This is a guide to help you enjoy vocalising sound, for its own sake or with the intention of improving your health, your voice, your peace of mind, your life and other’s.
It’s great to do first thing in morning or last thing at night, anywhere. I like a lovely natural spot with fresh air and the weather on my face : )
Here’s some info so you can try it at home. Yes indeed, do try it at home…. *
Different people do it differently. Basically if it feels right, that’s great, so go with what works for you, adapt and adjust accordingly. They are your chakras after all, so don’t let anyone tell you (including me!) what sound goes with your body. It’s a case of trial and error from suggestions and exploration. For those who have been coming to the Bristol Feral Choir sessions, you’ll know what to do from experience and how you can adapt it for your own needs.
Having said all that, I find that using specific vowels helps. I’ve noted some here but feel free to adjust, try them for a while and then experiment. The fact that they’ve remained remarkably similar across many different traditions for millennia is an indicator that there is something going for these systems.
In time, I’ve built up a personal relationship with each vowel and body location, so it feels right to me and the connections are all mine. Yours are all yours.
This is the vowel system I follow, from the bottom up:
……Base – UHH ………… Sacral – OOH ……….. Solar plexus – OH …… Heart – AAH ….. Throat – EH …….. Third eye – EYE ……… Crown – EEE
1) Toning can be done ANYWHERE *** Ideally get comfy & prepare as you would for meditation;
- minimise extraneous noise and distractions
- wear something loose fitting and warm
- have drinking water to hand
- switch off phone
- ask people to leave you in peace if needs be.
That’s it. You’re ready.
2) Decide how long you have or let it be what it will be. I recommend toning each chakra vowel for at least 2 mins, up to about 5 mins. However, 30 seconds on each chakra sound is so much better than nothing. Simply sound each sound for as long as feels comfortable and extend with practice. Take some nice deep breaths and enjoy the silence between each one if you feel like it.
3) Close your eyes. Locate your consciousness in your base chakra area and visualise whatever helps. (really try and move the focus so that you feel are actually in the base of your spine, rather than in the front brain area where we often tend to locate ourselves).
4) Start toning ‘uhhhhh’ at the bottom, softly and as low as is comfortable. Note that the chosen pitch is fluid and up to you. I find it’s good to keep a steady note so you can enter it deeply. Try sliding into all the notes from a lower pitch, it feels nice and is in keeping with the Indian singing tradition and other feral voices. It gives you more leeway to stop when you’ve found ‘your’ note.
You may really get into each sound experience. Try playing with the shape of your mouth and tongue to move the harmonics around. Your breathing, brain activity, metabolism and heart rate may steady. While you are there, stay with the image, the feeling and location of the chakra that you’ve chosen, let it resonate.
As you tone, reflect on how each tone feels – some will be murkier, some will feel stronger than others. With practice this can help you to scan your body for places of tension and help them to relax, amongst other things. Some may bring up body memories, let these be and accept them for what they are, so too any floating thoughts. It may help at another time to read a bit about the chakras and reflect on your own connections to these different aspects of your body and soul.
5) Move on up. Gently slide the pitch up with your consciousness to the next chakra and vowel (from uhhh, ooo, oh, aah, eh, eye, eee). The pitch can go up successively for each chakra until the last one which is as high as you like. The last sound on the crown chakra can be visualised as being located all over your skin and auric energy field. This is lovely.
6) Take a nice deep breath and in one breath, slide down from that high vowel sound all the way down through all the different vowel sounds until you come to rest in the base chakra uuuhhhh sound again. This is for grounding your energy so you don’t wibble off and space out, wasting all that good effort.
7) Finally sit in silence for a few minutes, take solace in the stillness and clarity. Another tip – conserve the raised energy and peace of mind you have just generated. Focus it as healing where you feel it is needed, in you or elsewhere. As a form of prayer, you can use the energy and intention for good.
I hope that helps you to find a practice you enjoy that is of benefit : )
Your body
knows best.
A trembling in the bones may carry a more convincing testimony than the dry documented deductions of the brain.
~Llewelyn Powers
There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it.
~Elizabeth A. Behnke
Finally
here’s one
I particularly enjoy:
I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
~Henry David Thoreau
Further lovely chakra quotes for inspiration here.
A further note on using sound for personal healing
I strongly feel that there is not a prescribed system of certain notes or types of sound and music that ‘match’ different chakras. This is counter-intuitive. Instead, trust your own judgement and your abillity to find your own healing. Beware of bogus recordings or practices that claim to have a piece of music designated for a specific chakra. A dose of skepticism is useful here – trust me, I’m a music therapist ; )
It may feel good, it certainly won’t do any harm, but only you can assess if it is really helping to balance your solar plexus for example. However the placebo is a wonderful thing. I once witnessed a Western yogic cult in Rishikesh being told to dance to techno to get in touch with their base chakras, then to several other pieces of godawful music that had been prescribed for their benefit by their loving guru.
I couldn’t get out the ashram fast enough ; )
At first I taught myself to tone, obsessively reading books about yoga and sound healing as a teenager (geeky even then). Since then I’ve used it as a daily morning practice for years. I’ve attended plenty of different vocal workshops and trainings that have incorporated elements of toning. Good people whose work on this subject I know and endorse – Jonathon Goldman, James D’Angelo, Susan Hale, Frankie Armstrong, Noah Pikes, Pete Hamel, Theo Gimbel. Go check ‘em out if you want to know more.
You might want to look at Hans Jenny’s Cymatics, yogic and Tibetan traditions too.
This is a Cymatics image, a physical pattern made by sound vibrating, originally by sand on metal plates.
Not just a pretty picture, it’s the kind of pattern you make when you tone.
Mmmmmmmm.
Life is amazing isn’t it?
* Unlike some pundits I’ve seen on the web, this is a completely free giveaway, in respect of the ancient global wisdom it contains. I’ve read one can be charged $150 / hour to have your chakras toned, or £500 a weekend. Well that is new age robbery IMHO yet you have to admire the cheek of those who sell it as such and the stupidity of those who pay for it.
** If you want to pay for something, go to a reasonably priced workshop, get a cd or download to tone along to. I recommend Jonathan Goldman, from reading his work I feel he is an honourable guy who has been doing it in a spirit I approve of. Of course, if local you can come to the Bristol Feral Choir too!
*** It’s nice to find a place you feel relaxed about toning in without embarrassment, but at the end of the day, just do it! You’re not exactly breaking the record for freaky behaviour. Others can live with it and may even be enjoy hearing it and be impressed! With practice, the self-conscious feelings lessen. Park benches in lunch hours, on the bus, random locations; I dare you! I particularly like stair wells (great for high frequency acoustics) or the inbetweeny ‘vestibules’ on train carriages, if alone i.e. not rush hour. The noise of the train on the tracks can drown out your sound and you can get quite loud. A great travel pep-me-up. It’s great to add your beautiful vocal sounds to all that industrial jibber-jabber. The world needs more oooh and aaaaah.
**** Nice info re chakras here – again ignore the pitch prescriptions eg base chakra is C etc. For my further argument on resisting tempered scales in the industrial age, you’ll have to wait : ) Find your own free range feral notes!
