The Sound and the Healing
Join Rohini Kanniganti and Claire Bigley as they take a deep dive into life, sound, and all things healing while calling back the wholeness and authenticity of us all.
The Sound and the Healing
Who are these women?
Exploring the profound connection between sound and healing, Claire and Rohini invite listeners to delve into their personal journeys and experiences. They discuss the ways sound can transform emotional states while fostering self-discovery and healing through various sound modalities.
• Claire shares her musical background and its grounding effects
• Rohini explores the intersection of sound and healing in medicine
• Discussion on the unseen energies and vibrations of sound
• Emphasis on the emotional and psychological impacts of sound
• Invitation to listeners to engage and reflect on their own experiences
Thanks for joining us!! Drop by our website and socials to say Hi and leave us any questions or comments :-)
Image credit for the beautiful bird/sunrise-Image by Kev from Pixabay
Song used for introduction and epilogue- Resolution by Claire Bigley
https://thesoundandthehealing.buzzsprout.com -podcast website
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570919104816 -facebook page
https://www.instagram.com/pianisticmuse - Claire's instagram page
Well, hello everybody. This is our first episode. We're so glad you joined us In this episode, claire and I want to introduce ourselves to you and we'd love to talk some and reflect with each other and discover with each other the meaning of the title of this podcast the Sound and the Healing and perhaps then explore what it means to each of us. This Rumi quote that we used about the branches and the roots, we're hoping that you will discover alongside with us. Claire, do you want to say hi and introduce yourself?
Claire Bigley:Thank you, rohini. I would love to yes, yes, yes, welcome. We're so excited to be embarking on this new, exploratory, playful, joyful project and creative musings with you all. Let me take a few minutes and kind of introduce myself and share with you what brings me to the table. So I started playing the piano at a young age.
Claire Bigley:Always been drawn to music, to sound, I took a very classical route in getting started and went to university and played a lot, got my piano performance degree and for many years I was an accompanist, I was a teacher, I worked as a pianist with a voice teacher as well, so I was immersed in music. I've been immersed in music my whole life. It served as a guardian and a Without me even being aware of what it was doing. From an early age I knew that, no matter what was going on in my life, that if I sat down at the piano, if I walked into band class, if I walked into chorus, everything would melt away. Walked into chorus, everything would melt away. I became harmonious, I became grounded in a way, and I was able to forget all the annoyances, anything that was clouding my vision, anything that was clouding my vision. So this was a lifeline for me just from the get-go, and so I worked mainly as a musician for many years and then, probably as I entered into my 40s, I had my life kind of dropped out from under me, which I think happens to many of us on a certain path in our mid meditation, you know, kind of metaphysical or spiritual or whatever you want to call it direction. I was really curious and interested and I found myself working with a man who ended up teaching a course that I took for a while, and it entailed an energy work, tapping many different modalities of healing, and sound happened to be one of them. And I remember him saying you know, you think you're behind in this particular journey, and he said you're really very much ahead of the game. He said you're really very much ahead of the game because he said sound is such an important, viable way of healing and energy shifting, frequency shifting. And he said you don't have any idea of how into the game you are already. And so in taking this class, I started to realize what he was talking about. I had been training for this my whole life without being conscious of it, had been training for this my whole life without being conscious of it. No-transcript in a very different way working with clients, working with tuning forks, just so. It's kind of taken its own different path. So that's kind of where I am now.
Claire Bigley:I also record my music. I got into working with different states that I would feel I was in an emotional state and I would sit down at the piano and record what would come through my fingers. And so I started recording and I'm always fascinated by what shows up on the other end, because I'll start at a certain state and as the piece continues with music, you can go through many facets and it will transform itself in a note to a different state. So you end up on the other side of the piece in a completely different place than where you started. So it's just a fascinating journey for me. And when Rohini suggested that the two of us do a podcast, that little girl inside of me went yes, yes, yes. So here here we are and I'm so glad to have you listening. So thank you for joining us and, ro, let's hear about your journey a little bit and what you bring to this podcast thank you, love.
Rohini Kanniganti:It was just joyful to receive your story. I've heard it before and yet it's not the words, it's not the story. This resonance comes through, which is so powerful. I could feel the opening every time you sat down to play, going deep into your roots, and the access you had to everything, doors upon doors opening, and so much comes through your voice, claire. And so much comes through your voice, claire.
Claire Bigley:The sound from your voice is healing music. Well, and that's so true of all of us, isn't it? There's something about the body that so responds to our own voice.
Rohini Kanniganti:And I hope we'll get into that in the following sessions, that we get to really play with our voices and the resonance of our voice. So you asked you know where did I come from? So you asked where did I come from? I grew up in a culture really marinating in poetry and in sound no-transcript and that these vibrations are deeply healing at profound levels that are unseen. And so in that Rumi quote, when we talk about you know we live in the branches right. Talk about you know we live in the branches right. Our senses can see and feel here, have a very direct experience with the outer world, and so we tend to focus our attention there. But what is unseen and deep and intertwined and mysterious and beautiful and resilient and resourced, so many ands here are the roots of our system and that so much can be learned and derived when we connect to the source of who we truly are. And I am hoping, claire, that, and I am hoping, claire, that we get to be in this beautiful process of discovery together with our listeners. I went from this childhood that was immersed and permeated with the sacredness of sound of various forms. I also heard sound that was really painful in various forms, whether it was screaming or shouting, and I understood. I was observing how it affected my nervous system. And this was my one of the first ways in which I sensed the response of a nervous system to its environment and I became so deeply interested in understanding the roots of who we are and why we are what we are, what is trauma, what is pain, what is joy. And I ended up at first studying chemistry in college which was incredibly holy and sacred and we can talk about that a different time and from there developed this love of providing counseling and healing to people from a more psychotherapeutic perspective. How does that connect with chemistry? You know you'll have to pay for that ticket. Hear that story. And then I went to medical school. There was grad school in there, working with EPA projects in the environment, but I ended up in medical school, which was a really extraordinary and sacred journey. It was painful, it was hard, and my teacher, sally Erickson at that time, coached me every time and she kept saying this is a labor of love, rohini. And these were words, but there's a way in which these words landed very deeply into layers and layers of my heart because she connected laboring with heart and it created a different container with which I approached studying and learning and then offering the gifts of this learning. Over the years and decades, you know I've gone into a lot of family medicine, into geriatric medicine, into hospice and palliative care and most recently, integrating that into integrative psychiatry, utilizing modalities such as psychedelics for healing. That's a whole other discussion again, and my work puts together all of these fields, really.
Rohini Kanniganti:But what's incredibly important for me to feel into with you, listener, and with you, claire, is that when we are deeply present with who we truly are, the veils become very thin. What does that mean? That's a whole other exploration. And ironically, in suffering and in illness, the veils become thin, as they do in sleep, in dreaming, in experiences of our own dying or being around other people's dying. This is what makes these experiences so sacred and so powerful as teachers. And the way that we heal in life and in all of these experiences is nonlinear. It's unpredictable. But when we are deeply rooted into who we truly are, our branches can engage beautifully with life without fear. Branches can engage beautifully with life without fear. So I'll say this much there's just so many more layers and layers and layers, and perhaps this is enough for now. I can't wait to keep exploring these elements of healing through sound, through vibration, and really the intention here is to have you experience who you truly are listening to this podcast and everything that that might blossom within you.
Claire Bigley:Well, and it's fascinating for me as I hear you, rohini, speaking of everything you touched on and dove into. I'm struck by you. Take sound, the very enveloping of sound. There don't have to be any words so it can hold everything without any separation, and I feel like there is a similarity between that and healing. You know both states.
Rohini Kanniganti:I feel like there's a similarity between that and healing.
Claire Bigley:Mm-hmm. You know, both states are situations where you're not necessarily having to explain or rationalize or speak. It is in being, with both of these two things, you know, you're sort of catapulted into that liminal space, into that all.
Rohini Kanniganti:So, yes, very very sacred sound has the capacity to be felt at the physical level, at a very gross body level. I say gross, I don't mean something bad or pejorative, I just mean at a very dense body level, at a subtle level, within feelings and sensations, emotions, thoughts, and then within this very open spiritual level of that liminal space that you just described. We get to explore this together.
Claire Bigley:I'm feeling exciting. Yes, I was just going to say I'm feeling pretty darn lucky at the moment.
Rohini Kanniganti:We get to play with each other.
Claire Bigley:Yes.
Rohini Kanniganti:Right.
Claire Bigley:Yes, yes, yes.
Rohini Kanniganti:What a metaphor that is in music, and maybe we end there for today. We're so glad that you joined us.
Claire Bigley:Welcome. Welcome, and we hope you'll join us for more. Thank you.
Rohini Kanniganti:Bye-bye.
