Wow, another great class full of info I was needing. Takeaways: 1. During the opening meditation (which I love) I had a new focused sound journey session come to mind to offer to my networking group. That's happening next week. 2. I loved the explanation of activated playing vs. passive playing. This is something I'd never heard about but makes so much sense. I'd wondered how to play to heal others and to assist with their addiction to stress like Kalee mentioned. I like the activated playing to help those with depression, including myself. Great info! 3. How we need to trust our instinct, which I think is huge and getting inspired by feeling the room and picking up the energy of the group. I've gone into my sessions fully intending on presenting a specific way, then after speaking to everyone, going a completely different direction. I just did it. Intuition at work. 4. Being mindful of letting sound fill the space. How the facility can affect the sound, wood, glass, carpet, padding. I hadn't considered how those textures can affect the sound. I thought a big open space was best, but there's more to consider. 5. I like knowing that it's OK to let sound drift off and end before striking the next bowl. I guess I'm uncomfortable with silence to a degree. I'm a bit too quick to go on to the next sound, some silence is ok. 😁 6. It's OK to heal along with everyone else. I'm healing too, which may explain why I feel so tired afterwards sometimes. 7. I love the examples of different types of journeys. Healing, guided meditation, a sound journey. Can you touch on how to start a session that's just sound, no guided meditation, just an explanation of the session at the very beginning? Or maybe we'll discuss that Saturday. 8. I didn't realize the effect that the weather can have on the sound of the bowls. We're in a very humid area, that makes me wonder if that's why my root bowl can sound so different from one event to another. Also, how the size of the room can affect the sound, I hadn't considered that either as well as the placement of the bowl compared to placement of the other bowls we use. Very interesting. 9. Thank you for mentioning playing clockwise vs counterclockwise. I wondered about that. Sometimes I just change for no reason, I guess intuition comes into play here as well. I like better understanding how the directions can move energy or release it. I'm going to practice that more. 10. If anyone gets stuck on coming up with guided meditations, I use my imagination and come up with places/situations I enjoy. I try to write them down and use them in sessions. But another good starting point could be using ChatGPT. Just ask to provide you with a meditation for one of the chakras or a point you want to help others with healing. It will come up with a beautiful meditation you can use or tweak for the situation. Take what it provides and walk it through in your mind to help you 'feel' it. That helps with memorizing and presenting at your events. It helps me a lot.

For some reason, I think this may have gotten left out of the conversation. When purchasing a bowl to go with existing bowls, it's a good idea to know what tuning system you're in. There are two tuning systems: 440 Hz or standardized tuning, and 432 Hz. 440Hz is what the orchestras tune and is a good tuning to have if you play with other instruments. These two tuning systems are based on the note a being either for 440 Hz or 432 Hz, and then all of the intervals of that scale are measured in a way to create that tuning. So in purchasing bowls, it's good to know which tuning system you have then if you ever break one or want to add others, you can match it up. My bowls are all in 440 Hz, however, when I broke my A bowl, I decided to move toward 432 Hz. The tuning that you have already or choose to have doesn't really matter, except that what ever tuning you choose, it is nice to keep them tuned all together. Remember you're the healer not the bowls.

I just wanted you to be aware that I'm making a few minor changes to the classroom courses. Specifically, "Awaken the Inner Healer with Sound" I'm going to collapse all 3 lessons into one course. This will create less confusion and more room for new things that I will add at a later date.

I'm going to be re-creating the about page. This is the page that people look at before they decide to come into the group. When it was a free group, it was easy people just come in. What do I have to lose? It's free however, it is a paid membership currently and I'd love to get your input so that people who are thinking about it know it's the right community for them. If you have a moment, please take a look at the about page and let me know what benefits that I can talk about that. Would assist people to know they're in the right place. I'm not very good at promoting myself and my creative projects. So, if you have some time, I'd be very open to your input! Even if you wrote a couple sentences about what you got out of being here and from the courses to people who are thinking of joining, that would be 🤩.

There are many important points in this week, but I only mention here what points are personally important to me at this moment in time. Takeaway #1: Use Passive technique to play bowls with Simple Melodies and in a Musical Flow because: • Simple themes help the brain relax and feel safe. • Musicality comes from patterns and repetition. • Slow, long sustains sounds will help clients get into the lower brainwaves (delta/theta) for calming and get healing in that state. Takeaway #2: The set list! Write a detailed set list and practice the set list daily! Call me paranoid but I put everything that I might forget on the set list 😅 Actually I created 3: - Packing items before heading to the venue - My introduction speech - The REAL set list for the actual playing I do it this way to calm my chatty brain 😅