The Magic of Sound

“There is nothing in the world that doesn’t talk to us.
Everything and everyone reveals their very nature,
character and secrets continuously.
The more we deploy our inner senses,
the better we understand the voice of all things.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (“Music and Mysticism”)

 

Everything that exists vibrates, every atom, every cell, stone, plant, each being. In essence we are frequency, vibration that miraculously manifests itself as matter, body, sound or color. If we stop to really look, feel, listen on a deeper level, we can contact with the essence of ourselves and everything around us.

In the eternal quest for knowing who we are and how to contact and communicate with divinity, there’re many ancient traditions using sound. In the last seventy years we have begun to re-discover and integrate the power and wisdom of sound into the Western world and apply it to personal development, self-knowledge, healing and spiritual opening. We’re using the voice and traditional instruments such as Tibetan bowls, gongs, and others of more recent creation.

All these instruments produce sounds with a huge variety of tones and overtones. Harmonic vibrations that touch us deeply. If they’re applied with a clean loving intention, they can lead us to our essence, to our energy and our bodies and emotions. Entering in the body and our energy fields, they harmonize imbalances and help to loose and disolve blockages, on a physical, emotional and energetic levels. The kind of sounds helps to quiet the mind and experience the presence in the here and now.

 

Instruments

The instruments we use are chosen for their great amount of harmonics, their profound effects and relative ease to play. Something that allows us to focus more on the essence of sound.

  • Tibetan Bowls
    Each bowl, handmade in the Himalayan region, with an alloy of 7 metals (gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, lead and mercury), produces a unique sound that is intriguing for its rich overtones. The range of tones depends on the proportions of each metal in the mixture, the size, shape and thickness. Each bowl is different and their use depends on the dominant sounds and their specific vibrations. They help release blockages at all levels and facilitate entrering into states of peace and deep relaxation (alpha and delta). In these states it is easier to look at one’s life from new perspectives. We use old bowls and newly created ones, all of a superior, profesional quality selected personally by Jacomina during her annual trips to Nepal.
  • Gongs (Tam Tam and Feng)
    Gongs are very powerful instruments. They are manufactured in China and then tuned by hand. Tecniques that come from thousands of years of ancient tradition.
    The gongs Tam Tam are used in the interior of many temples throughout Asia and used to teach monks to enter in other states of consciouness.
    The gongs Feng can be found in theaters in China, to represent the voice of the warrior. In working with sound, both are very helpful with diagnosis, to clean the energyfields of spaces and people, and to accompany processes of transformation and healing.
    There are also a lot of variation in quality and character in the gongs. We work with gongs of profesional quality, personally seleced by Jacomina in Germany, that are suitable for application in healing and as a musical instrument.
  • Tingshas (crótalos / cimbals, bells)
    Their penetrating sounds are very useful to unlock specific points in the body, for example, our inner hearing system. They’re also very helpfull to clean and restore balance in people’s energy fields and in spaces. Very effective and practical for their small size. The tingshas Jacomina brings in from Nepal, are produced in Tibetan refugee camps, incorporating metals of old Tibetan bowls that are broken, which gives them their high level of pure and long lasting sounds.
  • Monochords
    Pythagoras and other scientists used this instrument, with only a string, to investigate the laws of harmonics. They discovered that there are universal laws that organize and shape everything, from the smallest things on Earth to the largest in the Space. The monochord is easy and very useful to explain the harmonic laws, easy to play with an enormous richness in overtones.
    Based on the frequency of the movements of the planets in space, it is possible to calculate the tones they produce with their movements. These are very low tones, impossible to perceive with our senses. By raising the tone with octaves, we can hear and tune the strings in the tone of one of the movements of the planets or of Planet Earth in space. Currently we mostly use monochords with approx. 30 strings, usually tuned in C-sharp, the tone our planet produces in Space with its frequency in cycle a year. We can prepare monochords in the tones we want, and explore with the effects of these tones. They are used as tools for personal growth and (self)-help as well as musical instruments and for meditation and healing.
  • Voice
    Our voice expresses who we are in relation to ourselves and to the world. It is our closest instrument, that has the ability to re-connect us with our essence and our fundamental tone. Our voice can help us to heal ourselves and others and to merge, play and sing with all existence. It is not about learning to sing like opera singers, but to reconnect with ones own voice.
  • Listening
    There are many ways to listen. Listening leads to a deeper connection with oneself, with the world and nature, and obliges to be in the present moment.

 

Sound Program and Personal Growth

After years of using and teaching about the applications of sound for personal and profesional purposes, Jacomina has developed her own programm. Whatever way one wants to use sound, one always needs a base, an introduction into the ways sound effects our system on all levels. Jacomina starts with singing bowls and voice in the Introductory Workshop (Level I). This workshop opens the door to access the other workshops and trainings.

After the Introductory Workshop (Level I), people who want to incorporate sound into their personal or professional practices, can continue with the Advanced Workshop (Level II) and with thematic workshops, with Tam Tam Gongs and with Monochords. Professionals interested in expanding their knowledge and practices on a professional level, can either go on and deepen their knowledge with the Advanced workshop or directly enter into the Sound Training for Professionals. It’s not necesary to enter first in the Advances Workshop before going on to the Training but one gets more out of it.