Receiving Resonance Medicine by Wahkeena Sitka Huva

Written in Response to the essay, “Tuning In!” published in the most recent issue of Conscious Dancer Magazine.

Listen to the sounds surrounding you now. Open your ears. What do you hear? In every moment, we are saturated in a vibrational field of sounds, resonating within the cellular chamber of our body. Our body receives every sound and energy pulsing through it, from the dump truck picking up trash first thing in the morning, to the sound of a bus beeping as it backs up, to the sound of a hummingbird hovering just above us out of reach, to the undulating pulsings of a deep throat singing tone. Every sound registers in our body, and if we are present enough to the sensations in our body as we sit in a Modern Urban environment, we can learn how to become vibrationally aware to the degree that our bodies are being constantly thwarted in its attempt to reside in a peaceful state of homeostasis. Our bodies have the capacity to experience deep states of blissfulness, relaxation and pleasure. And likewise, our bodies have the tremendous capacity to be overwhelmed by stress, tension, pain and irritation.

In the world of instruments, when one cello begins vibrating or one singing bowl begins vibrating, other stringed instruments and singing bowls nearby begin picking up that vibration and begin humming with a vibration in response – this is called sympathetic resonance. Likewise, our body instruments are subconsciously trained to respond to the world by the law of sympathetic resonance, and thus – in vibrationally contractive environments, in noisy, loud, scattered and jarring environments, we feel that down into our bones. And in response, we begin withdrawing ourselves; we begin putting up our shields so we don’t take in any more damaging stress from the surrounding environment. This is what it feels like to me when I walk the sidewalks of Manhattan – an overwhelming intensity is assaulting my subconscious field and my body in every moment, and in order to maintain balance within, it becomes crucial to disconnect from the surroundings, to put up psychic shields of self-protection and withdraw to safe, quiet environments.

But our bodies react much differently when we are in joyful, blissful, quiet or meditative environments. Due to our body’s sympathetic resonance response, in the presence of a body of moving water with a strong current and waterfalls, our body opens up to merge with the environment. It is the opposite of the contractive nature of sympathetic resonance in the city. Our body naturally wants to melt into a state of bliss, and that is possible in environments that are vibrationally conducive to pleasure – where our bodies open up and receive the sensual pleasures of moving water, the gentle rustling of wind through branches, the subtlety of our bare feet upon cold, damp mossy boulders.

Something altogether different can happen when we enter into a high energy state of making sounds – making music, and dancing. An elation washes over us like a waterfall pouring over our hearts – our spirit begins pouring through us with creative energy, the natural fire of our soul singing joy. Whether our creative energy takes the form of our voice channelling sound current through our vocal chords with the vibrations moving through our bodies, or hands upon drums creating rhythm – this is creative energy in its purest state. A natural energy moving through us without having to try to understand it – it moves through us and we become moved by the experience. And this, in sympathetic resonance, is moving to others, and causes others to move – their bodies.

For thousands of years, tribal rituals have taken place in the Nairobi desert in Africa, where the Bushmen live and dance all night long around a bonfire. An American shaman named Bradford Keeney has travelled to Namibia many times and danced with the Bushmen there, who are renowned for their shamanic abilities to reach transcendental states of ecstasy through all night dance ceremonies, which enables them to do their healing work. In the context of a village bonfire, with the women clapping and singing polyrhythmic songs, and the men dancing themselves into altered states of consciousness – the work of healing the village is done, by clearing the energy of the village by keeping the community heart centered and loving with each other. This is facilitated by the deep states of union and liberation that happen in the context of community up all night long dancing and chanting songs. The shamans are able to do their healing work when they have danced themselves into a transcendental oblivion, and they have built themselves up to a ‘boiling point’ of N’om in their abdomen. When their ecstatic energy has built up in their abdomen, they are then able to release it and discharge it like an orgasm having its release, and that high ecstatic energy IS the medicine. The shamans then apply their ecstatic medicine upon the bodies of the ill by laying on the bodies of those receiving, and undulating their spirit medicine into them and melting into them through deep states of trance. But in order for that ecstatic energy to be released, there must be a song and a rhythm to coax forth the ecstasy and guide it rhythmically along the current of melody.

Thus, song is shamanic. And our bodies are shamanic receptor sites – capable of moving tremendous amounts of healing energy when our hearts and bodies open up to respond with the sympathetic resonance of rhythm. Our bodies dance, our hearts expand to take in more, to drink deeply of the elation of our spirit catapulted into the joy of this song. And in the world of vibration and sympathetic resonance, we can uplift others to reach this healing vibration of ecstasy. We begin sending out the pulsations of a heart uplifted by joy and transcendance. This is our work as light workers – to be radio receivers transmitting the pulsations of an awakened heart – this is our pure light, our divine birthright and work.

There is so much distrust and fear on the planet. So many hearts un-opened. So many hearts that need to receive so much love, compassion and healing. So many hearts that simply want to be felt, recognized, understood – held in the arms of the mother, the divine mother of compassion. So many hearts and minds afraid to let go and surrender to the transcendental bliss beating within them if they would let themselves feel more deeply – the pleasure of song, the pleasure of love, the pleasure of bathing in pristine waters and the pleasure of being held in a warm, open-hearted caress. Sound, song and dance are some of the biggest tools we have to offer the world of fear. When looking into the glowing eyes of a joyful dancing goddess, swept up into the passion of the song catapulting her into a frenzied state of bounce, how can one bear resisting to sympathetically resonate with that state of joy. It is the natural impulse of the heart to desire being open, to be happy.

Thus, I was inspired to offer and facilitate Ecstatic Medicine vocal circles. The voice is our primary instrument – we are automatically endowed with it, it is free, goes with us everywhere, and can propel us into healing states if worked with intentionally. Our voice is also one of those aspects of many people that carries with it a level of fear, intimidation and insecurity. Having facilitated many vocal circles now, I have seen that many, many people are scared to use their voice and express feeling “blocked” in their voice; as though there is something holding them back or choking their vocal expression. The mind does amazing things to get in the way of our natural abilities to be birdlike and resonate with playful liberation.

Those who are gifted with a beautiful voice have been given a special gift to offer the world, a gift that has often been called “Having Soul” – a gift that can inspire many deep feelings: of beauty, of awe, ecstatic elation, tears, & chills down the spine. And the voice, when used intentionally in self-cultivation practices such as Yoga and QiGong and Reiki, can be used in such a way as to bring oneself into deep states of meditation and inner balancing. The voice is probably the best tool we have to access vibrational experience on a body-based, cellular-based level. And as the voice passes through our body chamber, we can experience so much vibrational resonance throughout our torso, lungs, heart, throat and head. This can help us direct our attention inwardly – into our felt experience of the body. Thus the voice is our primary meditation tool! We can cultivate a meditative awareness more easily when we focus our attention on what we experience in our bodies, combined with deep breathwork practice and internal energetic cultivation arts.

The basis of my entire practice is thus: the merging of inner attention cultivation practices, with sounding, vocalizations, breathwork, inspired by Qigong – then moving into practicing deep listening, resonating, primal sounding and chanting into spontaneous tribal song play. When participants enter intentionally into a sacred space with the focus on using the voice for inner cultivation and raising ecstatic energy, people open up and move into transcendant spaces. My work is very much a guided journey into the realm of channelling the celestial energy within the group – because at the heart of every person, is a divine essence seeking to be remembered and embodied. We are all divine embodiments of divine source or God / Goddess, wanting to know and experience love and deep states of union with the divine.

The magic happens when we attune our attention to listening and merging into group states of union. When we put our attention on the sounds we are hearing and feeling in our bodies, emanating from each others mouths, we are being bathed in a celestial choir – the beauty of each other’s sounds and voices offers us a space to merge with that sympathetic resonance and melt into harmonic bliss.

We are living in transformational times on Planet Earth, everyone can feel it – the period of Denial has passed. We all know it. Changes are afoot, and everyone has begun being lifted into greater and greater levels of transformational intensity over the last few years. For better or for worse, the old paradigm ways are falling away and we will be learning a new way of acclimating to a transformational Earth. In my shamanic, visionary awakenings – I have received visions and downloads about the transformation occurring on Planet Earth. And I believe strongly that we are living on a Planet that is about to undergo a dramatic energetic shift. While the message of fearing the Earth’s transformational process is being broadcasted in the media, I believe the real message coming from the Earth herself is that of an ecstatic rebirthing. Thus, if we wish to learn how to ride the transformative currents emerging from the Earth, we must learn how to be more embodied, more body-centered and intuitively body-based in our awareness – in order to listen to the Earth’s energy and be attuned to her knowledge and information.

I believe that as a culture – we must begin learning how to become more attuned to the Earth’s energy and information – by spending time in Nature, and learning how to feel more deeply. Too many have become hard crusted and disconnected from the Earth in urban environments. I believe that using our voices, using sounding, in combination with QiGong and practicing energy cultivation arts in Sacred Sites is going to become crucial in ones ability to understand how to feel the information emanating from the Earth through her time of rebirth. Thus my vision for offering healing gatherings is moving in the direction of facilitating celestial activation Ecstatic Medicine vocal circles in Sacred Sites around the planet.

When we learn how to trust our divine selves, and we learn how to open our hearts to trusting our divine guidance from the universe – we have nothing to fear. When we learn how to trust the energy moving through our voices and moving through our bodies, we can learn how to trust spirit speaking through us. When we learn how to trust our divine essence, we can learn how to trust the intuition and Divine Essence in another. When we learn how to trust the ability of the community or circle of friends to come together and co-create a channelling of that open hearted energy of union through sound, voice and movement, we can learn how to trust the ability of humanity to step up to the next level on our ascent on the evolutionary ladder. We are all in it together, and everybody has their own divine part to play in the story that is unfolding. None of us will make it unless we work together, create together, play together, cooperate together, love together and sing together!

You can Find Wahkeena Sitka Huva at http://illumin.escens.org/