Whispers In Sound Or Sacred Sounds As Healing Medicine

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Thank you so much Tom for having me. I’m very appreciative.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, and I really did love that session that I got to experience with you. You have such a lovely voice, even you were singing little chance and playing an instrument and then the sound bowls and it was just like heaven. It was so amazing. So that’s why I wanted to have you on the summit. So people can learn more about what you do and potentially experience some sound healing through you. So how did you get into this field of sound? I know that you have done all sorts of different things. I think Pilates yoga Ricky. How did you get into the sound healing the field of sound?

Laura Penn Gallerstein

It’s kind of remarkable how it all came together. I was actually in a yoga training at the Soul of Yoga, It was a 500 hour training. And at the end one of the teachers asked me to sub and she had these crystal bowls different than my bowls, but they’re the frosted white ones. And she said, she said, well we just we need to do five minutes of bull playing at the end of this class. And I had no idea this was over 10 years ago. I had no idea how to play a bowl or what it even was. So she said, well all you do is just go around the bowl like this and you’ll be fine. So I taught the class and I used the bowls of the soul of yoga and I was like, this is what I wanna do. So and that led to many other stories, but that’s where it began.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s amazing. Well what a fortuitous circumstance that they said you got to play the ball and now it’s this is your life’s work, right. It’s really the stuff you love to do. What does, what is sound therapy? Talk to us a little bit about that because it’s not just, but making the bowl, you know, having what do you call the thing that you rub around the bowl. Yeah, so okay, cool. And you’re gonna do that a little bit, so it’s not just rubbing a wand around, you know, and then we get sound that has no value, It really does impact beings. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Okay, well, sound therapy has actually been around for thousands of years as music therapy and according to the ancients, they’ve always worked with sound to connect to spirit to for direction. The hawthorns use it to they say to connect to the cosmos. So, working with sound is not anything new, knew the Aborigines use sound as a direction finder, like a map. And so sound has been in many, many cultures, for direction, for connection, inner connection for listening, opening up to alternative ways of thinking and being and feeling. But this particular mode of sound therapy has probably been around for 30 years. 

And the reason it’s so unique, it’s because each of these bowls are digitally tested to match your different energy centers. So they’re meant to match it and bring your body back into recalibration, back into equanimity, back into balance and because we live such a frenzied life, most people lived such a very high stress life. One of my teachers Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, he was an oncologist in New York City. He said that when we can get the body to deeply relax, then healing can begin. And these bowls with intention from the practitioner setting an intention grounding being very present. It’s really for the practitioner to step into a place of calm grounded presence, setting an intention and then the practitioner sets that field, so the people who are lying down or in the field of the practitioner and if your intention is for that deep relaxation, that’s what you’re putting out there and the people will hopefully with that intention, feel it and go to that very very deep place of relaxation and then the body is miraculous because it will take instruction and it will begin the healing process.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, I love that, I love that when we get out of the way and relax, the body can heal right when we’re fighting tiger and fight or flight and the nervous system is, is switched on to you know, to be in fear, it’s hard to heal. And I experienced what you’re talking about, like you know when I was in your session, like you know, I really relaxed, I mean very easily, I meditate. This was like a deep meditation without really having to work, right, you know, just listening and and and because sound is vibration right? And our body starts to vibrate with that sound or energy centers start to vibrate with that sound.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Right? And the other thing I wanted to say from your question, I think of your body as like a symphony of sounds and think of an orchestra like let’s say somebody is playing the violin and somebody’s playing the cello and somebody is out of tune. The whole orchestra is affected by it. That’s the same thing with our bodies. Right? So when we have something that’s out of tune out of balance, it literally affects the whole the whole entire body.

Tom McCarthy

So people that experience your work, are they coming for healing? Are they coming for relaxation? Are they coming for mental clarity. I mean what are the, what are the types of things that you help people with?

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Well, a lot of people come to me for private, they’ll come to me because they have big issues going on. So we can never separate the emotional, the spiritual and the physical, it’s all connected. And neuroscience says that our emotions literally flood into every part of our being. So we can’t, we’re not these one dimensional humans, we are very multidimensional and in this day and age people come to me for many, many different reasons. They come to experience it. They come for relaxation. They come because they have cancer and they want to start working on their spiritual side to help bring some kind of healing to their mental, physical spiritual being.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. That’s awesome. How do you see sound therapy expanding.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Well, that’s a great question. Edgar Casey, who was a sleeping prophet many, many, many years ago said that Sound would be the next alternative medicine on our planet and he really believed it and saw it. Well, the thing about sound and the bowls or gongs or whatever modality you choose to use is that it gets you past the linear brain. And when you get past the linear thinking, you get more into the other side of the ball rain, which is more the creative, more the intuitive and that’s where we’re going on our planet. People cannot continue. We weren’t meant to be robots and have daily list to live by. 

We’re meant to tap into our higher self were meant to tap on a daily basis. And when we get into that creativity, it opens up portals of so much intuition deep thinking. But it taps into other parts of ourselves that give us wisdom. So I see sound hugely expanding and I don’t I see it expanding into the medical world. We already have ultrasound. But I know there are doctors out there rife. He has a technique that uses this machine that he took. This was many years ago. He’s not alive but he would test animals who were sick and then he would match a frequency to their illness and literally it would explode the cell. Like if it’s a tumor cell. So I see medicine totally going into sound in the future. I see that’s where we’re going.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah. And I think sound for medicine but also for happiness for you know, we said relaxation. I mean so many different ways it can be used. One of the things you had us do in the session that I was at with you was you had us kind of humming with you or you know, chanting, humming. Why did you have us doing that? Like, you know, because we were getting the vibration from the bowls and we were creating the vibration though with our own voices as we were lying there. I never experienced that before in a sound healing situation. Why did you have us doing that?

Laura Penn Gallerstein

It’s kind of my niche. Jonathan Goldman who I got to study with a while ago. I took a course of his and I’ve been involved with his work. He wrote a book called humming. And Jonathan Goldman is one of the forerunners in sound healing. So we have to give him credit because he started this 30 years ago. And so he wrote this book on humming and when, when my baby was a baby, I used to hum and sing to him all the time, but I didn’t understand how it literally takes you into the parasympathetic nervous system, lowers your cortisol levels and it has so many benefits. And one of the things he clearly states in his book is that humming is one of the most self soothing things you can do as a human. And you don’t need any other tools to bring your own cortisol levels down. So what I love to do is hum to and tone to your organs and glands. Like a like a prayer of love that you’re sending to your body.

Tom McCarthy

Beautiful and humming. Also it stimulates the vagus nerve which is what helps us get into that parasympathetic state. Yeah.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Yes and the vagus nerve is the largest nerve in the body and it affects all the organs and glands. So this is hugely powerful for bringing you into that parasympathetic nervous system which is the rest, relax digest part of our nervous system

Tom McCarthy

Yeah and that’s where we’re more intuitive, we get those nudges to go in the right direction. The body’s healing. So awesome. Hey I don’t wanna I don’t wanna put this off much longer. We’ll talk a little bit afterwards. But can we do a little session because we talked about it but I want people to experience it a little bit here so sit back, enjoy this. This is gonna be a real treat for you and Laura whenever you’re ready take it away.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Alright so let’s begin by closing your eyes and take a long, slow deep breath in, take your hands to your heart. I can imagine seven layers of light around your body and you have your hands at your heart and breathe into that heart. Breathe in and exhale I am peace, breathe in and exhale I am loved, breathe in and exhale. I am light and with your hands at your heart say your name. Somebody thought about that name for nine months and thought so much about the word love and your name invokes the energy of love. So if you say that three times you’re invoking that original energy at birth, Energy of love, the most powerful force in all of creation. And then imagine that energy of love bringing it into your heart. 

And then you can take a little home. So you get to experience what it feels like to hum to your heart. Imagine you’re sending a love prayer to your heart and they’ll set a beautiful intention for our time together, begin relaxing your feet and legs, feel your body beginning to soften most importantly, remind yourself you are perfect the way you are, there’s nothing missing. Imagine a beautiful blue light in your heart. Continue to relax the rest of the body, relax your shoulders, your neck, your job, your mouth. You’re far ahead. Feel the whole body softening and imagine this blue light cascading like a waterfall down into every organ and gland in your body. This is the waterfall of imagine this waterfall entering into every cell Oregon yeah, into your waterways into your blood, bringing in infinite pain infinite harmony, infinite gratitude, infinite protection, infinite compassion. Now imagine a beautiful golden light coming down into your mind like the sun filling your mind, positivity filling your mind with light and illumination, helping you to let go of limiting, limiting place, see that golden light coming down into your throat to help bring healing to your thyroid. Parathyroid cleansing cleansing your throat. See the throat being illuminated with this and now see these golden rays coming down into your heart center. Do you find this glen two lungs, visualizing cleansing the lung stimulating the thymus gland coming down now with the golden rays into your liver? See cleansing your liver. 

Then he passed resentment and bring that golden ray down into your mid belly to help stimulate your digestive center your organs, see the golden rays coming down into your lower chakra, creativity, sensuality, stimulating that second chakra to stimulate your passion, your joy, your creativity. Now see those golden rays going up and down the spine to clear any blocks irregularities down into your kidneys, washing your kidneys of any fears. Any worries see the golden rays coming down and out into your arc field. Okay, sure, yeah, shanti, take a slow deep breath in, feel your hands and your feet when you’re ready. You can slowly open your eyes.

Tom McCarthy

That was beautiful. Thank you so much. I know everyone really enjoyed that. That was amazing. Thank you, Laura.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Thank you Tom.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, that was so cool. So I had my eyes closed so I wasn’t seeing what you were doing. But you had, you were working with bowls, kinda talk us through what you were doing there.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

So I have my harmonium and show you, show you it.

Tom McCarthy

Okay. Cool. Very cool. Yeah.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

So I started you with that and then I used a little rattle.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Kind of set the stage and then I go right into my bowls which are right down here on the floor and see them. They can’t see them. But yeah, yeah, yeah. And went into my bowls and then I played these chimes at the end

Tom McCarthy

To kind of bring us back up. Yeah, yeah, that was amazing. And it was so cool because even, you know, on my desktop speakers, I was feeling the vibration. Right? I mean it was really relaxing me even though we’re, you know, you’re in Colorado. I’m in California, people all over the world are watching this, but I think they got it really amazing experience. Thank you so much for doing that. That was phenomenal. How do people find, how do people find your work? How do they, what resources do you have? How do they get in touch with you? How can they work with you share with us that information?

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Thank you so much. I have a website laurapenngallerstein.com So that’s a great way to reach me. You can sign up. I have a newsletter. I have a Youtube channel and on my youtube channel I have quite a few guided meditations for many different reasons with the alchemy bowls that I did in a professional recording studio and my email, [email protected] And those are great ways to reach me and anybody can go on my youtube channel to listen to the meditations and you have a book called whispers and sound. I wrote it about a year and a half ago and it tells my healing journey.

Tom McCarthy

That’s awesome. Do you work with people? Can they, can they work with you? What over zoom or?

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Yes.

Tom McCarthy

Come to Colorado and you’re in Durango. Yeah.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Yeah. So what I’ve done in the past, I was living in Sedona before and I had many clients who come to Sedona. I had a studio which all happy again here in Durango. I just don’t have it yet. But I am doing zoom classes, sound baths and I actually am going to have a how to play bowls class coming up in a couple of weeks and I’ll have that all of my newsletter that’s coming out this weekend and so I give workshops. I need courses on, I’ll do a three day course on bowls, working your voice, working with the harmonium creating guided meditations. So all of that can be, somebody can find me on my website. People come to me as soon as I get a studio here in Durango, I’ll open it up for people to come do classes, sound baths the whole nine yards. I’m doing some, I’m gonna be doing some volunteer work very soon as well in the sheriff’s office and I’ve done, I’ve worked with kids before in schools, which is super fun. So I plan on doing more of that kind of thing as well. And I just want to spread the word

Tom McCarthy

And when you’re working with people individually, you can kind of fine tune which polls you’re gonna play and what you’re going to do for them based upon what they’re looking for. Right?

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Absolutely. We talk beforehand and I get a really good sense of what’s going on with people. And I’ve had lots of training and then when they lie down, it’s a lot of, it’s intuitive. I just go with my intuition. My intuition has gotten pretty, very strong and I can tell what’s going on with people and what chakras are out of balance and what they need to work on.

Tom McCarthy

Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, it’s amazing. And thank you for giving us that beautiful sample of what you can do and that was a short version but super powerful. Normally I would be lying down. But even sitting up, it was like really powerful for me and yeah, you’re just such a beautiful soul. You do amazing work. I was so impressed with you when I met you, I wanted to have you on. So thank you so much for being with us and it really has been a pleasure getting to know you and your awesome husband and having you here on. Thank you so much for being here.

Laura Penn Gallerstein

Tom, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.