Editor's Note: We start our bonus book excerpt with an introductory article supplied by the author that is adapted from information in Vibrational Healing through the Chakras.

SOUNDS THAT YOU MAKE yourself charge your body and brain. Sound activates the vagus nerve that extends from your ear down into your larynx and through your entire intestinal tract, where its fibers control gastric and pancreatic secretions. This is in the area of your third chakra, which is an emotional center. The vagus nerve also has inhibitory fibers that pass your heart, which is in the area of your fourth chakra, another emotional center. So, (as we all know) sound has a profound affect upon your emotions, including your digestion and heart rate.

Toning is the sustained, vibratory sounding of single tones, often vowel sounds, without the use of melody, rhythm, or words. Most people have heard the toning of the syllable OM, which is believed to create an energy of harmony and unity. Regardless of their religion, people tend to experience a quiet centeredness when OM is toned repeatedly, especially when done in a rich and sonorous voice.

When a group of people make sounds together the benefits are exponential. A study of choir members in Irving, California showed a huge boost to the immune system after singing. Barbara Marciniak, in Bringers of the Dawn, describes the experience of group toning:

Spirit plays, and human beings simply
observe the attendance of the symphony that they are performing...
The harmonies alter something; they open the door...
When you tone with others, you have access to the group mind...
It is a gigantic leap in consciousness.

We live in a left-brain-dominated society that is anti-intuitive and anti-spontaneous. Our educational system rewards students for staying in their heads all the time. Give your head a break! Start toning!

Here is a short emotional release exercise that you can do while you're in the shower or driving on a back-country road. A shower is ideal, because the water (preferably cool or cold water) is continuously bathing your electromagnetic aura and literally showering you with healthy negative ions. This is an excellent way to start the day or to wind down after work or after an argument or any stressful encounter. It gives you an opportunity to express your feelings without doing harm.

Start by thinking about all the nasty things that have happened to you in the last week or month. Really get into it. Go ahead, feel sorry for yourself! Exaggerate your feelings. Make loud, complaining, disgusting grunts and groans. Let your voice dredge up all the frustration, annoyance, and grief that you feel.

After doing this for awhile, your voice will go into a higher register. It may go up and down. As you release tension and begin to feel better, your voice will tend to go higher for longer. At some point, you will feel a definite release and a leveling off. You may sigh or tone a long note. Just continue until you feel complete.

When you establish a direct connection between your heart and voice, it enhances your self-confidence, improves communication, strengthens your singing and speaking, and helps free up your creativity. And it's a lot of fun!

The following excerpt is taken from my book Vibrational Healing through the Chakras. It is found in Part 4: Healing with the Voice...

The Author's Experience with Sounding

WHEN I LIVED near Taos, New Mexico in 1967, my Apache friends invited me to attend a meeting of the Native American Church, to bless their new land. I heard that a Road Man (a holy man who conducts these all-night ceremonies) named Little Joe would be coming from Taos Pueblo, and he wanted to be sure that there would be at least six people who "knew the songs" so they could "hold the energy." Our host reassured him that this would happen.

When I arrived toward evening, the sun was already low on the horizon, painting the mesas in a brilliant salmon-colored wash. A tall, resplendent tepee graced the land. Little Joe arrived with a couple men from the Pueblo who would assist him with the ceremony. He was a diminutive man with a remarkable combination of humility and wisdom.

We gathered outside the tepee - about twenty of us - as the sun went down behind the mesa. Little Joe invited us to come in and we packed inside, just barely fitting around the circumference, cross-legged, with our knees scrunched up against each other. Little Joe sat directly across from the entrance, facing east. Then the Cedar Man came in and closed the flap. He tended the fire.

We were asked not to fall asleep and not to leave the tepee for any reason without asking permission of the Cedar Man, because everyone who began the meeting should be there at the end, at sunrise, to keep the energy together.

Little Joe passed the Bull Durham (pure Virginia tobacco) around the circle and we each rolled our own ritual cigarette, took a few puffs, and made a prayer. The smoke would carry our prayers to the Great Spirit. We placed our cigarettes on the nearly circular "road" that Joe drew in the sand in front of us, and the chanting began. Joe murmured some prayers in his own language and there was more chanting. Joe passed the drum to the man on his right and held onto the rattle. The person who holds the rattle speaks or sings while the person on their right accompanies on the drum.

Little Joe spoke in English and said something like this: "Ho! Heavenly Father, Earthly Mother, thank you for this fire tonight and all these good people who've come to walk this road with us and bless this land. Thank you for this beautiful day and all the women who came to help us cook. Thank you for this good path that you've given us to walk." He shook the rattle and his assistant took up the drum. The group broke into a lively chant.

Little Joe shook the rattle again and continued, "Great Spirit, I want to ask you to watch over my neighbor, Jim, 'cause he had a real bad accident two days ago when he fell off that combine and wrenched his shoulder. His wife is havin' a hard time takin' care of him and the kids, too. HO!" (He shook his rattle for emphasis, and several people said "Ho!" in agreement.)

Joe passed the rattle to George on his left. George was one of the men from the pueblo. The drum was passed to Little Joe, so he could play for George. There was a lot of chanting and then George said, "Ho, Great Spirit, Father-Mother. We're traveling this road tonight, this good road that you have given to our people. We want to ask you to bless this land and take good care of Jake and Jim and Sandy and Inez, so there will be plenty of water, and the crops will grow tall, and there will be plenty of food to eat.

"I want to ask you to help my mother, because that arthritis is getting pretty bad in her back and it's been hard for her to get out of bed these past few days. She wanted to be here tonight, but she just wasn't strong enough to make the trip. I want to ask you to comfort her and make that back strong again. HO!" The rattle shook while other folks from the pueblo joined in the Ho! And I could feel that they all knew his mother and cared about her and were sending her lots of good energy. Then they all broke into a lively chant. The energy was beginning to build.

Around midnight, a woman from outside brought a big pot of medicine tea to the entrance of the teepee. The Cedar Man received it and it was passed around. After we drank the tea, the energy picked up some more, the chanting intensified, and the prayers seemed more impassioned.

Never before had I heard ordinary people talking directly to God! I came from a culture where not even priests or rabbis talked to God. Where I came from, everyone in his or her right mind knew that only crazy people thought they could talk to God. But these people, whose lives had such direct simplicity, were teaching me something different.

As I listened to the drumming, chanting and praying, trying to avoid the smoke of the fire, I could feel my weariness and it was difficult to resist lying down. I found myself almost sleeping in a sitting position, rocking back and forth in rhythm to the repetitive chanting and drumming.

There was something so familiar and comforting about the rocking movement and the deep chanting in a foreign tongue. The word davenning came to mind. I felt myself transported to a different place and time. I was a small child, rocking in my mother's lap. We were at the sumptuous synagogue in Chicago during one of the special Holy Days. I'm sure my mother was remembering the High Holy Days during her childhood in Poland, when all the neighbors came flocking to her father's home. She was watching her beloved father, who was both Rabbi and Cantor for their little village, with his great bushy beard and the yarmulka perched on his abundant black hair. He was wrapped in his white prayer shawl, praying, davvening (rocking back and forth), chanting over the sacred prayer book.

Those early experiences at the Synagogue must have been my first awakening to spirituality. The combination of my mother's devotion and the soulful chanting of the Cantor, in an ancient language, transported me to a deeply profound place. It was like the native chanting in the teepee.

The rattle was being passed to the man on my right, and he was praying aloud. This was the second time it had gone around the circle, and it would be my turn soon. I did not speak the first time. I had no idea what I would say. Throughout the night I had been listening to the native people chanting and praying aloud for their friends, their neighbors, their animals, their crops, for the boys in Vietnam, for the President of the United States, and for their parents. Suddenly it felt strange that I had not spoken to my parents in two years; I didn't even know where they were.

When my family moved to California and joined a reform temple, I was shocked that there was no Cantor, no one to chant the Hebrew prayers. I could not feel God in those services. They felt empty, shallow, devoid of spirit and passion. At the age of eight, I refused to go back to that place where women went to show off their fancy new clothes. The temple felt superficial, full of hypocrites pretending to worship God.

So I turned my back on religion, and I became cynical. But I was still searching. Sometimes my Grandfather would come to me in visions. I never met him in the flesh, because he died in a concentration camp in Poland. But he would tell me things about himself and when I shared these experiences with my mother, she confirmed that what he said to me was true.

As I grew older and left home, I continued my spiritual quest. My parents were critical of the lifestyle of simplicity and poverty that I chose in the 1960s. And I was fiercely judgmental of their "conspicuous over-consumption." Eventually my mother "disowned" me and for two years we did not communicate. Now I had a six-month-old baby and my parents had never seen their grandchild.

During the chanting in the teepee, I had a deep experience of Spirit for the first time since I was a child. As I listened to the Indian people chanting and praying aloud for their parents, my judgments toward my own parents softened.

I must have been nodding out because I was startled when the man on my right began shaking the rattle. Everyone was chanting intently. My body rocked in rhythm to the chanting and suddenly I could hear my grandfather talking. My heart swelled with joy. It had been such a long time!

He showed me an endless line of people - all related - holding hands. My grandfather stood on the far side of my mother, holding her right hand with his left, while his own right hand joined a chain of relatives that seemed to stretch to infinity. My mother's left hand hung limp and useless at her side, while my right hand refused to take hers. I could feel that the break of energy between us, and the grief it caused my grandfather. I could feel how much effort it took for me to reach him and my other kin as long as that link was broken.

Tears flowed down my cheeks and my heart ached as the rattle was passed to me. I had feigned indifference toward my parents, but now the energy flowed from my heart to my throat as I broke into a wordless chant that seemed like a combination of the High Holy Day songs that I dimly remembered and the Indian chants that I'd been hearing all night. I didn't care what anyone thought; my soul poured out of my mouth as I expressed my grief, my sorrow and my longing for the connections I did not have.

When I was done I shook the rattle fiercely and everyone shouted "Ho!"

That was my first experience of sounding, though I didn't even know the word then. Many years would pass before I would dare to open up my voice like that again. But it was the beginning. I connected my heart with my mouth.

When I left Little Joe, I found my parents and mended the link with my mother, bridging that gap so that my children would know their grandparents and all the relations would be connected. As I entered the world outside the teepee, I knew that I had a direct connection with Spirit. I felt it when I was chanting.

© Copyright 2006 Joy Gardner

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joy Gardner is on the cutting edge of the new technology of the body's vibratory system. She has been a gifted teacher, practitioner, and pioneer in holistic and vibrational healing since 1968. She is the author of 15 books and director of the Vibrational Healing Program in Maui, Hawaii. Joy Gardner works in the tradition of the shamana and medicine woman. Her other books include Color and Crystals - A Journey Through The Chakras (also translated into Chinese), Pocket Guide to Chakras and Healing Yourself (translated into German). For more information see her website at www.highvibrations.net.