Resonance Rising: Peace in the Present

[00:00:06] Hi, this is the Be Well with Michelle Greenwell podcast. Our heartwarming conversation is designed to lift you on your wellness journey. Grab your cup of tea and enjoy the podcast.

[00:00:26] Welcome to Be Well with Dr. Michelle Greenwell. This is Episode Two of our special trilogy, exploring vitality, spiritual growth, planetary healing, and doing that through sound and frequency. This is about coherence and the collective field. In our first episode, we discovered that you are an instrument and today we're going to explore what happens when that instrument begins to resonate with others.

[00:00:53] And this episode brings us to how together we create coherence and we become part of the collective field. I am joined once again by two incredible women who've been working in great depths for presence and transformation using sound and awareness.

[00:01:13] Ann Smets is an intuitive, multidimensional practitioner whose work bridges embodied awareness, balanced healing arts, energy medicine, and soul-led guidance. And she helps people explore the deeper patterns underlying stress, emotional tension, energetic imbalance, and physical dis-ease by working with the body, nervous system, the subconscious, and the energetic field.

[00:01:40] And that's working with them as one interconnected system. Her work supports profound release, greater inner stability, and a deeper return to who we truly are. So, Ann, it is so great to have you back here. Lovely to be back. Thank you, Michelle, for having me. And Ann Marie Boudreau is a vocal facilitator and sound practitioner who empowers individuals to explore their authentic voice as a pathway to healing and self-expression.

[00:02:10] Through toning, sound release, and vibrational practices, she supports the body's natural ability to restore balance and flow. This is a gentle understatement for the capacity of Ann Marie. Thank you, Michelle. I've so enjoyed working with you, Ann Marie. So, there's so many facets to what you've been able to bring to sound. And it's just such a delight. So, thank you for being here for the podcast. Thank you very much.

[00:02:40] It's lovely to be with you both this morning. Together, they are going to bring you a balance of listening and expressing about receiving and radiating, and then being in presence and participating. So, it's going to be an interactive podcast today. And we invite you to get ready for this exploration.

[00:03:03] One, if you can have a glass of water or a tea or a coffee with you that you can infuse with energy so that you can start the healing process while you listen. And I'm going to ask these two lovely ladies what they put into their mugs today. And what have you got? Oh, I got my water today infused with rose crystals. So, opening the field for blessings and love for all the audience and for you both.

[00:03:32] Oh, my goodness. Thank you. That's wonderful. And, Ann Marie, what have you got? I brought in my favorite tea that I became addicted to after my travels in India, chai tea. And I love it. I love the cardamom and the spice that are in it. So, it's for my pleasure this morning. Lovely. Perfect. Well, I was trying to think, now what do I bring to this podcast?

[00:04:00] Because this is going to be a soundscape exploration. And so, I decided I'd bring the matcha in. And I don't usually bring the matcha. This one is called Live in the Dream and it's vanilla bean green. And so, as people are listening and you're thinking about what it is for you to be living the dream. And how can sound and frequency get you into that flow towards living the dream. We're just going to bring that to the forefront.

[00:04:29] So, as you're thinking about that, matcha is a powerful ally for coherence. It magnifies healing, sharpens awareness. It gently grounds us into the present moment. And as you prepare your tea, or if you're going to put it into some kind of a berry smoothie. I often do that. Then take the chance to just pause. Notice the color. In this case, it's a vibrant living green.

[00:04:58] And the color of the heart, the color of renewal, the color of connection. And then when you're ready, bring your cup towards you. Take a nice deep breath. And here's the affirmation that's on the package. Home is where the heart is. By providing self-acceptance and self-love to ourselves, we find our true home. So, I will say cheers. Thank you for joining me. I should turn my mug around. It's a saying.

[00:05:27] It's my 60th mug. And it's age to perfection. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers to that. So, let the warmth or the coolness settle into your body. Machi carries a spiritual essence, which is about anchoring. Similar to the chai. And then the way too that Anne was able to bring the rose quartz in.

[00:05:51] So, there's a lot of ways that we can really bring frequency to the body in the activities that we participate in. And when we do that, that reminds us that in our presence, by finding our presence, we are home. That our body is our home. And that coherence begins within. So, let's go a little bit into some background.

[00:06:14] And then I'm going to invite these lovely ladies to share their journey of discovery with sound. Because they have similar pathways that they took, which is really interesting. Both of you have explored sound, awareness, and healing in profound ways. And interestingly, the way that your paths traveled you around the world and in your studies has been similar.

[00:06:42] So, can you share with us what, number one, what called you to do this kind of work? And then what moments along your journey helped you realize that the power of sound and frequency would be the way to look at healing? Anne, do you want to maybe start? Sure. I'll try to keep it short. And I remember what really triggered me on my path was one year.

[00:07:08] In my previous life, I was working in tourism and hospitality. And I was working for one year in the United States. That was back in 1999. And I was based in Los Angeles. And there, I started to adopt a very healthy lifestyle with going to the gym, going on beach runs. And I went to yoga class.

[00:07:33] And I also discovered the Sivananda Center where we had weekly gatherings on tutorials on the Bhagavad Gita and on chanting. And that really resonated with me, like you say, as a homecoming. I'm like, oh, wow. And so after my time in the US, I booked a trip to India because I wanted to become a yoga teacher trainer.

[00:08:02] And that took me then into the ashram of Kerala in the south of India, the Sivananda ashram, where I did the yoga teacher training course. And it was very tough. It wasn't an easy walk in the park. But it was like coming home. And what I loved most was every night, there was about 200 people from all over the world. And we all gathered every evening.

[00:08:31] And we did our chanting, morning and evening chants. And the feeling, like you're talking frequency, the experience of vibration when these 200 people from around the world all shunted in coherence. And that was a life changing moment. And from there, I never went back to back. So I kept on going back to Asia. The year after, I went to Northern Thailand.

[00:09:00] And I started my studies in the universal healing Taoist system. So according to traditional Chinese medicine methods, which later on, I learned that that's one part of my maternal lineage. So it really was a homecoming that started to awaken. Wow. And that's all coming from you're born and raised in Belgium, right? I know. Yeah. In a small village.

[00:09:29] And I've always been the odd one, always leaving and flying out the nest somewhere. So yes. My goodness. And then currently too, you still travel quite a bit. You're sharing techniques and things while you're traveling, but also you're continuing to go back to these different areas and study more. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think I will study until my last breath on this planet.

[00:09:58] Because it's just, I don't really see it as a study, but more as a remembering. Because when I open these books and when I take these courses, inside I know it already, but it's just an awakening. So it's old life codes that came from past lives that finally now are being brought back to the light. And I feel that's what we all have within us.

[00:10:23] And that's what this life invites us to do really, whilst we are here. Okay. Wow. Oh, that's beautiful. All right, Anne-Marie, how about if you take a chance to share your similar path? Mm-hmm. Well, it is interesting that we did share so many similar experiences when Anne and I were talking. It was quite amazing to discover. Excuse me.

[00:10:53] It's morning here, so I'm still waking up. My throat is. When I really started into my own journey of self-discovery, I was quite young. But I had found the path of classical music, classical piano. And later in my 30s, I realized I wanted something more than just playing the notes that other people had written.

[00:11:21] And I connected with a colleague who was training and studying and teaching in the paths of the shamanic journey. And I realized that there was something deeper beneath music and sound, that there was medicine in it. And so beginning to study this medicine path, I started following the shamanic path to begin with.

[00:11:50] And I had the fortune to go discover more about that journey in Peru when I was there with several shaman. And actually had the opportunity to work right on Machu Picchu and do sound ceremony with the shaman in amongst the clouds in those mountains. It was quite an incredible experience. And that started leading me deeper and deeper into that aspect of there is medicine.

[00:12:19] There is a sonic tonic in sound, in working with it. So I continued my travels and went to study in India, similar to Anne.

[00:12:31] And that opened up a whole new pathway for me because as I explored more deeply, I began to realize that sound has an incredible aspect of healing with it in the way they use the music in India. They've been using their raga 3000 years prescriptively.

[00:12:54] So they are steeped in how and why music supports the healing process. And so I began my studies and stepped in much more deeply into the Indian history and studies of their music to bring that together with the shamanic work that I had done.

[00:13:17] And during that whole path, I had been working as a Reiki master as well. So I brought energetic aspects in. So this became my tool package of healing tools that I could start bringing to clients when I was working with them.

[00:13:36] So India gave me a lot of history, a lot of food for thought, and a lot of rich tradition that I was able to borrow, along with the beautiful shamanic traditions that I've studied from around the world. And there are many, many different shamanic traditions around the world, but there are so many similarities within the work.

[00:14:01] So that was one of the things that I really enjoyed talking about with Anne when I first met her about those similarities between our paths and our studies and what type of influences opened us up. And it's interesting when you talk about that classical music, that training is we're learning the notes of someone else. And it's hard to do that. It's hard to bring that music forward.

[00:14:31] And when you get into the flow of it, it's so beautiful. But it is a journey. It is. But then there's that other side of the music within and how to bring that music out and that we all possess it. So it's not just the writers of classical music that brought that forward or the jazz musicians or the blues, but it's this opportunity to really bring forward from ourselves and our voices all have capacity.

[00:15:01] And I just wanted to bring that forward for people to realize. Because both of you ended up on a journey finding that sound and being able to be embedded within it. And it's so incredibly powerful. Mine has been through feet. As a dancer, I did jazz in Highland where you play with the music, but not in the same way that tap dancers play with the music with their feet. So mine came in a different vocal.

[00:15:31] Mine's a mechanical rather than a vocal. Okay. So let's take us into our theme today, now that people can understand where you can study and the depth that you can go to. So let's look at the idea of presence and coherence. And the idea that healing doesn't happen out there somewhere. It just happens here in the present.

[00:15:56] And when we begin to align our breath and our heart, our body and our awareness, we can enter into a state of coherence. And it's often described as flow or being in the zone. And I love when you kind of get back to that zone, you walk away from it for a bit, you get back to it and it's like, there it is. In these states, our nervous system begins to regulate. Our intuition becomes clearer. Our energy flows more freely.

[00:16:26] And then the body can shift into repair and it feels at peace. And it's not a passive thing. It's an active thing. And this brings us into a state of alignment. So I wanted to bring that thought forward as we go into some of the next pieces, which will give everybody experiential practice.

[00:16:49] So I'd like to do a little breath and biofield awareness, bringing something that comes from Tai Chi and provides you with an idea of how energy can transform. With this, I want to share what's called a commencement. Each of us has our throat thing happening today. We're doing vocals, right? Okay. Mm-hmm. Okay. Commencement.

[00:17:15] If you're sitting on a chair, if you find your straight posture, plant your feet firmly on the floor. Then what's going to happen is you're going to be able, if you're standing, I should explain that. You're lucky enough to be standing or choose to stand up. Your feet are going to be straight forward, shoulder width apart. You're going to just relax the joints so the knees will be soft and it'll be able to be a fluid motion that comes from the feet straight through the body.

[00:17:42] And what we're going to be doing is pushing down into the feet and letting the arms float up. And for those that are listening, not watching, my arms are going to float to about shoulder height. And then my elbows are going to let go. My wrist is going to relax. And then my palms are going to return back towards the floor. As we do that, what I'd like you to do is have a gentle inhale as the arms float.

[00:18:10] And at some point, all of a sudden, the exhale will come in and the arms will be in a transition. In this practice, we have four energy forces. So as you push into those feet, we have an expansion. And then there's a contraction as the elbows bend to come in. There's a rise of the hand, but then the hands relax and they come down to settle. So as you breathe in, you can feel the expansion.

[00:18:38] And as you breathe out, you start to feel the settling. And if you bring awareness to your joints, your shoulders, your elbows, your wrists, your hips, your knees, your ankles. Imagine your breath moving through those joints, expanding the body and allowing you to breathe right through to the skin.

[00:19:03] And this takes you, your biofield, outside of the body. So you're not just in the physical structure, but you're where you're surrounded by this energy. And as you do that inhale, just feel that expansion come through. And as you exhale, just feel the softness that comes through the joints.

[00:19:28] So here you can imagine others listening, breathing with you, and the beginning of a collective coherence. When we're doing Tai Chi, there'll be millions of other people around the world doing Tai Chi at the same time as we are. All connecting into that same rhythmic pattern. And at the end of April, the last Saturday in April is World Tai Chi and Qigong Day.

[00:19:57] This is a day where many more millions will all practice together as well. So that little practice might be something that allows you to stop, be present in the moment, and be in action rather than paralyzed or frozen, but being able to expand and contract.

[00:20:18] And as we go from that little exercise, I'm going to ask Anne-Marie to lead us next into some heart coherence and sound. Okay. So I invite you to bring your awareness to your heart. Feel your heartbeat or imagine it. Your heart has a rhythm.

[00:20:47] Now begin to breathe with it. And imagine your heartbeat connecting. Connecting with mine. Connecting with Michelle's. And with everyone listening. And then extending into the heartbeat of the earth.

[00:21:15] That's when we realize we are not separate. We're synchronized. So in this state, we're going to do just a little gentle sound release. Allow your breath to inhale and then exhale on a sigh.

[00:21:46] Ah. And just relax into this moment of heart opening and wonder. Back to you, Michelle. Thank you. I feel so nice and soft.

[00:22:08] And I'm hoping those people listening to the podcast, you're finding out how easy it is to make that transformation happen and bring it through. And that sigh could be a hum. It could be a soft tone. So there's no right or wrong way. Just be in the moment and just let the sound come flowing through.

[00:22:34] So Anne, I'm going to invite you now to take us to some breath, some grief and letting go. And look forward to what you'll bring to this now. Sure. Thank you, Anne-Marie and Michelle. And I'd like to actually continue a little bit first with the topic you already started, Michelle, and the breath and Anne-Marie also. If you look at practices, we can never exclude the breath.

[00:23:06] And awareness that breath is so important can already be the first step to change, to healing and awakening. And actually, it's the breath that teaches us everything, the basics in life. And that is basically to be able to receive and also to be able to let go, release.

[00:23:32] And if we're looking at the breath, I want to extend that then into our own body and our organs. Because that's what we base our Taoist practices on, is on what's going on within and especially the organs. And we touched it in episode one. I went into the heart and the heart sound.

[00:23:55] So today I want to take you into getting to know our lungs and large intestine. Because that would be the direct entry point with the breath we receive. And it's the lungs, the respiratory system that we'll be receiving. And then equally important, the letting go through the large intestine.

[00:24:19] Because if we're looking at it in the eyes of TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, lungs and large intestine, they are friends. They work together. And they are buddies. They are under the metal element. And every of our organs, I touched upon that last time also, are holding on to specific emotions.

[00:24:45] And once we become aware of, first of all, I think for me, what really made my aha shift in my own healing of many things amongst that hypothyronism and migraines is the word emotion. And what is an emotion? Because everybody talks about it.

[00:25:07] But once we realize the innocence of it, we can do so much with it to make it become our friend instead of our enemy in many cases. So I thought maybe it'd be a good idea that I briefly explain what an emotion is in a little bit more scientific approach. So we can detach ourselves from it.

[00:25:31] So let's zoom out and let's just look at what causes us so much turmoil very often in life, this one thing, emotion. And so scientifically speaking, an emotion is a very short-lived response. It's a coordinated response of our entire system, our being basically.

[00:25:58] And it's a response to something important, what we perceive as important. And this can be something internally. But my experience and working with many clients, most of the time, it's something external. And when that response comes, it really involves our entire system.

[00:26:20] So it involves our brain, our nervous system, even our hormones, our body, our facial expression. I know in my case, that's very strong. And they're all like behaving, all moving together as one response. Now, the interesting fact of this is we all experience it. But technically, it's a very brief experience.

[00:26:48] So science has shown that an emotion usually passes our system ranging from 9 to 10 seconds to maybe a minute. So in C, it's not in theory, it's not the emotion that can bring us out of balance. Only what causes this overwhelm is basically our mind. Because our mind likes to keep reactivating this experience.

[00:27:18] It loves to do the storytelling afterwards. It likes to replay that event. And when we get into that loop, that's then very often that we get the imbalance. So the first wave is just the emotion. And that's where it's very interesting. I just wanted to add this in. The difference between us and our pets, for instance. Because I also work with animals.

[00:27:46] And so pets, they also experience emotions. But with cats and dogs, for instance, they don't have that loop, that holding on, that recalling, that memorizing. It's passing. And that's the beautiful thing. And that's why actually our pets are our healers in a way. And you probably noticed that when you feel sad or you had a fight or something, the pet will come and cuddle up.

[00:28:16] Because basically what it's doing through its vibration, it will help you release that emotion. And then it's very important that the pet can release the leftovers, let's say the crumbs. And cats will always do that by sleeping. They love their snoozes. And dogs, it's important that they can go out and walk in nature. So I think it's fascinating once we realize that to see how we're all the same.

[00:28:45] We're all interconnected, yet we're all very different. And so I thought that was a nice little way to look at emotions in itself. And so, yes, the breath is actually one of the quickest ways to release that symptom, that holding on in our body of the emotions. But if we don't learn how to, it can be a daunting task.

[00:29:11] And that's what we all do, the three of us with our jobs, is helping people to get over that. And so when I very often, I work with people with gut issues because it's one of my specialties. And so lungs and guts, they work together, large intestine.

[00:29:31] And if we look at the traditional Chinese medicine lens, the emotions that typically stay within our lungs is basically the emotion of sadness, difficulty of letting go. That's very often in the large intestine and grief.

[00:29:52] And so what it means is that very often, so the lungs, they receive life. But if our breath, for instance, is too shallow, we cannot fully receive life. And very often, if we have grief that is stuck or symptoms of letting go, we'll get symptoms.

[00:30:18] And just to name a few of the symptoms of the respiratory system out of balance could be that you have a very shallow breath, that you're sighing a lot. I know this, my father does that a lot. It's quite funny. If you have a tight chest, if you feel very often almost tearful or sad for not really a reason,

[00:30:46] you could look at it, oh, maybe my respiratory system is out of balance. Or you just feel flat, uninspired. You may have a constant cough, but the doctor cannot really find anything wrong with your lungs. It can be just that your metal element is out of balance. And it even will reflect on your skin.

[00:31:10] Because in the traditional Chinese medicine, the lungs are linked to our skin. So if you have dry skin or you have skin irritation, that could also be a sign. So it extends, right? It's never just one symptom that is there. And then on the lungs, it's a much wider picture, which is what I love about traditional Chinese medicine.

[00:31:38] Now, if the digestive system, if the large intestine would be a little bit out of balance, that can be very often, and that is what I notice a lot, is the difficulty of letting go. And that is just those people are just hoarders. Their attic is full of junk or the cellar. Or you have these old things that, oh, maybe I need it one day.

[00:32:05] There is definitely a disbalance in the metal element. But it may be more physical. It might be constipation. Or your stool, your elimination is a bit sluggish. Now, I could give you a full description of how a perfect poo should look, but I won't do that. But very often what I hear a lot, a lot of people hold tension in the lower abdomen, are bloatedness.

[00:32:33] You just feel bloated and you don't know where it's coming from. So this is very often to do with difficulties of releasing your old stories, your old attachments, disappointments. This can be something from 20 years ago, but we tend to keep carrying that with us. And then in general, dryness. So not just the skin, but you just have your cells are not hydrated enough.

[00:33:02] So these are all like little signs. I mean, this is not a replacement for a medical diagnose. But to me, these are very often the indications that tells me we need to look at balancing the long, large intestine organs and meridians if possible. Now, the nice thing is we can do that in many ways.

[00:33:27] And Michelle, like you said, the breath is one very important way of also getting that coherence and calming down and balancing the central nervous system, the vagus nerve, which is also hosted in our abdomen. But even the sound. And because we are all about sound today, I want to share an amazing practice. In the Taoism, we call it the healing sound.

[00:33:57] So we have the healing sounds that resonate with each organ. And so today we're going to learn the healing sound to balance our long and large intestine, our metal element. And it's a very easy sound. I will show it to you. It's like a soft snake sound. It's just sss. And you hear that all right? Yes. Yeah, the s.

[00:34:25] So like snake sound. So we can do an exercise together. I'll show it first. And then we can do a couple of rounds together. I always like to first tune in with my organs. So you can close your eyes. And you can just hold your hands gently around the lung area.

[00:34:48] And just with an inner smile, go inside your lungs and your large intestine and look inside with your two little eyes. Just have a peek inside those organs. And feel. And you might feel that there is some density. When you do this at first, you probably won't identify immediately what is stuck.

[00:35:16] But you will feel there is density there. It's all a bit muggy, a bit dark, a bit cloudy. And so what we're going to do, we're going to, with our hands, basically imagine that we take that density. And first we're going to lift up the hands over our head. And turn the hand pumps to the ceiling. So like overhead. And then you're going to do the sound. You're going to do ssss.

[00:35:47] Yes. Very good. And bring the hands back down to the lungs. And now just imagine the beautiful white light entering your lungs and your large intestine. Let's do that again. Because now we cleared that first layer of dust. It's going to look a bit brighter in there already.

[00:36:14] And we're going to be able to maybe feel that in that deep left corner of your lung, there might be some sadness sitting. Maybe from a day you experience a member of the family passed or a pet, there is still a remain which is very possible. We don't judge our emotions. We befriend them. And we just invite them to release, to be released, letting go.

[00:36:43] So we're just going to feel what's inside here or in our gut. What have we been holding on? You may start to yawn. That's already a sign something is releasing. And again, we feel that emotion coming out of our organs into our hands. And we scoop it out and we bring them up above our head.

[00:37:12] And the hand pumps to the ceiling. And just imagine blowing it out. Like steam releasing your body. Very good. And bring them down to the lungs. And let's do this one more round.

[00:37:35] Three rounds is always good to clear that stagnation and just feel, is there anything today that we can release? Anything that we want to break that loop out? And it can be toxins even. We know we inhale polluted air.

[00:38:04] So this really won't harm if you do this exercise daily just to get the toxins out of your system and your food as well. So what do we want to let go of? And then scoop it up. Bring up those hands like a dark cloud. Push it into the sky.

[00:38:36] And bring down beautiful, bright white light, fresh chi, fresh energy. And let that enter your lungs and your large intestine. And bring it a nice last smile. And tell them I love you and thank you for all the hard work you do.

[00:39:03] And then gently you can release and open your eyes. That was so beautiful, Anne. My, the white light coming in was amazing. And I do that, well there's two movements in the Tai Chi sets.

[00:39:31] One in low cup and one in Tai Chi where we're doing that action. But I never felt it the way that you brought it together. So thank you for that. My pleasure. Thank you. You're nodding your head, Anne-Marie. What was your experience? With the accentuation of the sound, I was amazed at how much release came through with that.

[00:39:55] Because even the first time I raised the hands, I could feel the release happening through that sounding as well. So I loved how the sounding paired with that. And again, like Michelle was saying, that beautiful white light came pouring in at the end. It was quite amazing to experience. So thank you for leading us through that, Anne. Pleasure. Great.

[00:40:19] Well, thank you for sharing because it's a sign that even we need to make space in order to receive the light. And that's what I really focus on is that we can work on our awakening, but we need to also work on being able to embody it. And that's where all the layers of our being are so important. So it's great that it was experienced like that.

[00:40:48] So I have to say that when you started the exercise, my cat was sound asleep in the corner and you had talked about pets. And when you started the breathing, she got up and she did her little sniffly thing that she does. And she walked around while we were participating in the exercise.

[00:41:11] So I thought that was really interesting because she easily would have just gone to the door, which she's doing now, which is clawing to get out. But she actually took the time and she went around the room with us. So, yeah, really interesting. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Now, I have that we were going to do a little bit with a nature soundscape. You want to leave that, Anne? Sure. Yes. I love nature.

[00:41:41] And again, I think all three of us, we look at nature as our mentors in a way because we feel so connected. And so nature soundscape is also a very easy but powerful way for us to help us getting back in balance. So I invite you to go on a little soundscape with me. And so I invite you to just sit or stand.

[00:42:09] Yeah, probably better sit or lay down and just close your eyes gently. And if you're sitting, place the feet flat on the ground. That's really effective. So we can also feel and bring the awareness of the Mother Earth into the bottom of our feet. And gently inhale and roll your shoulders back a little bit. And exhale through the mouth.

[00:42:41] And on the inhale, you can also bring your awareness and invite the Mother Nature because she also has her energy. Invite her energy into your body, through your feet, up into your legs, your hips, and your belly. The heart space.

[00:43:10] Mind is calming down. Mind is calming down.

[00:43:49] As you've arrived there, why don't you take a seat and just relax. And now just hear the sounds that are around you. What do you hear and feel even because it may be wind on the top of the mountain blowing, touching your skin.

[00:44:16] It may be the waves of the water, of the ocean, or the falling, the cascading of a waterfall. Very purifying, very healing. Or it may be the chirping of the birds in the forest. The wind moving the leaves.

[00:44:39] Just observe how wind, water, birds, everything belongs. Everything belongs and nothing is forced. And you notice how it's all in alignment. Nothing is out of rhythm.

[00:45:08] It's all natural because nature lives in coherence. And realize that that same harmony now lives within you. Within your unique world. And feel how that slows down your breath.

[00:45:36] How it brings a little glow on your cheeks and a smile on your lips. And just take a nice, one more nice deep breath. And as you notice how time passed and it's time to leave your beautiful space. Get up. And just look up one more time.

[00:46:04] And now repeating your heart and say three times. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Because you now know that you are also part of this divine, beautiful coherence. And you can now gently walk back to your own space.

[00:46:31] Feel your seated bones on your chair or your back, your bed below your back. Move your hands and feet a little bit. Rotate the shoulders. And gently come back. Open the eyes.

[00:46:53] And come back to the here and now in a beautiful, relaxed state of nature's coherence. I had one tiny little muscle inside my shoulder let go and drop. And I have had with my shoulder, it's always just been a little bit of residual something sitting there. And I think that was the last piece.

[00:47:22] And then a ring that had been out last night while I was sleeping was doing a pulsing. And then it let go. So I appreciate what you brought to the table. How valuable it is to take ourselves back to nature. And even if we can't get there and sit ourselves down on that ground, we can take ourselves visually there and embody the opportunity. How powerful that is.

[00:47:52] Henry, anything you'd like to add there? Well, I was thinking the power of suggestion is amazing as well. Because here we are without the sounds of nature around us, literally for myself. Yet, I was able to step into nature as you were describing it. So that power of suggestion really took my mind and my oral senses right into nature so that I was back there within myself.

[00:48:20] So you don't actually have to be out in a field listening to the crickets and the rustlings and the birds. You can actually take that moment for yourself to do it. Bring in your imagination. And see where it soars. So thank you for that, Anne. Thank you. All right.

[00:48:42] So if we think about coherence and our opportunity to be in community, we have that first episode where we went within to look at how we find coherence within ourselves.

[00:48:56] The second part, we're looking here at that coherence in our relationship with others in our environment, nature, with how we fit, but then also how that brings us back to coherence on the inside. We invite you to take this experience into your environment. You can go into nature. Beautiful. Maybe you want to record a soundscape in your community.

[00:49:26] I know last summer. I was up on the mountain and I did a Tai Chi set under the trees in the middle of nowhere. It was so beautiful. But the birds, I had a squirrel that was letting me know he didn't like my presence. But I had the beautiful sounds around me and I recorded all that. It's just, it's one of my favorite things to remember about summer now.

[00:49:52] And so this might be a way for you to record a soundscape of your own that you can go back to again and again. And this could be something you could share. You could tag it to this podcast so others could be able to enjoy the environment that you might be lucky to live in and others might not get to experience. And the other thing would be maybe be able to bring in a word, something that could describe how you felt in this opportunity.

[00:50:23] And then we can create a collective field of awareness. We can be together with that collection. Anne-Marie, is there anything else you want to bring to the conversation before we close it? Well, I was going to talk a little bit more about disease, emotion, the dying process and some release forms. Perfect. Let's go there.

[00:50:53] Anne had begun talking about the emotions and how they can, they are temporary. They come, they go. And they go around and cycle after cycle after cycle within us. And so one of the important things that I learned within the Indian system of music, as I was talking to you about earlier, is how they use their music prescriptively.

[00:51:21] It is to support the emotional journey. So when we have deep emotions that are sitting in the body, grief, angst, anger, fear, anxiety, they can manifest in different ways, especially when it builds up over long periods of time. And that is because those emotions are being held onto. We can't really release them. Or sometimes we stuff them down. We don't want to even acknowledge them.

[00:51:46] So sitting with them is that we want to actually invite ourselves to sit with those emotions. And so the Indian prescriptive music is such that you would go to a guru and say, I am feeling depression. I'm feeling grief. He would say, listen to this music at this time of day for so many weeks, etc. And allow yourself to sit with the emotion.

[00:52:12] So there's that concept of sitting with and acknowledging the emotion so that we become deeply present to ourselves and to what is happening. And it's when we start to love and acknowledge all those tender places inside of us that we really start to heal those very deep places inside that need it. We are acknowledging them. We are loving them.

[00:52:40] So I wanted to bring that to the table to share as well. It brings a great, because the two of you have talked about emotions in two very different ways. So one being that 10 seconds to a minute that an emotion passes through and then how we loop it around. And the opportunity to let it go. And then that other opportunity of the experience of an emotion.

[00:53:08] Rather than so much, I am sad, but sitting with sadness. And then what does that mean for you? And I think both of you have given us a landscape of looking at emotions differently than just that anger outburst that might happen.

[00:53:31] But finding contentment in sitting in those uncomfortable things like sadness and being able to move through what it means to us or what it means in our lives. Did you want to add a little bit more to that, Anne-Marie? You're nodding your head. Yes, yes.

[00:53:52] Of course, working in the palliative care and hospice area, I tend to meet a lot of deep grief and angst, fear, anxiety with clients that I'm working with for a variety of different reasons, as you can probably imagine.

[00:54:11] But one of the wonderful things about being able to sit with the emotion, to acknowledge it, to be with it, when we are moving through a lot of those stages, there are moments when we can join together collectively with others in those moments so that we can actually grieve together as a community, not only solo.

[00:54:39] So just to give an example, at my father's funeral, I sang his favorite song, Oh Danny Boy. And many people told me afterwards that they had held it together through the celebration of life, but hearing his favorite song sung by his daughter was a moment that moved many to tears. And it was in that moment that it allowed them time to feel the loss deeply and also feel deeply connected together in their grief.

[00:55:09] So there's great comfort and healing that can happen within the communities as well. So, and that is, has a historical context in keening and wailing, which was an Irish tradition. And they would actually have professional keeners come and do a distinct form of wailing within a group.

[00:55:36] So they were hired to lament the deceased and to help that community process their collective loss. So I always was drawn to the fact that we may move into these deep grieving places, but when we do share that, it has such a healing effect as well within the community, within each of us.

[00:55:59] And there's something I noticed about moving to Cape Breton Island, because it's the whole community that's going to go to the wake and then to the funeral. And I know in Western Canada, they don't do wakes. And that a funeral would be those people who were interacting with that person may go, but that's kind of it. But here it's the whole community.

[00:56:23] And even if you didn't know the person well, you likely know many of the people who were involved with that person. And it is a collective unit that comes together. And where out West, it was more you were separate from those funerals. You'd see a funeral. You'd see the funeral procession. You'd see the church full or the hall. But here it's like, well, here's the wake.

[00:56:52] Everybody goes to the wake. Everybody goes to the funeral. And it's such a community event. So I appreciate what you're saying, Anne-Marie, because I don't think people realize so much in other parts of the world where the funerals are kind of off in the distance.

[00:57:13] And they're not as tangible and approachable, that whole process that allows all of us to move through these emotions and let go. I'm trying to imagine hiring someone to come in to do the wailing. And here they just have to have the top of the church full of fiddlers. And as soon as the fiddlers open up, that's it.

[00:57:43] But usually what happens with the fiddlers, too, is they start slow. It might be in a lament or a soft ballad. But then they'll break into something that picks up the pace. And it brings everybody back to the present. And by the time everyone's walking out of the church or the hall, they're all walking with this upbeat. And they've moved themselves through. So another example of that community.

[00:58:11] Yes, it's beautiful, too, the way you described it, because the fiddlers are meeting the people where they are, which is the lament. And they help them. They understand that emotions, like Anne was saying, don't stay with us forever. They can shift. They can transform. They can lighten. And so the fact that the fiddlers shift to something lighter to bring us back to that surface. And to remember, we still have a life here yet to live.

[00:58:41] And we are in the land of the living. And it is time to celebrate. We are in community with each other. There is still much for us surrounding us to step into within our communities. So I love that, how you described that, Michelle. It was beautiful. Lovely, lovely conversation. Anne, you're nodding your head. Anything you want to add there? No, I'm just in awe. I'm like, oh, I want to move to Cape Breton.

[00:59:09] It just doesn't happen here. And I think we can learn from this. It was a very inspiring story that, yeah, we should spread out in the world more, because not many people are aware of this impact. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah. You know, before we moved here, I'd been to all of, I think, four funerals in my entire life.

[00:59:33] And then four funerals here, it could be in a week, you know? Yeah, I was going to say, must keep you busy, though. So it's just so incredibly different. But community is so important. So beautiful. All right. Anne-Marie, was there anything else you wanted to bring to the conversation today? No, I think that is a lot.

[01:00:01] And thank you for the very, very rich conversation and sharing as well, Anne and Michelle. It's been beautiful. And it's been lovely to do some experiential pieces. So our listeners have an opportunity to transform some emotions, find some tools that they can add to the toolbox, but also think a little bit differently. Anne, anything you wanted to add there? Thank you. Thank you.

[01:00:29] It was, again, very inspiring and uplifting. And being with both of you, thank you both for sharing. It was amazing. So this ends our recording for the second episode. And we invite you to stay tuned as we move further out into community with the third part of our trilogy.

[01:00:53] And as we leave you today, we just want to bring the idea that coherence is not something we create. It's something that we get to return to. And when we become present, when we allow sound to move through us, when we connect heart to heart, we're remembering. We're not alone. We are in community. And we're part of a living, breathing field. So I just want to give you one last thing to think about.

[01:01:20] When we shift our frequency, we shift the field. We shift for those around us and for those that we don't even know we influence. And it's such an important role that we play being in community. Thank you both for being here. And I look forward to our next conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Be well, everyone. Thank you for listening to Be Well with Dr. Michelle Greenwell.

[01:01:50] There are a couple of resources I want to just point out. When you go to the website greenwellcenter.com, you'll have a pop-up window. That pop-up gives you the top eight easy stress releasers that you can use every day. That's something you can put beside your computer, the bathroom mirror, beside the bedside table. A great resource. Also, my YouTube channel.

[01:02:13] It is full of playlists with all kinds of different ways that you can activate energy and bring vitality into your day. You can find that when you go to YouTube at Michelle Greenwell. And last, if you're a Linktree person, Linktree, L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E slash Greenwell Center. That has all my resources in one spot.

[01:02:40] Those are for intricate little things that you can't get everywhere. And it's a wonderful way for me to be able to share all the different aspects of the kind of work I do. So thank you for listening. Be sure to drink that tea. And if you want to have the tea blend that was shared in the podcast today, then be sure to check out kbrettontea.ca. Have a wonderful day. And you'll get it tomorrow... When I hear this, the camera is very lit in the money line of cách diversity and then PGD on handbrake. And I think that it's during the time I have led by. Thank you.