News From the Netherlands

So for openers I will share this beautiful song my friend Paul Goudsmit turned me on to the other day. He and his partner Jane Tipping teach personal transformation workshops based on the principles of A Course in Miracles and they use a lot of music in their workshops. This is one of them. I was completely knocked out by it. So beautiful...


Beyond the "Beyond" (Para Gate!) I am having an amazing and very full time in Holland. Paul and Jane live in a small town called Soesterberg about 35 minutes by train from Amsterdam. I am still trying to get my sleeping thing worked out. The night before last I was exhausted but ended up being up until 4 a.m. regardless, totally unable to sleep. Even the Delta tuners didn't help, which are tuning forks that entrain the brainwaves to different vibrational states. The Delta tuner is for deep sleep and it usually works pretty well for me. But I was being faithful to my blog that night and worked on the computer until very late and I think it really whacked out my melatonin. I finally got up at 11:30 a.m. after being awakened twice by Paul, took a shower and we got on the train to Amsterdam.

Strange Encounter in Amersfoort

I started off the day today by giving a sound meditation with Tibetan bowls to Paul and Jane's Practitioner Training group which was quite lovely- about ten people all lay on the floor on tumbling mats. Interestingly, every person who shared seemed to feel the bowls strongly in their heart. It was sort of amazing the similarity that they described in that aspect of their experience. Maybe it's because they have been together as a group now since October so they are unusually connected, rather than a group that has just come together for the first time for the purpose of experiencing a Sound Journey.

After that Jane and I went to Amersfoort, a nearby city, the heart of which has retained it's medieval origins in it's architecture. It was really very beautiful. In 1300 a defensive wall was built around the city but about 80 years later it needed to be enlarged so a second wall was built around the first and the first one was taken down. The bricks from the original wall were used to build more houses. The front of theses houses were built on the original foundations of the first wall and is now called Muurhuizen (wallhouses) Street.

So Jane and I had just gotten to Muurhuizen Street and hadn't walked more than 50 yards when we were stopped by an old man, easily in his early eighties, who was about to go into his house and invited us in to see the inside of his house. He was quite persistent so in we went! Wouldn't you know he was musician- he played contrabass. The first thing he showed us was his toilet! Unfortunately I still haven't figured out how to get pictures to my blog so to understand why, you'll have to go to my Facebook page! Seriously- I am not saying this to plug my Facebook page- it's just the only place I've been able to upload pictures since I got a new computer!

Anyway it was a kind of a wonderful and bizarre visit. His house seemed like something out of "Amelie", the living room absolutely packed full of all kinds of knick knacks, photos, stuffed animals, crazy old instruments... God knows what! But it seemed so oddly auspicious that he was a musician. I got very excited and tried to tell him that I am a sound healer but absolutely nothing we said really registered. He just wanted to show us everything in his house. He showed us pictures of his family, his father, his brother- old pictures- very old! But it became apparent quite quickly that if we could stay all day he would have been very happy so finally we told him we had someone to meet and sort of backed out the front door of his funny narrow little house. He asked when we were coming back and told us to be sure to ring his doorbell and pay him a visit when we were back! His name was Fritz. He was sweet and lovely and I'm sure if you go to Amersfoort you too could simply knock on his door and he'd let you right in!

Transformational Healing in Holland

Well, once again it has been a stretch since I have been writing. Much too long. I arrived in Holland yesterday and figure this blog will serve as one of my journals! Along with my Dream Journal and my other journal that I like to write in by hand- which also holds notes from sound healing workshops with Shyamji, Jai Uttal, Thomas Ashley-Farrand, Margalo Ashley-Farrand, Daniel Tucker and who knows what else!

Next weekend I am teaching a workshop on Transformation Through Toning, Tuning Forks and Tibetan Bowls. I will also be attending a workshop the following weekend with my Nada Yoga teacher, Shri Shyam Bhatnagar. Amazing that I have not been able to see him in the states for years but synchronicity provides me with the opportunity on the other side of the Atlantic!

I am staying with dear friends from Toronto who moved here last year. I met them in the late '90s when they were in Florida facilitating some deep process workshops based on the teachings of A Course in Miracles. After that they bought a sound table from me and hosted me for 6 weeks up in Toronto where I taught one sound healing class after another, gave many private sessions and met all kinds of amazing people.

Unfortunately I have a new computer and haven't figure out how to download pictures onto Blogspot yet. I need to find a Mac person here. So for now it will just be my random writings!

I have had a very full past few months with some wonderful sound experiences, not the least of which was a Nada Yoga: Temple of Sound workshop last weekend with Yogi Amrit Desai and Bhagavan Das that was extremely powerful. The most extraordinary piece occurred when I got back though and gave someone a treatment. I did not tell her the theme of the workshop but she received the whole teaching through the session. This is her testimonial:

My Experience with the Dance of Creation & Dissolution: Shiva Nataraja - Betsy Vaught

As I lay on the sound table with the heart opening rhythms of Jai Uttal vibrating through my body, Rosie was by my side energetically supporting me as I moved through this journey. The experiences I had opened my awareness and understanding, shifted limiting energetic patterns, and gave me insight into Satya: Truth.

The following words explain as much as they can of what I experienced, but cannot encompass the wholeness of it. I could feel my body energetically receiving the images, information and awarenesses in fully integrated form, as if a hologram was downloaded into my being, although I was able to view it in linear fashion.

Lying on the table with my eyes closed, the form of Shiva as Nataraja danced into view. I felt the energy, the movement, the creative life force flowing through the dance and out into manifestation. As the dance continued, the universe was created, and desires were made manifest. I saw, knew, understood that as I danced with Shiva/as Shiva, my deeply felt thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions came to be what I experienced as the 3-D material world. I saw, knew, and understood that I had created every situation in my life through this dance. Whatever I put energy into through my attention to it, became manifest.

In a brief instant I asked, “How do I then change the things I don’t like or want in my life?” Very clearly, I was shown that as Shiva Nataraja put his foot down and came to stillness, everything dissolved back into pure consciousness, Purusha. So it is in the stillness that the maya, the illusion of separation dissolves. It was when Shiva lay down in stillness under the foot of his Beloved Kali, that Kali was able to stop and recognize Him as her Beloved. The illusion dissolved.

And so it became clear that the opportunity in this lifetime in this moment is to consciously dance our dance of creation by choosing our thoughts, words, and actions to reflect the world we want to live in and then feel the reality, the truth of them in our bodies, dancing them into being. If we want peace, then we must live peace. When confronted with situations that are not what we want, we shift them by moving into the stillness, reconnecting with the oneness of pure consciousness, and merging our thoughts, feelings, words, attention and actions into our desired manifestation.

I must admit to being absolutely astounded as she began sharing with me the details of her experience. What I got from that is that the sounds, mantras, that we practiced were imprinted on my energy field and the experienced was transferred to her through the process of the sound healing session. And yet, she did not get my experience. She had her own experience that was completely accessible to her. I just keep learning about how this works and the endless forms it takes.

Tools for Transformation

Oh my heavens! The new year came zooming in whilst I was in throes of dealing with my son's post-surgery recovery followed swiftly by a scary fall when I arrived at my mother's house on New Years Eve day. She fell, not me. Literally within minutes of arriving at her house, bringing in our bags- she fell in front of the fireplace and hit her head, blood everywhere but Grace abounding... no concussion, broken bones or anything else... ambulance within minutes and she was patched up and sent home with 4 staples in her head. :-( Oh my poor mama! But as she has been quick to remind me every time I start to say that, how lucky she was!

I have been treating her quite consistently with tuning forks and lymphatic massage as her legs tend to swell up from arthritis and she has responded so well! Much less pain and edema seems to have disappeared for now. I will keep at it as long as I am here. ("Here" is Massachusetts.)

This is looking like the year my dreams come true. As soon as I get back to Florida I will be able to buy a harmonium which I have been wanting ever since I went to Kirtan Camp last summer. But the big news is that I am going to Holland to teach a sound healing course, March 10-11. Since I have never been to Europe before I am going to go for 3 weeks and I am so excited I can barely stand it. It was a huge plunge and I was so afraid to press the button to buy the ticket, but there was no good reason not to- and every good reason to do it! And once I did I became so excited that I am practically bursting at the seams.

I will be staying with dear friends who have a sound table and will be bringing Tibetan bowls and tuning forks with me. The workshop will be on Transformation Through Toning, Tuning Forks and Tibetan Bowls. They used to have a Course in Miracles retreat center in Toronto and I did a lot of sound healing work there in 2000 and 2002 so I am so looking forward to spending time reconnecting with them, doing lots of sound healing work and exploring Amsterdam!

In closing, here is a beautiful and empowering message by Lee Harris on the implications and possibilities of 2012. Take 20 minutes out of your busy day to soak this in. Enjoy.

Love, blessings and a beautiful 2012!

Sound Circle of Life

Listening right now to Walela singing "Amazing Grace" in Cherokee. The first time I heard it I started weeping and decided in that moment that I want this played at my funeral. Other than that I don't have too many thoughts about a funeral- but I would have one just so that I could have this song played at it! It is so beautiful.

I haven't been blogging. I miss it. I think of it just about every day. I have been spending time with my mother in her 90th year which has been an incredible gift for both of us. And then unexpectedly my 33 year old son had to have surgery to remove some scar tissue in his small intestine from Crohn's Disease. The surgery took a lot longer than they expected and his healing is slower also than anticipated. So I have been very much dealing with that, plus my mother- and Christmas around the corner. I am so grateful that I am in New England to be with my son while he is going through this.

And there is the grace! "I do not know what anything is for."

The Amazing Talent of Alice Coltrane

Clicked to some great link online just now which opened up a world of bhakti and in the middle of the page was this wonderful piece by Alice Coltrane. God how I love her music. Her "Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana" was one of my all-time favorite albums years ago. Played it til I could play it no more. Would often listen to it over and over. I ache sometimes to be able to hear it and chant along with "Govinda Jai Jai" and "Prema Muditha".

I think the couple my ex-husband and I lived with off and on must have had the album with this title track because when I heard it tonight I knew every note of it and it resonated so deeply within me. So interesting to hear this music from a time when I knew nothing on a conscious level about sound healing and have the awareness of how deeply healing this music was for me.


Sound Sculptures

For the past two weeks I have been working pretty intensely, as much as I have time, on my Healing Sound Garden website www.healingsoundgarden.squarespace.com. I have been exploring all kinds of possibilities for sound sculptures and outdoor instruments. This morning I ran across this pretty wild sound sculpture. Not suitable for an outdoor sound garden but nonetheless, very cool!

A Sonic Treasure

Julian Treasure is my great discovery of the day! I stumbled across this video online today and was so grateful for this man's understanding of sound, how powerful it is, how it can affect us both negatively and positively- and the clarity of his expression. He talks about ways in which we can use sound to enrich our lives and things to be aware of to lessen the potential damage of certain sounds and modern technology.

One of the things I loved that he talks about is how we are developing a sort of dissociation (he calls it "dislocation") between what we see and what we hear- ex. being overuse of telephones. We are constantly "inviting into our lives the voices of people who are not present with us"- we take this for granted and in fact many people today are really addicted to their cell phones.
Makes me think of a song by Greg Brown.


I also found the information about the compression of sound through the use of digital recording, mp3 players, etc. very interesting- that compressed sound makes us tired and cranky because our brain has to work so hard to fill in so much of the sound. Fascinating, and of course it makes perfect sense, given how incredibly nurturing the "right" kind of sound and/or music can be, whether it is natural ambient sound from water, birds and insects to a live concert in a hall acoustically designed for optimal music appreciation.

The right kinds of sound and music feed our brain and nourish our whole being.

Adrian Belew Interview


This is an extremely interesting interview with Adrian Belew, the brilliant guitarist who has played with some of my absolute favorite bands of all time- King Crimson, Dave Bowie, Frank Zappa and the Talking Heads- and no doubt many many more. I love this though because he talks about all these bands that were part of my formative musical background. And all of this music had such a huge influence on me, literally a lifeline during really tumultuous times.

Before I went away to boarding school my brother gave me a KLH stereo and every day I would come home, or go to my dorm in school and lay down on the floor with my head between the speakers and let the music take me away. That music was so full, so rich, so subtle and so powerful and I see how much I have taken from it in my Sound Journeys- the ability to combine sounds that take the listener to a different realm. I really never thought about it in that way until tonight.

Gethsemane Sunset (Cymatics).wmv


This is just incredibly beautiful. Can you even begin to imagine what is happening inside of our bodies, our brain, when we listen to music?

And isn't it interesting how many of the formations from the disc on the left actually look like the brain?

Who is Tingsha Bobo?

Tingsha Bobo has been a rare but most welcome visitor in my life. I have experienced the gift of his wonderful ability to touch people's hearts and tickle their funny bones only twice in my life. The first time was on my 50th birthday several years ago ("several" is more than 3 but probably less than 10, yes?). Last Saturday he reappeared as if by magic while a few family members and I were in the midst of a celebration for my mother's 90th birthday.

I decided to write about him in this blog because sound is one of the vehicles he uses to transport people into his world of magic. His recent visit was quite short- no more than 7 minutes altogether- but during that time he played a small didgeridoo which he pulled out of his knapsack as well as a set of Tibetan tingshas (presumably where he gets his name) and a small rattle. When he appeared at my birthday he brought out a long haunting flute and quickly brought a group of 50 or so people under its spell. Both times he has combined the gifts of music and laughter, two of the best medicines known to man. We also discovered that he has a marvelous voice when he unabashedly serenaded my mother with her favorite birthday song! Anyone who has ever had a birthday in her presence has heard her sing that song. How did he know???

I have been looking on line for a derivation of the word "Bobo" which seems to be a fairly commonly used name for a clown. So far this is the most interesting and seemingly relevant bit of information I have come up with:"Who is Boo-Boo the Fool? A listener wonders if this African-American character has any relation the Puerto Rican fool, Juan Bobo. Martha draws a connection to the Spanish term bobo, meaning “fool,” and its Latin root balbus, meaning “stammerer”. Grant notes that the name Bobo has been extremely common for clowns since at least the 1940s, and the bobo/clown/jester character is prevalent in most all cultural folklores, be they African, South American, or Anglo-European."

So, if anyone were to ask me "Who is Tingsha Bobo?" (which they occasionally do since we have an extra line for him on our phone just in case someone needs to reach him for some laughter and song- hopefully we could call him in through the ethers) from my brief introductions to him my answer would be that he is a clown, a very sweet clown, who uses music as his medium- although I suspect he has some other tricks up his sleeve (or in his knapsack) that have yet to be revealed.

Enjoy!

Wake Up Call


Good morning blogaholics. I haven't written a word here in 6 weeks. Finally my schedule has wound down. I am in Massachusetts at my mother's house and will be here for the next 8-10 weeks- through the new year as it looks right now.

About five weeks ago I went back to California for two weeks to teach a sound healing workshop on the use of tuning forks. It was at my sister's clinic in Los Gatos, the Six Harmonies Traditional Medicine Center. We had a class of ten students including my sister Miranda and her partner Jen Minor- who are both amazing practitioners! I have to admit that I am quite astounded at the work they are doing out there. I have known them both for a long time (yes, well... one of them all my life!) and have certainly experienced Miranda's work but the blending of modalities and the sensitivity with which they individually address each client was so impressive. They use Traditional Chinese Medicine (acupuncture, herbs and tui na), Thai massage and craniosacral therapy and also have a number of apprentices they are training- all of them either acupuncture students or licensed acupuncturists.

So I was essentially there to help them explore ways that they could incorporate sound into their practice. The workshop was great- it was a wonderful group and although it was one day and basically a very intensive intro, I felt that everyone got a lot out of it and would really be able to work with what what they had learned. I also did a Sound Journey and the second week I was there gave a lot of sessions, all but one with tuning forks. I did give one person a session with crystal bowls.

The most powerful part of it all for me was doing 3-4 tuning fork sessions every day for a week. I was so immersed in the process and it was such a wonderfully contemplative time. It is such beautiful quiet work and a simple straightforward protocol with very little hands on and it allows a space for the practitioner to become very quiet and internal and really it gave me a lot of time to look at my life and where I am now and see where I might want to do somethings differently- particularly for me in regards to my physical environment, given that I have never liked living in Florida. The awareness that it is time for me to really move forward towards making a change hit me very strongly.

The Creative Mind

Woke up- no- correction- found myself awake this morning very early, unable to sleep- my mind having a mind of its own! In fact it seemed as though I slept very little during the night. My body wanted to sleep and in fact one part of my mind seemed to be wishing that the active part of my mind would quiet down so that we could all go back to sleep! But that did not happen. So I surrendered to the part that was awake and my body begrudgingly followed along. We got up (me, my body and the various conscious and semi-conscious parts of my mind), grabbed a copy of "A Course in Miracles" that was by the bed, threw on some clothes and made my way into the living room. The sound of birds outside was irresistible- they've been drowned out by the air conditioner for months and was probably the most compelling reason to remove the pillow covering my head (the last ditch effort to go back to sleep) and get up and enjoy the sound and see what else was waiting for me in the early morning hours.

All of this led me to thinking about the activity, the creativity and the expansiveness of the mind. My intuitive sense tells me that it has infinite potential, literally, but we are so used to be confined in a body that we automatically throw confines around the mind as well because we don't know how NOT to. My friend Will said years ago that we live on an addictive plane- we have gravity pulling us down at all times. That stayed with me. As I lay in bed this morning I was aware of some tendency to move toward fear in my mental body and a lesson from ACIM came to me. Simply, "There is nothing to fear." I allowed myself to rest in that awareness for a little while, observing my thoughts before I got up. The body is not confined by the mind. I know that as I sit in this chair and I write, and I close my eyes and I listen. There are trucks in the distance, dogs, birds, cars, the movement of the air.

Where does my mind go when I sleep? If it does not sleep when I sleep (which it clearly does not!) then does it die when my body dies? It seems highly unlikely. But it will no longer be trapped by the body, by gravitational forces that want to limit it and rein it in. The mind has a compulsion to create and in line with the tendencies of this plane it also can be drawn in to addictive patterns- those tape loops that keep us away in the middle of the night. Some of it I think is biological- like the addictive pull of the computer which I believe is a factor of frequency. How often I sit down at the computer with the intention of either performing a simple task (checking email, sending a message, looking up an address) or beginning a creative project (writing, creating a brochure) and I find myself wasting absurd amounts of time due to distraction and attraction of varying sorts- but I think they all come down to a frequency, or frequencies, that pull at various parts of the brain-mind-body. It is interesting to see the shift from creativity to stagnancy that can occur in a short space of time.

The ability to create is fascinating. The mind uses the body to express itself. Yesterday I read a quote about the challenges of an untrained mind and what a powerful tool a well-trained mind is. When I got up and turned my computer on this morning, thinking about the creative potential of the mind, the confines and the expansiveness, I was met with this beautiful video. The music was composed and sung by my friend Christine Ghezzo. I felt it was the perfect expression of all that I had been thinking about, a perfect example of the mind's urge for creative expression and one of the billions of forms that takes.

Wholistic Chants

Just found some tracks on Youtube from one of my favorite albums of all time- the Apple recording from the Radha Krishna. I still have the vinyl but it is not remotely playable! But I could never get rid of it- especially since it has the transliteration of all the chants from the Devanagari- it was my first real introduction to Sanskrit. I remember when I used to chant along with it as a teenager and experiencing the familiarity of the language and my homesickness for India even though still today I have not yet been there in this lifetime.

Healing and Resonance...

At last I am done with three months of intensive teaching- sound healing courses for massage therapists. Not to complain, to be able to provide continuing education credits for massage therapists is a wonderful thing. It is an incredible venue to be able to bring sound healing further into the mainstream. There are many who come thinking they are just coming to get their CEUs and discover a whole new healing modality that they were previously completely unaware of. The deadline for Florida massage therapists to get all their CEUs and renew their licenses is tomorrow. So it has been a pretty intense period of time. And some very powerful experiences and beautiful healings. Here is a testimonial from a participant in a tuning fork workshop a couple of weeks ago who had a pretty amazing experience while receiving a session with the Brain Tuners.


On a different note, there has been a lot of discussion in my world lately about vibrational energy and resonant frequency. One of the things I have been thinking a lot about is telluric energies, or electrical currents that run through the earth. There is a theory that languages, music and cultures developed from these telluric energies and are inherent to those areas. Hence the great differences in, for example, Far Eastern and Germanic languages and music. This could also have to do with the different flora in different areas and part of the problem of introducing foreign species of plant life. They react strangely, are invasive, whatever... because they really are vibrating at a different frequency than the plant life- or animal life- around them. Some of them adapt. They become entrained to the vibration around them. Whichever is the stronger vibration will win out.

The End of "Life"...

I spent the last three weeks immersed in Keith Richards' autobiography "Life" when I wasn't immersed in Kirtan Camp, California dreaming, and landing back in the hot humid un-reality of Florida! It was one of those books I did not want to end and have been going back to it for days re-reading different parts of it that struck me the most. I actually had a piece of paper that I kept tearing in half over and over marking another page, then another and another. What a great heart. So honest, such simple straightforward eloquence and deep appreciation. Such a deep love and appreciation for music, for the people in his life- family, friends, acquaintances, fellow musicians- and for his memories of a very packed life.

I have to share some of this. "For many years I slept, on average, twice a week. This means that I have been conscious for at least three lifetimes." This book is so full that it is like reading about three lifetimes and pretty much every moment of it is captivating- at least it was for me.

When he was little his grandfather Gus would take him out on his wanderings. "His warmth, his affection surrounded me, his humor kept me doubled up for large portions of the day. It was hard to find much that was funny in those days in London. But there was always MUSIC!... You had no idea where you'd end up. Little shops around Angel and Islington, he'd just disappear into the back. 'Just stay here a minute, son. Hold the dog.' And then he'd come back saying, 'OK,' and we'd go on and end up in the West End in the workshops of the big music stores, like Ivor Mairants and the HMV. He knew all the makers, the repair guys there. He'd sit me up on a shelf. There'd be these vats of glue and instruments hung up and strung up , guys in long brown coats, gluing, and then there'd be somebody at the end testing instruments; there's be some music going on. And then there'd be these harried little men coming in from the orchestra pit, saying, 'Have you got my violin?' I'd just sit up there with a cup of tea and a biscuit and the vats of glue going blub blub blub like a mini Yellowstone Park, and I was just fascinated. I never got bored. Violins and guitars hung up on wires and going around on a conveyor belt, and all these guys fixing and making and refurbishing instruments. I see it back then as very alchemical, like Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I just fell in love with the instruments."

But my absolutely most favorite part of the whole book is one beautiful paragraph where he describes Roy Orbison. He's talking about when the Stones are in Dunedin, New Zealand, very early on in their career- 1965, and it's been an incredibly long day and it's wet and dark and they're all totally depressed. As he puts it, "Boredom is an illness to me, and I don't suffer from it, but that moment was the lowest ebb. 'I think I'll stand on my head and recycle the drugs.'" And then...

"But Roy Orbison! It was only because we were with Roy Orbison that we were there at all. He was definitely top of the bill that night. What a beacon in the southernmost gloom. The amazing Roy Orbison. He was one of those Texan guys who could sail through anything, including his whole tragic life. His kids die in a fire, his wife dies in a car crash, nothing in his life went right for the big O, but I can't think of a gentler gentleman, or a more stoic personality. That incredible talent for blowing himself up from five foot six to six foot nine, which he seemed to be able to do on stage. It was amazing to witness. He'd been in the sun, looking like a lobster, having a chat, smoke and a drink. 'Well, I'm on in five minutes.' We watch the opening number. And out walks this totally transformed thing that seems to have grown at least a foot with presence and command over the crowd. He was in his shorts just now; how did he do that? It's one of those astounding things about about working in the theater. Backstage you can be a bunch of bums. And 'Ladies and gentlemen' or 'I present to you,' and you're somebody else."

Music Heals... Kirtan Camp- 2011!

Just got back from an amazing 7-day Kirtan Camp with Jai Uttal last night! I believe the end count was 55 kirtanistas chanting their hearts out... crying, laughing, singing, praying and playing together. An atmosphere of love, nurturing and support...

I realized sometime over the course of the last few days that I felt physically better than I have in a very long time. Was it the food- mostly raw, all organic... the climate- San Anselmo, CA, just north of SF- and the awareness of what an incredible physical drain Florida has on my body... the music- chanting, playing harmonium and drumming for the better part of 7-8 hours a day... the devotion, the bhakti, the shakti? Well, I think it had to be all of the above... again my favorite word comes to mind- WHOLISTIC. Healing on all levels- body, mind, heart and soul. Giving myself space to be and to heal. I realize how little music I have been enjoying for myself and my own spirit lately.

Such a good reminder of why I do what I do.

So simple.

Music heals.
Sound heals.
Love heals.

Here is a just a glimpse of the absolute sweetness of it all- which also speaks to Jai's generosity and spirit of willingness to share with no agenda of his own. Someone asked about how he combined other instruments with his kirtan and specifically enjoyed his use of the banjo- which is something I have always loved in his music, so the next day he brought it in.




The Physics of Water and Tibetan Bowls- Part Two

Well, to someone else this might have just been a cool and interesting video- it certainly was to me! But it was also much more than that. I was immediately intrigued because what I saw in the video somehow reminded me of what was happening in the bowls. It was clearly not the same but definitely seemed related. I immediately went to the MIT website and was able to find the email address of John Bush, the math professor on the video. (If you don't know what I'm talking about see last week's blog post.) I was hoping perhaps he could explain what I was seeing. I didn't really expect a response and actually felt a little shy about it but my curiosity far outweighed my sense of awkwardness.

I wrote John an email the same day- in fact probably within the hour of seeing the video because I was so excited about what I had been observing and the possibility of an explanation. I described as best I could what I had been seeing and asked him if he was familiar with the singing bowls. I really figured that even if he hadn't witnessed this in the bowls that he may have been familiar with it in some other capacity and that it was probably some boring "old news" to him and since he was some really important busy guy from MIT the chances of hearing from him were slim at best!

In fact I heard from him within 24-48 hours of sending the email and he was very interested in what I was observing. He said it sounded like the phenomena of "walking droplets" his friend and colleague Yves Couder had been exploring. He attached an article describing the walking droplets and I was pretty convinced that this was exactly what I had been seeing when I played the bowls with water in them. He was not familiar with the bowls beyond that he thought he might have heard one at one time.
This is the URL for the article. Unfortunately I could not get the link to work in this post but you can cut and paste the URL into your browser and it should work.
http://www.lps.ens.fr/~boudaoud/Publis/Couder05Walk.pdf

We continued a dialogue and because it fit right into the work he was already doing, within a short time he had a grant to study the fluid dynamics of the water in Tibetan bowls, specifically in relationship to the wave-particle phenomena in quantum mechanics, previously a theoretical foundation but unproven (and/or not disproven) on a macrocosmic level. I picked out a couple of bowls for him that best displayed the action and they were soon at home in the MIT Math Lab. Before I sent off the bowls though I couldn't resist my own humble demonstration for the world to see.

The bowls I used in this video were two of the bowls I sent to MIT.

Not long after that I was in Massachusetts visiting my mother less than an hour away from Boston and I was invited to come to the Math Lab to see what they were doing. I was very excited! It was pretty much what you would expect of a lab that was studying fluid dynamics- lots of faucets set up at different heights and beautiful large format photographs of drops of water, water patterns and insects walking on the surface of water. And on a white formica counter top was a Tibetan bowl that had been marked in four places around the edge with a Sharpy- clearly the spots where the waveforms would first begin to emerge as it responded to the sound. The bowl had a wire attached to it from a large speaker which would resonate the bowl when they turned it on. That way they could keep the sound at a steady volume to observe and film what was happening. So basically the bowl vibrated by sympathetic resonance rather than someone manually playing it. It was very cool and odd and interesting to see this sacred sound object being used as the centerpoint of a science experiment. The whole question initially was whether they could get the water to "walk". They were excited to try it with silicon fluid because of the difference in viscosity. (Excerpt from an email a couple of weeks later:
"I just came up from the lab, where Denis has seen bouncing of drops of silicon oil in Bowl #1.
Tomorrow, walking!")

All in all I sent them four bowls. I spent lots of time trying out bowls to see which ones really worked the best with the water, in terms of showing the unusual movement of the fluid. I have gotten so that I can tell just by looking at the shape of a bowl whether it will respond especially well with water in it. I am always amazed and fascinated and sometimes still totally surprised by what I see. For example, a few days ago we put water in a smaller bowl, less than four inches across and the droplets formed a beautiful symmetrical pattern all clustered together in the center of the bowl.

The research project was completed in a little over a year and three weeks ago John Bush sent me the original article plus a short article that was in the BBC. It has received a lot of press in various physics and science magazines. This is the link to the article in the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13972556 (Again, you'll have to cut and paste the link. Sorry)
The videos are fascinating so if you don't feel like reading the articles watch this.
This first one is silent but very interesting:

The bowl in the video of the attached article is one of the ones I sent them. He also gifted one to his good friend Yves Couder who I believe was the original inspiration for the research project.
Here is the video from the BBC article.


I am sort of an insane fanatic now and spend absurd amounts of time playing bowls with water in them and watching, watching, watching. Not only that, I find myself watching all kinds of other drops of fluid. Every morning I take a liquid sulphur supplement and I have to count the drops as I add it to water because I have to take a very specific amount. It seems to have an odd consistency and the bouncing is very obvious.