Since my last post was about me and I got that out of the way, I want to start talking about some other people. The first is “Akasa.” a woman I met the other night, the night of the new moon and the day of The Dragon Sun, an auspicious alignment. She’s a former businesswoman who had a spiritual transformation when she visited The Oracle at Delphi, something akin to a beam of sound entering her spirit and informing her of her next phase, which was to become a sound healer. This was back in 1997 and since then, she has gone on to build formal connections with the likes of Barbara Marx Hubbard, Rowena Patee-Kryder and the Belgian integral philosopher, Michael Bauwens.

She held a workshop/ritual in Mill Valley and I arrived on the latish side. When I stepped into the space of the mostly filled, medium sized room they were deep in the heart of some Chinese mudra associated with Tian Gong, a mystical version of Chi Gong and I’m sure a slightly less threatening version of the politically heretical Falun Gong. Akasa was dressed in ceremonial headdress and robes, toning, intoning and chanting while one of her students led the group through a guided meditation.

As the evening progressed Akasa showed her self to be a pretty good facilitator despite some obvious challenges with language. She gave lots of credit to various people in the group throughout the night, taking a name, like “Daveed” and singing it over and over sort of like “Eeeay, Eeeay, Eeeay.” It gave the whole night a sense of the celebratory and the shift in the intonation of the name changed the name itself into energy,

There were lots of slideshows with beautiful images of oneness and mission statements from Marx-Hubbard and Patee that read like manifestos of consciousness. The presentation itself was very effective as Akasa moved from speech, to singing to video, to meditation, all with the intention of unifying every single person in that room, both individually and as a whole.

Being the terminal outsider, I am always looking to see where the message is coming from and where they are taking it and like many of today’s healers, Akasa borrows from a number of older traditions to attempt to create something new and while I have my reservations on the intent of the new age movement, especially at the highest levels of high profile speakers and presenters, I felt a genuine enthusiasm and passion from Akasa, especially after the workshop when I briefly spoke with her and I know that I left her program feeling much lighter than I did before. My only feedback to her, and this is my cynical critic sticking his nose in here is to “lovingly” remove the portion of the workshop where a youngish woman comes up to the front of the group to sing a version of “Imagine.” I know that Wayne Dyer brings his daughter up to sing on his talks, but again, it’s the cynical critic here, unless a voice is really, really good, I’d rather not be subjected to spiritual karaoke.

Okay, if you want to know more about Akasa and her work, you can go to her website, One Sound Visioning. That’s the first new find, the next I’ll save for my next post.

by Robert Phoenix
Robert Phoenix moves freely among a vast array of realities, but tends to focus-in on music and human evolution.