"The Pilgrimage" GOSPEL CONCERT, Sunday December 16th at 4:00 pm at the Cowichan Theatre in Duncan. Tickets $15 through the Cowichan Theatre Box office at 250-748-7529 or at www.cowichantheatre.bc.ca . Group of ten for $100.
This once-in-a-lifetime Gospel concert event will feature internationally acclaimed Gospel soloists and musicians from One Human Family Gospel Choir chapters across Canada and the US in a mass choir performance. One Human Family Gospel Choir

SUFI DANCING & Dances of Universal Peace: music, movement, meditation. Learn simple circle dances honoring all religious traditions. No partner or experience necessary. First Tuesday of every month. 7:30 pm, Friends' Meeting Hall, 1831 Fern Street, Victoria. 385-3378 casjazz@islandnet.com

HUM FOR HEALTH

A growing body of medical research is validating the health benefits of singing, chanting, humming and toning. Pamela Miles, an expert in medical applications of Reiki writes:

"Might Reiki be an inaudible hum, akin to the sound of OM, which yogis call the primordial sound of the universe? Might the benefits of Reiki be related to the healing effects of chanting and drones such as the didgeridoo of the Australian aborigine or the tamboura of classical Indian music?

The cross-cultural prevalence of toning in healing and spiritual practices is hard to discount, and it is supported by data from a range of studies.

For example, a UCLA study found that hospitalized schizophrenics who hummed "mmmm" had a 60 percent reduction in auditory hallucinations. Humming creates sound waves that reverberate throughout the sinuses like a subtle inner massage, helping to clear secretions and promote airflow. Humming seems to stimulate the production of nitric oxide, which helps stimulate immune response and regulate blood pressure, and affects communication among brain neurons. Nitric-oxide levels in the sinuses of healthy participants were fifteen times greater when they hummed rather than when they breathed without making noise. Additionally, the benefits of ultrasound are well documented. Clearly vibration has widespread application to healing." Reiki: A Comprehensive Guide, P. 199-200 More research

In early October I was blessed to spend another week in Ketchikan, Alaska, at the invitation of Tlingit elder Mary Brown (Kaasay), who invited me to a large family reunion and naming ceremony. In the traditional manner, she adopted 19 people into her Wooshkeetaan clan, myself included. She also honored five generations of Baha'is in her family and the services they have provided to their communities. We were inspired most of all by her example. Friends and family shared stories of her compassionate, inclusive friendship with people of every nationality, even in the face of extreme prejudice. As I looked around, I saw that the people in her family now include lovely jewels from every continent. What a beautiful rose garden of humanity she has gathered around her.

When the Baha'is of Wrangell heard that I was going to be nearby, they jumped on the bandwagon, and invited me to come there too. They kept me running for four days, and I bravely carried on with a full schedule of concerts and Reiki treatments in spite of having intermittent laryngitis. My voice always seemed to appear when needed, but some miracle (of course). I sang in nursing homes, benefit concerts, schools, prayer meetings and drumming circles. It would be hard to pick a favorite, but I did especially enjoy singing at the elementary school in Wrangell. Imagine several hundred children singing "You are my sunshine" while I told the story of a 3 year old boy who saved his sister's life by singing that to her. Not too many dry eyes that day...

There are 65 photos of the trip at the link below. (Many thanks to Kay Larson for the photos of the Wrangell drum circle). Sorry I don't have time to label them all, but I know you'll catch the spirit. You'll see that I was blessed to meet many very special people. Thank you so much for your friendship and love! May God bless you all with joy, laughter, health and prosperity.

http://photoshare.shaw.ca/gallery/nancywatters/

A few months ago, I realized that I consistently need less sleep than before. I used to sleep 9 hours and wake feeling tired. Now I wake up after 5 hours and feel refreshed. What's up? One morning at 3am, as I eagerly rose to start my day, I remembered a story, from the book Chant, by Katherine Le Mée. It explains how chant energizes and heals us. If you want more time (and health) in your life, read on . . .

"There is a story told by French physician and internationally renowned ear specialist Dr. Alfred Tomatis in an interview with Canadian writer and radio producer Tim Wilson. Dr. Tomatis visited a Benedictine monastery in France just after the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960's, when there was some discussion as to whether the Latin language should be retained for daily worship or whether the vernacular French, which was encouraged by the Council, should be adopted. Also under consideration was whether chanting should be continued or abandoned in favor of other activities thought to be more useful. The final outcome was the elimination of chant from the Divine Office. Before long a change took place in the community. Monks who previously had been able to survive rather well on the customary three or four hours of sleep a night became extremely tired and prone to illness. Thinking that tool little sleep might be the cause of their malaise, the abbot allowed more, but this did not help. The more the monks slept, the more tired they became. Even a change of diet was attempted—to a meat and potatoes regime, after vegetarianism had been the rule of the community for 700 years—but this too had no positive result.

The situation grew worse and worse until February 1967 when Dr. Tomatis was invited back to the monastery again to see if he could help with the problem. In the same interview Dr. Tomatis recalls that, when he arrived, "seventy of the ninety monks were slumped in their cells like wet dish rags." Upon examination, he found that the monks were not only tired but that their hearing was not as good as it should have been. His solution to the problem was to use a device called the Electronic Ear to increase the monk's auditory sensitivity over a period of several months. The Electronic Ear, developed by Tomatis, is a cybernetic device with two channels joined by a gate which gives the patient sounds as normally hear on one side and, on the other side, the same sound filtered to allow an improved audition, particularly of high frequencies. Changing channels from one side to the other exercises the muscles of the inner ear and makes it possible for the patient to regain auditory acuity and sensitivity. The other aspect to Dr.Tomatis's treatment was to have the daily chanting brought back immediately into the life of the monastery.

Within nine months the monks had experienced an extraordinary improvement, both in their ability to hear and in their general sense of health and well-being. Most were able to return to the way of life that had been normal in their community for so many hundreds of years—the extended periods of prayer, short nights of sleep, and the demanding schedule of physical work.

What happened? Continuing the interview with Mr. Wilson, Dr. Tomatis went on to explain the vital role played by the ear in stimulating the brain's activity: in particular, it serves to charge the cerebral cortex with electrical potential. It is clear, then, that a person with poor hearing is unable to effectively receive the charge of energy being provided by the ear.

A well-tuned ear is able to stimulate the brain—but there is more to the story. Modern research identifies two kinds of sound, known as "discharge" sounds, which tire and fatigue the listener, and "charge" sound, which give energy and health and with have the power, like the Electronic Ear, to re-awaken the hearing and recharge the mind and body with energy.

Charge sounds are rich in high frequencies, whereas discharge sounds are of low frequency. Tomatis, in his book The Conscious Ear, has compared a number of languages in terms of their frequency range, that is, their potential for providing this energy charge to the brain, and finds British English particularly high with a range of selectivity of 2,000 to 2,000 hertz and North American English, from 800 to 3,000 hertz. In speaking or singing it is not as important to have a highly pitched voice as it is to increase the generation of sounds in the high-frequency range. High frequencies in British English are due to the number of plosive sounds and the generally clipped way of speaking.

Dr. Tomatis points out that putting an oscilloscope to the sounds of Gregorian Chant reveals that it contains all the frequencies of the voice spectrum, roughly 70 to 9,000 hertz, but with a very different envelope curve from that of normal speech. The monks sing in the medium range—that of a baritone—but due to the unity and resonance of the sound, their voices produce rich overtones of higher frequency. It is these high tones, mainly I the range of 2,000 to 4,000 hertz that provide the charge to the brain. When the monks referred to earlier were not chanting, they were missing their daily dose of energy. It is not difficult to understand the feeling of fatigue that they experienced.

These energies are very small in measurable terms. This is why they are often though of as being of a subtle nature. The fact is that it is not their energetic content (i.e. the quantity of watt-seconds, ergs, or any other measure we may care to use) that is important, but the information they carry. To draw a simple analogy: it is not the power of the signal sent millions of miles away to a space probe that matters so much as the shape of the energy that carries the information that operates a device or sends a series of pictures back to earth.

The way the monks receive energy through the sound is that it acts partly as a signal which, through the complex organization of the body and its energy fields, serves to reorganize the energy distribution within the body. The result is a sense of gaining energy or losing energy, depending on how these energies are redistributed within the centers.

From the point of view of the listener there is one further point to be made. We receive energy from listening to the chant but at the same time experience calm and tranquility. This is due to the fact that we can participate in the same pattern of deep and peaceful breathing as the monks or nuns chanting the long, melismatic lines of Gregorian chant. Most texts and melodies for Gregorian chant can be found in the Liver Usualis, the Benedictine's daily song gook. Many texts can also be found in any Missal or Breviary published before the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960's. Unfortunately, these books are no longer in print. However, if you can find a copy of the Liber Ursulis, try singing along with a recording.

Excerpted from Chant, by Katherine Le Mée, p. 123-128

It's been about a week since I returned from a 21 day singing tour of four cities in SE Alaska--Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg and Juneau. This was the first full-blown Sacred World Song tour. It was exhilarating and exhausting! There were eight concerts (including two nursing homes and a women's shelter), two chantshops, five devotional gatherings, three radio interviews, and ten private Reiki/Sound Therapy sessions. Amazingly, I still had time for hikes, a boat ride, touring and lots of yummy meals. Thanks everyone! I am still mentally meandering amidst of all your lavish scenery. Check out the photos in my album on MySpace.

There were incredible blessings all along the way. For example, the first concert was held in the Saxman Long House in Ketchikan, a holy place of the Tlingit people. It was an auspicious start. Elders, young people, and all ages in between participated with enthusiasm.

It quickly became evident that SWS events successfully attract people from many cultures, religious backgrounds, socio-economic groups and ages. On this tour Sikhs, an Episcopalian minister, Muslims, Jews, Christians and Native Americans participated in various events. They easily and joyfully joined in singing chants from all over the world. Much love and unity was generated. As one 13 year old boy put it, "I felt warm all over, like my heart was cooking up more love." Doesn't that just sum it all up?

I connected with a lot of people who are tired of religious conflict and yet are still seeking to deepen the spiritual aspect of their lives. It was really touching to see people open up their hearts and let singing into their lives again--especially such healing music.

And who can forget the hilarious moment when I was playing my native flute in a nursing home, and a small puppy suddenly appeared, cocked his head back and forth at me, listening with great attention. Everyone burst into laughter.

This tour was truly a collaborative effort of so many people. I am filled with gratitude for how you all contributed to the growth of the Sacred World Song project. It was blissful to be able to chant with so many, to have wonderful musicians accompany us at each venue and to raise awareness about the common foundation of world religions.

I especially want to thank the Baha'is whose enthusiasm put the whole tour in motion. They arranged transportation, housing, concert venues, publicity, yummy food, and even sightseeing. A huge thank you also to Kristen Mabry and her family for letting me use their gorgeous Juneau home and Mountainside Wellness yoga studio while they were away.

I hope everyone will stay in touch. The real treasure I am taking home is the many friendships I made in SE Alaska. Drop me a note and let me know how it was from your point of view, ok?

You can also stay in touch by registering for the SWS newsletter at www.sacredworldsong.com I don't send it out that often--about every 2-3 months--so don't worry about too much email.

Now I'm off to Michigan for three weeks. I'll be doing one concert (see the schedule here). Mostly I'm gonna play with my grandchildren, ages 4, 2, and 9 months. Their mom and dad asked if could babysit for a few hours one night. Can I handle that? We'll see.

Happy Fourth of July, you Americans. Love and light!