Step into the mystical realm of sound healing with Kathy Harmon-Luber, a Reiki and sound healing practitioner, on this episode of Exploring the Mystical Side of Life.

We delve into Kathy’s compelling journey from suffering to thriving through the transformative power of sound and energy healing. Explore how Kathy’s integration of modern medicine with sound and energy healing showcases the complementary nature of these therapies. The episode touches on the use of sound healing in medical settings, the scientific research on how sound heals, and gives insights into historical practices like Nada Yoga, flutes, drums, and rattles for whole-body healing.

Here are three key takeaways for you:

🔹 Mind as a Healing Tool: Uncover how Kathy’s shift in mindset, viewing suffering as a choice, empowered her to use her mind as a healing instrument. Her journey emphasizes resilience and mental strength in overcoming physical adversities.

🔹 Sound + Intention = Healing: Discover the scientific foundation for sound healing, exploring how specific frequencies can revitalize cells and promote well-being. Kathy reveals the profound equation of “sound frequency plus intention equals healing” and its application in promoting physical and mental health.

🔹 Daily Sound Healing Practices: Learn about practical sound healing techniques you can incorporate into your daily routine. Kathy demonstrates a sound bath exercise, guiding listeners through a relaxation practice that grounds and centers using breathwork and sound, enhancing awareness and reducing stress.

Don’t miss this inspiring discussion with Kathy Harmon-Luber that sheds light on the transformative potential of sound healing.

 

Transcript:

Linda Lang:
We are talking sound healing today on Exploring the Mystical Side of Life, and we have a delicious sound bath to put you into a beautiful interstate. Stay tuned.

Announcer: Welcome to Exploring the Mystical Side of Life with your host, Linda Lang.

Linda Lang:
Hi. This is Linda Lang from www.ThoughtChange.com. We are Exploring the Mystical Side of Life once again this week. If you enjoy our conversations, remember to subscribe, share with a friend. Today, we have Reiki and sound healing practitioner, Kathy Harmon-Luber with us.  Kathy has an amazing healing story and a little gift for all of us. So welcome, Kathy.

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
Hi, Linda. Thank you so much. It is a delight to be here.

Linda Lang:
I’m always fascinated how people step onto their past. So maybe you can share a little bit about what was happening in your life that gave you the perspective of energy healing and sound healing.

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
You know, from a very early age, I had a lot of health issues. I was kind of a sick kid. And in my twenties, I was diagnosed with a number of spinal hereditary spinal diseases. And everything was basically okay. I was really athletic, very active. I started playing classical flute and piano when I was young. So I was really into music and sound in that way from a very early age. And as I got older, the spinal conditions became way worse as did some of the other autoimmune issues.

So I’ve been on this healing journey literally since a very young age. And it was in in my twenties when I was diagnosed with some of the spinal stuff, the doctor said, at 21 I was, they said you have the spine of an 80 year old woman. And I said, well, what do we do about that? And they said, well, you just need to be careful. And like, you know, I was a runner and a dancer and I played all the sports. I was just really super active. So I was young. We feel invincible. Right? And I thought, oh, I’ll deal with it one day.

A subsequent appointment, a doctor said to me, you’ll be in a wheelchair by the time you’re in your mid-thirties. And I was horrified, Linda. I was like, that can’t happen. And I just sort of decided at that point, I’m not gonna own that. I, I, I don’t wanna own that diagnosis. I mean, I didn’t put my head in the sand and say, you know, I’m going to ignore it. It was more like, I’m going to do everything I can do to find a way through this so that I don’t end up worse. I wanna have the best possible outcome.

Fast forward, I’m in my forties, and I’m at the gym working out with a personal trainer and a disc ruptures. And it was really bad. Now had 5 disc ruptures as a result of all of these inoperable spinal, you know, conditions. I saw doctors, I saw orthopedic surgeons, none of whom would operate because of the complexity of the issues. And they said, basically, you’re gonna have to figure out a way through it. You know, physical therapy, acupuncture, supplements, everything I could think of. Spending time in nature, you know, all of it was like, how do I live a better life with everything that I’ve been dealt? And I was doing really, really pretty well. You know, I, I just would rupture.

It would take me months and months and months to recover, but then I got back to normal quote, air quotes, normal. Until 2016, the most recent rupture. I was on a business trip and it involved 3 hours in a car and overnight, 3 hours back. And the very next day I I was standing in the kitchen telling my husband about it and a disc ruptured. And I thought, oh, here we go again. It’ll be, you know, a couple of months, maybe 3 or 4. It turned out to be 5 years bedridden. Bedridden.

Couldn’t do a thing. Like, couldn’t walk to the bedroom door. You know? Couldn’t dress myself for like many, many months. It was really extremely horrible, let’s say. And so I had to really find the inner resources to continue. So, completely flat on my back and some days darker than others, I began to realize that suffering is a choice. I’m not talking about the suffering of people in the Middle East or Ukraine or any other war torn country or people who are going through horrendously awful things.

But on our healing journey, whether that’s physical or mental or spiritual crisis, you know, we have a choice in every moment. And I realized lying there flat on my back that I could choose to be miserable and end up a miserable old woman one day. Right? Just, just angry. And, you know, people would say, well, yeah, you were dealt a bad thing. You deserve to be angry and whatever. Or I could choose something different. And I began to realize our mind is our medicine, right? That’s what my book, Suffering to Thriving. That’s why the title, Suffering to Thriving.

It is possible to go from suffering to thriving and leading a better life physically, emotionally, spiritually. And figuring out what is your medicine. Right? Like nature’s my medicine. I’ve always been a nature girl. Art, music, writing have always been in my life. Those became my medicine. The, the list of what I could not do was ginormous. So I started thinking about it in a different way, not inability, but ability.

So I couldn’t get up and hike and walk, but I could do other things. But the interesting part of the story is that life that I had… you know, I worked for nonprofit organizations as Director and VP of Development and Marketing and things like that. And I loved grant writing. I just leaned into that because I could do it from flat on my back. You know, I just began to see a portal, if you will, into a new life that I never would have found before. And sound healing and Reiki energy are part of that. I had been doing those things for many, many years, going to sound bath, going for Reiki healings.

But then my Reiki practitioner, she says, you really have a sense and a feeling for energy. I think you should learn Reiki. And I did. And it again, like sound healing, it’s really changed my life. Yeah. In a nutshell, that’s, that’s the story. And I’m happy to say that I am thriving now and getting back to a much more normal active life than I’ve had in the past 7 years now. Yeah.

Linda Lang:
Kathy, do you think that sound healing, or energy healing for that matter, can actually, like, shift the molecules in your spine so that you can actually improve your health, not just maintain it?

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
Oh, yeah. And the amazing news, Linda, is that there is solid scientific research behind what I’m gonna tell you. There are sonic scientists like John Stewart Reid, who I’ve studied with. He, he works in partnership with medical doctors and researchers. And in the past several years, they’ve discovered some phenomenal things about sound. You know, we are energy beings. Our bodies are energy. They’re vibrating molecules. Right? And the whole universe is.

There’s there’s a guy at at UCLA here in California, James Gimzewski. And he is really a pioneer in this kind of research. He has found that every cell in our body emits a sound. We can’t hear it, but their equipment can hear it. And so heart cells might vibrate at a different frequency than brain cells. Right? And they’re mapping this. And what they have found is these cells sing, and when they are diseased, atrophied, right, what brings them back to life, what revitalizes them, if you will, is that frequency.

So so let’s say cells, are vibrating their sound, so to speak, is is vibrating at 40 Hertz. And Hertz is just a a measurement that we use for sound frequency. 40 Hertz. When that 40 Hertz is applied to cells that are atrophied, let’s say, or dying, they begin to become reinvigorated. This is shaping modern medicine. Like one of the most amazing things to me is that sound healing and energy healing like Reiki are being offered in integrative therapy departments in hospitals and nursing homes across not only the United States, but probably Canada and also across Europe. And so they’re, they’re beginning to integrate it. Not instead of modern medicine.

What I always say is we have to work in complement with modern medicine. And there is an oncologist by the name of Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, who’s written, a fantastic book called The Power of Sound Healing. Many years ago, he wrote this. And in one of his quotes, he says basically sound can redress any physical issue in the body. And for people who are interested in this and who may have cancer or perhaps somebody they know has cancer, look up Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, oncologist, and, and he does sound baths where he walks around the room where all of his patients are with a Tibetan singing bowl or other sound healing. That’s how much he believes that it has the power to heal us.

And I found that in my own life, like my spine has gotten significantly better and stronger when they told me it wouldn’t. I mean, they told me it wouldn’t, and I’ve only gotten progressively better with spinal diseases that are supposed to progressively worsen. Right? One of my favorite instruments is the gong. It has the lowest of lows and the highest of highs. So it hits every frequency in the body, basically, even when we cannot hear them. They’re doing their work to stimulate the cells in our body. So to answer your question, yes, that was a long winded answer. But yes, I do believe that it really contributes to our healing.

And I’ve seen it firsthand and I’ve seen it in my soundbath clients as well, where they have noticed, you know, significant changes take place maybe in the acceleration of healing or preparing for surgery or just emotionally relieving stress. And we all know that stress is just a killer. Right? And so it helps with stress and relaxation by changing the brainwaves. And the most recent research is that they recently have found a certain, frequency stimulates the brainwaves of people with things like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. They’re doing more research on this. This is not definitive, but they’re doing more research to find out if it will help for those of us who don’t have that to prevent it. And if it helps change the course for people who are already suffering from any kind of issue with the brain. And I think that’s like the future of modern medicine in partnership with sound and, and energy.  Yeah.

Linda Lang:
How exciting! My husband and I have been to gong shows, and we’re both actually taller at the end of it. And how I know that is because our heads hit the top of the vehicle when we sit down, and that’s not how we were when we went into the gong show. It’s like the sound frequencies create greater space between each of the vertebra.

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
And the other reason that might be, Linda, is as I think about this, you know, our bodies are they say anywhere from 60 to 85% water. And when I was speaking of the disc ruptures in my spine, the discs are for people don’t know, are like these little jelly filled donuts. And they’re not water, but they’re liquidy. You know, there’s like a liquid shock absorber between our vertebrae. Right? So if the sound sort of plumps up that water in some way, that would explain for sure why you might end up a little taller. I’ve not noticed that, but ought to pay more attention actually. Yeah.

Linda Lang:
Kathy, all of this research that you’ve mentioned, it reminds me of Dr. Emoto’s research from Messages in Water and the quality of the sound affected the cellular structure of plants, water, whatever.

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
Exactly. Oh, thank you for mentioning that, Linda. I mentioned Dr. Emoto in my book, just because it is such a fundamental principle to what we’re talking about here. And for those who don’t know, Dr. Emoto and others have have done research on water, snowflakes, plants. Imagine those 3. It works across the board for all of them because we are all energy. Right? So if you speak kindly to, let’s say, a plant every single day, words of love, words of praise, words of beauty, and to another plant, you speak words of hate and dislike. You know, cutting them down verbally.

Kids do this in the classroom now as an exercise because it’s so powerful, the power of words. And words are sound. They’re sound energy. Right? And so the plants or water molecules or snowflakes that have been spoken to kindly have beautiful sacred geometry patterns. They’re perfectly formed. They’re, they’re lovely to observe. Those that aren’t look very disturbed.

They don’t look like the other one. They have problems. The way we speak to ourselves, you know, every now and then you come across somebody who really cuts themselves down. They, they, they berate themselves. That is doing that Dr. Emoto experiment to your cells in your body.

Linda Lang:
How can we bring more sound healing into our lives?

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
Okay. So there there are quite a number of little tools in my toolkit that I that I love to talk about, Linda. And one is what Jonathan Goldman, who is a pioneer in this field, calls the humble humming. Humming. Whether you hum well or whether you do not well does not matter. Humming stimulates the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is called the wandering nerve. It wanders all through our body. It helps to regulate things like heartbeat and blood pressure and digestion and all the important bodily functions we never have to think about. Right? We never think about those things.

And our ear connects with the vagus nerve. And I’ve heard some people say that, you know, when you it’s like a massage for your internal organs. That’s how powerful it is. Singing is amazing. You do not have to sing well. So many of my clients, when I say try incorporate singing into your day, they’re like, oh, I can’t sing. I can’t carry a tune in a paper bag. Does not matter.

The physicality of singing is what is healing. And singing things that you love, just like listening to things that you love, listening to music you love. And people always say, oh, must be classical music. Right? And that’s not always true. It’s music you love. If it’s rock and roll and you love it, it’s going to be healing. What these scientists have found is it takes 4 minutes for our bodies and our brain to go into what’s called entrainment, which is a fancy word to just come into sync with the sound frequencies that we’re hearing. And the other thing is if you can do singing or humming or any kind of sound healing for 20 minutes, that’s where the magic is when it comes to healing.

Then it becomes supercharged for healing. So if you can put on 20 minutes of music, how easy is that at some point during your day? Or singing in the shower or humming or doing a combination of all of those things for 20 minutes while you’re doing something that you enjoy. Drums have been used since the beginning of humanity for healing in healing ceremonies. And not everyone has a drum, but you can drum percussively on your desk, on a book, on your chest, tap rhythmically. For our bodies, it’s related to being in our mothers’ wombs and hearing the heartbeat. So if you do a simulated heartbeat, there’s something very calming about that. It brings the body into this place of just deep relaxation and calm, and the brain goes into a different brainwave of relaxation, like the alpha or theta states. Ah, it’s a reset.

You know, you just feel the energy, any tension you can let go of anything that’s not serving you. So those kinds of things are really helpful. If you don’t have a a Tibetan bowl or a crystal bowl, use your wind chimes. Right? There’s so many things in our lives that we can do.

Linda Lang:
Sound has a history of healing and supporting humanity even in ancient times.

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
The the the three instruments that have been around since the beginning of time, and this is according to archaeologists: flutes, many of which were made of bone; drums, you know, trees that were that were bent into a shape and covered with hide and beaten, sometimes with a rock or a stick; and also gourds with seeds in them that became rattles. Those are the three core healing instruments from the beginning of our, of our ancestry. And so those things are really easy to replicate at home. Easy do it yourself.

So those are a few things that our listeners can incorporate into their lives. And it’s like anything, everything is incremental. Right? And so if you do this every day, I have, in addition to my meditation, a daily sound healing practice. That is where the healing is.  It’s not a one and done. We wish. It’s like exercise, right? You have to work the muscle. Yeah.

Linda Lang:
I think even a cat purring, sitting on your lap is healing for your spirit.

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
Absolutely. Yeah, very definitely. I think if people get creative, there are so many things you can do. For people who are musicians, playing any musical instrument is healing when you bring the intention to it. Right? If you’re just running scales or practicing something over and over again and it feels like drudgery to you, that’s not so healing. My little recipe for for healing is sound frequency plus intention equals healing. So that’s a really, really, you know, good point that we’re talking about because that really is a golden key right here, intention.

Linda Lang:
I love that you have given us lots of choices — not only sounds that we create, but even just listening to sounds that lift our spirit, both have their place and could potentially have a place in our life every day to help bring us more balance.

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
Sound is a great way to bring awareness to our lives. When you are in the moment and just listening to sound, whatever it is, here’s another little tip. It doesn’t have to be any of these sounds even we just talked about. It could be going out in nature or sitting in your house and opening a window, listening to dogs bark, listening to children, just tuning into that brings a level of awareness meditation. A lot of people think meditation is just sitting on the cushion and emptying our minds. It’s hard to still our monkey minds. But focusing on a sound however far away, then bringing the sounds closer and closer in the of the refrigerator. You know, children laughing, whatever you happen to hear, focusing on that stills the mind.

And in that stillness is where we get relief from stress. Our bodies get a reset of any fight or flight, you know, when we’re in that fight, flight, or freeze response, when the best things we can do is just breathe deeply, hold it, exhale slowly, and then focus our awareness on a something. And that something can be sound. There’s sound everywhere these days. Right? So use it to your advantage. Focus on the sounds of traffic. Right? Focus on a bee buzzing in your garden. That single pointed awareness brings us to a place that, that really steals the mind.

And, and that is very healing. There’s a plethora of medical research out there about how bad stress is for our bodies and bringing on chronic diseases. If we can stop that stress through sound awareness, that’s pretty powerful. I think there’s the mental, emotional, and then there’s the spiritual. And one of the things that I love and I build into my daily practice is something called Nada yoga. It’s the yoga of sound. It’s, it’s practicing chanting. And this goes back thousands of years in India and Tibet and other cultures.

Certainly where chanting a mantra. Just you could, you could make up your own mantra. “I am at peace.” There you go. That’s your mantra for the day, all day. Chanting that mantra, again, is a single pointed focus. And before you know it, your life is infused with more peace because it’s what you’re seeking. It changes your spiritual path.

It leads you on a on a whole new journey spiritually or can if you go with that flow and walk through that door. I like to say this. Your healing journey, whatever it is, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, your healing journey is embedded in your life’s journey. Right? Everyone, if we are lucky to live long enough, we’ll have a healing journey. Yeah. Everyone’s. Our healing journey is embedded in our life’s journey, which is embedded in our soul’s journey. What is our purpose on earth? And like right now at this crazy, terrifying time on our planet.

Right? It’s, it’s a pretty crazy time that we’re living through. I believe every person on the planet right now was born to be here right now for a purpose. Not everybody knows what their purpose is. Right? I found mine. I thought I knew what it was. I thought it was working with nonprofit organizations that make the world a better place. And it’s that, and it’s sound and energy healing too. And so that portal came to me through my own healing journey and, and searching for answers of how to help myself heal.

And so I like to say that this healing journey is a portal into life purpose and everyone on the planet has a life purpose. I think that’s our job. Like drops of water in the ocean create the vast, magnificent, powerful ocean. Each one of us can be a force for change. If we figure out what our gifts are, how to bring them forward to the world and be of service. And I think the healing journey is often a portal for that as is any disruption in your life. That disruption in your life is a gift. I know that is a crazy thought.

When I started thinking about my own healing flat on my back, unable to move at all. Somebody said to me, you will one day find the gift in this. And I was like, oh, get out of my life. Are you kidding me? No way. And I live to tell, yes, it was a huge gift. It’s probably one of the biggest gifts in my life. So any disruption in your life can be that. You can look at it and say, where’s the silver lining in this? What do I need to learn? Part of it is asking the right questions.

It’s not, why did this happen to me? We go down that rabbit hole. I certainly did. Why did this happen to me? I am so angry. I don’t deserve this. This isn’t fair. Right? That rabbit hole. We have to ask the right questions. Like, what is the gift in this? What’s the silver lining? Phrase it as you will.

Not what inability, what ability can I transform this to? It’s it’s about asking those right questions and then really doing some deep contemplative inquiry. And just sitting with those questions, the answers come. They always do. It takes time. And in our world, we want a quick fix. Usually, give me a pill, make that be over, but it’s in doing the work, I believe.

Linda Lang:
In doing the work for sure. Kathy, would you play a little sound bath for us?

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
I’d love to. Alright. So I would say to you and listeners get comfortable, you know, whether you’re in a chair, perhaps you’re lying on a floor or a yoga mat. If you’re driving, come back to this another time because there’s deep relaxation here. So begin just by closing your eyes and take a couple of grounding, centering breaths. Breathe in for a few beats and then exhale even longer. This longer exhale signals our body it’s time to relax. Do a few of those.

Relax your face. Relax your eyebrows and your scalp and your neck and your shoulders, just all the way down your body to your fingers, down your core, down to your feet. And from your belly, imagine little tendrils of tree roots sprouting and going down your legs, through the floor into mother earth. You’re grounded. You’re centered. You’re relaxed. All there is to do is just accept the sound. Pay attention to the sounds.

INSTRUMENTAL SOUND BATH

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
And now, time to come back. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Stretch a little. And when you’re ready, open your eyes. And if you had any insights, take a moment to journal them. Blessings.

Linda Lang:
Really beautiful, Kathy. Thank you so much for being my guest today.

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
Thank you. It has just been a delightful conversation, Linda. Thanks for having me.

Linda Lang:
And where can we send people who might like to know more about your work?

Kathy Harmon-Luber:
Great. Thanks for asking. Yeah. My website is the best place. It is www.sufferingtothriving, to spelled out t-o, all one word, .com, www.sufferingtothriving.com. There they can connect to my social media, my YouTube channel. That would be the best place. Thank you.

Linda Lang:
Perfect.  And thank you for listening to this week’s edition of Exploring the Mystical Side of Life. You will find all of our conversations on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform come visit me at www.ThoughtChange.com to learn what energy medicine can do for you while you’re there check out my program Alchemy from the Inside Out. That’s it for this week. We’ll see you again next time. Bye for now.