's such a market out there. Now the newly made market really started to make its way into the world in the 70s. Like I said, the energy of the bulls really started to make its way into the world in the 70s. Like I said, uh, you know, the energy of the bulls really started to make its way into the world at that time and, uh, there was this, uh recognition because the, the nepali people are, are uh wonderful and also business oriented that they could make some money. So, you know, they started to manufacture bowls and that kind of thing. Like I said, there's a lot to the history that you know. In a quick podcast we won't get into it all super deep, but those are just some of the little things to know.

Speaker 1: 23:42

But if they're interested, that would come in the training, right yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:45

Yes, so if you want to know more, I'm always happy to have a one-to-one conversation. And then also, yes, there is a little bit more on the history in the history of the courses, the history. There was one other thing I was going to mention. Oh, it's just really the sound. Sound in general.

Speaker 3: 24:16

It has been here since the beginning of time and people have worked with sound since the beginning of time. A lot of it was done through voice singing. A lot of people, for example, once religion started to become, you know a thing, people singing in churches, even like shamans and different things, singing using whistles, like all of these different things. But the bulls weren't necessarily a thing. You know, yes, some history of a bull or someone having a bull, but then, like what you see in today's modern era, is like sets of bulls, like I have, I think, 13 bulls here with me, and so that is a more contemporary thing. That started happening more in the mid 70s and later, that people would have multiple bowls, like it would generally have been maybe one bowl and a bell and a drum. You know different things like that that were doing the sound healing work. So that is one of the things that's a little bit challenging about sound is that it's not regulated and there's not like a specific association that you can, you know, like check someone out and like make sure that they're a good teacher, that they're associated with an association. So really, someone could, you know, take a weekend course and then start teaching and, you know, be teaching what they're supposed to be teaching, right? I mean, that's like always been my realization is, whatever brings someone into the fold of helping others is what it's meant to be. And then, on a similar path like I have, if you want to know more, you'll seek out more, you'll find another teacher, you'll learn more.

Speaker 3: 26:03

And in my time of learning I've had my perspective changed quite significantly. So, for example, when I first started learning about sound and I'm also a yoga teacher and Reiki and so on I really had this note or what I thought was a knowing about the chakras and that I knew all the colors and I knew all the notes that were supposed to go with the chakras and all of these different things. And then, when I met Jeffrey again, my perspective was opened to another possibility and it was like, well, why do we have to always work with, for example, a c note which in, uh, you know, some circles would say that that was for the root chakra. Uh, why wouldn't a c also open the heart? And so really, essentially, like you know, taking away this uh thought process of like we have to have the seven chakras or the seven notes, those types of things within the bowls, you know is also a, you know, fun and new thing to explore, and in the time that I've been teaching, I started teaching courses in 2018. You know, I've definitely personally opened up a lot of people's perspective around that, and I'm not saying it's not valid. Also, I happen to notice that if I play a C bull, I might feel it in my root chakra area, but then also I might feel it in my heart or I might feel it in my crown. So it's not to say that the bowl specifically is only for one, one specific place in the body.

Speaker 3: 27:53

So, yes, a lot of the things that people might be interested in knowing is what does sound therapy do?

Speaker 3: 28:02

When you bring in sound and work with a client?

Speaker 3: 28:08

And it is a lot of the same benefits that you would receive from any type of healing modality.

Speaker 3: 28:15

So it's going to help with the nervous system, so it will increase that relaxation response. It can lower the pulse rate, lower the blood pressure. Lower the pulse rate, lower the blood pressure, it can help reduce pain significantly actually. So it's really beneficial in that aspect and it is great for and the reason why because I'll probably, you know, get asked why or how or whatever the vibration of the bowl generally will help to soothe any type of muscle stiffness or, you know, any type of congestion that's in the body, and we've even had people that have had, you know, pretty severe low back pain that will have seen bowl work done with them and they will feel better. Uh, so, you know, again, that being said, with many modalities, I'm I'm never one to say like sound therapy is the only answer, because I think that it's a um, it's a multitude of things that we would want to get, get to receive when we're in pain, for example, I have a question for you.

Speaker 1: 29:29

Sure, one thing that is coming to my mind right now about and I've experienced sound therapy a couple of times, not a lot, probably less than 10. And it is very different than other types of healing. So, even if you're in a Reiki session, you know some people sense energy shifting to be different. It could be, you know, they see something, they feel something, they hear something, whatever it is, so they're kind of noticing how it shifts from their perspective, in their body.

Speaker 1: 30:00

Sound, on another hand, my experience is all of the well, maybe not all of, but a lot of the what I will call chaos or monkey mind or whatever. All the distractions of the world that kind of set your nerves off to kind of be irritated. Now, that's the physical body, right. It can be also your mind too. Um, that when, when a note, like when the music that you just did, okay, in a sense you almost know that you're meant to listen and pay attention, and because it has a sound and it is stimulating one of your senses in such a way it almost quiets everything else. It's almost like pay attention, you know, and then it allows you to say, oh, wait, just for a moment, just like Ricky, right, just for a moment, put the rest of the stuff aside and experience this. So it kind of brings you back into the now, yeah, and forces you to do that.

Speaker 3: 31:02

Yeah, Definitely, present moment is is really big with sound because it's right there, it's like right in your ears, it's right in, it's on your body. So I talk a lot about whole body listening, especially with sound, and that is because it's not just the ears that are hearing, the whole body is listening and feeling and all of that, and definitely like one of the if you will, the easiest ways to meditate is to do sound meditation because it gives you something to focus on. If you have been a meditator for you know, if you're a new meditator or a longtime meditator what you will realize and recognize is it can just be hard to drop in and it is true like our minds are so busy with the business of the world and the business of our lives and all of these different things. And so when you can go into a place where you can intentionally listen, that can really shift the way that you are going into a meditation.

Speaker 1: 32:05

So that leads me to another question. Yeah, and this, this kind of goes into I don't think it's really a debate. I think you're going to understand what I'm saying and I think the listeners will too. I don't remember, probably 2013 or after my husband died, but basically I was looking for help and I kept going to the spiritual stuff. And you know, a lot of the messages are the same, and one time I finally heard a message which I had heard several times over. I knew that the answer was meditation. So I would turn on a YouTube or whatever and do which right after my husband died. I was, you know, it's pretty easy just to sit there and zone out Right. My husband died I was, you know, it's pretty easy just to sit there and zone out Right.

Speaker 1: 32:52

But then, as I listened to somebody actually talking about it, I understood what meditation really is, which is not necessarily sitting in a specific position or breathing a specific way. It's more of a process of being aware, kind of exactly what we're talking about here, getting in the present moment and observing it. And and as soon as I realized that, I was like, oh, it reminded me very much of being a child and all of these teachers telling me I need to read all these books and need to write book reports. And I hated fiction, and I know now I hated fictional books, right, and I'm a child of a teacher. So I was like that's really taboo, you can't say I don't like reading. But I did say it to my mother.

Speaker 1: 33:32

But eventually what I realized was, as a young person, they were telling me reading is reading chapter books for an elementary school kid, right? Well, that's not what reading is. Reading is something it can include, that, but it's not just that. So once I opened up to that, then that allowed me to say, okay, maybe I do like reading. Same kind of thing with sound. Okay, maybe I do like meditation, okay. So here's my question yeah, how is sound healing different than when we choose to listen to sound and whatever method it could be, music, meaning, like you know, like popular music or whatever kind of music you like, right, how is it? How is sound healing different than choosing your own music and kind of getting in the zone?

Speaker 3: 34:21

Yeah, I actually think that listening to any kind of music is super valid. I'm a Taylor Swift fan you know Swifty right here and listening to her music has been incredibly healing to me. I really am a lyricist, I love lyrics, and so I 100% think that intentional listening to any kind of music can help you bring healing. Now, specifically with sound therapy, with bowls or gongs or any of the myriad of instruments, the nice thing that happens there is there's typically a practitioner that is, you know, there and you are with someone that might be picking up on additional challenges that might be coming up, or that kind of thing can can really help you focus yourself into that present moment.

Speaker 3: 35:17

Like, generally in a session, I start off with people you know laying on the table and there, you know, we start off with intention and we start off with with breath and often a little guided meditation, and then the bowls are going to be physically on the person's body and so that's just a really nice almost like the. I like to look at it as like a weighted blanket, you know, and then the bowls are typically cool and temperature. So it's all very wonderful for the nervous system to, you know, help it regulate and go into that parasympathetic aspect of it. Could you achieve a similar effect by laying down and, you know, being intentional about your breathing and being intentional about your listening? Yeah, absolutely. But the one thing about, like I said, with working with someone is you've got live instruments, you've got a practitioner there working with you and helping you along the path. You know, we're like the little trail guide, basically.

Speaker 1: 36:22

So in a sense, kind of they're there and able to help you to kind of translate the energies, which my experience has been people who do that kind of stuff like you, because you're so skilled at noticing the change in the energies and sensing things and taking that energy information in and being able to articulate it in a language that we all speak, right. Yes, that it comes. It feels like it comes to you quicker, but I'm starting to recognize that it may not come to you quicker. You just have worked on knowing how to translate that into communication, right, yeah, yeah, and being the other person there in a sense validates that first the let's call it, the client validates their experience of it yeah, yeah, I, you know I've been working as a practitioner full-time since 2015.

Speaker 3: 37:19

so I, I, you know how do you explain what happens in a healing space? You know it's like it's really hard because it's energetic, it's work. Yeah, I would have like multiple. You know, like people just over and over and over again talk about how this was so effective for them. They've really been able to let go of things from the past. They've been able to focus more on their present and not so much on their future.

Speaker 3: 37:47

And that's like one of the things that I often talk about with people is how, you know, just typically, when we're dealing with depression or what have you, it's usually very past oriented, like we're thinking about what's happened in the past and and that kind of thing. And then when we're dealing with anxiety, it's generally very future oriented, you know. So we're not staying in that present moment place. So whenever we're in session, my goal is to try and keep the client in that present moment state for their whole session, however long that happens to be, and they're in that state of consciousness that then they can like really be open to listening and hearing the greater message that is there for them and that kind of thing, and sometimes it correlates, sometimes like the message will come through to me and I'll have it, and then sometimes I'm really just that channel or that vessel and I'm really there for the person to have their message come through, and so it can work both ways.

Speaker 1: 38:54

Yeah, yeah. So as we talk about this, I think it becomes even clearer that life, but also sound healing, is more of an experience than it is an idea or you know things that we can talk about easily. It's better to. You will understand it better if you just have the experience, if you go through that. I mean, I don't think I have actually I have done something where they did put sound on or near me.

Speaker 1: 39:26

But I'm curious to know what has been your experience with people who are really sensitive to energies. Do they have stronger responses to the sound? Like? I'm just imagining I would feel safe with the sound healing with you if you were to put a bowl on me, with the sound healing with you, if you were to put a bowl on it, but if I didn't know the person or I didn't know the situation, and then somebody comes up and not only creates a sound but, like, puts it so close to my body that would feel really threatening. So, um, what? What is your experience with people who are sensitive to energies? Like in terms of the sound, like, does that make it amplified? Does it make it scarier? Does it make it scarier? Does it make it easier? What does it do?

Speaker 3: 40:10

Yeah, I'll tell you about a couple of experiences I have. I've had. So I have had the wonderful pleasure of working with a lot of other very sensitive people, because I work on a lot of Reiki people. I work on a lot of other sound people of Reiki people, I work on a lot of other sound people, and so there's definitely a I work on a lot of highly sensitive people and in the general form of this, like I am very conscientious about I'm, you know, talking to the client. I'm going to be beginning the sound. I'm going to put this bull here on your belly, I'm going to put this bull on your heart. So there's an awareness of where I'm at, where the bulls are, where the sound's going to be.

Speaker 3: 40:55

When I'm in a one-to-one session, I'm not working on trying to do any sort of element of surprise, Like that's nothing, like I'm a very meticulous, very intentional therapist, if you will, and I'm not trying to do anything on the element of surprise. Now, does something happen occasionally, like a bull might cling together, things like that? Yeah, it happens, you know. I mean, we're humans, we're playing live, like that kind of stuff. But typically people are at that point whenever something kind of weird happens, which isn't a lot, it just does happen. You know, speaking honestly, that the person's typically so deep that they don't really notice it. And if they do notice it, there's often the comment afterwards of like, oh, when that bull clanged together, like I was really holding on to something, and suddenly that was the catalyst for me to let it go. And so I've heard that over and over and over again. I have worked with people that have been sensitive to sound specifically, and so in those particular cases they still obviously have booked a session with me and so they want to have the experience. I'm highly sensitive to sound people. I would really play much softer, for example. I mean I would really be tuning into how I'm playing and how I'm doing my thing.

Speaker 3: 42:25

And I think one of the most important things for anybody that's doing healing work, and especially if you're interested or already working with sound, is the remembrance or knowing of how important it is for us to step out of sight of our ego. You know like there might be that moment of being like gosh, dang it. I just really want to whack this bull. But what purpose does that serve? What purpose does that serve to do that right now, when my person has been in a meditation for 15 or 20 minutes, all it's likely going to do is bring them out, scare them. You know any number of things like that. So you know like stepping of things like that, so you know like stepping outside of the ego is really important.

Speaker 3: 43:11

Most people aren't coming to my sessions because they want to be energized. Most people are coming to my sessions because they want to relax and, you know, relieve their, their nerves and their stress, and you know those types of things. So it definitely plays into how I play for my sessions one to one. Now, on the flip side with that, I do public sound journeys as well, where I play for groups of people and in those particular cases, while I'm still very in tune with the crowd because that's who I am and I'm very in tune with people and what have you there will be a little bit more fun, a little bit more element of surprise, some louder playing and that kind of stuff. It's just part of. It's a very different type of playing when doing one to ones with people in a healing session type of situation, versus playing for a group in a meditation that I'm doing at a retreat or at a festival, or you know even my regular monthly sound baths or or whatever.

Speaker 1: 44:19

Yeah, I want to just touch on something you talked on, talked briefly on, I think you talked about it even before you started playing, talked briefly on, I think you talked about it even before you started playing, as you were talking about just, you know, saying, be aware of there might be some extra sounds, right, but just know that they're there for a purpose and they're not going to get in the way or that kind of thing, which is similar to what we say in hypnosis. Right, that does happen where the person is, wherever they are, and they can can experience that, but they don't have to have it become this big disruption. There was a uh, the way you were articulating it was reminding me of this movie that I watch. I don't know if you ever watch this, but, and for the listeners, if they're interested in getting a um, a very refined presentation of that idea uh, there's a movie called august rush and it has, um, a young boy in it who, basically, he has a really hard life and he winds up on the streets and I think it's Robin Williams who gives him a guitar and his parents are musicians, but they were like teenagers, so that's why he's not with his parents.

Speaker 1: 45:23

But there is this scene where he is playing the guitar and they actually which I know they orchestrated this. So it's not necessarily really how it is, but you hear streets, because he's out on the street Like I don't know where, new York or something, and you hear these street sounds and then what he does is he takes the guitar and he kind of marries that or harmonizes that together with all of the street sounds and it is just this beautiful, which, of course, he's not playing it the way that most people play the guitar, because he's not been instructed, right, um, but it's just this beautiful presentation of that and it, it, um, it shows exactly what you're talking about there. It shows exactly what you're talking about there and it shows the importance of that, yeah, and it forces it. It brings in a visual, because it's a movie, but also sound, what we were talking about getting forced to be in the moment yeah and that you don't really have to have only specific kinds of sounds.

Speaker 1: 46:22

You can have other sounds too, and that's the harmony that you're meant to hear, right.

Speaker 3: 46:29

Yeah, yeah, just to one. One word I would like to change with that is the forced part and say you're being invited. You're not elected to be forced to do anything. My mind's always going to be like why do I have to do this? Right, so you're being invited. I like that word a little more than forced. But yes, even like. I noticed, because I have a lilac bush right outside my window here, and when I was playing, probably four minutes in or something, all of the birds showed up and they were singing. I don't know if you heard it, but it'll, it'll, it'll most likely show up in the recording.

Speaker 3: 47:09

Um, so yeah, like, and then there was an airplane that went by, so like, that's like I live right in center of Missoula but you know the path is lining up to the airport. Um, so, you know, we get airplanes that go by a few times a day, that kind of stuff. So you know, like, when you start thinking about how you can incorporate your environmental sounds, it's a really cool and kind of mind-blowing type of scenario. It's like, can I make the sound? Like? I was doing a live sound journey in Spokane once and we were in a second floor studio above this really busy street and the cars were driving by like for like, the speed limit was like 45 miles an hour, so like, people are driving by pretty fast and it was like, honestly, kind of annoying to me which that happens like I get annoyed by things because I just want people to have such a great experience. But then afterwards all of the people that were in attendance were saying, oh, the sound of the street didn't bother me at all, it sounded like the ocean, and so, like, as I listened, because I did another event there some, you know a while later after that, and so that's what I said to begin with is, you know, allow the sound of the street to sound like the ocean to you. And then I even did like the ocean of holy love that's one of the holy fire journeys, you know did the ocean of holy love meditation at the beginning? And so, you know, really set the theme basically around the ocean and people just really loved it.

Speaker 3: 48:43

So there's always a way to find, hopefully, a way to make that external sound okay, and then also beyond that, if it's really just on the nerves and you know there's, there's a reason and what. What is it that I really need to tune into? For example, like when I go to other sound healing, other facilitators, sound healing events, which I do. I love to go and receive. I give a lot, so I love to go and receive.

Speaker 3: 49:17

And one of the things that really bothers me, for example, is people snoring, because it happens and you know it does. It happens and people get very relaxed and that's the next little possibility is people fall asleep, and it just is one of those things that just tends to kind of gray on my nerves and that's just been something like I've I've personally worked on Because it's like I love that people are getting to rest, and so there's that piece of it, and I always try to put that, you know, knowingness, like I'm just so grateful that they're getting to rest, and so there's that piece of it and I always try to put that, you know, knowingness, like I'm just so grateful that they're getting their rest, but then for me there's just that little bit of like eek, you know, I just wish they'd stop, but it is part of the experience sometimes is you know, people snoring or you know any kind of normal, you know sounds people rustling around, sitting up, laying down. You know any kind of normal, this, you know sounds people rustling around, sitting up, laying down.

Speaker 3: 50:08

You know clothes are noisy, you know, and I would say like it gives you an opportunity to focus on yeah want to focus on yeah, and as a person that works with sound and has been working with sound for a while, it's made me even more sensitive to sound.

Speaker 3: 50:25

So, so, like I just am hyper, you know, aware of like sounds and I had mentioned before we started like I try to be really mindful of how much my like sticks click together and I'm kind of notorious for wanting to hold multiple mallets at a time, but that's where you start getting your, your clicks, um of the sticks, clicks of the sticks, and you know, while it's not terrible, it's also, uh, in the way that I've studied and learned and now what I try to present, just try to present the most professional experience that I can, and you know that would be not an ideal sound necessarily to, you know, be bringing forward. So, yeah, it's always good to just kind of look at my own playing and you know, again, like I said, things happen Sometimes a bull's a little too close to another one and they click together and all of those kinds of things.

Speaker 1: 51:21

So, yeah, Well, you feel like another one.

Speaker 3: 51:25

Yeah, sure. So is it okay if I just say what I'm, what I'm up to?

Speaker 1: 51:30

That's exactly what I was gonna ask you. Let's do that first, and then we'll just end with the sound.

Speaker 3: 51:35

Another little meditation. Yeah, so I, as I mentioned, my name is Kami Kote and I'm in Missoula, montana. My business is called Heart Rhythm Reiki and you can find me at heartrhythmreikicom and I specifically, well, I'm a Reiki teacher, but then I also teach sound therapy for singing bowls. So I have a level one and a level two that I do in person in Missoula and those courses are amazing because I have hundreds of singing bowls in inventory, so you get to come and play with all the bowls and you know all of those things and generally when people come to those courses they they're pretty serious about wanting to add bowls and buy bowls. So I sell singing bowls and sell singing bowls at a reasonable price and that kind of stuff. So you know, that's, that's kind of how that works. And then I do the online training, and the online training there's a little bit of pre work because I've got to have people set up with their bowls prior to the course. It's not, you know, you're not going to be coming into my room and working with the bowls that are there. So I generally have a meeting with the student ahead of time. We figure out where they're at with, what they want to do what their budget is, that kind of stuff, and then I create a set with them and so everything's always done, you know, typically through zoom, and we work on building their set together. So I'll give dates. I'm teaching and a level one in September and that will be on September 14th and 15th and everyone has to take level one first. So that would be the first training in person in Missoula.

Speaker 3: 53:18

I don't usually take that course on the road because of how much of the inventory I have to haul, of how much of the inventory I have to haul, and as a you know woman that pretty much travels and does everything on my own, I'm married but my husband works and he doesn't have time to go with me for all of my things and it's just easier, you know, for you all to come to me and it's worth it. Missoula is cool and then, beyond that, for my people that are really just like too far away, like I have students from Texas and I have students from the East Coast and different things like that, and it's just really not reasonable for them to come to Missoula. I do the online training.

Speaker 3: 53:59

It's an intro training, so it's it's the outline or the basic concepts of the level one, without some of the uh the piece of like making the set and that kind of stuff. So it's a little bit condensed down, especially on Sunday and uh, that one is happening on July uh, excuse me on November 9th and 10th and uh, these courses give you multiple uh knowings of like how to get the best sounds out of your bowls and you know bringing in that professional aspect into the playing either a full sound therapy session or if your interest is to do tandem sessions where you would do massage or bowls or Reiki and bowls or any number of things like that, then that is an option. So, yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1: 54:59

Yes, I'll put a link up to, of course, to your stuff on the podcast.

Speaker 3: 55:04

Perfect. And then also just one last thing I do do the public experiences. I do a monthly in Missoula sound journey. That happens. I typically try to have it be the second Tuesday of every month, but you know, sometimes it gets skewed around for a thing. But this is all on my website. And then I, in the winter time, because I find it more challenging people are typically so busy in the summer I actually do what I call online activations, and those incorporate meditation and singing bowls, and so those are things to be looking out for. I'll probably start those up again either in October or November and run them through probably March is sort of what I've done in the past. So, yeah, I've been doing those for a few well, since the beginning of COVID, and so I've been doing the online ones for four years and typically have some really nice success with them. So, yeah, people enjoy them and so on.

Speaker 1: 56:06

Excellent.

Speaker 3: 56:06

Yeah, oh, one last thing, Sorry, I just. The one thing about the online ones is so cool is like I often have people say, oh, I wish I could just have you in my bedroom. And I'm like this is the way. I'm not going to come to your bedroom in person, but you can listen in bed to the online activation.

Speaker 1: 56:26

So those are fun. So are those replays? Or they just live, or both.

Speaker 3: 56:31

They are, so I do record them, I post them onto YouTube, but only for the people that have in the online activations. I do as a donation, and so people do like, essentially, buy a ticket if you will, but it's a donation, so you can donate a dollar or you can donate more, and that way it's just easeful for me. I set it up through Eventbrite. So Eventbrite is cool in the aspect of, like it automates emails and stuff like that and and yeah, that's great, yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:03

Cool, thank you, okay, okay.

Speaker 3: 57:03

Yeah, cool Thank you Okay.

Speaker 3: 57:08

Okay, so I'm going to just spend a little bit more time playing this out here, and, as I mentioned, this set of bowls is a beautiful set. It sounds really lovely and, for those of you that might already be working with sound, I'll just mention that something that I've been paying a lot of attention to these last couple of years especially has been subtlety and resolve, and so the subtlety comes in with how hard or soft I'm tapping my bowls and sometimes stretching my opportunity for the listener's ear to listen a little more intentionally, and then resolve is something of like a coming back to. So, as you maybe heard in the beginning of my playing, at the beginning I tapped the same bowl at the beginning and at the end of my playing.

Speaker 2: 1:02:55

And so I'm bringing that resolve back to this bowl. I love you, thank you. Thank you, I'm going to take a deep breath. Thank you, I'm sorry so so I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: 1:05:36

Thank you, I love you. So, for those of you listening, I'll have you take a nice deep breath in and exhale. So thank you for taking this opportunity to listen with intention. May the benefit of this time of music and sound bring you blessings and healing. Thank you, thank you, thank you thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:06:14

Thanks for listening to this episode of mystical and infamous podcast with the happy lion center. Send requests for topic discussions, questions. That's podcast at happylioncentercom.