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Did you know that different kinds of sound can effect our bodies, emotional well being and everything about and within us? Meet Sharon Carne who today is an incredible sound wellness expert. Sharon will tell us how she always has had a love of music. She learned classical guitar and eventually secured a degree in music. Her journey to that degree is an amazing one. She was clearly, as you will hear, absolutely fixated on and committed to securing that degree.
She taught Music for some thirty years. Along the way she began to take an interest in sound, music at first, and then other sound that could help people heal many things. Some 15 years ago she and her husband began the Sound Wellness Institute. Sharon retired from teaching full time in 2016 and now devotes her full time to the institute to teach and help others through the use of sound.
Our discussion is, to me, quite inspiring and informative. I believe you also will learn a lot from what Sharon has to say. Along the way, please visit www.soundwellness.com to learn more about Sharon’s work. At the end of our episode Sharon offers some free gifts. We have put links to them in our cover notes.
About the Guest:
Sharon Carne, BMus, M.F.A., Director of Training and Program Development for the Sound Wellness Institute, is an author, international speaker, musician, recording artist, reiki master, sound healer and publisher. In addition to almost 30 years as a faculty member of The Conservatory, Mount Royal University, Sharon spent about 20 years doing personal research and formal training in Sound Therapy and Sound Healing. In 2008, Sharon was invited to participate as a facilitator in a study on stress reduction sponsored by the Integrative Health Institute at Mount Royal University. She developed a program for the study using a variety of ways sound and music relieves stress. Sharon is the founder of Sound Wellness, the Sound Wellness Institute and co-founder of the Emergent Workforce, the most recent expansion of offerings through the Sound Wellness Institute. Through the Sound Wellness Institute, she developed programs and training for holistic practitioners. Sound Wellness is now its own modality and practitioners receive the highest level of tested competency training in Canada in using sound and music to support their practice. The Emergent Workforce programs have been developed because of requests and interest from the business world.
Ways to connect with Sharon:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherrangonh/
Calendly: (To book a 1:1 Mentorship Session) https://calendly.com/christopher-rangon/mentorship
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chris_rangon/
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@skateboardcrh12
**Instagram: ** https://instagram.com/chris_rangon https://www.instagram.com/christopherrangonspeaks/
Gifts for your listeners
Nervous System Balance A 4-minute track of tuning fork sounds. Listen to the track once in the morning to start your day with calm and focus. https://soundwellness.com/balance/
Woodland Song A 60-minute recording of a forest creek and birdsong. Play quietly in the background when you are working to keep your body and nervous system calm and your mind alert. https://soundwellness.com/woodlandsong/
About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.
Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.
https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/
accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/
https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/
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Transcription Notes
**Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.
**Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Here we are once again. And it's always fun to be here. I love interviewing and and conversing more than interviewing with lots of different people. And today we have Sharon Carne as our guest, who is the founder of sound wellness and one of the cofounders of the sound wellness Institute. She's going to tell us more about that. She's going to talk about things I've known for a while that is the truth of how sound can affect us and does affect us. But she's going to be the one to talk about that because she's the expert, of course. So anyway, we will get to that. But I want to first welcome you, Sharon. Thank you for joining us here on unstoppable mindset.
**Sharon Carne ** 02:06 Thank you so much, Michael, what a delight to be here to be able to share a little bit about sound. Well,
**Michael Hingson ** 02:14 that is, of course a lot of what podcasts are all about and and hopefully we can make it all sound reasonably decent as it were. But why don't we start maybe by you telling us about kind of the early Sheeran growing up in some of those kinds of things to sort of set the stage for what we're going to do later.
**Sharon Carne ** 02:30 Oh my goodness, I've had music in my life all my life as long as I can remember Michael, and it probably from my mom singing. We used to my dad was in the armed forces here in Canada radar technician. So we traveled long distances in the summer to go visit family and mom would sing all the way across the country. And we had our favorite songs. And then that led to singing and choirs sang in church choirs, school choirs, as long as I can remember, oh, one day when I was or at Christmas time when I was 16 years old, there was a guitar under the Christmas tree. And from having grown ups, mostly singing, playing a little bit of recorder, that guitar was such a fun thing. Oh my gosh, we were so lucky. We had a guitar teacher half a block away. And so I signed up for lessons right away. He just happened to be a classical guitar teacher. And so he started me on that and inspired me with every single lesson was playing recordings of some of the masters and classical guitar and I just fell in love with it. Totally fell in love with it. And it's interesting how sometimes you dropped something as you get focused on something else when I went off to university, and it came back in a big way later.
**Michael Hingson ** 04:04 I I know exactly the kind of thing that you're talking about. We moved to California when I was five. And it was the first trip I really remember although I think we've probably we probably did some driving around before then. But my dad liked to sing and he was a fan of Old Country and Western songs. I mean, we're talking about back in the country western days have 40s and 50s and so on. And he even yodels a little bit. So he's saying a lot. And we we got to enjoy that and always loved it when as he was driving, he would sing. And then he he also did have a guitar. He had an old Martin grand concert guitar from 1940. He got it by training something for it and I actually still have it. But he would occasionally get it out and play so I know what you're talking about. I know the excitement and the feeling that you had
**Sharon Carne ** 05:01 Oh, what a beautiful thing to have still Michael, my goodness, great memories.
**Michael Hingson ** 05:07 It's in the guitar is an incredibly rich sounding guitar. Of course it's it's not an electric guitar at all. But the sound is just very rich. It's a very full bodied sounding guitar. It's a lot of fun. Anyway, so you took lessons and you, you said that it came back to to be something good for you later on. Hmm.
**Sharon Carne ** 05:33 It did. And so and in a way that wasn't quite expected to because I went off to university, and I did well in high school in sciences and maths. So majored in in math and sciences at university and it did not go well. It did not go well. So I, I left university after the first year in registered in Teachers College at the time, and did one year at Teachers College and ended up teaching in a tiny town in northern Ontario. And the love of music continued there by joining the Town Choir, there was an amazing music teacher in our tiny town, we put on shows, we did concerts all around the area. And my interest in the guitar, which had been put away for a few years while I was doing this, at least two years, came back again. And part of my finishing my degree at university, I took summer courses. And in the second summer course I signed up for a music history course. And oh my goodness, it lit a fire under me like nothing I've ever experienced before. So I went into the professor at one of the professors at the end of that course. And I said, What do I have to do to get into this university as a music major. And so he told me, I needed this level of playing, and I needed this level of music theory. And I said, okay, and off I went. It took me two years, but I got entrance requirements to the university to get in as a music major. not expected. It was such a fascinating, fascinating fire. That was the passion that was that was lit at that time. I just had to continue.
**Michael Hingson ** 07:30 So what did you have to do? You miss mentioned the level of playing what does that mean?
**Sharon Carne ** 07:38 Well, in Canada, they have an examination system through the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. And so I needed to play I needed to have an exam at the grade eight level at the time, along with the the theory that was required music theory that was required for that level. And I had had a year and a half of guitar lessons. So it was it was an accomplishment to to find a teacher from. And I was teaching in a tiny town in northern Northern Ontario, the closest teacher who could teach me at that level was an eight hour drive away. And so and I had no car, so I called him up and I said, I have to take lessons with you. I need a grade eight, in in classical guitar and what's involved in so I was teaching public school and in this tiny town, so on Friday night, I'd help on the bus and be on the bus all night, get to the city where the guitar teacher lived, have my lesson that morning, hang around the bus station the rest of the day. I'd take the bus all night to the back home again on on Saturday night. And I did that for two years. And after two years, I did the exam and got my grade eight and all the theory required. So
**Michael Hingson ** 09:11 what does it mean though from a playing standpoint, to have a great eight What did what did you have to play or what did you have to show through guitar playing?
**Sharon Carne ** 09:20 It's it's probably a concert level to play pieces that are that are complicated enough to be able to sit in a theater and play a concert on the classical guitar at the beginning stages of that.
**Michael Hingson ** 09:41 Once you did it,
**Sharon Carne ** 09:43 I did it. I could not not do it. It was there was no there was no question. It was something I I had to do. I had to get in to the university and get a music degree. I just I'm not. It was a drive that I couldn't exist. lane?
**Michael Hingson ** 10:02 Well, but it was your drive. And that's what what really matters with a lot of commitment to take a bus all night and then do your lessons and then wait for the bus to return. So while you're waiting at the bus station, did you play the guitar?
**Sharon Carne ** 10:15 No, no. I don't remember do I know. I didn't practice? No, I didn't practice there I practice at home, there was a confidence level to because I was on an extremely accelerated study path to get to that level in two years.
**Michael Hingson ** 10:37 So he packed a lot into each of your your lessons, obviously. Mm hmm. That's cool. So then you got into the University? And how long were you there?
**Sharon Carne ** 10:52 Yeah, I will. I was there for three years, because I had already had one year of university, I could use those courses as my arts and science options. So I completed the rest of the music degree. It's a four year degree in those three years. And, and then it just felt like, there was so much more to learn. So I applied for a master's degree at two universities, and was accepted at both one of them in London, Ontario, and the other one in Minneapolis. So I went to Minneapolis, and did a two year master's degree after that. And then it kind of felt like I had a good grounding. I had such acceleration, that it felt like there was a lot of catch up to do. Also, after I got my entrance requirements anyway.
**Michael Hingson ** 11:44 What made you decide to go to Minneapolis as opposed to London, Ontario,
**Sharon Carne ** 11:49 the university in London, Ontario was mostly a music history degree and I loved music history, but I wanted to learn how to play the guitar better. And Minneapolis, the University of Minnesota there, they had a guitar teacher and an option to focus on performing, which is what I wanted to develop more skill in. So I did that.
**Michael Hingson ** 12:14 So was it all classical? Or did you branch out into other kinds of music at all,
**Sharon Carne ** 12:20 it was all classical.
**Michael Hingson ** 12:23 Which is probably not too surprising. That'd be the sort of level or orientation that that music degrees in would take and so on that they want you to really get the classical part of it and, and get all the challenges and nuances, because they're probably a lot more in from a guitar standpoint, nuances and, and sophisticated things to learn then going into more of the modern music, which isn't necessarily as much guitar being out in front as the only thing as with classical music, I would assume.
**Sharon Carne ** 13:03 There are certainly skills of nuances in a group and in popular music, however you write about it with the guitar and being the only performer at least when I hit solo, where that there was a lot of a lot of skill and nuance for sure.
**Michael Hingson ** 13:18 So when did you graduate with your music degree? What year was that?
**Sharon Carne ** 13:23 It was 90 Well, in the from Queens, I graduated in 1977. And then from the University of Minnesota in 1979.
**Michael Hingson ** 13:34 Okay, so you are now a master's degree holder and dealing with music. And you play the guitar pretty well. So then what?
**Sharon Carne ** 13:47 Well, I returned to Alberta, Canada, where I got a part time job at the college. They're teaching music teaching guitar as a start for what to do next, because I wasn't quite sure. And, and when when I was I taught at Red Deer college for two years. And in the meantime, I met my husband, and we got married, and he immediately got transferred to Houston. So it kind of ended my opportunity to teach it read your college and we ended up in Houston for about three and a half years.
**Michael Hingson ** 14:30 Wow. So what was he doing at the time that took you to Houston?
**Sharon Carne ** 14:37 Well, he was in the oil business, an engineer and so he was transferred there to do testing on oilfield equipment and quality kinds of things. So he's an engineer, so got into that field. And because I didn't have a visa to work in the United States. I we had our two children there In Houston, we have two boys. And I learned how to play another instrument called the lute, which was great fun, so it was filled with kids and lute playing.
**Michael Hingson ** 15:13 Did you do much guitar playing?
**Sharon Carne ** 15:17 I did some with what with a baby. And then with the second child who came along just before we move back to Canada, it what I did I did some guitar playing. And then also the lute. Hmm. Wow.
**Michael Hingson ** 15:35 Two different instruments indeed, though. Well,
**Sharon Carne ** 15:37 I think the Luton part was was healing for me, because I had started taking it when we got down there, there was a great loot teacher and I found someone who would make me a left handed load, I play left handed. So I had to have the instrument specially made. And my father passed away after we were down there for about a year. And I couldn't play my guitar. I couldn't play it. So what I did is I played the lute, and learned more. Well played it more became more proficient on the lute. And doing that for the next probably nine to 12 months. Michael was really healing for my heart, and then I could pick up the guitar again.
**Michael Hingson ** 16:29 Well, so you, you had three and a half years in Houston, then you move back to Canada back to Alberta. Uh huh. And then what did you do?
**Sharon Carne ** 16:42 Well, we moved, we moved into Calgary, Alberta. And after the kids were a little bit older, about a year after we moved here, and we're still in the same house in Calgary, I applied, or I was asked actually to join the faculty of Mount Royal University. They didn't have any guitar teachers there that specialized in teaching young children. So I ended up there for almost 30 years, and teaching all ages from three years old up to in their 70s and really had a very fulfilling career with with doing something I really, really loved.
**Michael Hingson ** 17:25 You said you did that for 30 years.
**Sharon Carne ** 17:29 At Yeah. And then sound wellness came along. And it was a gradual shift into what I was doing now. And that was a bit of a surprise to wasn't something I hadn't expected. So it kind of it it started to grow. During my last five or so years of teaching at the Conservatory.
**Michael Hingson ** 17:55 Well, tell me a little bit more about that, if you will, the what, what started that whole thing, and what was the overall eventual cost for the shift?
**Sharon Carne ** 18:06 Oh, gosh, it probably started with, with innocent experiments. So teaching, teaching adult students, I had a group about eight, six or eight students at the time, who wanted to gain more confidence in performing so I, I ordered every book on stage fright that I could find and read them all and picked a whole pile of exercises that we could experiment, I called a coffee shop, to coffee shops in town and organize informal evening performances for everybody. And also art galleries. If they wanted music for the opening of an art show. It's another great opportunity, low pressure for people to just sit in and play background music. So we tried out a bunch of the exercises. And we found out that one of the ones that worked the best was imagining a color while we were performing. And the weird thing about it was that every time we did it, at least one person in the audience would get the color. I'll never forget that. I gave one concert in, in a town during this time we were exploring near here. And I chose one piece on the program to practice imagining the color with and this woman came up to me after the concert and she pointed to that piece on the program. She said Sharon, this piece was so beautiful. It reminded me of sitting by the ocean. The color was so blue. And I thought okay, this is no longer a coincidence. It had happened too many times. So I started really By doing my own research and asking questions like, What is it about sound that makes it a carrier for the lot? And of course, emotion? And what is it? That that? What how can it do that. So I got all kinds of books in the library ordered books and ended up studying with two of the pioneers in in America in sound healing a few years after that grant, so it's a gradual transition from what I was doing to how the interest in sound healing was really sparked.
**Michael Hingson ** 20:40 Well, love to hear more about that in terms of what it is what it does, and, and just your journey about all that.
**Sharon Carne ** 20:52 Well, sound healing is it's, oh, gosh, it's exploding all over the world. And they're still, it's still in a way being defined. As far as probably where it sits now is it's a modality. It's related to using the voice or frequency or sound tools like singing bowls, or music in order to stimulate a healing response in the body. And so it it is fascinating modality because of the wide variety of tools that can be used in order to stimulate that. And there's the at the time when I was becoming interested in sound healing, there weren't a lot of people teaching it. I did find Jonathan Goldman's with his intensive workshops, the where I attended, probably 20 years ago now. And and then studied with Tom Kenyon in Seattle, who is a psychotherapist who developed a technique for working with the voice and releasing emotional energy to stimulate that beautiful healing energy of the body. And it it was something that that fascinated me so much having spent a lifetime in sound, I had never really thought how powerful a tool it is to support the body in healing.
**Michael Hingson ** 22:26 So when you talk about sound healing, and I think there's a fair amount today of accepted science that it can help or cause different kinds of reactions in the body but what what does it heal
**Sharon Carne ** 22:48 well, I like to call sound food for the nervous system, and like junk food and good food and super food that we had junk sound that stimulates the release of stress hormones from the nervous system which the which increases the the, I guess, disease loader or stress load on the body, which can create disease and discomfort. The Good Food are things like major sounds that can help the body just go into the relaxation response that so many people need. There are there are several so many hormones that are released by the brain in the nervous system every time we experience sound and music, and four of them at least our our immune system boosters, then there's oxytocin, the bonding hormone, that one if for those people who love going to hockey games and football games when everybody's singing, we will we will rock you in in the stands for to support their favorite team that stimulates oxytocin which binds all the fans together along with the team and others dopamine and serotonin there's all kinds of neuro neurotransmitters that are stimulated from sound that that then go into the tissues of the body and stimulate that healing response depending where the intention is focused to.
**Michael Hingson ** 24:19 And when you talk about sound healing, you're talking about real physical healing. It isn't just a mental thing necessarily but real physical healing.
**Sharon Carne ** 24:33 Yes, there I can share a story of one of our calls where we have monthly calls for our practitioners and on this one call the topic was how to come up with a series of tuning fork sounds so we were studying tuning forks in that course and to support reducing pain or or helping you something to to heal and carry one of the practitioners had just had a rotator cuff injury that day, she had been to see her physiotherapist in, she described her pain level as a level nine out of 10. So very high pain level. And she was really uncomfortable on the call. So her question was how, how can I create a series? The wish was a topic? How do I create a series of tuning fork sounds? So I said, Carrie, how about we create a series of sounds to reduce the pain in your shoulder. So she, she recommended four different sounds that she felt would help her shoulder reduce pain. And what I did is I pointed the tuning fork, so we were all online. So I pointed the tuning forks to her shoulder, I pointed them to her image on the Zoom screen. And so we worked with the first one and then the second one. And she said, Well, the pain is probably about a level five. Now, when we completed me just pointing the tuning forks to her image on the Zoom screen is her pain level is down to a to two to three. And it didn't it got better over the next couple of days. She went to see her physiotherapist the next day. And she told me in a message after that appointment that her physiotherapist didn't see how that was possible that the pain can be reduced that much with with tuning forks, pointing them at hearing the sound and then pointing them to the person on to her shoulder on the screen. It was remarkable. And something that surprised me too, because I hadn't, I hadn't had the experience that powerful of using a tool I usually use with a person on their body to help reduce pain or bring more blood flow, those kinds of things. And yet it worked online. It was fascinating experience.
**Michael Hingson ** 27:05 Well, so that is in well, it's incredibly fascinating because you did it online. And I'm trying to think of the physics of it a little bit, pointing your tuning fork to the image, I guess, might to some degree, help focus the sound, but her image wasn't where the sound was coming from or starting from. So she had to take something in, within herself that also had to help that process, I would think
**Sharon Carne ** 27:44 very much so she was directing the sound to her shoulder. There were there were a few other on the call at the same time who held the intention of reducing pain because the goal was to reduce pain.
**Michael Hingson ** 27:59 Right. And so it wasn't just you producing the sound, but the listeners hearing that sound and directing it where they they wanted it or knew what had to go. That that makes some sense to be able to say, I'm directing the healing energy that I can feel to where I want it to go. Hmm, well, that is still pretty amazing. But it makes a little bit more sense. It isn't just the sound, as you can imagine, and as we all can imagine, it's also the mental commitment and the mental focusing that goes along with it. I wonder how much different it would have been if she had been in the room with you?
**Sharon Carne ** 28:42 That would be that was? That's a really good question.
**Michael Hingson ** 28:46 Yeah, how would you how would you project that that would have gone or have you ever had any examples similar where you actually worked with someone in the same room?
**Sharon Carne ** 28:57 Well, I've worked with clients in the same room with tuning forks and the singing the large singing bowls on the body. And it works pretty well the same way from what I've seen. And with with the tuning for hip pain, for example, with someone with with difficulty in moving, moving a joint or a pain or around either in the joint with where bones are rubbing together, there are always tissues around the joint that are compensating. So the tuning fork would be used in all of the connective tissue around the joint in order to help release the tension in the muscles and and then to reduce the pain that way and and then on the other side to the other side of the body, which often compensates. But the online is was so fascinating because it didn't have those elements of having the fork actually on the body and feeling the vibration of that sound going through the muscles in the tissue. Shoes?
**Michael Hingson ** 30:00 Well, or at least to a much lesser degree, the sound actually approached her hit the body because there was still a speaker and the sound was still there. But she was focusing it, which I'm sure had a lot to do with it as well. And she wanted to make it happen. And she did. Yeah, yeah. Which is, which is pretty cool. Well, so when did you actually end up leaving teaching and go full time into sound wellness and, and then eventually, I assume eventually, but starting the sound wellness Institute.
**Sharon Carne ** 30:38 That was a gradual journey to and it was it was probably sparked with a phone call that came from out of the blue Michael, I while I was still teaching at Mount Royal, I had finished my training with Goldman and Tom Kenyon, and had returned back to the conservatory, and I got a call from the director of the Integrative Health Institute at the University. And she said, Sharon, I hear you are into sound therapy. I said, yeah, it's been a very kind of my own private research topic for many years by then and fascinated with it. And she said, Well, I'd like to have you create a program to using sound therapy as intervention in the study on stress that we're sponsoring this year. And so I was delighted to take part in that I created the program. And it was so successful working with the people in my group that I created some wellness about a month after that, and that was in 2008, is when I did that. I left the Conservatory, I gradually my hours were becoming less and less with teaching music, and, and with sound wellness was becoming more and more so in 2016, I finally retired from the Conservatory, and focused on sound wellness, exclusively after that,
**Michael Hingson ** 32:12 wow. Well, it's always exciting and a challenge and an adventure to go off and start to do something really on your own.
**Sharon Carne ** 32:22 Hmm. There was another complicated Well, I guess another kind of events that were happening in our personal lives at the same time, is we went through eight years during those eight years of starting sound wellness of end of life care for both of its parents, and then my sister, one after the other. So it was it was a challenge sometimes to make sure that there was the there were our priority, and then still bringing some energy to sound wellness to help it grow. And it's interesting how, how these these things kind of happened together. And we were grateful to be able to support mom and dad and then my sister throughout that journey too.
**Michael Hingson ** 33:22 Were you able to use any of what you learned with sound wellness or sound healing to help them and work with them at all?
**Sharon Carne ** 33:30 We did and we're not quite as much with mom. She suffered a massive stroke and ended up on extended care. So it was a little harder there with dad. Mom was the first to pass away and when dad one of the things that we did with Dad is bring him to one of our courses. And he fell in love with the seeing bowls. And so we bought him a crystal bowl. He couldn't play the Tibetan bowls because he was shaky. He was 91 when he came to our course. And so he his hand was a bit shaky when he was trying to play the Tibetan bowl so the stick would Clank on the bowl. And so we bought him a crystal bowl in a strong base so it wouldn't tip over. And it has a saw a softer stick and an easier way to make the sound. So he said he played that every day before he went to bed and it helped him sleep better. So he loved that. And my sister had cancer and with her I would bring the she had tuning forks with her all the time to help with stimulating her immune system. And then I would come over especially after chemo and play the crystal bowls and it should that would help her pain level enormously and her discomfort level right after chemo.
**Michael Hingson ** 34:54 Tell me a little bit more about the singing bowls if you would, please
**Sharon Carne ** 35:00 Oh the singing bowls are there's two different kinds. There's what are called Tibetan or Himalayan singing bowls, which are metal and the old bowls and the handmade bowls have a lot of wavering sounds to them and a lot of different frequency levels. And so they are several things they do all those low wavering sounds when the bowl is on the body helps to release muscle tension. We teach a lot of massage therapists how to use the bowls on the body because that makes it easier for or less work for their hands and their arms to massage tissue. The bowl does a lot of that. And then the crystal bowls have more of a pure sound and one or two frequencies only not as many overtones and wavering sounds as the Tibetan bowls do. And Crystal works with intention in a more powerful way I find personally then the Tibetan bowls Do I have an old Tibetan bowl beside me here Michael? If you'd like to hear it, I can play it
**Michael Hingson ** 36:10 I would love to if you don't mind that would be great. Please bring
**Sharon Carne ** 36:14 bring it over a friend of mine nickname this incredible it's about 16 inch it's about 16 inches across and it could be several 100 years old who has a lot of beautiful sounds so here's how this
**Michael Hingson ** 36:33 how deepest the bowl or how
**Sharon Carne ** 36:41 we it probably goes down to I don't have Edie measured at all on his oscilloscope Pat program on the computer. It probably goes down into 20 hertz 30
**Michael Hingson ** 36:53 No, I mean but physic physically you said is 16 inches across but how deep is it from top to bottom?
**Sharon Carne ** 36:58 Oh go deep from top to bottom. Hmm, probably about seven inches. All right, it has around the bottom so a little tricky. Yeah. Okay. Okay, go ready for the sound? Yes, please. Okay, here it is
**Michael Hingson ** 37:22 Wow, okay.
**Sharon Carne ** 37:24 I need to I need to put on original sound here to take There we go. So if I can tap it again then just give more in sounds because zoom has a setting for sound that I didn't have on yet. Okay, so here we go
**Sharon Carne ** 38:00 it'll go on and on and on it will
**Michael Hingson ** 38:02 so several reactions one going back to the person with the sore shoulder I can see how even though it was online the richness of the tone in your right when you change the zoom setting it made all the difference in the world but how that coming through the speaker could especially depending on the microphone but still be something that would be very usable online because the the the audio was a very full rich tone from lows to highs as you said Ed, I'm sure measured it with an oscilloscope that gave a spectrum there but I bet somebody who was in a remote place would get a pretty good range as well again, it's always a question of how good the microphone is but you seem to have a pretty good microphone there.
**Sharon Carne ** 39:04 Yeah, we invested in in a good quality microphone because I work with sound online and one of the things I wasn't quite sure about Michael is I started doing sound baths online sound bath this is a an experience with several different bowls and sounds and to a group of people and I've played with doing them online for about a year before I started doing them more regularly, and it blows me away hearing the response from people and how effective they are online. I've done many of these events in person so they're they're powerful in person and I wasn't sure about online but after the experience with carry on the the feedback from the people who've been attending the online sound baths, I'm I'm still in awe for the response it creates Send people.
**Michael Hingson ** 40:01 Again, as I think about it, I guess I'm not too amazed because you've got a good audio source that is collecting the sound. And that's got to have a lot to do with it. Because if you don't have good audio, then you won't produce good audio at the other end, but you clearly do. But still, it is kind of wonderful that you're able to do this virtually as well as work with people in a in a specific physical location. What? How does how does sound healing actually heal? I know you talked about re producing or releasing different kinds of chemical reactions in in the body is that mainly what it is? Or are there other nuances to the whole concept of sound healing?
**Sharon Carne ** 40:54 Well, it it stimulates the nervous system to release hormones and neurotransmitters that support the healing of the body's own way of healing. Also for for the large bulls that using them on the body helps to release muscle tension, which releases emotional energy that sitting in the muscles and releases the muscles themselves. And, and I like to to, to also say that sound doesn't really heal by itself, it stimulates the natural healing ability of the body, because the body knows how to do that. And so it because sound is felt in every molecule in every cell, then it It stimulates the body in so many different ways in so many different levels.
**Michael Hingson ** 41:47 And that is kind of what I was getting to so it's you know, because it's not a magical thing at all. But it is a part of the whole process. And I think as I've said, we've known about the concept that people react to sound and have reacted to sound in various ways, for a long time, and we've known it, but it's great to see that it's being used in such a wonderful way to help heal. Will most anyone react to the sound that you just did with that old Tibetan bowl? Or do different people react differently to different bowls that I assume have different kinds of sounds?
**Sharon Carne ** 42:27 Absolutely, we all respond to sound we can't not respond to sound, but we all respond uniquely. And it could be that that that sound of that bowl, several people wouldn't be able to, wouldn't be able to stand it at all. And one of the things we found with with sharing sound, and options, different options you can use to stimulate that healing with groups of people. And one of the things that's so fascinating is that one person will say, Oh my gosh, that feels so good. I relaxed, my heart beats down, I feel so much better. And the person beside them was ready to leave the room because it graded them so much. They couldn't stand the sound. And the person beside them would have well it was so so I didn't like it as much as she did when not I didn't hate it as much as he did. But so it's it's so unique. And that's the part that's fascinating is we all respond to sound and many of us have our own intuitive ways. The music we love to listen to, that helps us to feel better, is an intuitive way because we respond we know how we respond to that. And part of branching out into other types of sound is to explore how it makes you feel because it's different for everybody.
**Michael Hingson ** 43:48 So clearly everyone is sort of, in a sense differently wired for sound although we're all wired for sound in one way or another so as you said different people are going to react to different bowls or to different techniques or different I guess it's fair to use the word technologies that you use to produce sounds when you when you played the bowl. Did you just tap the bowl with a stick or with some something? Is that what you need to do or?
**Sharon Carne ** 44:16 Yes, I have a gong mallet that has a felt head on and love to tap the mole with that. It because when you tap the ball with a gong mallet, the ball responds almost like a gong. It comes it it plays all soba at so many different frequency ranges from really low frequencies to high overtones.
**Michael Hingson ** 44:36 Yeah. And also, it's it's easier on the bowl as well. You're not using some hard stick that can damage it over time.
**Sharon Carne ** 44:48 For sure, yes.
**Michael Hingson ** 44:52 Well tell me. So this kind of brings up something that you just mentioned brings I'm so different people like different kinds of musics and so on. And obviously, the sounds that we hear, can and do in one way or another stimulate our health. We all like different kinds of music. And I think there are some of us I'm and I'm one of them feels that there are some kinds of music that are just a lot of noise. And they're very loud. And they're very obtrusive. And it's not what I like in music, but I'm assuming that you would say, but for some people, those are okay, or is there? Is there some sort of music that really is just kind of not good at all? That it's, it's just too jumbled and doesn't really help? Or is that a fair thing to say?
**Sharon Carne ** 45:46 It's a fair thing to say, Michael and, and this, this one, I can share a story about our son, our younger son, and he is a heavy metal fan. And Ed and I are not heavy metal.
**Michael Hingson ** 46:01 I'm not either. And they're just a Frank Zappa. But anyway,
**Sharon Carne ** 46:09 I know, when he would buy, buy a record in those days, they were there were records or CDs, I think we're just coming out. Anyway, I have to always check the words, he always chose bands that had positive messages. Fortunately, some of them do not. And when he was 16, he went into a clinical depression. And we took him to the doctor, the doctor gave him medication, which he took one of and said, Mom, I don't like the way I am on this medication, I'm gonna throw it all out. So I said, Okay. And what he did to heal himself, of that depression, was he when he would come home from school frustrated or angry, or whatever mood he was in, he'd run up to his room, slam the door, like a lot of teenagers do. And then he would put on his music, angry music really loud. And so Ed and I had to plug our ears and let him do that. After a few months, he he will, even after just listening to 20 minutes of that 15 minutes of that he was feeling better it for him for him, and helped him to process that out of his system. And with some people, it increases that, which is not a good thing. For for Matt, it helped him process that and it helped to heal him. And so I don't I pause when it comes to making a judgement about a music like that. Because for Matt, I know, it was very much a part of his healing. Well,
**Michael Hingson ** 47:47 and that's why I asked the question, because different people like different music. And what I was curious about is basically what you said that doesn't mean that that music can't be helpful or be good for them. Although turning some of that heavy metal music, very loud. Must have some effect on the eardrums after a while to.
**Sharon Carne ** 48:11 Oh, yes. Yellow. Yes. And that's where safety comes in. Because yeah, yeah. I industry says that it sustained sound in the work environment can be no louder than 85 Hertz. And a rock concert is about 100 decibels. Thank you. Yes, our rock concert is over 100 decibels usually. And so it is definitely doing damage.
**Michael Hingson ** 48:36 The other side of that though, is that the people who are playing in the bands are behind the speakers, so they don't get hit by it as much, which is a point that someone made once we were discussing that very thing. How come the people who are playing don't get deaths? And the answer is because they're behind the speakers, and they're not getting the blast of the louder sounds, but nevertheless, it's still there. And I have never liked really loud music. I went to a concert in 2019. It was Pentatonix, the, the, the vocal group, and they're amazing. They are although I like straight, no chaser even more, but that's okay. They're a group of 10 guys from Indiana. The problem for me with the Pentatonix concert, and I loved it. But unfortunately, I was sitting almost right below a speaker so it was just louder than I liked and I wasn't able to move. But they did one song where they turned off all the microphones. And it was it was exactly as I imagined it. It sounded the same as what they did with the microphones on except just not nearly as loud and it to me sounded a lot better, but they're an amazing group. They were absolutely fun to listen to even though it was loud
**Sharon Carne ** 50:00 Hmm, yes. And one of the things our son did, he joined a couple of bands, he plays electric guitar. So when he was playing in the heavy metal bands he got earplugs made that he would put in his ears so that, that being around the sound over and over again, the level of all it wasn't as damaging. So he still uses Wi Fi is goes to a concert or even goes to the hockey game. We have loud fans here in Calgary for the hockey team, so he'll wear his earplugs at the hockey game.
**Michael Hingson ** 50:31 I went to Daytona, the Daytona Speedway in 2011, the National Federation of the Blind was demonstrating the first vehicle that a blind person could drive not an autonomous vehicle, but actually it provided the information so a blind person could sit behind the wheel. And they literally drove it around the Daytona Speedway, if you want to see it. It's at www dot blind driver challenge.org. And Mark Riccobono, who's now the president of the National Federation blind literally drove around the whole Daytona Speedway, traveling through obstacle courses and other things and passing a vehicle. But after that, and it was about four hours before the Rolex 24 race began in January of 2011. When that race began, they had passed out earplugs to us when I was a little ways away from the race track. But my gosh, was it loud, we we stayed for 10 minutes and then left because it was just way louder than a lot of us really liked even with earplugs.
**Sharon Carne ** 51:33 Wow. And how fabulous I had no idea that a car had been designed to allow a blind person to drive Michael, what great news. Well,
**Michael Hingson ** 51:44 it's got a ways to go. And I think that the whole concept of autonomous vehicles will help. But Mark drove this around the the entire racetrack he drove through a couple of obstacle courses of barrels. Then there was a van in front of him it threw boxes out of the back and he had to avoid those and so a lot of randomness to it. It was really pretty cool. But WWW dot blind driver challenge.org. It was it was really kind of fun to be there and be a part of that. But not when the race started. That was a little noisy for us.
**Sharon Carne ** 52:17 Oh my.
**Michael Hingson ** 52:21 So we we all have minds to one degree or another. But eventually we all get very busy. We get our minds get very busy just involved with every little thing. Are there sounds and ways that we can slow that mind down and get people to step back or just slow down a little bit?
**Sharon Carne ** 52:42 Oh, yes, there's a couple in particular, a couple of I could recommend one of them. It has to do with how the body responds to music and the beat of the music. For example, if you go into the grocery store, and there's music always playing, it takes only about four to five minutes for your heartbeat to match the beat in the music. That's called entrainment. Now knowing that your heart wants to try to match the beat of the music, then knowing also that a relaxed heartbeat is around 60 beats per minute, you can make your own playlist of music that will help calm the heart down. And when you calm the heart down, you calm down your breathing and your brainwave state. So it calms the mind down to in fact, I found out recently, Michael that YouTube has 60 beats per minute playlists and a whole pile of different musical styles. What a great tool for people to use. It's fabulous.
**Michael Hingson ** 53:44 I have to go check that out. I'm I'm assuming though, Matt felt getting to a slower heartbeat and so on somehow came with heavy metal.
**Sharon Carne ** 53:56 No, no, that's the reverse. If you're driving and you need to you need to stimulate the mind. Then having music with a lively beat a faster beat can help to keep you more alert. I love lively Latin guitar and big band dance music is another one of my favorites for driving. Yeah, I love those.
**Michael Hingson ** 54:20 I'm a great big band fan. I love a lot of from the 40s and 50s the swing era and so on Benny Goodman but others as well and even more recent album when Linda Ronstadt did a couple of big band albums that were great. Ah, cool. So, but I hear what you're saying. Still. It's it's, it's different for everyone though. But I'm assuming you're saying that it's pretty standard that that we, whether it's the grocery store, whatever our heartbeats typically will match themselves to the beat of different different sounds depending on where we are and what We're doing is that pretty universal?
**Sharon Carne ** 55:02 That's pretty universal. And there are genres of music applied psycho acoustic music for one of them that is based on manipulating or changing the heartbeat, and it to create the relaxation response or the reverse to keep the body relaxed and then to keep the mind alert.
**Michael Hingson ** 55:21 So people are, I'm sure asking and we've sort of alluded to it a number of times. We know there's healthy eating I'm assuming there's healthy and unhealthy sound besides just being too loud or is that true?
**Sharon Carne ** 55:40 Definitely the they're unhealthy sound like traffic noise. There are studies especially from the European Union showing how people who live near mirror major freeways, it has become a major health problem, because the sound of traffic consistently can raise the heartbeat and and also stimulate stress hormones so that that's more like junk sound, unhealthy sound, healthy sound. The three healthiest sounds actually for the body and human are wind, water and birdsong. These are natural sounds that we evolved with? Well, their honor, we have them. Water is essential. So when we have water sounds around us, I think the nervous system response that I'm safe, I can relax there's water is essential for life. Then we have wind which helps us get our bearings, and then we have birdsong. And birdsong affects the nervous system and a couple of ways. birdsong helps us feel safe when the birds are singing, because our ancestors when the birds stopped singing in the forest, they knew there was danger nearby. Another thing that the birdsong does is it stimulates the brain and the nervous system, high sounds will stimulate the brain. And so it can help keep you alert when you need to need to get a lot of work done or have a deadline or something like that. So really healthy sounds
**Michael Hingson ** 57:12 I've enjoyed generally being close to rainstorms. Listening to the rainfall, or and sometimes thunder if it's not too loud when it gets to be too explosive, the sound but I have found that rain or gentle storms like that can be very pleasant.
**Sharon Carne ** 57:35 Oh, me too. And waves at the surface. Yeah. Yeah. Another one.
**Michael Hingson ** 57:40 Have you ever heard of an album I think it's by 101 string is called one stormy night.
**Sharon Carne ** 57:47 I haven't heard of that one. I've heard of a couple of others that they've done with nature sounds in the background of the strings.
**Michael Hingson ** 57:53 Well, one stormy night is an album that that came about years ago, back when we still had LP discs right before. But somebody in the Los Angeles area recorded a rainstorm. And then they put it to music. They put different songs to different parts of it. And I've always found it to be a very pleasant thing. I actually discovered that it is available when I asked my little Amazon Alexa device to play it. And now I've got some decent speakers that I can project it through. It really sounds pretty good. And I find gentle summer rainstorms like that even with a little bit of thunder to be a pleasant thing. I've also been in storms where thunderclaps come right over our house and they're not quite as fun.
**Sharon Carne ** 58:45 No, they're not. We've had both. Yeah, I love the gentle summer rain storms too, or the wind blowing through the leaves
**Michael Hingson ** 58:53 are blowing through the leaves. We have wind outside right now. My little system tells me it's about 28 miles an hour. But I also have some wind chimes that someone gave me earlier this year or late last year, just after my wife passed and we put them up as the first time we put wind chimes here at the house but they're very, they're very pleasant. They're very soothing sounding. And so between that and the wind, it also gets kind of nice. And Victorville. There's usually a lot of wind so it's nice to have something that turns it into a little bit more pleasant sound.
**Sharon Carne ** 59:29 Huh beautiful. I love wind chimes too. I have them in the in the on our front porch that I just love the sound of them.
**Michael Hingson ** 59:36 We have this we have this on our backpack. Well our patio, it's on the side of the house, right outside my family room sliding doors so I can hear it most anywhere in the house, especially if one of the windows is open but I can hear it outside now from my office here and it's really kind of nice to hear them. Well Is there is there some last minute advice or thoughts that you might have for people listening to this and watching it on YouTube?
**Sharon Carne ** 1:00:09 Well, I think the main advice Michael would be to become aware of the sound around you because it's affecting you. The human being is so deeply wired to sound in so many ways from heartbeat to receptors in the cells to how it shifts your brainwave state so many different ways and of course, the nervous system. So become aware of the sound around you the music also, so that you start to get a sense of what feels right to you. And what is is good food for your nervous system. And
**Michael Hingson ** 1:00:44 feed your nervous system it's well worth doing. Well, I want to thank you for being here with us, Sharon, this has been a lot of fun. And I know you have given us some things too, that we can offer to people listening want to tell us about those.
**Sharon Carne ** 1:01:04 There's two things Michael that I've been I love to share. One of them is called it's a recording called the nervous system balance. And it's about a four minute recording. It's four different tuning forks sounds that are are created are these the series of sounds are created to calm the nervous system to settle the nervous system, calm down so that you can start your day from a good place. And so it's something I encourage people to download and play with find out because we are all new unique, find out if this will work for you. And if it helps make your day go a little bit better. The second one is two of the three nature sounds that we talked about. It's a beautiful woodland Creek, and the other one is birdsong. So it's quiet of playing quietly in the background allows the body to relax with the sounds of the water and the birdsong can create relaxation, but also stimulate the mind I like to have it on when I'm writing so so I can it keeps me the body relaxed and keeps me focused.
**Michael Hingson ** 1:02:17 And how do people access those,
**Sharon Carne ** 1:02:21 the their the nervous system balance is sound wellness.com forward slash balance. And then the woodland song is sound wellness.com forward slash woodland song All one word.
**Michael Hingson ** 1:02:42 There you go. Well, and people can go get those and download them and hope they will and I am going to do it. I like waking up to nice reasonably quiet sounds in the morning we used to live up in Northern California in an area of Novato, California called Belmar in keys which was designed to look like Venice, Italy. So every house was either on a lagoon or a waterway between lagoons and especially during the summer it was quiet outside, you wake up in the morning. Some of us like to sleep later than other people in the in the whole association. So we got to wake up to the sounds of boats going by our our house will have we would have the back sliding door and our bedroom open a little bit. And we could hear the boats going by and just all the pleasant sounds of the whole area with the lagoons and all that. And then of course all the ducks who came up because they thought that we should read them. That's a different sound. But we loved the Pleasance sounds of, of the boats and the water.
**Sharon Carne ** 1:03:52 Oh, how beautiful.
**Michael Hingson ** 1:03:53 So it was great. Well, I want to thank you again for being here. This has been absolutely a joy, you've been a joy. And I really appreciate you coming on to be with us. If people want to reach out to you and learn more about you and maybe explore ways that you can help them and so on. How do they do that?
**Sharon Carne ** 1:04:14 They could go to sound wellness.com or sound wellness institute.com.
**Michael Hingson ** 1:04:22 And there's contact information there.
**Sharon Carne ** 1:04:24 Yes, phone number, email, all of that.
**Michael Hingson ** 1:04:28 Great. Well, I really appreciate your time and you taking the opportunity in time to be here. It's now got to be close to dinnertime for you. Which is a different sound.
**Sharon Carne ** 1:04:41 Yes, it definitely is. My husband clunking away upstairs. I think Nick is cooking today. So thank you so much, Michael.
**Michael Hingson ** 1:04:51 Thank you. This has been a lot of fun. I hope you've enjoyed listening to us out there and that you will take advantage of the gifts and communicate was sharing it would be wonderful to do that. I would love to hear from you want to hear your thoughts your comments please feel free to email me Michaelhi at accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com. And or go visit our podcast page www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast where you can find all of our podcast episodes. Wherever you're listening, please give us a five star review. We really appreciate those reviews and thank you very much in advance for doing that. So I hope that this was worth your time. I really enjoy you doing it and Sharon I really once again want to thank you for being here and we really enjoy having you want unstoppable mindset.
**Sharon Carne ** 1:05:40 Thank you Michael.
**Michael Hingson ** 1:05:47 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again
