Good Vibrations

During Journey to One listeners surrender to a "sound-energy experience."

By: Daniel Shearer

TIMEOFF/DANIEL SHEARER

Sound therapist Lisa Byrne plays a Native American flute at home in Newtown; a didgeridoo is balanced on her leg.

   Something very primal transpires when one of the oldest instruments known to man is producing sound only inches from your chest.
   No one can be sure exactly when the first person played a didgeridoo, but the discovery certainly took place in Australia many thousands of years ago. Aboriginies have at least 50 different names for it. Depending on the tribe, it’s called a ganbag, gamalag, maluk, and sometimes a yirago or yidaki. In the early 1900s, Europeans began calling it a didgeridoo, mimicking the sound it makes.
   The instrument is a carefully selected eucalyptus branch that has been hollowed by termites, and is played by vibrating the lips on one end of the tube, much like a brass instrument. A continuous tone can be maintained by using circular breathing — essentially, in through the nose, out through the mouth — but it’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Didgeridoos, often decorated with images from Aboriginal mythology, have been used throughout the ages in healing and purification rituals.
   The length of time required to learn circular breathing varies between individuals, but Newtown, Pa., resident Lisa Byrne has taught people how to do it in a few hours. She frequently offers workshops and lessons to teach people to play didgeridoos, which she sells at her shop, Soulutions for Daily Living. Ms. Byrne and her partner, Laurie Gambacorta, opened the store two-and-a-half years ago in a tan, two-story house on North Sycamore Street in Newtown, and carry a wide range of new age and metaphysical wares.

A sound-energy experience in Newtown, PA.

   Copies of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, and Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy’s book, Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teaching of the Original Christians, are displayed alongside boxes of herbal teas, semiprecious stones, incense, and even a container of myrrh, a red-brown resinous material that can be burned as incense. According to the label, "Scent is power. It allows us to move onto a higher state of consciousness. This ancient incense is used for healing, purification and inner peace."
   Ms. Byrne found her calling helping others to alter their consciousness, however her preferred vehicle is not scent, but sound.
   On this particular evening, Ms. Byrne is working with 11 individuals who have come to Sage Chiropractic, a few blocks from her shop, for a program called Journey to One. Ms. Byrne describes the session as a "sound-energy experience," and over the course of more than an hour the group, in her words, "travels the sacred sound current" produced by didgeridoos, Tibetan prayer bowls, drums, rain sticks and other instruments.
   Some in attendance have brought blankets and pillows, others bring floor mats. In the fading daylight, nearly everyone assumes a reclining position, eyes shut, shoes off.
   Ms. Byrne begins the session with a blast from a large didgeridoo, which she calls a "thunderdidge." Performing a complex, ever-changing rhythm, she slowly moves toward one of the audience members, Levittown, Pa., resident Altaf Rahamatulla, who is seated, facing the instrument.
   His face is calm, and his lips broaden into a smile as she positions the mouth of the instrument near his chest. She backs away slightly and moves the didgeridoo in an arc around his head, returning to his chest.
   At such proximity, listeners not only hear the sound, a low droning noise that varies slightly in pitch depending on how its played, they feel it — everywhere.
   It resonates in their heads, their stomachs, their bowels.
   They feel it in their toes, on their eyebrows, even in the hairs on their arms.
   The pace is measured and meditative. Ms. Byrne switches between instruments frequently in the dimly lit room, tapping prayer bowls as she plays a melody on a breathy, wooden flute, then beats on a frame drum with a mallet, occasionally uttering soft, guttural chants: "Hey-yah, hey-nah, hey-yah, nah."
   After several minutes, the beat from the drum fades. Holding a rain stick in one hand, she pauses to rub a wooden wand around the rim of a large glass bowl, much like rubbing a wet finger around a wineglass, only on a much larger scale. After an initial grating noise, Ms. Byrne’s frosty-colored bowl produces a most remarkable sound.
   If there was a sound at the beginning of time, this is it — a deeply resonant hum that reverberates and penetrates. The tone, growing in intensity, bounces off the walls. She later says the bowls "talk to each other," referring to the audible interactions as the sounds from several sources interfere and amplify. She augments this process by sounding a large bowl on the floor, then slowly moving a palm-held bowl closer to the larger bowl, then moving away, sometimes raising the smaller bowl to her lips. When she does this, she uses her mouth as a resonance chamber, creating a faint "wah-wah" effect.
   In a very real sense, listeners become one with the sound, and the consensus after the session, when everyone in the room describes their experience as they pass a talking stick — a token intended to designate the bearer as talker, and the rest as listeners — is that the sensation feels fantastic.
   "To me, it’s like bringing all the different parts of me together," says Mr. Rahamatulla, who works a stressful day job in information technology for Merrill Lynch. "During the day, it’s imbalance. I leave here feeling light, beautiful. It’s a great feeling."
   Levittown resident Sandy Gafgen describes similar sensations.
   "Your whole body starts to vibrate, and just resonate," Ms. Gafgen says, "and it’s exciting, but it’s not hyper, not that chaotic stuff. It just feels wonderful, and you get a very peaceful sensation. And my body, I’m usually tight. My body will relax. I mean, I’m lying on the floor in a room full of strangers, and I’m relaxed. I just love it. It’s wonderful."
   Ms. Byrne describes her work in very broad terms. Her intention, as she performs Journey to One, is for listeners to have an experience "that is for their highest good, whether that’s relaxation, sleep, healing, a new experience."
   "There’s a lot of brain research that talks about altering states of consciousness with sound, and physiological changes," she says. "There are four primary states of consciousness. Normally, when we’re talking, we’re in a beta state. And then, when you introduce a stimuli like sound, it lowers the brainwaves, and allows people to move into either alpha or theta states of consciousness.
   "As your brain waves lower, your heart rate goes down, your blood pressure goes down. Muscle tension decreases. And when you can relax, and call on those altered states of consciousness, you can bring about changes in the body."
   Ms. Byrne believes in the body’s "innate wisdom to heal itself," however she is well aware that not everyone who visits her would define the experience in the same manner.
   "This is something that will promote relaxation," she says, "and if your body chooses to accept the sound, and help it heal, or whatever that means for you, whether it’s stress relief, visualizations, or contact with your higher self, then that’s possible."
   Ms. Byrne also offers private sessions at her home. Upon arrival, she asks clients to fill out a form with information about physical and mental states, and also sign a disclaimer that says the session isn’t intended as a cure, and that they are aware that she is not a physician.
   The heart of her practice revolves around emotional release, and as anyone who has ever been moved to tears by a symphony can tell you, shared experience with sound can be especially compelling.
   "I think that there’s always an emotional component to illness," she says, "and if you can get those emotions out of the body, you’re more likely to keep healthy."
   Born and raised in Hightstown, Ms. Byrne attended Rider University, paying her way through college with several jobs. Graduating with a degree in business administration, she took a job with Bristol-Myers Squibb, working in regulatory affairs, and later switching to quality assurance. Her interest in sound therapy came about in 1998, after she attended a weeklong workshop held at Elizabethtown College. She first experienced the sound of a didgeridoo when one of the speakers, John Dumas, played the instrument close to her body. She bought her first didgeridoo several years later and started offering classes at her shop in 2003.
   Last week was a milestone for Ms. Byrne. She left her job with the pharmaceutical company to devote her time to running Soulutions, and working full-time to raise consciousness and promote healing with sound.
   Sound therapy, she says, "is merely a reflection of yourself. It’s amazing how you feel the vibration just going through your body. Each person is different. Same thing with Journey to One. It depends on the group energy. I just kind of allow the instruments to basically tell me where to go. If you’re a musician, when you get in that zone of where you’re playing, you have altered your state of consciousness and things just happen. It’s like what happens with athletes. They’re in that zone, and it heightens the senses. Where the instruments and the sound go, I follow."
Soulutions for Daily Living Inc. is located at 123 N. Sycamore St., Newtown. The next Journey to One will take place at Sage Chiropractic, 281 N. Sycamore St., Newtown, Pa., June 29, 7:30 p.m. Admission costs $10. Additional events (various locations): Reiki I with Laurie Gambacorta, June 5, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Oneness Celebration, June 8, 7:15 p.m.; Sound Health with Lisa Byrne, June 10, 7 p.m.; Concert with World Musician and Sound Healer Scott Eggert, June 11, 7 p.m., $15; Didgeridoo Meditation with Harold Smith, June 12, 7 p.m., $15; Reiki II with Laurie Gambacorta, June 15-17, 7 p.m.; Soulutions Dance Party, June 18, 8 p.m.; Feng Shui Lecture, June 22, 7-8 p.m.; Reiki Share, June 25, 7:15 p.m. For information, call (215) 968-9750. On the Web: soulutionsfordailyliving.com