by Robert Phoenix
In my personal quest to find the sound of enlightenment, I spent the weekend of the 26th of January at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills, attending the Sound Healing conference, organized by the Global Sound Healing Institute, based out of San Francisco and directed by David Gibson, a music engineer and sound healer himself. Gibson tread the fine line between dialed in organizer and an eccentric minister of sound, slipping in and out of trance-states during his keynote and panel appearances, blurring the line between the objective and the subjective, dissolving for moments into non-time, courting attention with OMs and overtones.

Transformational Downpour

The heavens opened with a profuse downpour on Southern California, providing a dreary backdrop as Capricorn moved officially into Pluto for the next sixteen years. It made sense in a grand scheme, cosmic sort-of-way as the theme of this year’s conference was to “bring sound healing to the masses.” Pluto is the deepest source of transformation and ultimately healing, while Capricorn symbolizes the greatest manifestation of form. The theme was buttressed by professionals in the sound healing fields that have made conscious and definite steps to be taken seriously by the worlds of science and medicine.

The attendees ranged from mavericks from the medical field, looking to find new forms of healing, filling the infinite space between the beat of a heart, to seekers of all ages looking for communion in the wordless realm of the universal frequency via the mathematical scriptures of tone.

Un-Thinking Sound

Perhaps no other practitioner in the realm of sound healing has made more intentional steps and built more bridges into the mainstream than the distinguished, Dr. Jeffery Thompson. Based out of Encinitas, Dr. Thompson consults and implements workshops with Fortune 500 companies, bringing his own unique form of sound healing into the boardroom to accelerate healing, improve creativity, problem solving and peak performance.

In addition to Dr. Thompson’s outreach into corporate America, he’s also involved in an ongoing study/program with Scripps Hospital in San Diego, bringing sound healing techniques deeper into the heart of the mainstream medical world. Without being too elaborate his intention is to free the individual from the fight/flight syndrome, which governs our biology on a moment-to-moment basis. His keynote address set the tone of possibility meeting provability in a Cartesian world, where “I think, therefore I am,” becomes “I un-think, therefore I am more than I am.”

Sound in the Ra

Another trailblazer set to cut a wider swath down the middle of the mainstream is Alan Howarth. Howarth was the road sound tech for the groundbreaking jazz-fusion group Weather Report in the seventies and eighties. After his stint with Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorious and Joe Zawinul, Howarth turned his ear towards the big screen, authoring sound effects for all of the Star Trek films, most of John Carpenter’s films and a number of other movies and television programs. Like Jeffery Thompson, Howarth is also a musician and his understanding of sound extends beyond the merely technical or theoretical.

His interest in both led him to Wes Bateman, who had stumbled onto a natural tuning system (that Howarth has dubbed, “The Ra Frequencies”). With Bateman in tow, along the renowned esotericist, Dr. JJ Hurtak (Keys Of Enoch), the trio went to the Great Pyramid to prove their findings—and they did. It’s Howarth’s contention that if we were to revert to using the Ra Frequency in all recordings and compositions moving forward, that we would be more in tune with natural patterns and cycles, thus helping to alleviate the tension and stress brought on by the modern world. Howarth has even gone so far as to patent his theory and technology and will launch an online application that will allow any user to convert their music into the Ra Frequency for a small fee.

Sounds Improbable

There were other speakers and presenters like Dr. Gary Schwartz who were also deeply invested in the empirical components of sound healing as well.

While the provable was on display, the seemingly improbable was also in full force. Dr. Fred Bell addressed the audience with a small, copper pyramid around his head. The meat of his presentation included wild tales of X-file abductions, underground bases, time travel and alien contact. Bell’s latest inventions are inspired by his contact with Andromedans and his sound healing components include elaborate pendants and intricate desktop obelisks with a variety of cosmic symbols imbedded in their external structures. If Bell’s technology is headed into the mainstream at any time soon, then the mainstream might be a lot further along than any of us would give them credit for.

All in all, the sound of change was in the air and a serious vibration was sent forth into the world. Listen and you might just pick up its emanations.

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