409: The Power of Sound And Music
Flicka Rahn And Ashley James
Highlights:
- How we can heal ourselves through music
- There is a way through love to heal ourselves that has been traumatized through toxic thoughts, experiences.
- Music expressed through love is the variable that helps things become more ordered.
- If we want to be in a state of loving empathy and be able to connect with others, we need to make sure the music we choose matches that.
- We want to choose music that is meant to heal us and make sure that we avoid music that isn't going to bring us healing.
- We want to be conscious of that because music can be a weapon or can be a tool for healing.
In this episode, discover how the power of music can affect us emotionally and spiritually. Even knowing that music can have the power to heal us by just having the knowledge on how to correctly choose the music or sounds we would listen to. Flicka Rahn shares her expertise on all things music and sound in today’s podcast.
Intro:
Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the learn true health podcast. Today's episode is uplifting and beautiful and it touches on this blend of energy and spiritual, emotional and physical healing. Bringing it all together something that weaves throughout is music. Music can affect us spiritually. Can affect our energy, our mood our psyche and it can even affect us on a physical level. I know you're going to really enjoy today's episode with Flicka Rahn, who is an expert in using music to heal us emotionally, physically and energetically.
I am so excited for the Learn True Health home kitchen. I've been working on it. Filming with Naomi since October. We launched just two weeks ago and already all the members who've joined are really enjoying it. If you haven't joined yet, I highly recommend checking it out. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That's learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. Every week I upload new recipes, new videos, new lessons. There's over five hours worth of content already in the membership and every week we're adding more and more. If you want to learn how to use food in a way that heals your body, you're going to love our membership. It's affordable. Everyone can afford it and I want you to use the coupon code LTH to get the member discount so it's affordable and we teach you how to cook delicious food, save you time in the kitchen heal your body with food and food that your family will enjoy. There's wonderful tips in there for shifting your life and shifting your habits in a way that improve your health. So no matter where you are on the health spectrum and no matter what diet you follow, you will get fantastic tips and fantastic recipes that you can implement to get more healing foods into your life. Please come check it out. I would love for you to see it. We're having so much fun sharing all these wonderful recipes and videos with you. learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That's learntruehealth.com/homekitchen and use the coupon code LTH. Come join us, we're having a ton of fun. All the members who've joined so far are really loving it and I know that you will too. Excellent. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about so we can help as many people as possible to learn true health.
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[02:57] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host Ashley James. This is episode 409. I am so excited for today's guest. We have on the show Flicka Rahn. Who's a specialist in healing with music. This is a topic that's really near and dear to my heart. My dad, he loved music. He was so passionate about it. He was in the music industry. In a unique way he designed a type of speaker that these speakers that are in like home entertainment systems. He designed a type of speaker that you only needed two of them but that they you could hear from different directions and this is back in the 80’s and 90’s. So now I know like everyone just has a tiny little Amazon device in their corner that plays music but back then he designed these speakers that he called it spatial sound that you could be anywhere in the room and you could hear a sound from somewhere else in the room because it would throw the sound around. He always played music and he always shared his passion about music with me and growing up I complained that I was only teenager that would yell at her dad to turn down the music. He would wake me up playing Fool in the Rain Led Zepplin on a Saturday morning. So I just smile every time I hear Led Zeppelin because he would, I mean he just loved he loved all music but he would play he would play everything for me and so growing up him and I would share, we would share our CD collections. We'd go to the CD store together and we just we just shared it so much that, so much of music for me it brings back these really positive memories of love and a connection that I had with my dad. For me, I found that music is healing when you can link it to something like love and you can resonate a sense of like love and connection. That helped me to heal after losing him. I've always had a deep connection with music and I know that it's part of us. I think I feel like it's part of our DNA. When you reached out Flicka, to be on the show to share your expertise around using music as a form of healing, I thought this would be a wonderful experience for all the listeners. Because all the listeners are here to learn how to achieve true health and there's a little-known thing that is very affordable that we can all do and that's using music as a therapy. As a way to heal. Welcome to the show.
[05:37] Flicka Rahn: Well, I'm so happy to be here Ashley and thank you for this really wonderful opportunity to share what I know and what I know works. My entire life has been revolved around music and the sharing of music and teaching of music and playing music and composing music. I taught for 25 years at Texas A&M University as a voice teacher. I also had a pretty extensive career as an opera singer. I have music published by for soprano and piano. I really have studied this. I mean it's a never-ending study of music and the depths of how it can reach deeply into us emotionally, physically and spiritually. Yes, indeed, what you did share with your father through music was a sense of love and there is no greater force for healing than love. That is really what after I retired from the University, I became impassioned with knowing about what has been used by indigenous healers. Throughout history as healing music and specifically sound. I did a great deal of research and study about those different examples. And because I have so much experience singing and in all forms of worship, temples and churches and fellowships, I just found a lot of commonalities. That I then went on to explore at a deeper level and went and experienced even into South America. Into the Amazon to really understand the healing nature of the music that they used. The shamans in South America in the Amazon. All of this has come around to broaden my – I really laugh people say, “You're not retired.” “No, I'm I really, I've just found another job.” That is creating and composing this music that specifically uses the elements of sacred music that I've discovered and using those elements to then create my own specific type of sound. Which I think you will be playing for the listeners at some point.
[08:38] Ashley James: Yes, I'll definitely play your music that you've given us at some point in today's interview. Did something happen in your life where you were sick or didn't feel well and you used music, the vibration? Maybe you could explain a bit about this also that music is energy and our bodies are energy. Where we're made up of energy and so using music as a vibration that moves through your whole body can help to correct the energy in our body. I know this is really out there but if you think about it, we're actually we're not solid. Nothing is solid. Everything is atoms vibrating and we're all a vibration and energy and so is music. There's been people who've shared that certain frequencies, certain Hertz have healing properties. Was there ever a point in your life where you fell ill and used music or had an experience of healing through music?
[09:37] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. But I do want to return to specific frequencies and how some are more powerfully accepted by your body than others. Let's talk about the time, actually I was in I was in Peru and I used to suffer really pretty profoundly with migraine headaches and because I was about to experience sacred ceremony with the Shipibo Indians, I could not take any medicines for a month. I was just about at my wit's end because I used it to help with my migraine headaches. Honestly one night, I went down there with my brother and he was in another place in the hotel and I said, “Flicka, you know, you’ve physician heal yourself, okay.” This is I mean this is where the rubber hits the road so I said, “Alright, so what I'm going to do, I will tone every note to correspond with the resonance frequencies of each of the chakras.” I did. I started at the root chakra with the pitch. Which is designated as the note C and for about 10 minutes. Then I moved up to the next chakra and I just really moved all the way up the body to the crown. By the time I had finished toning and it was about an hour that I had vocalized all of those pictures, the headache was totally gone and it never came back. That's a powerful way because I was self-creating frequency and vibration. We know that quantum physics now teaches us this new view of reality which is which has moved beyond Newtonian physics in that, everything vibrates everything has frequency and yes, there is nothing really solid in that in the quantum world. Where I then begin to work and my knowledge and my studies is, “How do I affect this quantum world that is really at the base of what our bodies are to help people with illnesses that are –“ well, there's lots of causes for that for the illness to appear into your physical body but they all really start at the etheric body. Which is the energetic body that is right beyond your physical bodies a lot about two inches away from your physical body. That is where I, as a sound therapist work is in the etheric body and trying to bring all of that energy into harmony and in balancing the chakras which respond to sound and vibration and to the healing touch which is really the vibration of love. Reiki has a part in that as well but by balancing and re-aligning and harmonizing the entire body, the electromagnetic field around your body then healing can take place. I have I have witnessed so much of this with my clients. Sometimes after I work with a client it in and really worked very closely with the energetic bodies, it takes a couple of weeks because for the etheric body to then harmonize the physical body. It's not very often although in my case it was because I think I was highly stressed and stress as we know is not something that can help healing. Does that answer your question, Ashley? I’m sorry, I went on and on.
[14:04] Ashley James: It’s okay. You've given me ten more questions. Just that one example where you used the frequency for each chakra and within an hour your headache or migraine was gone. It's interesting though you were reaching for the Advil or you're reaching for the ibuprofen, whatever drug you're reaching for every month when you had these headaches but then when you were up against a challenge, the challenge to go drug-free for a month. Then you were left with needing to like dig into your own tool belt. I think that that's actually a really great challenge for all of us. All of us, we all have resources and sometimes we forget. Sometimes we'll reach for the coffee, over-the-counter medication, right? The sugar, the coffee, the stimulants, the uppers and downers. Whatever over-the-counter stuff to get us through the day to mask a symptom. I love that you challenged yourself. You took on the challenge to not medicate for a month because you're walking into a situation where the healer asked you for one month to be medication free.
That is a great challenge because sometimes we know we have these resources but sometimes we reach for what's easy just to get us through the day and if we challenged ourselves to not self-medicate, to not go for the alcohol at the end of the day or the sugar when we have the sugar craving or the coffee when we're tired but instead dig deeper into our own tool belt of resources. Realize that we probably have or the body is talking to us. The body probably is saying, “I'm dehydrated. I need to rest. I need some more joy in my life. I need to eat fruit.” Or whatever the body is saying. The body is – and your case, your body was saying, “I need to be in alignment. My energy needs to be in alignment.” So you dug deep into your into your tool belt and you used the very tools that you have at your disposal and your headache went away. We've been trained that it's really easy to reach for the over-the-counter medication or reach for those things that mask our symptoms but when we mask our symptoms, we're actually not achieving health. Where we're stunting our own growth and our own personal growth and development so I love that you use that as an example. When you did that though for that hour, I think you said you were at a hotel, were you singing to yourself for an hour?
[16:41] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. I was and it doesn't need it didn't need to be loud because even subtle, it was toning. It’s what was it was, Ashley. Toning is not really, it's chanting without the words. It's just singing a pitcher tone without words. It's more like singing an alm but I would do it on the resonant pitch of each of the chakras. Starting off with the note C.
[17:14] Ashley James: Can you teach us?
[17:16] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. I think it's really – thank you for letting me have the opportunity to do this. It's important that that your body be, check it for stress so that if you are sitting up and in this case, I was sitting up on the bed because the breath then can be deeper into your belly. Like a soft belly breath. I would breathe easily into my belly and then just, okay, here I go. [Singing Sound] I just did that using all of the resonant pitches of each of the chakras. As I closed, did you hear as I closed into the m to the mmm sound, you can feel the vibrations in your head. It was almost like an internal massage and very calming, very comforting and very ultimately healing. That's all toning is. It's no big mystery. When I'm teaching people about toning for in my case, I picked a specific pitch and then I moved up the scale but I teach people that whatever tone your body wants to make is the absolute perfect tone for whatever you need your body knows. It will produce the pitch that best heals it.
I always yield to the body wisdom in that case and it didn't have to – so when I'm working with people, it doesn't have to match my pitch. It is because we each choose the pitch that the body wants to hear or to feel. Of course, it's frequency and frequency carries information and you can feel your heart vibrate through all of these toning exercise. It's just wonderful. I mean you can even do this in the car when you're driving and you're in really bad traffic. Honestly, Ashley, I have to tell you this but when I go to the dentist and that is not my favorite place but I tell the dentist, I said, “I'm going to be toning the minute you start that drill.” and they expect it and it, number one, it blocks out a lot of those higher partials in that drill sound that makes them crazy but it also calms me down and I'm breathing slower because I'm releasing the sound slower than the breath I take in. All your listeners may try this. The next time you go to the dentist. I mean it works like a charm.
[20:23] Ashley James: Can you explain how you do that when your mouth is open, they're drilling in your mouth or they're cleaning your teeth, how do you do this?
[20:31] Flicka Rahn: Okay. So here I am in my studio right now and I'm opening my mouth like I have to and at the dentist, so it's like this. [Singing Sound] so the back of my tongue is up against the back of my throat so as to not be you know, swallowing all that water they put in your mouth when they’re cleaning up but I don't go into the sound the M sound at the end. I just I just hold one note for a long time and again, it doesn't have to be a specific pitch. It's whatever your body wants to sound at the time. You think about it Ashley, I mean for any really emotional response that we have to an event. Be it fear or terror, I mean there's always an explosion of sound that we make as our species has done that to try to balance the body. Screaming when someone is afraid is very beneficial to help bring the body back into balance. Of course, when we're really happy and laughing or singing. It's all sound related as the body continues to try to keep itself in a balanced energetic state. That just occurred to me, sound is very connected. Our own sounds that we make to our emotional state at a time. By staying quiet if there's something that you need to cry about is, you know, your body will take that energy and and hide it into the etheric body. It's better to go ahead and cry or scream or sound or something so that you keep the energy moving out. Rather than pulling it in to be hidden and that you have to deal with later at some point because you will.
[22:52] Ashley James: It's so true crying is so cathartic and letting it out, you know, we were taught in the society to hold it all in and then it explodes like a volcano, right? It causes so much internal stress but let it out. I like that you said that when you when you do this alming, your out-breath is longer than your in-breath. I recently had an interview with Forrest Knudsen who's a yogi and he teaches how to create the heart rate variability which is now the number one way of measuring stress. It's the most accurate way of measuring stress. They're now seeing that it's the most accurate way of measuring your longevity. That if you have poor hurry variability you are likely to die sooner than those who have very good heart rate variability. He said the key to achieving heart rate variability meaning very good healthy heart variability where the heart and the body is in a low state of stress is to make the out-breath be a little bit longer than the in-breath. So by you doing this, you're actually practicing not only are you using frequency and energy healing but you are also creating heart rate variability and decreasing stress in the body.
[24:15] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. I know exactly about what you were speaking. I've used the breath work as well but to add a toning sound to that is even better because then you're giving your body some vibrations and frequencies that really help with the alignment and the heart rate variability. Yes, stress is a killer. Stress is a killer and we have a stress epidemic now. My music really addresses stress in a big way. I think that most healing music from Egypt, from Tibet to India, to all of the indigenous peoples use ways to decrease stress.
[25:17] Ashley James: Now what about those who are – I have some listeners who are Christian and might not feel comfortable saying ohm because they’re associating it with Buddhism or a different religion. Could they say anything? Could they say Amen? Yes, that’s what I was going to say. Could they chant Amen to themselves? I know that in the like Catholic Church and the very ancient you know, Catholicism, chanting was a really big thing. That they would chant over and over again. I was imagining you could just take a nice deep breath and say Amen over and over again. Sing it to yourself and whatever pitch your body wanted.
[25:58] Flicka Rahn: Let's just try it.
[26:00] Ashley James: Okay. Let's try it. Listen listener, you try it too. Let's all do it. Let's do it together. Okay.
[26:05] Flicka Rahn: Remember it doesn't matter what note you pick. Take the deep breath in. [Singing Sound] Take another breath. [Singing Sound]
[26:37] Ashley James: That's really fun. It feels so calming. It really feels like a blanket of comfort came over me.
[26:48] Flicka Rahn: Yes Ashley, Yes. You see even with just two Amens, all that anchors you again into a feeling of full, you know, completeness and peace. I think this is – it’s a it's a beautiful practice.
[27:08] Ashley James: If one was spiritual could imagine connecting with source, with God, with Jesus. With whomever they want to connect with. Could imagine bathing in the energy of divine love. They could you know take that take this to the next level, right? Because you're incorporating so many senses, you're feeling your voice, you're breathing in and then breathing out. You're feeling a vibration around your whole body. It’s sound bathing but you're feeling this vibration inside you. You're hearing it and then you're feeling this energy so there's several things going on at once.
[27:47] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. Yes. You know, and if you didn't want to close your eyes, you could look at a picture of whoever you know, a picture of Jesus or a picture of Buddha or a mandala with different colors. I mean there are a lot of ways to stimulate the senses through even sight. As also the kinesthetic and the end the oral with your ears. Yes, they’re very powerful. Very powerful.
[28:19] Ashley James: Now each chakra has a different frequency, so how do you then go up? Like if you said you could start at whatever frequency your body wanted then how do you address each chakra?
[28:31] Flicka Rahn: Okay, so in that case, I would pick the specific pitch. I would start at C and I'm getting a C for you right now. We're going to start with a C. That's a C. [Singing Sound] I would do that for as long as I felt like I needed it and then the next pitch is a D. [Singing Sound] E, [Singing Sound]. If you want to go down an octave, I don't think I have a low E but if that's not comfortable for you then you can go down an octave. There are lots of tools on apps that you can get as a tuner and they will tell you what note is C and D and E.
[29:37] Ashley James: Okay. Now I know you have a CD that people can download. I think it's called chakra soundscapes. Is that it?
[29:43] Flicka Rahn: That is exactly it and it actually that is what I used when I was in Peru. I put my earphones on and I toned through each of those tracks. They're eight minutes a piece so I was toning for a long time. The tracks and the sound would lead you gently into that pitch. People would enjoy that. They certainly could go to iTunes and get chakra soundscapes by Icaros. That is the name of our group and tone along. Just know that I've been toning along with you and actually my voice is also on each of the tracks. Yes, that would be an easy way to start to so you don't have to find an app and know where the note C is. You could just tone along with the CD.
[30:36] Ashley James: Very cool. Tell me about Icaros. That's your band?
[30:39] Flicka Rahn: Well, it is. It is actually two of us. It is my co-composer and when I did all this research about trying to find the common elements of sacred music throughout the world, throughout history and also through all of the sacred expressions of sound and music. I identified those elements and then I asked Daniel, who is an incredible pianist and to help me create what I knew in my mind I wanted to create. The incredible thing about the CD which if people hear it is all of the music is improvised. Which means we wrote nothing down. We went into the studio and I said, “Alright. We're going to use C as our resonant pitch and we're also going to play around with the major triad. For those of your folks who don't know what that is it's like, [Singing Sound]. I mean everybody knows that combination of pitches. Then we also used a lot of other intervals that have a very strong effect on our Western ears to help us release energy. Let me come back to that. Daniel and I did this and I use my crystal singing bowls which I have here in the studio and I used a whole set of those and we went through each of the resonant pitches of each of the chakras and his harmonies are absolutely just exquisite. I then improvised around his harmonic progressions. We both know how to improvise so this really came from just this outpouring of love that I was feeling and we both get in kind of the same spiritual space. Then we create from that space. Every time we perform, it is all improvised. We feel the audience and then really it's a co-creative experience. The audience and us.
[33:18] Ashley James: It's like spiritual jazz.
[33:22] Flicka Rahn: That's exactly what it is, Ashley.
[33:24] Ashley James: I want to see you live. oh my gosh. Do you tour?
[33:26] Flicka Rahn: Yes, we do.
[33:28] Ashley James: Okay. Well, tell me when you're coming up to Seattle.
[33:31] Flicka Rahn: I will. I will. We're about to go to Palm Spring in about three weeks to perform. It's not even really performing, it's to offer the experience is more like it. Because it's meditation to a sales meeting of Tito's vodka.
[33:58] Ashley James: So like get hammered and spiritual at the same time. It'd be really cool if they don't have a hangover the next day because you're like attuning their bodies.
[34:09] Flicka Rahn: I did talked to them. I said, “You know, we have got to do this in the morning.” So I’ve done that and we've also gone to some conventions of doctors and holistic healers. We are going to Mexico in March for a big holistic spiritual festival outside of Mexico City. People are hungry for this now because there is so much stress, Ashley and we've lost touch with our hearts honey. It's we've lost touch and what Daniel and I offer is a way to touch back in and make a connection within yourself to your own heart and then it's so easy to love everybody else. It just naturally flows. That's what we are finding is during our live performances this happens and everybody just gets up and all they want to do is hug each other. It's just great.
[35:15] Ashley James: Oh, my gosh. If the whole world if the whole world did that. Can you imagine the amount of change that we could make? I love that that's your mission. Back when I was 19 I stayed at Kripalu. Which is the I think it's the largest yoga residential Center in the United States. It can house over 200 people and I stayed there for a whole month. I took their 200-hour bodywork training program. I got to experience several different types of music healing. I had a session with didgeridoos where they would play didgeridoos on my body. We lay down like a daisy, like we're petals of a daisy and he would stand in the middle and he'd play the didgeridoo straight on top of each chakra. There's nothing like it. I can still feel it when I think about it. It's pretty amazing.
[36:13] Flicka Rahn: See the didgeridoo is so rich in overtones and what we call partials. What it does is totally aligned, it's like a buffet for your body as far as a frequency and sound. I am a big believer in that and Gong's also offered the same thing. Often times when I'm working with a client, I will put the bowl right on their body just to kind of feed that chakra. That's what happened to you. I mean, I bet it was an amazing experience.
[36:51] Ashley James: It was very cathartic and then we also experienced on a different day we had the singing Bulls. My favorite however, was that the crystal harmonica and they let me play it. I mean I really want to own a crystal harmonica. Many people don't know what it is but I believe it was Benjamin Franklin that created it. It was at the time more popular than the piano but it would break often in transportation but it's a bunch of crystal bowls on a stick on their side and it would rotate slowly and you have to have very clean fingers and you get your fingers wet and you play it as the bowls spin. Oh, my gosh.
[37:30] Flicka Rahn: Oh, ethereal.
[37:31] Ashley James: It's so ethereal right. Yes. Yes, it does. It just did something for me. I've had those experiences and of course, we would ohm. The whole group would ohm like several times and you would be bathing in this vibration of the whole room. I can't even describe what would happen but I felt so full and so complete. Then often every few days they had drumming circles. Where before and after lunch or before and after dinner, there would be 20 or 30 of us drumming and the rest of us would just be dancing just you know moving our bodies to the sounds of the beat. Everyone wanted to just hug and love on each other and smile. No matter how angry, I mean I was 19. I was going through so many emotions. I could imagine very angsty and no matter how frustrated or angry or you know hormonal or whatever I was going through, I'd walk into that drum circle and I'd walk out just like my authentic self. Like all that other stuff would just peel away. I've had these experiences with using music as energy healing and they were profound. I've never had a mundane music healing session. Let's put it that way.
[38:52] Flicka Rahn: Well, it's like effects like. We are frequency and so when we are into a therapeutic situation where there is vibration and frequency, there's something in us that knows this is this is who we really are. Although there is some sounds that are not healing. That tend to be very disruptive to the energetic body. I think and people can know what those are but just by your response to them. I've had some experience with people who are quite disturbed. Do you want me to go into that?
[39:42] Ashley James: Sure.
[39:44] Flicka Rahn: Okay. I have a degree in counseling as well as I'm a master's in both music and counseling. I have studied a lot of the psychological challenges that people had. There is one way of releasing a lot of pain and that's through this action of cutting your own skin and from the person who's doing the cutting it makes a lot of sense because it's a focus for the internal pain that they can't get to so it feels actually good. I've also experienced people also listen to extremely loud disruptive hard metal dissonant music as a way of focusing on the inner environment which is you know, really probably frightened and in pain and in trauma. It's making those tuning, that the cutting and the listening to just really hard metal dissonant really loud angry stuff, it's a way of putting it outside yourself rather than it being inside. I've seen that as somewhat therapeutic but it certainly is not the end goal. To understand why, you know, if it were me, I would want to know, “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? It feels good but why does it feel good?” Then move on to something that is more healing because if you keep doing that disruptive music it just keeps, the neural pathways keep getting deeper and deeper and it's very hard to then change. Put in some other to feel the release of dopamine and seratonin through like meditation or meditative music. Did any of that make sense? I'm very empathetic, I guess. To how people try to manage their pain and yes, it can be very scary for them. Yes, so-
[42:05] Ashley James: Someone is cutting or if someone recognizes if they're at the point where they're recognizing that they're using self-harm in an effort to self-soothe. How can they use sound or music to help them to make healthier choices for themselves and help them self-soothe in a way that isn't harmful?
[42:30] Flicka Rahn: Okay, glad you asked that. I am working with a neurologist now and we are exploring the sound of the crystal singing bowls in working with our veterans that have experienced PTSD and are finding it very difficult to re-enter a society. You know, where there's not the constant threat of death. We do know that their brains have been changed by the trauma and that there are some pathways in in the brain in which see if they heard a backfire, the brain would interpret that differently then say maybe I that heard the backfire because I don't have the associative memory. Those neural pathways have not been made in me but it in some of our brave warriors it has been. How can you change the landscape inside your own brain to move away from that reactive, the reaction. We also know that what wires together then then repeats. What you want to do is not try to make that go away but spend time and meditation so that that becomes more normal. The pathways of peace, of love, of calmness and there had been a lot of success by people who have taught meditation and a lot of breath work to veterans even over one week. They've seen changes and the brain has changed. There is a fantastic movie on I think it's Netflix called Free the Brain or Free the Mind. One of the two but free the – and it recounts the study that was done with these brave warriors and also with children with ADHD. Who it seems that you know, the neural pathways in there are different from someone of a of a child who can just sit calmly. Through meditation, through breathing, through learning, those techniques those kids have found some relief. I think that weird now really starting to – we intuitively have known the stuff has worked but now there is the data, the hard scientific data that's coming forward that's saying, “Yes, what we thought works is working. We can really see that. We can assign some numbers to that.” I really think that's the next step and that is where I want to go with my neurologist friend who wants to do some studies with what is happening inside your brain when you hear the sound of the crystal singing bowls? Is there something with just the specific sound with a specific frequency? We don't have those answers yet but we will. That's very exciting to me because I want to offer some palliative tool to people who are suffering. You know, we all suffer to some degree. Through anxiety or stress or fear and we all have that. So is there a way that we can anchor to a part of ourselves that is not in the drama and then stay observing? I mean that is a meditative technique. I've really tried to pull away from the drama of the ego but I think this helps. It helps connect to that higher expression of yourself through meditation, through listening to meditative music. You want to stay away from music with words because that then engages your left brain and you want to get into the right brain which is more holistic. More just stilt in nature.
[47:06] Ashley James: I mean music with words is okay, it's just if you're looking to heal with music, you want to avoid words is what you're saying. What about when you're chanting to yourself? Like chanting the word ohm, you are the instrument. The word is the instrument in a sense, right? The word is the music coming from you which is the instrument.
[47:28] Flicka Rahn: But you're not having to analyze it.
[47:31] Ashley James: Okay. Yes, got it.
[47:32] Flicka Rahn: It just becomes like the sound you're making and then at some point because of the repetition, Ashley. The mind says, “Okay, nothing to see here.” and it then can lift to a higher awareness.
[47:51] Ashley James: Okay. Yes, so chanting of a word becomes a meditation in and of itself and allows you to go into that higher state. I like that you mentioned becoming the observer in neuro linguistic programming. That is a technique where you become the fly-on-the-wall. The third person. Seeing your life as the third person allows you to analyze especially difficult situations where you can then kind of start to see the whole scenario instead of be reactive in this situation. What about headphones versus allowing the music to bathe their whole body? Is there a big difference? Can we listen to this music and gain the same benefit from hearing it through headphones or should we have speakers or the sound bathe or whole body and our whole body feels the vibration?
[48:44] Flik Rahn: I think that it addresses two therapeutic scenarios. If you listen to chakra soundscapes for example with headphones, you are harnessing the effects of entrainment. Which the binaural entrainment, which is webbed into my music. Both of the CDs have theta brainwave state and webbed in through binaural sound. Should I explain that?
[42:20] Ashley James: We will definitely get into binaural sounds in a minute because I think that's an important topic but I definitely want people to understand like when should they listen with headphones and when should they make sure their whole body's being bathed in sounds.
[49:32] Flicka Rahn: Okay. So when is the whole body's being bathed in sound, the sound will then interact with the whole etheric body. The physical and the etheric body. That offers other benefits too because within our etheric body, we have places where there's like stuck energy. If you want to attain a deep meditative state in your brain, it’s headphones. If you want to address the places in your etheric arc body that have stuck places or negative emotions are caught there, then listen with speakers on either side of you and just sit in the middle of it.
[50:17] Ashley James: Yes, all right. I think you already opened us up to the next question which is, tell us what binaural. I keep hearing binaural beats, right and I've listened to this on YouTube. What’s binaural beats? What’s binaural music? What does that mean?
[50:30] Flicka Rahn: Okay. So this was discovered I can't give you the exact date of when it was discovered but it's not been some very long ago because our technology has not allowed that with our earphones but binaural beat is, let's say for example, okay so you're hearing, it goes from 20 Hertz to 2000 Hertz. All the way through there, you're able to hear like outside bird calls, your dog barking, that falls within that that spectrum but if you go below that 20 Hertz, you can't hear it. The sound will be there but you can't hear it. What a binaural beat does is it's through the sound technology in the studio, they will produce a sound that a say let's say 15 Hertz in one ear and then in the other ear they will produce 10 Hertz. Those are two different frequencies and pitches. You won't be able to hear them but your brain does. Your brain can discern the difference between those two fifteen and ten as being five. Five Hertz that is way below hearing but that then measures and falls within the theta brainwave state which is very deep meditation. That's where we see visions, that's where we go into these altered states that really deep meditative state. That's what binaural beats do for you but you have to listen to them through your headphones so that you get – the beat means that what you hear you don't hear specific pitches but you may hear a beat. That's why they called it binaural beats.
[52:35] Ashley James: What effect is listening in, so you want to still listen with your headphones because they does something to the left and the right, in the brain, right? Can they measure – you spent many years in academia teaching so I'm sure you like to look at the science of it. Do they have they ever hooked people up to machines or brain waves so they measure? Do they see that it measurably makes a difference to the brain waves by listening to this?
[53:04] Flicka Rahn: Absolutely. Yes, through binaural beats then they can they can put a do some brain mapping and see that the person listening to the binaural beats has slipped into these lower expressions of your brainwave state like theta certainly alpha. That yes, that's reproducible and provable. That is a very actually, this is the way I meditate. I put my earphones on and I listen to either my music or you know sometimes others that I really like and I will very easily and quickly go into that low meditative state. Where the deep healing takes place. So yes, it's powerful and it's easy and it works. I really encourage your listeners to find some music on YouTube that you really like that says it's binaural, hook your ear, put your phones on and close your eyes and drift away.
[54:09] Ashley James: Now does it make the difference whether we put the right earbud in the right ear and the left earbud in the left ear?
[54:17] Flicka Rahn: No. It doesn't matter.
[54:18] Ashley James: Okay. So it doesn't matter which way we have our headphones on as long as we're wearing headphones.
[54:23] Flicka Rahn: Yes, that's exactly right. Yes.
[54:25] Ashley James: Interesting. I always come back to this same binaural beats soundtrack when I am trying to concentrate so if I find that I – I like to multitask. I've got a million things going at the same time and I'm like, “Okay. I've got to get a podcast episode up. I got to finish editing this and I've got to schedule this person.” I've all this stuff to do and I really want to focus. There's this one track on YouTube that I listen to. It's for studying and focusing and it really helps. I just put it on it's like a two-hour long track and I I just put it on in the background it with my headphones on while I work and it really helps me to stay focused so I've noticed that it works for me. Then they have ones out there for like weight loss and for happiness and for sleep. They've figured out different binaural beats that put the brain into a certain state.
[55:19] Flicka Rahn: That's exactly, yes, yes.
[55:20] Ashley James: Can you talk a little bit about that like how did they figure out that this specific binaural beat makes someone relaxed for sleep and this one makes people happy and this one makes people want to lose weight.
[55:31] Flicka Rahn: Well, I don't know about the lose weight. I can tell you that if you're calm and peaceful, you may not want to eat as much because you have stress eating syndrome but we do know about the beta state and right now I'm in beta, you're in beta because we are actively listening to each other and thinking. Beta is not a bad state to be and when you are in high beta. This is those brainwave states are well known that you are stressed. You're in you're in a lot of traffic and you know you're sweating and you're that kind of high beta. What happens is you're not really thinking clearly and you're in high stress. Your body interprets that is we are threatened so it down shifts into the limbic system like, “I'm going to protect myself.” All of this is not conducive to healing. That's beta. The next one is alpha and that's the daydreaming place. That's where you're taking everything in but you're not analyzing or paying extreme attention to something. That's alpha. That's also very creative place. That is where you probably go into like this lovely alpha place with your music. Now if you were to go into theta you’d be falling asleep. The different brainwave states are fascinating and they each have a signature brainwave weight that people can see on a screen. We know that these two things correspond the binaural beats and also emotional states and these different brainwave states.
[57:40] Ashley James: When you're creating binaural beats how do you know that what you're creating is going to put someone in alpha or put someone in theta, put someone in a more relaxed state?
[57:55] Flicka Rahn: I guess I don't know that it will but that is when we we’re finished with in the studio, we were finished with our tracks and then I gave it to a sound engineer and I said, “I want theta binaural beats webbed into each of these tracks.” and so it was sub-audible. How do I know it will? I don't. I mean if someone is really convinced that they're going to stay in beta they can probably override that but if you say, “Okay. I'm in for it. Whatever.” You just give in, you'll slip into theta or alpha. There is also another phenomena that I know your listeners know about this. The scientific term is called isochronic beats and that is different from binaural beats. Isochronic means the same thing over and over. Isochronic, one thing over and over. This is what happens when drumming. You're in a drumming circle you're getting isochronic beats. If the drumming is fast then you will your brainwave state will align with that faster beat. Warriors who want to get ready to go into battle, if you can remember what was it? Braveheart.
They were getting ready to go into battle and the Scottish Warriors were gearing up, they heard this loud drum going over and over and over so everybody was aligning in training to that drum. There is also a part of the brain that that loses touch with reality through that isochronic heavy drumming. This is what puts people into trance state in many indigenous societies. Through heavy drumming. It's like the brain pane just shuts down and doesn't think anymore. It's an interesting phenomenon.
[01:00:09] Ashley James: It reminds me of being in a stadium at a sports stadium where we're all hitting the floor with our feet and then drumming starts off [Sound], the whole stadium is just banging really fast and you feel like you're not in your body anymore. You really feel just out there. That you're not thinking. You feel like you're totally in the moment. It's a very intense but very enjoyable experience. You're right. You're definitely not just in like regular beta anymore at that point.
[01:00:42] Flicka Rahn: Nope. You've lifted out and drumming can be very healing too. The slower drumming, remember that you're going to entrain to that slower beat and that means your brainwaves are going to entrain to that slower beat and you can easily be put into alpha. If you could just imagine that whole stadium slowing down and everybody slowing everything down all of a sudden things would get really more peaceful if the drumming or the sounding slowed down.
[01:01:17] Ashley James: You’ve made this chakra soundscapes. What other and I know you have other music for meditation –
[01:01:32] Flicka Rahn: The other CD that we just released is called hymns like a hymn to Gaia. G-A-I-A. Hymms to Gaia and the subtitle is Honoring the Elements. We used the same process nothing was written down. We went into the studio and I tried to, didn't have to but I tried to like match the water element with the sacral chakra. Which is has to do with water in your body and like the fire element was the heart and very often we see that the heart is shown as the fire of love or the fire. Then we mixed in, after we have to recorded everything then we mixed in sounds which would show these different elements like sounds of wind, sounds of water, sounds of fire, like a fireplace in a cozy cabin and then I also added the ethereal element love I saw as an element and the angelic realm. I see them as part of our energetic environment that we live in. That we may not always know or recognize but it's there all the time. I loved doing this. We had a great time. It’s a beautiful, it's a different experience but it can be used as for meditation as well. It's hymms to Gaia: Honoring the elements. That's also Icaros which is what I call. The name Icaros actually is what the sacred songs that are sung by the shaman in the Amazon. That's what they call them the their Icaros and during sacred ceremony, I was so profoundly moved by the fact that I could actually see the sound in the air. I could see it. I saw how the beautiful songs that the shaman would sing would heal and help people manage you know to come to a place where they're freer and more loving, more centered in themselves through this through these sounds. I jumped on board. I said, “That's for me.”
Photo by Simon Rae on Unsplash
[01:04:28] Ashley James: I love that you traveled the world to learn from the indigenous people. I studied Hoonah many years ago. I studied Hoonah, ancient Polynesian spiritual practice and learn to do their chants. Here listening to the chants or doing it myself, I definitely went into a different state. Definitely went into a meditative state but I felt my heart would vibrate, my whole chest would feel full of love and full of energy. It was my prayer to for healing. The chanting was sort of this meditation asking for healing and I would just feel that in the moment it was so it was really a connection there was a connection there with universal energy. It was very interesting my experience with sort of indigenous music for healing. Can you take us back to when you were traveling? Share some stories about or revelations you had as you were traveling and learning from these indigenous people and learning about how they've always used music for healing?
[01:05:46] Flicka Rahn: I went because I felt myself that I was in need of some emotional spiritual growth and healing and as I told you before the month before, I promised myself that I would do whatever it took, I was willing to go to any anything to get free. There were things that happened in my childhood some pretty traumatic things that I wanted to I wanted to let go of in a way that was loving and that made sense to me and that I could synthesize the wisdom of those experiences without carrying the trauma. This is what drove me is, I knew that I needed to be in this lifetime as free as I could. If I was going to offer what I knew I what came here to do and that is this beautiful music infused with love so I needed to be infused with love. My own love. That is why I went it was like I cannot do this music and carry any trauma or any bitterness or any resentment or any guilt. I needed to free everything so that's why I went down to be in the jungle with the Shipibo Indians and went through some very powerful experiences, Ashley.
In which I reviewed my whole life from the perspective of love and saw that everything made sense and so part of this process is experiencing those emotions and then moving through them so the motions the crying and the yelling and that was part of the release. I understood the process and I wasn't afraid of that. What I wanted more than anything, I was not afraid of the crying or anything. I was afraid of carrying resentment and trauma. That was the biggest fear because that would limit me. That was my profound gift to myself is, “We're going to do this.” and we did. That's what drove me and then because I knew that the sound having known, that sound has led me into the divine places in my own heart and I've known that I was a little girl. That I would experience these moments of clarity where I knew there was something much more than what I was just seeing out of my eyes and I had some in spirit experience of enlightenment. I was familiar somewhat although the traumas in my earlier life, sometimes drew a veil over what I knew to be true. I not only wanted to know what I wanted to feel, I wanted to embody as much love as I could. So that means I've got empty out all the other stuff that isn't loving. To be a true handmaiden of sound and frequency and love. That is what I did.
[01:09:34] Ashley James: You mentioned that you felt enlightened doing this. Can you take us back to that moment and share with us the experience?
[01:09:47] Flicka Rahn: Yes. It happened when I was probably, there are two times that I can recount which was not a part of a sacred ceremony enlightenmen. This just happens spontaneously. One was when I was probably about seven years old or eight years old. I was laying on a sidewalk in front of my house in Texas and it was just of starting to be dusk. I was just looking up at the sky and I could see the clouds but I could also see the stars were coming and starting to come out. I something left my body and I knew that I was a part of that. I knew it that the little Flicka on the sidewalk was just a teeny expression. I certainly have no words for it. I just knew I was part of this greater reality. I was an intregal part. That happened then the next time enlightenment happened and I think enlightenment is not like one event. It is many enlightenment events in which you get to sense the true-self in little bits as you can handle it. I was driving back from a funeral in Philadelphia and this time I lived in Boston. I was on actually the Connecticut Turnpike and I was listening to Pachelbel's Canon which is a beautiful classical piece and for me it's just very spiritual. I was listening Pachelbel's Canon. It's Orchestra and all of a sudden I felt totally enveloped and enclosed in this tube of light. Light that was so bright that it I had to pull over because I was so infused with this white light but it was not bright it was just brilliant and of course, I was sobbing because it was so beautiful and I don't know how long I was by the side of the road in this white light but ultimately it left and I started crying now it's so beautiful. I knew that that is what I was.
In back of everything, apart from everything that's what I was. I was this light and I've been trying to get back there my entire life but it happened on the wings of music so when I sing now or when I perform music or when I do this music with Daniel, it's like we cross a bridge into a divine playground of beauty and love. It's exquisite. It’s what it is. My hope my music can impart some of that reality to people because that's what that is my intention is to be so connected to love. That is what I channel so it becomes audible love. I mean that's my wish so if people can sense this in themselves then they will know that they are not the anger, they're not the trauma, they're not the fear, they're not the crisis of the moment. That they are something way beyond all of what we hear on this and dualistic planet experience. Then to identify with that and to not be afraid. There's no reason to be afraid of anything. There's no reason. It's all love. That's all it is.
[01:14:04] Ashley James: I like the saying we're spiritual beings having a human experience. We’re spirit. We’re energy. We’re in the Christian faith, we’re made in the image of God and in other faiths there's a belief that were that God chose to become us to experience this world. There’s many different ways of thinking about it but when it comes down to it, there's so much more than what we can see and touch. That what we can see and touch is the illusion. That energy is the reality. That energy is in this infinite energy, is reality and that the illusion is physical. That the illusion is fear. Yes, the negative emotions are illusions and that what's true is love. When you said that you realize that you are that light and you're sobbing on the side of the turnpike. That you that you were enveloped with light but that you remember you remembered that you were light.
In timeline therapy it's a technique, I'm a master a practitioner of timeline therapy, In timeline therapy, it's you go into a light state of trance, they're totally conscious. You travel above your timeline and when I ask people to go beyond this life so go beyond your death people see the same thing. Everyone sees they enter a brilliant light that it envelops them and is them and that you know you could call that heaven. With the afterlife when everyone imagines themselves in in this light state of trance, we all see the same thing and it's this brilliant energy. I thought that's just very interesting. That we all perceive when we're not in our body anymore, the same beyond this energy. I've heard so many people who can commune with angels. They all talk about this music that they hear like the angelic realm is vibrating in this music and so between I mean, there's light. Light energy and music are all just forms of frequency.
[01:16:41] Flicka Rahn: Exactly. That's exactly right, Yes. Everything vibrates. Through vibration comes sound and yes –
[01:16:50] Ashley James: Now you mentioned that the latest album you created was to help people release energy. Can you tell us what you meant by that?
[01:17:03] Flicka Rahn: Okay. I guess I mentioned that if there is something in your etheric body that really is a block to the free flow of electromagnetic flow. That very often that will show up as discomfort or dis-ease. So you understand what I'm saying about that, is that if you put yourself – for example, you put yourself in that area or of the didgeridoo and you felt it. I mean you felt it in every cell of your being and I'm sure that that was like taking a sound bath that what I do too. I give sound bass once a month at the little clinic where I have see my clients and people come in the bathe and themselves they allow themselves to be bathed in these different frequencies. That breaks up the – is this what you're referring to? That breaks up the blockages or the places where the energy gets thick. Where it doesn't flow. So there's no flow of Chi so to speak. A problem and if there is a free flow then the body is able to bring itself into consonants and heal itself.
[01:18:37] Ashley James: Yes. You talk about maybe the stagnation where people get locked. It’s Interesting. In Hoonah, there's this visualization of the body as a river. Imagine a beautiful river because in Hawaii they have these gorgeous rivers and so you imagine your body’s this river and the river it represents the flow of Chi. The flow of energy through the body, through the meridian system, through the chakras radiance. Negative emotions and limiting decisions and unhealed unresolved past memories are seen as little black bags where that store that negative experience and are like a big boulder in the river. Distorting the flow of the energy and so their visualization is all these black bags may be stored in your body and you imagine a river with no stones that it flows very nicely. There's no rapids, there's no turmoil in the river but you put a bunch of boulders in the river and now there's waves and it's disruptive. Their description is you want to really work at resolving the trapped the trap trapped negative emotions and limiting decisions and negative past experiences that are stuck in your physical body.
They’re in your energetic body but there actually can be triggered in your physical body and release them. Gain the positive learnings and heal from them because they cuts off the flow, it creates stagnation. We said release energy. It reminded me of that – I was a massage therapist back many years ago. I had a really interesting experience. I was receiving a massage by my instructor in in college as a demonstration. I was the demo and she was working on my back laterally by my shoulder blade coming up around my arm on the outside of the armpit basically and I began to sob uncontrollably. I couldn't stop sobbing. The class ended and she held me just put her hands on me on the table and I sobbed for an hour. I couldn't stop. I had no idea what was going on and I just obviously released but she, I mean, she was a massage therapist for many years so she knew it was going on. 19 years old that was my first experience with this happening and she said that, you know sometimes the body can hold on to the – can in the muscle will hold on to that little button that little trigger and but by getting massage. Massage can be a spiritual and an emotional healing tool as well because it allows you to release these trapped energies.
I imagine combining energy work with like for massage therapists listening, combining energy work with your songs would really help. I've had these experiences. My husband had a similar experience. He went for a Reiki class and no, it was before the Reiki class. He had Reiki, his girlfriend, this a long time ago gave him Reiki and he burst into tears, sobbed uncontrollably for an hour and then laughed. He said he never felt love like that before. Just universal love and then he just became a raving fan of Reiki because it was just for him, he just never had anything that allowed him to cry and feel such release. He had no idea where was coming from. We have this trapped in our body as so many of us walk around so stoic because that’s what we were taught but there's this there's so much available. So many tools out there available for emotional healing for this release as you say so that we can get back in touch with who we truly are which is connected to spirit, connected to the universal energy. That we are that love and that light actually. I love that you're creating these tools through your talents to help people achieve that. What about the day to day problems that people have with anxiety, procrastination and motivation? Sometimes people get in this cycle of stress that – we don't feel stress, right? Stress is kind of like we don't feel it until we break but we do feel anxiety or procrastination or we do feel sort of get that stuck this or that stagnation in life where we don't have that motivation and then the anxiety kind of just overwhelms us so we get stuck again. What can we do to break free from that?
[01:23:46] Flicka Rahn: I think all of those reflect kind of this and most of it is subconscious but that there is some fear around that activity. We don't know. I mean it comes up as anxiety but really if you keep going down deeper and deeper there's some fear of what's going to happen or me not being good enough or I'm not going to say the right thing. So what you do is you procrastinate so you don't have to go into what you fear but you don't really understand where that is coming from because it's subconscious. Again, to realign yourself with your Divine self is the way out of that and to become another person and a person that is not caught up in their daily routines of being a certain way or feeling a certain way about a person or going through the same habits. You then try to create this other self that is more whole, more a happier and some of this is through your own observation. “Oh, there I am I'm doing it again. I don't want to do that because I want my life to be about happiness and love and compassion so I'm going to choose to do this.” Sometimes it's hard to give up Ashley, because I find that people and I know you probably find this they have an investment in being a victim or they have an investment in being hurt or bitter.
There's a payoff for them. If they really want to get well then they're going to have to give up their addiction to those negative reactions and say, “No. I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to go towards love and I meditate every day so that I continue to stay connected to this. To the divine expression of who I am.” There are times when I, I'm human you know. I get angry at drivers on the road that are doing stupid stuff so but at least I'm aware, “Oh, there I lost. I lost touch with myself.” Send that person compassion instead of the alternative but it takes awareness and it takes such an investment in wanting to be free or to be whole or to be in love with yourself and in love with the world. If people knew and this is what I am trying to do is to give you a taste of what the peach tastes like. This is the peach. The peach is the best but if somebody says, “I don't know what a peach is. I don't even know if I want to come over there and have a peach. I like it over here eating free fries.” That's what I try to do through this music is to say, “This is the peach. I'm going to give you a little taste of it. Do you like it? If you like it, there's a lot more.” That's the deal. When I go over there and I'm eating french fries and I'm thinking, “Oh, my god. I will back off the same, “Look at you Flicka. You're eating french fries when you could be having a peach.”
[01:27:15] Ashley James: Right. We all indulge in the self-pity and the anger and all that. It's the human, the ego wants to have a little fun and the ego gets to have it's fun but then to become the observer and go, “Oh, isn't that interesting that I did that? Isn't that interesting? What’s the payoff there? Is this the quality of life I really want? Well, no. Okay. So my ego got to have some fun. Let's get back to creating a connection with the divine and getting back to remembering that I am loved.” Did you definitely need to become conscious of it. There's stages of mastery. The first, being unconscious of it. We're totally unconscious and then there's that conscious incompetence. Where we have to keep catching our self and building that muscle and going, “Oh, look I did it again.” but now you caught yourself only five minutes into being angry instead of 15 minutes into being angry, right? Then we keep catching ourselves. My husband is a great example. He used to really have a lot of road rage where, I mean he wouldn't like take it out on people except the people in the car would throw this, he wasn’t happy. I would catch him and be like, “You know you don't know what that person might be having a really bad day. Maybe they just didn't see you in their blind spot. You're always assuming the worst.”
Just reminding him and now bad drivers don't bother him. Whereas they used to really, he's a Virgo. No one can – everyone has to be perfect on the road apparently but now he can just he can just let it go. It’s funny because he'll catch himself and he'll be like, he’ll say, “Do you see that? Do you see that? Oh, that that person cut me off and I didn't freak out. Do you see it?” so he got to the point where he's catching himself going, “Oh, look. I didn't do that old behavior.” or I'll catch himself getting angry and then go, “Oh, okay. That's not who I want to be. That's not the quality of life I want. I'm not going to choose that.” We have to catch ourselves so in catching ourselves, we create a break state of our neurology and we're creating a new neural pathway.
[01:29:31] Flicka Rahn: Exactly. Yes. Now I wrote about this very same thing the road rage because it happened – I'm with your husband here. I do it too. Although it's been so long since I've allowed that to you know change mine. The stress hormones which are released when you get angry but I did the same thing. I mentioned this in my book. I want to make sure that we know that all of this information is in my book. That what I've learned to do is to say, “I don't know what's going on with that person but they may be going to the hospital to see a loved one or they have some emergency.” I reframe the event so that I can stay centered in myself and not get thrown out of who I really am. Because ultimately, I'm the one who pays. The person who you know cut me off they're on their merry way but I am left with all these horrible stress hormones coursing. The adrenaline coursing through my body. I don't like the way that feels. Some of it is self-preservation I'm going to stay loving but it's best for me. Ultimately of course, everybody else. Yes, that is a technique I'm continued, of course we all continue to learn but it has become a lot easier is to look at the event and reframe it so that I don't spin out of control.
Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash
[01:31:07] Ashley James: Do you have stories that you can share from people who have had positive experiences listening to your CDs has anyone shared with you results?
[01:31:19] Flicka Rahn: Yes. A lot of people have said that just listening to my CD it and it's extremely grounding and comforting and loving. A friend of mine who actually lives in Mexico, I just got back from Mexico. She was going through extremely difficult period and she's she is a shaman and she said that she saw into that music what it does and I can't do that but she has that ability. She said it is very – it heals DNA. Now I don't know that, Ashley. But I'm telling just what she said and she had been through a huge trauma in her life. She listened to it like two hours a day and she said it really helped her come back into herself because trauma tends to separate us from ourselves.
[01:32:22] Ashley James: Right. Well, trauma, they can actually test DNA and see if your ancestor had trauma. They've proven this. Because we're just still we're learning so much about DNA and epigenetics. Epigenetics means that the certain DNA that can turn on and off. Become like suppressed or can activate. It can turn on and off different enzymatic processes in the body. The best example is and I've said this on the podcast before but for new listeners, they did a study where they took white mice. This cute, fluffy, soft white mice and they exposed them to the same amount of bisphenol A. BPA per body weight that we would be exposed to on a daily basis. If we were to touch of receipts every day when we buy things there's BPA on there. Drinking from plastic bottles and cans that have BPA. You might think, well, I don't buy those things but if you eat out at any kind of restaurant you have exposure to BPA because restaurants really don't care. They're going to buy the cheapest things possible so their canned foods or sauces, whatever. Their condiments are going to have BPA in them. Through the food industry BPA is just leached into our food unless you eat a whole food plant-based diet where you're buying organic and just cooking everything from scratch which is what I teach. We actually I just launched a membership called learn true health home kitchen. I teach that. How to cook whole foods so that you're getting the purest nutrition you can to heal the body through food.
So this BPA they exposed these mice to it and the mice quickly turned yellow, their fur went from white to yellow and from a nice softness to a coarse hay straw like feel and then they became obese. They didn't really change their diet other than giving them the BPA but what it did is epigenetically changed their genes to make them become obese and to make them not be able to make beautiful fur. Then they stopped giving the mice BPA and it took several generations. They followed these mice for several generations before they just fed them water and food instead of the BPA but I think it was over three generations until the mice returned back to being white again and having the soft white fur and not no longer being obese.
Epigenetically their DNA was damaged for several generations. We see this with ancestors of those in the Holocaust during World War II. Those who spent time in Auschwitz or were severely emotionally harmed during World War II. Even their grandchildren they can see when they do DNA test, they can see the epigenetic gene expressions of trauma, of stress. They have higher levels just at resting state of stress hormones. What we do in this lifetime will affect our grandchildren directly through our DNA and though the healing that we do in the detoxifying and the nutrifying that we do, they're seeing now can actually affect our DNA for generations to come. It’s not only healing yourself that aids your healing for your children and grandchildren. I think that's it's really fascinating. The fact that this healer sees that your music has a role to play in healing DNA. I wouldn't be surprised that everything is energy.
[01:36:01] Flicka Rahn: There is a study that I mentioned in my book and I'm sorry, I don't have it at my fingertips but I'll recount what it was. It was a study done by taking some DNA in which they put into a petri dish and they subjected it to heat so the DNA “died” or uncurled. It was essentially destroyed and then they had people hold the dish with the hurt DNA and directed loving thoughts to that, I know this sounds crazy, to the DNA and the DNA recoiled. There is a way through love to heal ourselves and to heal the DNA that has been traumatized through toxic thoughts, experiences, down regulated so to speak. That's through this the power of love which carries probably I'm thinking a very coherent geometry. That the DNA can then reform around this coherent geometry which that's also a huge subject that we could talk about. How they're now understanding that this field that we are in the zero-point field is filled with information and energy but there is a uniform geometry that they're finding that is common throughout everything that saturates everything. I don't know if you know the work of a Nassim Haramein. He's a physicist in Hawaii actually and has been studying the geometric shape of the field.
[01:38:05] Ashley James: Interesting. What you're saying is reminding me of Masaru Emoto, his work. The book. The hidden messages in water where he would emit love or hate and freeze water and then under a microscope you see that water looks so beautiful in the geometric shapes are just divine when you emit love to it but when you emit hate or anger it looks distorted and polluted.
[01:28:38] Flicka Rahn: Right. Then they give the polluted water to some Japanese monks and have them love that water. They take another sample and the water has reformed into those coherent shapes. It sounds to me like love is the variable that helps things become more ordered. Are you familiar with the work of Hans Jenny and cymatics?
[01:39:04] Ashley James: It sounds really familiar but I don't know tell us.
[01:39:07] Flicka Rahn: Okay. So cymatics is the study of sound made visible. What he did and this was in like the early 1900’s maybe up through the 50s. He would take like a brass plate and sprinkle particulates on it or sand. Then introduce a specific pitch and then the sound would form into these beautiful like mandalas. Beautiful shapes that correspond and it's reproducible under the same circumstances that they would always form the same shape. Then there were other researchers who put particulates in water and the same thing would happen once introduced to specific pitches or frequencies. Snowflakes, I think snowflakes just are showing us the geometry of the field. If the field is love then that is like the rosetta stone of all of these expressions. My music is tuned to a 432 and I don't know if you're familiar with all of that work. It's a way of tuning, Ashley. It will sound warmer to you. I's a little bit not as sharp.
It's a little bit under pitch because we tuned to at 440 Hertz. Universally, all music is at a 440 Hertz but throughout history certainly in the in the Romantic period it's a musical period and before instruments were tuned lower than 440 Hertz. Some higher but for the most part it’s 432 Hertz because when you see pitches tuned at 432 Hertz, the geometry is beautiful and it's coherent. It's much more balanced. Knowing all of that, all of my music is at 432 Hertz which sounds warmer so your body can accept that geometry because it matches because it's a whole kind of sacred geometry and the fibonacci spiral and everything. All of those shapes that we see in nature are then reproduced in the sound that if the instruments are tuned down to 432 Hertz. Have you heard an orchestra that the oboe plays one note and then everybody kind of tunes off of that one note that the oboe plays? Have you ever experienced that when you go to a symphony orchestra? Well, they do and then the oboe then is toning an A pitch at 440 Hertz. Then everybody else in the orchestra tunes to that but if the oboist drops it just a little bit, just a little bit to 432 Hertz, then the orchestra would tune down a little bit and the sound is warmer to your ears. Your body can accept that because that is our natural, we are sacred geometry beings. Geometrically, we align with that.
[01:42:56] Ashley James: How does the musician know to go to – I can understand knowing how to play a C note but how do you play hertz? How do you know to go to a certain hertz? You need a device to read the Hertz?
[01:43:15] Flicka Rahn: Yes, and there are lots of tuners out now that you can get that will direct you to that 432 Hertz. Both of my CDs are tuned down to 432 a at 432 Hertz. Certainly, every note is a different hertz because hertz designates the frequency and the pitch. But you have to have a touchstone you say, “Okay. I'm going to use this as my tuning center.” The oboist, they can even use a tuner. They'll hold up a little tuner. They'll blow into the tuner and then they'll go to their oboe and they'll sure that they match that tuner. You asked me why did things change because it used to be that things were tuned down to a 432. There's a whole conspiracy theory that goes up around –
[01:44:14] Ashley James: I want to hear it.
[01:44:16] Flicka Rahn: Oh, my god. Okay. We got into it.
[01:44:19] Ashley James: I want to hear it. So because back before TV, music was so – that's what we did. That was entertainment. Even kings and queens five hundred years ago would pay composers. It was a status symbol to have a composer write you. That's sort of my dream is I'm going to win the lottery one day and like I'll pay a composer to make me as a symphony. It's such a outlandish but beautiful thing to promote the arts obviously but just imagine if you had the ability to have a have a composer write you a song. That was such a big deal and music, we bade themselves in music so often and now, we watch TV and don't bathe ourselves in music. This was my dad's, that was his mission was to get people back to listening to music. That's one of his things why he invented his speakers and promoted that. I lived it. I lived his vision. Well, my dad's time was before cellphones but his thing was, “Why do families come home and stare at a boob tube together when they could put on music and they could talk and they could connect and they could have this loving family time.” He wanted people to return back to that. Tell me the conspiracy theory around changing the hertz in music. When did that take place?
[01:49:49] Flicka Rahn: Okay. Well, first of all, your dad was so right. There is nothing that forms bonds of loving feelings than doing music together. What would going to church be without everybody getting up and singing a hymn. There's this energetic flow that happens through making music or listening to music together. Yay, dad. The conspiracy theory and I tend to think it's not so much conspiracy that it's really true. During the Second World War, before the Second World War, there were lots of composers. This very famous composer Verdi. I don't know, it's Giuseppe Verdi. Wrote many operas and he insisted that his orchestra tune to 432 because he said it is easier on his Sopranos. What he didn't know is that the geometry of the body matched that specific way of tuning and if you tuned up it goes against the geometry of your body.
He was a big believer in that. At World War II, there was this whole propaganda machine that Hitler got into play as a way of controlling the German population. One way he wanted to control them is to make them a little bit anxious because if you have people who are anxious they're going to get behind a guy who says, “I got the way out for us. We're going to go out. We're going to conquer the world.” but you don't want them feeling comfortable and loving. No. You want them on edge because you can control them. Goebbels his minister of propaganda decided that all the music that they were going to use is we're going to be up at four hundred and forty Hertz. Which makes you feel a little bit more on edge and you can go to YouTube right now and look at examples. Look up 432 versus 440 and you can hear the same piece played tuned a 440 and the same piece of music played at 432 and just subjectively experience that. That's easy to do. That's fun.
[01:48:18] Ashley James: You know what’ll be fun is get your get your partner, like you get blindfolded and get your partner to randomly choose whether they're going to play the 440 Hertz which creates anxiety versus the 432 Hertz which is healing. Then you feel your body and you see if you feel on edge or you see if you feel connected and happy and content. That would be a fun home experiment.
[01:48:44] Flicka Rahn: Right. Yes. Well, subjectively, I feel better when I hear music in 400 and here, I wonder if I could do it right now because I have my tuner on my phone. Alright. So here is and I will tune so that your listeners can hear this. Here is a note played in 432. Okay. Now here is the same note played in 440.
[01:49:23] Ashley James: It does sound just like a little bit anxious. I got that, yes.
[01:49:26] Flicka Rahn: So here's again 432. This is the calm pitch. Okay. Now here is 440.
[01:49:51] Ashley James: Hitler made all the music be played at 440 Hertz to make people anxious and so they're not happy with their present situation in life.
[01:50:05] Flicka Rahn: Exactly. Yes. That's the way you control people. Engender fear and anxiety and stress and they're going to look for a way so that can go away. So he said follow me, I'll make that go away.
[01:50:18] Ashley James: How did he know to do that?
[01:50:21] Flicka Rahn: That I don't know, Ashley. That I do not know but interestingly enough after World War II and there is also other conspiracy theories that the Rockefellers who were invested in a lot of, I'm not sure if I'm trailing all of this correctly but I knew they were involved is that then they approached the American Federation of musicians and then the worldwide Federation to make the standard 440. Now you can say maybe they wanted us all on edge so that they could control us and that was a worldwide conspiracy I don't know. But that is what happened so that if a flute player in the United States can go to an orchestra in Japan and they'll tune the same way. There had to be a standard but they chose that higher standard so that so that the population would feel ill at ease and not as anchored or centered.
[01:51:31] Ashley James: That's so interesting because we listen to classical music in the car. Often we're driving with our son. We often most of the time, I say 90% of time we're listening to classical music. There are some times when I feel like I should be very comfortable and at ease in this a beautiful song but I'm not. I get agitated. I'm , “What's going on?” The music is and I have to like change it to a different classical station and I'm just wondering if that was the Hertz. Very interesting that they chose to stick to 440 Hertz around the world. Well, the thing is that if they knew they could prosper from it because when you were feeling uncomfortable in your own skin, you will seek dopamine. You will seek pleasure. You'll spend money and you won't spend time doing internal exploration. Becoming a sovereign individual. Becoming a higher thinker. Becoming more spiritually connected.
You're going to spend more time trying to soothe the anxiety through staying in a low level so it's easier to control a population that's uncomfortable or that's in pain. Than control population of a very comfortable, happy, free thinkers so that really does make sense. We want to make sure we want to be conscious. This is why my husband doesn't – he prefers that we don't listen to music with words because he doesn't want to be enslaved to the mainstream narrative. Let’s just say that. Because when you're listening to music you're in a state of trance and if you're taking in words that are telling you the world is a certain way then you are a slave to that narrative and if you go dive into the history of the music industry, there's a lot of control there. We have you just did but there's modern-day music industry. There's a lot of control there and so I like to listen to independent musicians who aren't trying to manipulate us but are just trying to spread love like you are. We're being conscious. I think I like that you really bring up a point to be conscious of the music you play because it can be used as a weapon against you or use as a tool to heal.
[01:53:59] Flicka Rahn: Yes. My business partner her name is Tammy McCreary. She also was a co-author with me. She wrote the last chapter in my book and she is a manager for artists in Los Angeles. She absolutely sees that the music that is being offered now is very detrimental because yes, you're right. That people do, they are in trance when they listen to music and so that allows the message of the words just to be accepted blindly by a brain that is not really thinking.
[01:54:42] Ashley James: It's hypnosis.
[01:54:43] Flicka Rahn: Exactly, Ashley. Yes, right. Her goal is to wake up the musicians and say, “You have this incredible power you've been given. Be very careful with this because you create the future of our young people.” I get very concerned for them. I really do. I certainly don't listen to it but your husband is right. Don't be enslaved by – See now, I didn't think about that you are in a kind of hypnotic trance.
[01:55:17] Ashley James: I'm a master practitioner and trainer of hypnosis. You're talking about that music sends you from beta to alpha, what’s hypnosis. Then you're taking in words that have suggestions that create imagery in your mind. Even in an unconscious level those are, its slipping past the conscious mind and slipping into becoming unconscious suggestions.
[01:55:44] Flicka Rahn: There no evaluation. It just goes straight in.
[01:55:47] Ashley James: Right. You're not using your critical thinking.
[01:55:51] Flicka Rahn: Yes, yes. Amazing.
[01:55:53] Ashley James: So you listen to something over and over again and you like really – I have a friend who listens to heavy metal and he's just a very angry person and he reinforces it and you've said this earlier but he reinforces it with the music he chooses to listen to. The music we choose to listen to can reinforce our neurology. Can reinforce the way we're thinking and our thoughts. Create our actions or actions create our behavior and our results in life. If we want to be in a state of loving empathy and be able to connect with others we need to make sure the music we choose matches that. Hopefully at 432 hertz. Now that we know that.
[01:56:43] Flicka Rahn: Yes, right. You know there are stations or YouTube stations that have, this is not ideal but they've tuned things down like the orchestral pieces. The famous ones. It's certainly better if it's recorded from 430 Hertz rather than to be manipulated by a sound engineer to drop it down. That's better. So that may be interesting for you to listen to expressions of the same piece to see.
[01:57:17] Ashley James: Oh, so cool. Well, it's really interesting is after this interview I'm rushing off with my son to take him to the Seattle Children's Chorus where he is taking classes. He's four years old. He's about to be five but he's taking singing classes. It's so adorable to see these four-year-olds singing together so that's what I'm doing later today. I'm about to go bathe myself for an hour in children's singing which I'm really looking forward to. Flicka Rahn, it has been such a pleasure having you here today. I would love to have you back. This has been so much fun exploring this. Thanks for getting into the really interesting topics and this is the kind of stuff I just love exploring. I really feel like we hit the meat of it by understanding that we want to vibrate with a frequency of 432. That we want to choose music that is meant to heal us and make sure that we avoid music that isn't going to bring us healing. That isn't either the lyrics or the sound is not in alignment with our healing goals. We want to be conscious of that because music can be a weapon or can be a tool for healing. I love that you uncovered that for us. Is there anything you'd like to say to wrap up today's interview?
[01:58:35] Flicka Rahn: No. I just want to really encourage people to like if you're changing a pattern be aware. Just be aware of what you're hearing. Go into the supermarket and be aware of what you're hearing or if you're out in nature the sound of the birds carry such high healing frequencies so you're being bathed in those beautiful higher frequencies that are natural in the natural world. I think just waking up and just saying, “What am I really hearing here? What am I listening to? Is that helping me or do I feel more loving now or do I feel more anxious now?” Just maybe understand that sound can have a huge impact on you as we know. It's sound and music. To not forget about the beautiful gift of toning and help how quickly you can move to a place of peace and just calmness by doing that. If you go to your dentist, give it a shot cool. It works. I tell you, it works.
[01:59:56] Ashley James: Awesome. Cool. I'm going to tell my husband. He's got a dental cleaning coming up next week. I'm going to teach this to him. That's so cool. Flicka, thank you so much. Of course, the links to everything that Flicka Rahn does, it's going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com. I've decided I'm going to edit this episode so listeners who are hearing this have already experienced. I'm going to sprinkle your music throughout the episode. Also, now at the end of the episode. Thank you so much for gifting us some of your music that we could include in this and if listeners would like to buy your music and buy your book, please check out the show notes of today's podcasts. Where you'll find the links to Flicka's book and her CDs. Also, we'd love to see you live so tell me if you're ever going to be up in Seattle. On your website, do you display where you are when you tour?
[02:22:52] Flicka Rahn: That is forthcoming. Let’s just put that.
[02:00:53] Ashley James: Okay. Looking forward to that. Looking forward to seeing that information on your website actually. Thank you so much Flicka.
[02:01:01] Flicka Rahn: Thank you, Ashley. It's been delightful really honey and have fun tonight with your son. That’s great.
[02:01:06] Ashley James: I will.
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The Power of Sound and Music – Flicka Rahn & Ashley James – #409
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Ashley James
Health Coach, Podcast Creator, Homeschooling Mom, Passionate About God & Healing
Ashley James is a Holistic Health Coach, Podcaster, Rapid Anxiety Cessation Expert, and avid Whole Food Plant-Based Home Chef. Since 2005 Ashley has worked with clients to transform their lives as a Master Practitioner and Trainer of Neuro-linguistic Programming.
Her health struggles led her to study under the world’s top holistic doctors, where she reversed her type 2 diabetes, PCOS, infertility, chronic infections, and debilitating adrenal fatigue.
In 2016, Ashley launched her podcast Learn True Health with Ashley James to spread the TRUTH about health and healing. You no longer need to suffer; your body CAN and WILL heal itself when we give it what it needs and stop what is harming it!
The Learn True Health Podcast has been celebrated as one of the top holistic health shows today because of Ashley’s passion for extracting the right information from leading experts and doctors of holistic health and Naturopathic medicine
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