Season 1, Episode 51
The Transformative Power of Sound with Jonathan and Andi Goldman
Jonathan and Andi Goldman help us discover how sound can harmonize our physical and emotional well-being, facilitate heart-brain coherence, and even aid in fertility and pregnancy. Get ready for an experiential journey that combines humming, conscious breathing, and silence to tap into the transformative potential of sound.
Key Takeaways:
- The Principles of Sound Healing
- The Healing Potential of Humming
- Sound Healing for Fertility and Pregnancy
- Sound as a Path to Expanded Consciousness
- Integrating Sound Healing in Daily Life
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Read This Episode Transcript
Lorne Brown:
By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.
Welcome again to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Our guests today are Jonathan Goldman. And Andy Goldman. And I had the privilege to meet them both at a conference and get a copy of one of their books signed that I now own. And I just want to give you an introduction to both Jonathan Andy and talk about sound and healing and consciousness and why I have them on as a guest because you’re going to see shortly that these are the experts that we wanted to be talking with on the Conscious Fertility Podcast. So Jonathan is an international authority and he’s a pioneer in the field of sound healing. He’s a renowned writer, musician, and teacher. He’s the author of several books, including Healing Sounds, the Divine Name, which won the 2011 Visionary Award for Besso Alternative Books. He’s written the Seven Secrets of Sound Healing and he’s composed lots of great music.
He’s a Grammy nominee. His award-winning recordings include Chakra Chance, the Divine Name in Reiki Chance. And some of you may be familiar with Limb Taggart. She often uses Jonathan’s music as part of her Power of Eight Healing. He’s the founder and director of the Sound Healers Association and c e O of Spirit Music, and he was named one of Watkins Mindbody Spirit Magazine’s, hundred most Sally Influential Living People. And Andy, she’s a licensed psychotherapist. She specializes in holistic counseling and sound therapy as well. She’s the director of the Healing Sound Seminar and co-director of the Sound Healers Association. She’s a musician, teacher and sound healer. She’s an award-winning author and she’s also the wife and partner of Jonathan Goldman. So we got our couple here today. So welcome both of you to the Conscious Fertility Podcast.
Andi Goldman:
Lorne, we are delighted to be here and thank you for having us.
Jonathan Goldman:
What a pleasure it is to be here indeed. And thank you so much for that lovely bio.
Lorne Brown:
Good to have you guys here. And the reason I wanted to invite you is when I heard you speak Jonathan at the conference, and then I got to meet both you and Andy afterwards, and just being in your presence was a pleasure. So I don’t know what you’re broadcasting, but you’re just nice to be around. And then what you shared in your presentation I thought would be really beneficial to our listeners. Now, I’ll share with you guys that the title is called The Conscious Fertility Podcast and Fertility Kit have many meanings. Now, a big part of our audience are trying to grow their families. However, we’re aware that we have listeners that have been tuning in because they love the consciousness aspect of this. And there’s that growing that life within that everybody is interested in no matter what age and where you are in your life.
And we often share that our goal is to heal the planet. We have to heal our hearts and minds. And when we heal our hearts, our minds then how we connect and see the world, the perception will change. And we’ll just be more into a cooperative versus a competitive mindset. And we go from conscious fertility to conscious conception to conscious pregnancy, to conscious parenting. And so this is kind of the goal of this podcast. And I wanted to talk about always looking for ways for people to connect to their higher self, their inner guidance, and ways to help heal. And that’s on a mind-body, spirit level. So you’re what I think of one of the few people that I know because I don’t know a lot of people that are into sound healing or the experts in this area. So I find serendipitous that we got to meet. And I’d like to ask, and whoever wants to start answering both of you, jump in please. But I’m kind of curious, just in your background, how did you both get started in the field of sound?
Andi Goldman:
It’s a long story.
Lorne Brown:
I’ll get
Jonathan Goldman:
Started first
Andi Goldman:
And then I’ll pop in
Jonathan Goldman:
And Andy
Andi Goldman:
Can
Jonathan Goldman:
Hop in because for me, I come from a family of doctors, first of all, brother, father, grandfather, all doctors and some very well-known medical doctors as a matter of fact. And I was the rebel. I was the musician.
And I tell you back then when I was playing in a rock and roll band in Cape Cod, Massachusetts Seaside Bar, and I went out in the audience as I’m playing and I looked out and I saw that there was an ambiance of negativity and violence. And I had the thought that, gee, I wonder if music can help make people feel better. Because until that time, and then from there, I literally within the week, that thought went from can music be used to make people feel better, to can sound be used to heal? And that was back in the late seventies, quite a while ago,
And literally was a whole shift of my consciousness. And certainly now 50 plus years later, maybe not maybe 40 plus years later, I don’t know. I don’t know how old I am anymore. But the bottom line is as one begins to move into understanding the power of sound as a consciousness shifting tool, as a biofield shifting tool, as a tool to affect our physical body, it doesn’t stop. It keeps getting better and better, and the secrets just reveal themselves more and more. Because if on a level as our mystics and our modern quantum physicists say, everything is vibration, then you can apply using sound, any field and path in this lifetime and other lifetimes because
Lorne Brown:
That’s the idea that everything is kind of a vibration. There’s waves and particles, particles, waves are collapsing into particles. Here’s our matter. And if sound is all frequency vibration, then you’re saying we can use that to affect everything around us.
Jonathan Goldman:
Indeed. But let’s move into how Andy Got it. So Andy,
Lorne Brown:
Yes. I’m very curious to know how you came into music. And again, your background is you’re a counselor, right? So you’re a psychotherapist, so I’m curious how you came into sound and hopefully you’ll jump in also about how you’re using it in your practice.
Andi Goldman:
Oh, lovely, Lorne. I’d love to share that Jonathan and I, first of all have been working together for going on 30 years now. Prior to meeting Jonathan as a holistic psychotherapist, I was very into expressive therapies. And so that was the main flow of my practice. And of course even before that, gosh, way back in my very early twenties, which was a very long time ago, metaphysical areas and consciousness raising areas, I was right there in it long before it was more well known, those types of modalities. And so at any rate, I met Jonathan, and of course I was and still am a psychotherapist. Working with sound was probably from my experience, the most experiential modality because when you start working with sound with people, like you were just saying, we were just saying everything is vibration. And so you can utilize the voice is the main focus that we work with, that I worked with.
And it really can shift and change our consciousness. And when we are utilizing our voice and working with our own sound, there’s something that happens where there’s a release of oftentimes stress. There is openings in being able to get more clarity on what route we want to take as we are healing. And so it was sort of a natural thing. And then Jonathan and I had a mutual friend, he has now passed over by the name of Don Campbell, who was quite well-known in the field of Sound. He wrote the Mozart Effect, which was I think a very popular book. And he was a friend, a mutual friend of ours, and he actually
Jonathan Goldman:
Sort of introduced us,
Andi Goldman:
Introduced us. So the rest is history, the rest is
Lorne Brown:
History. Now we’re going to talk a lot about, or we’re going to talk about healing. And a lot of our listeners love to know the mechanism behind the healing, which I know you talked about in the presentation. So I hope to direct you there at some point. But you’re saying that sound can be used for healing. And so I’m curious what the basic principles of sound healing are. And for our listeners and how I understand this, I come from the Chinese medicine principles, and I think you subscribed to this idea as well, that the body has this innate ability to heal. We’re constantly reproducing cells, we’re fighting cancers and pathogens. The body has this self-sustaining capacity. And when it gets out of balance, then we have dis-ease and then pain or diseases can actually manifest. So I use that as our segue into how are you using sound to help us heal because I’m assuming it’s helping the body’s innate ability to heal. And I’m curious what the basic principles that you have seen in sound healing or any research that’s available.
Jonathan Goldman:
Great. Lorne and I would just like to suggest, as we talked about before a little bit, that everything is in a state of vibration and everything is sound. So from the electrons moving around the nucleus of an atom to planets and distant galaxies moving around their suns, they’re in a state of vibration, which can be perceived of as being a sound. This includes our body, every orga, every bone, every tissue, every part of our body is in a state of when we’re in a state of health, we say we’re in sound health, a state of resonance and everything is very, very wonderful, like this overall orchestra that’s playing the symphony of the self. But going along with this metaphor, what happens if the second violin player loses their sheet music? They begin to play out of tune out harmony. Pretty soon the entire string section is off.
Pretty soon the entire orchestra is off. And this is as though a part of our body has lost its natural harmonic, resonant frequency. And we say it is vibrating out of ease, out of health. We say it is disease. So the basic idea of using sound as a healing modality, one of the ideas at least is that you’ll use sound of vibration to put that which is vibrating out of ease, back into ease. You’re giving the string player back their sheet music in order to play in tune with the rest of the orchestra. And as we know, most, if not all of the different, shall we say, vibrational therapies including acupuncture and chiropractic, chromotherapy, all sorts of different things really utilize the idea of putting an out a balance body back into balance in order to restore health.
Lorne Brown:
And when you’re talking about the vibration and all the tissues and the sound, like the planets, Chinese medicine, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but every organ has a sound that goes to it, a vibration. I
Jonathan Goldman:
Actually studied with a Monta Shia, are you familiar with
Lorne Brown:
Him? Yes, yes.
Jonathan Goldman:
Monta back in the eighties. Yes. He first came out with the Daoist sounds and stuff like that, which is based on a really old tradition as well. So yeah, it’s universal. This idea using sound and what a blessing that we can if you like. I’d like to suggest that we have four, what we call the four pillars of Sarah.
Andi Goldman:
I was just going to say,
Jonathan Goldman:
And the first one is that everything is vibration, but the second one,
Andi Goldman:
The second one is intention is powerful. But I’m going to back up just for a moment, Lorne, because when you were asking about what are the basic principles of using sound, and of course Jonathan and I have through the years focused on the voice primarily, but there are many different tuning forks, sound beds, all kinds of crystal balls, et cetera. But just, oh golly, not too long ago, Jonathan and I sound has just really begun to explode.
Jonathan Goldman:
It’s blossomed if not burgeoned.
Andi Goldman:
And so many people are interested in sound. So many people are interested in sound healing now, which is just a blessing really for us. So anyway, we thought, well, let’s put together four pillars, four foundational aspects of sound. And Jonathan had written a book many years ago called The Seven Secrets of Sound Healing. And after we put together these four pillars, we realized that they were part of those seven secrets of sound healing. And I just want to share with our audience what those four pillars are right now. Everything is vibration. We’ve just been talking about that intention is powerful and we want to talk more about intention as we go along here in the podcast today because it is a big part of working with sound. And the third one is, and this one we love, we are all unique vibratory beings, and we really love that because people are always looking for that magic frequency, et cetera. But we know that one size does not fit all. And the last one, the fourth pillar is silence is golden. And when we are working with sound, so often people are very enamored with the sound and they forget that after they’ve worked with sound, they want to go into silence because that’s where shifts and changes actually occur.
Lorne Brown:
Want to just touch on that silence part? I want to unpack it just a little bit because in your presentation that I got to listen to, I saw the yin yang of it because when we practice humming, and hopefully we’ll do a little bit of this at the end of the podcast for our listeners, I remember you emphasized the importance of equal amount of silence after the hum. And I think of the yin yang. Yin is stillness, yang is activity I think of in hypnotherapy. I’m trained as a clinical hypnotherapist, as we are regressing and using language in the hypnotherapy session, we purposely have pauses in silence. We’re not talking all the time. And then I use a lot of low level laser therapy. There’s actually research on using it for altered states, so use it on the brain, but we use it for our fertility patients are paying patients, and we’re starting to find that when we pulse the light, so the light’s on and then the light’s off, there’s that silence the cells absorb in and do better with that. So it seems to me it’s not just with sound, it’s it’s starting to look like a universal yin yang thing, that there’s got to be a little bit of activity and then a little bit of rest. And I think you’ve observed this when it came to sound.
Jonathan Goldman:
I don’t want to stop where we’re at, but I just want to suggest that when we talk about humming, which we’re going to talk about, one of the things that occurs as a positive benefit through humming is the release of nitric oxide and particularly nasal nitric oxide. And the key with this is nitric oxide, which is among other things, the vasodilator and also an antiviral agent is when you do nasal nitric oxide humming, you hum for about three to five times and then you’re in silence for about a minute or two so that the cell can regenerate in order to produce more nitric oxide. Now back to our program,
Lorne Brown:
And we’re going to talk more, that’s one of the mechanisms. And nitric oxide is so important when it comes to health and vitality and immunity as you shared, and that’s one of them that I remember you talked about. But let’s go back to where we were with the basic principles of sound healing and you were talking about the four principles.
Andi Goldman:
Well, it’s interesting because having just mentioned the four pillars, when we do get more into experiential piece today with humming, we’re going to be actually utilizing all four of those pillars. That’s
Jonathan Goldman:
Right.
Lorne Brown:
So can you say them little people can rewind. Can you say the four pillars again? Just 1, 2, 3, 4, just so they’re in our, because we stopped on
Jonathan Goldman:
Silence. Andy’s going to jump on the second one. Third, we’ll just if you like embellishing, please One, everything is vibration. Two, intent is powerful. Three, we are all unique vibratory beings. And four, silence is golden. Now, we talked a little bit about everything being vibration. Now Andy intent is powerful. This is so
Andi Goldman:
Important. Well, I have to say, Lorne, that probably 40 some years ago when Jonathan was working on his master’s degree in developing a program for sound, he came up with a formula. And that formula is frequency, i e, the sound frequency plus intent. What are those thoughts that we’re holding that intention? Frequency plus intent equals healing. And Jonathan has a great story about that, if I don’t know if you want to share that, Jonathan. It’s a great one.
Jonathan Goldman:
Just on a quick one, I had a pile of papers about Yohi, which were all these different systems of using sound for healing from doctors, from scientists, from spiritual masters, from yogis, you name it. And coming from a family of doctors, I was going to put them all together and be the first person who ever correlated all this information and make one solid cohesive unit. And instead, Lorne, as I got together, Dr. A would be using a certain set of frequencies or tones for an organ. Dr. B would be using a totally different set of frequencies for the same organ and both claiming success. Spiritual master X would be doing one mantra for a particular chakra, and spiritual master Y would be using a completely different mantra for the same chakra. And I was sitting there with my head in my hand going, oh my God, how can this be?
I was in a state of intellectual angst, this inner voice that it is not only the frequency of the sound that creates its effect, but also the intention, the person making and receiving the sound. And I wrote down, frequency plus intent equals healing. This is more than 40 years ago, and it seems more relevant than ever back then. When I first started doing it and talking to scientists and doctors about the importance of frequencies, they looked at me like I was from another planet, which I well might be, but they weren’t supposed to know it, but less it be. Then you had people from Wayne Dyer doing his power of intent to Joe Dispenza talking about you are the placebo, Bruce Lipton’s biology of belief, Lynn McTaggart doing her work with the intention experiments, Muro doing his water work. And this has grown and grown. And as we get more into a consciousness and we understand about among other things, the devil slid experiment and how our consciousness can literally affect the field of reality, well, that includes the energy, the sound.
Lorne Brown:
You just said something that I think it’s worth to emphasize, that consciousness, your thinking, your feeling impacts the fabric of our universe, puts a little bit of a butterfly effect. And so intention is key here. And as thoughts come up, I want to share, when I trained in Qigong many years ago, in the early two thousands as part of my Chinese medicine training, I dismissed Qigong because I was like, ah, silliness. And it wasn’t until recently because Qigong is about movement, breath, intention, and when I went into Qigong, I dismissed it and I saw the movement and the breath, but there was no intention behind it when I was doing it. And that was the missing ingredient I learned 20 plus years later. And so when I heard you say frequency plus intention equals healing, it made the dots connect because Qigong was movement. Exercise plus intention and movement creates energy. When we create energy like water, it has to spin the wheel or the windmills. We always need movement to generate energy. And so that’s why Qigong has that breath and movement into it. But the missing ingredient is intention. If you do it without the intention, you don’t get the same effect. And that’s what you had realized when it came to sound healing. I think again, another universal law, maybe we’re uncovering here.
Jonathan Goldman:
No, no. And indeed Andy and I do this monthly sound soft song, which is a wonderful free teaching that we do online and it collects a lot of people. And we were recently, for example, working with the power of mantra. And one of the things is that without going heavily into it, one of the things that’s so important is in order to empower the mantra, we think it’s really useful to really know what the mantra is and have an idea of what you want to create when you are chanting the mantra that just amplifies it. The whole thing is if you like, about amplifying fields. Now we’re going to go into number three, which is we are all unique vibratory beings. This is all just too important before we go into, and Andy, do you want to take that one?
Andi Goldman:
Well, sure. Because everyone experiences sound, everyone experiences life in their own unique way and they’re coming to whatever their challenge is from what they’ve had happen in their backgrounds, et cetera. So we’re just all unique. We all, we have a thumbprint is unique, et cetera. Well, this happens to apply to sound as well. And so I might hear piece of music that just, oh, touches my heart and just takes me, brings back all kinds of memories. Jonathan May hear that same piece of music and go, Andy, what are you listening to that for? I don’t like that. So it’s really interesting. We just experience sound and music very, very uniquely to ourselves.
Jonathan Goldman:
And we think this is so important because as a field of sound grows and grows, you’re getting more and more people who are frequency. It’s a new term. You hadn’t heard that one before. Okay. I helped create that in my first awareness of sound. And when I generated my award-winning books, I talk about once again, the importance in power of frequency and there is an importance in power, but people zero in on that and then they look for the magic frequency. And then there are a number of magic frequencies that are making the rounds these days. And from our perspective that probably nonsense, unless of course you’re empowering that frequency with an intentionality in which case it’s going to work. So we have to honor it, but at the same time, we don’t want to restrict our thing because for example, there is, oh, a belief that a certain frequency is a frequency of love. And without going anymore, I’d say, boy, this is really a pity. If a mother has to hold a baby, sing a lullaby to the baby and look at a guitar tuner to make sure she’s singing in the right keynote in order to be generating love, how absurd is that and how damaging is that to the power of sound?
Lorne Brown:
So you’re saying it’s not one size fits all.
Andi Goldman:
Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan Goldman:
And
Lorne Brown:
You’re going back to your intention part. That’s how I think the word you use is you’re using consciousness to encode upon the sound. So intention can amplify anything you’re doing.
Andi Goldman:
Absolutely. That was beautifully said, Lorne, because the intention part, once again is so important. And then of course, if we go in now to the last pillar, which is silence is golden. Wow. When we are in silence, there is so much that is happening after we’ve made sound. And the shifts and changes that are occurring at a cellular level are very, very powerful. And it’s interesting because I always like to, after we’ve say for instance, and we’ll do this later on today, but after we’ve even hummed for say five minutes and you’re in silence, the shifts and changes that bring in that balance. But I find it’s a time to listen to our inner wisdom and that inner voice when we listen within, that’s what happens when we’re in that silence.
Lorne Brown:
And to just kind of again, emphasize this point, this inner wisdom. And for those that have been listening to the podcast, we’ve had multiple expert guests, physicists, and they all have different names for this higher self, little C for little consciousness, big C for big consciousness. One thing that is showing up here is that we are tapping into something. We don’t totally understand it, but we’re seeing shifts and changes. We’re seeing where the resistance is lowered through this work through conscious work and sound being part of that. And then that brings in the allowing and receptivity that we’re looking for. So I just wanted to share because when you said you’re tapping into that part of yourself, some people go, but I want to share that if you listen to the other episodes, we’re not going to go into that today, but there’s some really interesting discussions by physicists and doctors talking about this new science and that the data’s growing and we should not dismiss it. So I just wanted to bring that up.
Jonathan Goldman:
We frequently utilize sound in different matters in order to shift our frequency level brain, body, spirit and really tap in. It’s really sort of like a retuning or feel to higher levels where we can communicate with other things. A while ago that may have seemed strange, but as you’re suggesting, a lot of people are now getting on that bandwagon going, Hey is more than just a little self. But I want to continue for just a moment and say that there are two basic ways that sound is an overall gestalt affects us, psychoacoustics and acoustics.
Lorne Brown:
Okay, I’m excited for this part. I remember you talked about this in the lecture, and this to me is going to feed that left brain side for many people. So we got psychoacoustics and acoustics. Go for it. I need to hear it again. So I’m glad that you brought this up.
Andi Goldman:
Well, I’ll start with psychoacoustics because that is when we are actually listening, we were just talking about listening within that when we’re listening, when the sound goes in through our ears and travels down our auditory pathways up into our brain, it affects our brainwaves, it affects our heart rate, our respiration, our breathing. So when we are listening to specific sounds that when we’re listening to anything really, it goes right up into our brain.
Lorne Brown:
So this is important because if it’s affecting brainwaves, heart rate, respiration, then it’s affecting our autonomic nervous system. And for those that are trying to grow the family, that’s the hypothalamus pituitary ovarian axis, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis. This health and wellbeing is based on the autonomic nervous system,
Jonathan Goldman:
Fabulous vagus nerve.
Lorne Brown:
And now we got the vagus nerve, which goes from the brain all the way down through the gut, heart, lungs, gut, and now more data is coming up. One of our guests had talked about that. It goes right up to the cervix level. So reproductive systems,
Andi Goldman:
Well, and I mean we can use sound to affect our brainwaves, our heart rate, our respiration. So once again, it’s a great healing modality.
Jonathan Goldman:
So just jumping into the psychoacoustics, because there’s vibrant acoustics, I don’t want to get into that in a minute, but just jumping into psychoacoustics is when we listen to music or the voice, and I want to suggest that it’s so important that we can all use the conversational voice as a healing instrument. If we program it with intention such as compassion or kindness or love, we can heal people with a voice, with a simple, hello, how are you doing? I mean, actually Andy and I go for a walk every day at this nature preserve, and we pass people. And I consciously would go, hi, how are you doing? Just sometimes looking glum and the look on, oh, I’m doing good, thank you for asking that type of thing. So we can all practice that immediately. Number one, that’s using on a level,
Lorne Brown:
And that’s important. So again, there’s the intention using your voice, and as you said, you can set the intention with compassion or kindness. Love. Again, for my listeners, a lot of my patients, listen, I often encourage them to listen to a podcast by Joan Rosenberg, and she talks about when you speak your truth, be clear to do it with kindness, be positive, be compassionate. So there’s the intention, right? So again, I just love it. The synchronicities here.
Jonathan Goldman:
And what’s very interesting, boy, I remember, I’m not going to get into this, but many years ago I remember watching a famous politician talking about some sort of event that was happening globally, and I just immediately got hit in the solar plexus and I knew that he was not telling the truth, and it was a huge global event. And I thought, wow, we’re being told something that is incorrect. And you can oftentimes feel this if we just use that sense of being. But the second thing, vibe, acoustics, it’s where the sound goes into our body going into us on a cellular level, molecular level, d n a level. And here’s a quote from the New York Times science section February 8th, 1988. So it’s not new,
Lorne. Most of the stuff is not new, it’s just people are now doing more and more awareness and research on it. Sound shaped into dazzling tool can make break or rearrange molecular structure. They’re talking about ultrasound, but ultimately this is also very, very true about that, which falls within the audible range. And two things I want to say in terms of, I was thinking about this just as Andy was speaking, and this is very important if people don’t know about it. It’s the work of Dr. Alfred Toma, who’s a French auto laryngologist back in the nineties who did a lot of work with the ear, but also a lot of work with listening and also a lot of work with the importance of sound in utero for the baby and the babies, if you like. Ears seems to almost develop before the brain and the baby can pick up sound waves from particularly the mother very, very early.
I think it’s probably within about two months or more. And so it’s really important to be consciously aware of the sounds that we make in utero when a baby is developing. And I have actually created a recording for the birth of our first son, Joshua, called Dolphin Dreams, that was created for the birthing process from neonatal, all sorts of things. It’s a wonderful thing. And there are other recordings as well. So just this idea that you can use sound to enhance a birthing process. And I will just tell you that I have stories of people who use this recording to, shall we say they were unable to manifest a baby, whatever the term is, and all of a sudden within use doing this, they’d sit in and a week later, my wife got pregnant, or a week later I got pregnant or we got pregnant or whatever. I thought, well, isn’t that interesting? Of course, we are all unique vibratory beings. If I could sell this as an instant pregnancy kid, I think that’d be great. But no, that is a true story that happened to actually famous psychotherapists that we know,
Lorne Brown:
And we’re looking for everything to tip the scales in our favor for health, harmony, vitality. And so this may be that thing that just helps push you into that balance to that vibratory state that looks like health.
Andi Goldman:
Well, and Lorne, we’ve been talking a lot about the voice. And through the years, Jonathan and I have really taught so many exercises where people are toning their chakras. We’re working with maybe specific mantras where utilizing the voice as a very powerful tool. And a few years ago, we’ve been doing this for a long, long time, and we realized how the sound field really is just, I mean, blossoming now
Jonathan Goldman:
Blossoming.
Andi Goldman:
And we thought, well, how? And they didn’t really, people don’t understand what is sound healing and how does sound work? And we thought, okay, what we want to do is find, talk about, write a book about a sound that absolutely everybody can make that absolutely everybody understands right off the bat. And we looked at each other and we went, what should we write this book about? And we just went, let’s go back to the beginning.
Jonathan Goldman:
Basic bottom line is that we perceive that the voice is the most healing instrument. Number one, it doesn’t require electricity batteries. You don’t have to stick it in your pocket or spend any money on it. And the owner’s manual is relatively easy to use. Most everybody, if you’ve got a conversational voice, you can basically use it and it’s the easiest way to program intentionality with other instruments and all that stuff. You have to put your intentionality into the sound being created by that. Here, you can just naturally put your intentionality, perhaps projecting love and compassion or whatever you want to do into the sound that you’re making. So we like that the voice is the most powerful healing instrument. But here’s the thing, because of one, I mean this has always been, but more recently because of wonderful shows like American Idol and the Voice, people get so judgmental about, oh, I’ve got a good voice, or I’ve got a bad voice or whatnot, that you can’t even have people making an ah or an ooh without being judgmental. But the hum babies do it. The elderly do it. Everybody hums and they don’t do it. We actually have not encountered anybody who is judgmental about their humming. We’ve
Andi Goldman:
Never heard anyone say, I’m just not a good Hummer.
Lorne Brown:
It’s a really good point because I’m self-conscious to sing. I don’t think I can sing, feel like I’m tone deaf, but I would be comfortable humming. That’s really, and so this is why it’s the most important instrument because it’s free. It’s with you all the time, and we don’t have to be self-conscious about it.
Andi Goldman:
Well, and the interesting thing, Lorne, is that humming as we’re saying it is such a simple, effective, and of course we call it conscious humming, and we knew that when we were writing our book that in order to really sort of bring people in with credibility, we had to made the whole first chapter is nothing but peer reviewed research that really talks about what happens in our physical, our emotional bodies when we are actually consciously humming.
Lorne Brown:
So I hope we can go through that, some of those things that are happening when you’re humming, because for me, I’m that type of person that if I understand it, then I’ll be more motivated, inspired to practice it versus just do it on faith. So for those that the left brain of us and I do have a right brain, otherwise I would not be hosting the Conscious Fertility podcast. So I’m not severely left brain, but definitely it’s a dominant side for me or it’s a well-developed side and for all my like-minded people then that love to know what kind of research and what kind of benefits come from humming. Can you kind of list some of those? I’m assuming the vagus nerve you mentioned, and I just want to share with our listeners, we got Steven Porges as one of our podcasts. Beautiful. He talks about, so we’re not going to get into great detail in the vagus nerve, but I’d love you to talk a little bit about it. We have a whole episode on the vagus nerve in healing from Steven Porges, but the benefits, we’re
Jonathan Goldman:
Not going to talk about it except to suggest that there are two ways of consciously affecting the vagus nerve. One of them is through slow deep breathing. The other way is through humming. That’s I believe in Steven’s book. So everything is interrelated too because as you know, you take a nice slow deep breath that’s going to affect stuff. And taking a slow deep breath is one of the protocols of our conscious humming. But basically you get, and this is so really, really important, give the reduction of heart rate respiration and brainwaves. Well, that’s huge. And this of course, I would suggest that it’s necessary to do conscious humming i e taking some nice deep breaths as well as humming, because if you’re just humming along without breathing and you’re a real high and rapidly breathing, I don’t think that’s going to work. So once again, everything in it’s calm, gentle thing, but the reduction of heart rate, respiration and brainwaves is so important. You can literally reduce your blood pressure by pharmaceutical levels. I’ve done it myself. Oftentimes I have what is called white coat syndrome. I get to a doctor and I’m like, ah. So I start doing that for a couple of minutes and all of a sudden my blood pressure goes
Andi Goldman:
Absolutely. So not only does it do that, but also it releases melatonin which controls our sleep cycles. It releases the hormone oxytocin, which is the trust hormone. And so I’m thinking too of some of your listeners, Lorne, who might be pregnant, you could just put your hands on your belly and just hum into that baby. There is oxytocin right there that is being released, as
Jonathan Goldman:
We said, nitro dioxide, which is hugely important. Once again, the vagus nerve vagal toning, and you get heart rate variability occurring heart and the brain oftentimes will get into a state of coherence, which among other levels also amplifies. And this is really for our purpose because we’re very, very interested in using sound not only on a personal level, but on a planetary level. We literally interface with, shall we say, global consciousness, and we can expand our electromagnetic field by hundreds of times by doing heart, brain coherence through breath and visualization. And then you add the element of sound and it becomes even greater. There is a reason why the different prayers on our planet, or for the most part, vocalize, whether the whispered chan it’s spoken or sung, is because the sound amplifies the power of the prayer.
Lorne Brown:
I’m going to list them just for memory and what you just shared. So you talked about increases nitric oxide that causes vasodilation. We’re always interested in good blood flow and circulation.
Jonathan Goldman:
I’m going to look in our book.
Lorne Brown:
You look in your book and impute that’ll help with immunity. You talked about enhanced melatonin. I don’t know if you know this, Andy, but melatonin is one of the supplements or drugs hormones that they give to ’em in trying to conceive because it’s been shown in some research to improve egg quality. So melatonin, you talked about the oxytocin, the love drug, right? The
Get along drug reducing the stress hormone, cortisol. There is research showing constant high cortisol levels can interfere with our fertility. And so reducing that hormone that leads to blood sugar, dysregulation, inflammation, and then releasing those Gil, good endorphins, and then that’s all on the material level. It can cause a shift in alter states of consciousness, which is where this podcast idea is. There’s more than just the material body. There’s something else going on. You talked about this to connect to that, some call it consciousness or higher self. So when we’re looking for miracles or for something that can do something beyond the physical, then this is another way to tap into that. So to me, sounds like something I want to be doing on a regular basis. So do you want to kind of describe the process and take our listeners through some humming,
Jonathan Goldman:
But I got to just jump in. There have been fertility chance fertility, sonic rituals since the beginning of time. I think there’s more going on than may meet the eye, ear, nose, or throat in terms of this and that we need to basically re-empower our own sound and our ability to listen to sound, to interface with our entire field, our physical body, the organs, our emotional body, everything, Lorne, everything works together nowadays. And the sort of reductionist separatist level of looking at things is perhaps not the whole picture. So if we can begin to perceive of in the sand, it’s called a vita or non-duality, it’s basically the concept of oneness and how sound can really help initiate oneness through all these matters that we talked about.
Andi Goldman:
Well, and also when we’re talking about the benefits of humming as a psychotherapist, helping my clients to reduce their levels of stress and helping them to come into balance. If we hum for even a short period of time, I mean if you even hummed for a minute, there is going to be a shift in your levels of stress because of all of those factors that we said happened when physiologically, but I love the fact that something as simple, but yet as effective as humming can actually help bring someone into balance and help them reduce those levels of stress.
Lorne Brown:
This will be the first time you’re hearing this, but my listeners know that I have this approach for conscious work that I work with the people I see, and it’s called notice, accept, choose. Again, the idea is to interrupt our story when we’re unconscious. And it comes from Victor Frankl’s quote that I paraphrase. Where in a situation, there is a moment where you either unconsciously, habitually react, or in that moment you can consciously choose to respond. And I use N A C notice, notice how you’re feeling, right? Don’t take it personally. Everything you experience is through the lens of your subconscious except really surrender to what is, and I’m sharing this with you because I’m going to incorporate, I always find these different modalities and I incorporate them. So the hummings going to be one of my tools that I use. E F T, site K, Byron Katie’s inquiry, I use E, F, T, all these things in the accepting what is. So this would be another tool that I’ll use in accept what is. And then C is choose again. So I’m so glad that we’re doing this because humming is another way to interrupt the story. And you said, just do a minute a day. What I have found with this process is the more times you can do it throughout the day, the better. Why? Because every time you’re doing it, you’re becoming conscious again. That’s the key, is becoming aware. And when you’re present, you tap into the potential of everything
Jonathan Goldman:
And sound is cumulative.
Andi Goldman:
And in our book, Lorne, we’ve got lots of different exercises. I mean, whatever practice would work for whatever, we are unique vibratory beans. And I mean, Jonathan and I spend five minutes a day humming together, and I’ll spend two or three minutes by myself humming whenever I get extra stressed during the day. And sometimes I’ll start humming, and then I’ll utilize that as the stepping stone into my meditation. So there’s so many different ways that you can utilize humming.
Jonathan Goldman:
I mean often just humming for five minutes that will allow you to almost enter an altered state of consciousness. It’s that powerful.
Lorne Brown:
Well, if it’s putting you into the alpha brainwaves, then you’re putting yourself into that parasympathetic, and that’s the detached, relaxed state. That’s where you can get into the operating system.
Jonathan Goldman:
Yeah, you’ll probably actually get down to a theta and maybe even delta if you do it for long enough, which is why we suggest that if you’re humming for five minutes, you stay in silence, one to receive it. But also oftentimes if you try to get up, you’ll be so blissed out and so high that literally you won’t be able to drive and stuff like that. So we suggest that and that you allow this. I just want to suggest that there’s also the use of humming for P T S D, but let’s first just jump into the protocols.
Andi Goldman:
I was just going to say, I think that we should start talking about the protocols. We have this lovely sheep that we made, which we don’t obviously need. But the most important thing is initially, as you were saying, Lorne, notice we say, check yourself out. How are you actually feeling right now so that you’ve got something to gauge how the coming can affect you.
Jonathan Goldman:
And then nice, deep, slow, whether you want to call it diaphragmatic breathing or whatnot, but it’s really mandatory. People need to do that. We’re not going to teach this now. I know, but once again, being aware of taking a nice slow, deep breath. And then
Andi Goldman:
Of course, the most important thing, we want to start this. You keep your lips closed,
Jonathan Goldman:
Right? That is because some people go, well, yeah, I’m going to hum, no,
Andi Goldman:
Yeah,
Lorne Brown:
The auditory, we’re going to put up a visual of this on Lorne brown.com and we’ll give you the embed code two for you guys if you want to put it on your website. But the ah was mouth open, and then his lips closed,
Jonathan Goldman:
Which then causes you to have the hum to be the most powerful vibroacoustic, a sound that you can make because as soon as you go, then the sound is going out as soon as it’s, you’re getting much more of a sonic massage or vibration occurring through the lips close.
Andi Goldman:
And we want to also, when we’re humming, stay in your comfort zone. We want to stay on one tone and stay in that. Don’t stress, don’t try to make it, just let it happen in that. And oftentimes it is really the conversational voice that is that comfort zone area. So we want to do that.
Jonathan Goldman:
And also hum on one tone. Don’t do zippity doda or the 1812 over. That’s great. But the frequency levels are bouncing all over the place. And you want to create one if you like standing wave that’s going to vibrate in a particular area. And then the harmonics resonating all over the place. So there’s that once again. So we’re going to repeat it. And then finally we say, do about we add three to five hums. We’ll, probably today when we do do four,
Andi Goldman:
We do four. Can that be good?
Jonathan Goldman:
And finally, being in silence for an equal amount of times. And number one, check yourself out deep and relaxed. Breathing, keep your lips closed hum in one note, do it on uncomfortable pitch. Do it for a minimum of three to five times and then be in silence.
Andi Goldman:
Now, that sounds like a lot of things to think about all at once, but it’s really very simple. And we are going to take our listeners through a brief experience if that’s possible to do, Lorne, and let us know if is a good time.
Lorne Brown:
This is a good time. So let’s hum. Let’s get into alpha. Let’s engage the Vega tone. Let’s connect to our altered states.
Jonathan Goldman:
Can we first be really silly?
Lorne Brown:
Absolutely. Playfulness is important when it comes to conscious work,
Jonathan Goldman:
Right? So I want you want you to hum with me, and then we’re going to pitch your nose. Okay?
Lorne Brown:
All right. Okay, here we go. Hi. I can’t hum when my nose are pitched,
Jonathan Goldman:
Right? And we just tell people, okay, if you didn’t know that, most people don’t know that. I found out about through a kid’s book on a sound that I read many years ago, and I said, oh my goodness. So if we don’t know about this, about the hum, maybe there are other secrets about the arcane mysteries of the hum that are there. Okay? So we are indeed going to now get a little more grounded. At least I will. And I would just suggest that we do
Andi Goldman:
Let us begin. So what we always do at the very beginning is ask, we close our eyes because when our eyes are closed, that focus internally seems to be enhanced. And we’re going to take a couple of nice deep belly breaths, diaphragmatic breaths, and we’re going to begin to have our bodies relax. So let’s just take a couple of nice deep breaths right now and breathe out with a sigh, letting go of anything that is not serving you in this moment. Let go of any anxiety or just begin to breathe in and breathe out. And then what we’re going to do shortly is we’re going to be breathing in and on the breath, on the exhale, that is where the hum comes out. So we’ll be breathing in and then we’ll hum. So that’s basically it.
Jonathan Goldman:
We’ll do four of those. So if we can, yeah,
Andi Goldman:
So eyes closed. Take that nice deep breath. Stay in your comfort zone, by the way. And we will now begin a series of four hums breathing in and hum. A nice deep breath and breathing in. And one more breathing in. And now we’ll be in silence for a few moments
Jonathan Goldman:
Because this is a podcast and we don’t want to think that we’ve dropped off the air.
Lorne Brown:
Good thinking.
Jonathan Goldman:
We’ll just say that when we do this by ourselves, we’re in silence for a lot longer because even now, Lorne, I don’t know how you’re feeling, but I got pretty buzzed by doing those four hums.
Andi Goldman:
How were you feeling during that, Lorne?
Lorne Brown:
I enjoyed it and it was just neat to notice the feeling in my chest and in my head. And then I thought about our conversation today, and then I started just thinking thoughts that I wanted to put the intention behind my hum. So I decided to add some intention while I was humming. So I enjoyed it profoundly. And in one of your steps, I think in number six, the keyword was minimum hum a minimum of three to five times. So could somebody do 20 hums, for example? There’s not an issue with humming longer,
Jonathan Goldman:
Just as long as they allow themselves enough time to be able to assimilate the really powerful shifts and changes because this is actually an advanced yogic tool. It’s called broy pranayama. And this basically can take you to really very, very powerful levels of consciousness, altered states of consciousness. And because of that, you need to be able to, if you’re out of your body, you don’t want to try to get up and have to answer the phone. So allow space to assimilate the reach, powerful shifts and changes.
Lorne Brown:
So if you’re just starting, I always say less is more in this case. So maybe do those three to five hums for a couple of days, a couple of times a day before you increase the length because you’re going to also have to or not have to. But the benefit comes from when you have equal silence after the hum. So three to five times love it.
Andi Goldman:
And really set aside that time where you won’t be disturbed. So that even if you have five minutes or 10 minutes, but set that time aside so that you can effectively hum and be in silence.
Jonathan Goldman:
And as you were saying, the key to really the next level of this is all in our book, is putting your intention on the hum, what you want the hum to do. Where do you want it to resonate? You can change the resonance without changing the picture of the tone simply through your consciousness. What do you want to manifest if you like? The hum, believe it or not, is a sacred sound. It is perhaps the original sound of creation, the Yoga sutras written by Anglis thousands of years ago. Sutra 1.27 basically says the original sound of creation was Anova, the humming of Prana. They had to give it a name, so they called it Ohm
Andi Goldman:
And Lorne, I would just love to take a moment and read a quote that Bruce Lipton wrote that is on the back of our book because it kind of sums all of this up.
Lorne Brown:
Love to hear it. And we have an episode with Bruce Lipton on the Conscious Fertility podcast as well. So after you guys listen to this quote, the invitation here is listen to Steve Porges episode and Bruce Lipton’s, and it will tie a lot of this together.
Andi Goldman:
Oh, I love that. Thank you. So Bruce Lipton, of course, who wrote The Biology of Belief, he says, I highly recommend the humming effect for all those impacted by the stress of the modern world. It is a powerful non-pharmaceutical prescription for self-healing that has only positive side effects such as harmony, health, and happiness.
Lorne Brown:
Nice. And we’re going to put in the show notes a link to the book, so the Humming Effect as well as the other books, and also your website healing sounds.com. And so I’m saying that, but it’s also in the show notes. And is there any other way you want people to connect with you? I know there’s Facebook, Instagram, or is healing sounds.com, where you want them to go.
Jonathan Goldman:
Our website is an interdimensional portal
Lorne Brown:
To a
Jonathan Goldman:
Realm of consciousness and vibratory shifts that it’s a real blessing that, and we’re proud of it and there’s lots of freebie stuff that people can get and it’s just got information, et cetera. So go to healing sounds.com, try it, you’ll like it.
Lorne Brown:
All right, thank you. And thank you, Jonathan
Andi Goldman:
Lorne, it has just been a joy and thank you for having us.
Jonathan Goldman:
One last thing we’d like to say, we heal the planet,
Andi Goldman:
We heal ourselves,
Jonathan Goldman:
We heal ourselves,
Andi Goldman:
And we heal the planet.
Lorne Brown:
And that’s why you’re on the Conscious Fertility Podcast. That is part of our mission, so thank you.
Andi Goldman:
Thank you.
Speaker:
If you’re looking for support to grow your family, contact ACU Balance Wellness Center at ACU Balance. They help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach, using low level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the ACU Balance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to acu balance.ca. That’s acu balance.ca.
Lorne Brown:
Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne Brown official. That’s Instagram, Lorne Brown official, or you can visit my websites, Lorne brown.com and ACU balance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.
Listen to the Podcast
Jonathan and Andi Goldman’s Bio
Jonathan Goldman’s Bio:
Jonathan Goldman, M.A., is an international authority and pioneer in the field of sound healing. He is a renowned writer, musician and teacher. Jonathan is the author of several books including Healing Sounds (Inner Traditions), The Divine Name, the 2011 Visionary Award for “Best Alternative Book” of the Year and The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing (both from Hay House); A Grammy nominee, his award winning recordings include: “Chakra Chants”, “The Divine Name,” and “Reiki Chants”. He is the Founder and Director of the Sound Healers Association and CEO of Spirit Music. Jonathan Goldman was named as one of Watkins’ Mind Body Spirit magazine’s “100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People.”
Andi Goldman’s Bio:
Andi Goldman, M.A., L.P.C., is a licensed psychotherapist, specializing in holistic counseling and sound therapy. She is the Director of the Healing Sounds® Seminars and Co- Director of the Sound Healers Association. She is a musician, teacher, sound healer, award-winning author, and the wife and partner of Jonathan Goldman.
Jonathan and Andi Goldman have co-authored Chakra Frequencies, winner of the Visionary Award for “Best Alternative Health Book” of the Year and their new best-selling The Humming Effect which has just won the 2018 Gold Visionary Award for “Best Health & Healing Book” (both from Inner Traditions).
Together Jonathan and Andi have dedicated their lives to the path of service, helping awaken and empower others with the ability of sound to heal and transform.
Where To Find Jonathan and Andi Goldman:
- Website: healingsounds.com
- Book: The Humming Effect
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