298. Healing from Within: A Path to Resilience & Transformation - Kathy Harmon-Luber

20230919 Kathy Harmon-Luber

Kara Goodwin: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the meditation conversation, the podcast to support your spiritual revolution. I'm your host, Kara Goodwin. And today I'm joined by Kathy Harmon Luber. Kathy is a certified sound therapy and sound healing practitioner, a Reiki master, a classically trained flutist. And award winning fine art photographer. She's the inspiring author of the bestselling book, Suffering to Thriving, your toolkit for navigating your healing journey, which is full of wisdom gleaned from decades of healing from her own debilitating health crisis. 

Wait until you hear Kathy's inspirational story. It's truly remarkable what she went through. And more importantly, what she [00:01:00] did with what she went through. Not only was she able to pull herself out of a tragic situation, but she used the opportunity to encourage and inspire others. In this episode sheet, not only talks about the year, she spent hardly being able to move. But she gives us a ton of information about the healing that comes from sound. So we'll dive into that in just a sec, but first be sure to check out my website, Karagoodwin.com. I've got a wonderful retreat coming up in January. What better thing could you do in the dead of winter than to join me on the sacred grounds? The Tibetan, Mongolian Buddhist cultural center in Bloomington. There'll be meditation workshops to strengthen your connection to your higher self sound experiences and so much more. This is going to be deeply enriching and tickets are moving quickly. Go to Kara goodwin.com and select retreats to find out more. Stressed out can't sleep. Truvaga. Got you covered. [00:02:00] Say goodbye to restless nights and hello to inner peace with this simple but powerful handheld Vegas nerve stimulation therapy. It only takes two minutes, morning and night to reclaim your peace of mind. This amazing device stimulates the vagus nerve to improve overall health and wellness. Your Vegas nerve plays a crucial role in regulating various bodily functions, including heart rate, digestion, stress, inflammation, and mood. Truvaga delivers gentle energy impulses to the vagus nerve. Leading to a wide range of wellness benefits, including reducing stress, increasing focus and improving mood and sleep. This technology is the most clinically studied and tested Vegas nerve therapy available. 

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Kara Goodwin: So welcome Kathy. I'm so excited to be with you today.

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Kara. I'm so happy to be here. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Kara Goodwin: Me too. So can we start by talking about your healing journey from your health crisis and what kind of laid the foundation for where you are today?

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Yeah, thanks. That's a great question. I love talking about this, probably like a lot of your listeners I have been on quite the healing journey and it actually started in my early 20s I was 21 super active in sports Dancing hiking Swimming, you know running the whole thing and [00:04:00] I started having some pretty bad back problems and which was unusual for age 21, went to doctors.

They told me I had the spine of an 80 year old woman.

Kara Goodwin: What?

Kathy Harmon-Luber: And yeah. And one doctor, one orthopedic surgeon went so far as to say, Oh, you're going to be in a wheelchair by the time you're in your mid thirties. And I just was like, I am not going to own that. I don't, I'm going to. Do everything I can to just figure out a way forward that I could live my best life.

I wanted to continue to be active and I'm thrilled to say decades later. I've not been in that wheelchair, knock on wood here, but all through those years, I was dealing with several back, spinal disc ruptures. I have seven spinal diseases and because they're so complicated and involved, when I started having disc ruptures.

Doctors would normally just operate, but because of all of the diseases I had, they could not, [00:05:00] it was like a 14 to 18 hour surgery. And they said, we won't even do it, so 

surgery was not an option. So I had to start looking for other. other ways to heal. And I was doing super well until 2016.

I should have listened to my intuition. I'm a meditator. I've been meditating for many decades and very in touch with my, what I like to call my inner healer. And the warning signs were everywhere that year. I was doing a lot of traveling. I had traveled to go see a client.

It was an overnight trip. I was having a lot of spinal issues at that time, and I just didn't pay attention. Frankly, I didn't listen to my intuition. And so, the disc ruptured. It was the fourth. Disrupture. It was the worst. Usually I could recover from them in like around three months, of just bed rest, lots of chiropractic, acupuncture, [00:06:00] all the things, and just really, robust self care.

that didn't happen this time. I was bedridden for over five years. 

And. Yeah, and so it, it became a very different kind of, of healing and a very different kind of journey. I let go of my entire life as I knew it. Like I, I had a full time job working for non profit organizations that make the world a better place.

I served on boards of directors. I played classical flute. At least once or twice a weekend, in public. I just had this really full life. I was active in our art Alliance, all kinds of things. And everything stopped that day in December of 2016. And I had to find a different way forward. My healing journey became, 24 hour care, robust care for myself.

acceptance of where I was trying to envision a new [00:07:00] way forward. Like I said, I've always been a meditator. I really leaned into that. I don't want to sugar coat it. It was terrible. It was. extraordinary pain, like really extraordinary pain. And you begin to question, can I even go forward? Can I even live, like this?

And doctors said it could be anywhere from, six months to three years. It was even longer than that. And I did everything right. But it forced me to do a couple of things. One was just to really try to find as many alternatives, complementary medicine, modalities, workarounds, as many things as I could to set new goals.

like for the longest time, my goal was, can I walk, I don't know, I think it was maybe 20 steps to the bedroom door. I couldn't do that for many months. The next goal was, can I walk to the kitchen, which is about 30 feet away, maybe 40. So little baby [00:08:00] steps, right? 

But keeping, literally baby steps, but keeping yourself, motivated, inspired, full of hope, not giving up.

That's really hard. And that the second part of this is really leaning into your mind is your medicine. It is meditation. My practice got me through, I used to do walking meditation, swimming meditation until the day the disc ruptured, right? Plus regular meditation, nature meditation, lots of different kinds of ways I integrated into my life.

And I was just flat on my back. I couldn't do any of the active things. And so it became a real lesson in, in other ways to do things, visualizations, heals us. When we can envision the cells in our body at a cellular level healing, I do Reiki. I began just, opening the channel of Reiki and imagining the energy [00:09:00] healing the cells in my body.

So meditation combined with, imagery really Saved me. I started writing. The one thing I could do was put my laptop on my lap, literally, 

and just, flat on my back. I could write. So I did a lot of contemplative writing. I started going back to a lot of the people who inspired me over many years, from Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay and, Joe Dispenza, a million people.

And every day I would try to find a quote. that would help me just keep my head in a good place. And I realized, everything is a choice. like I went through a very dark time. I sought the help of a therapist and I encourage any of your listeners who are in that really dark place.

Sometimes you need the help of, and 

that's not a weakness. it's a strength to be able to say, I need this help. 

And so with all of that, but I [00:10:00] began to realize that every moment we have a choice, I could have decided to give up and Not try and become this bitter old lady one day, right? I just had this 

vision of me just being this miserable old person and I thought I don't want to go there, right?

And a line from, I think it was David White, the poet, What can I do today that my future self will thank me for? So I just kind of held on to these quotes, right? And realized that suffering is a choice. So is thriving. Hence the name of the book, suffering to thriving every day. I'd wake up, I do my gratitude.

The things weren't worse than they were that, that I was seeing incremental progress that I have this beautiful interior life, right? 

I could go on these inner journeys that were really beautiful and that sustained me at a time when my body kind of failed me. Right. And so I started just, Living in [00:11:00] that space of today, I choose to thrive, whatever that means, it might be taking five steps more than I took yet than yesterday.

Sometimes it was less, but not going down the rabbit hole of despair and asking the right questions. This is your mind is your medicine. And this came to me through meditation, So what are the wrong questions? I was there, I was living in that. I was so like. What's going to happen to me?

What if my husband leaves me and won't take care of me anymore? what if my friends abandoned me? What if I never get better? What if I never walk again? I mean your head just goes to that place, the gloom and doom, the perseveration, the catastrophizing. We all go there. Humans are good at this.

and so, excuse me, it became a matter of trying To just work with my mind to ask the questions like what if, all the good what ifs, what 

if something wonderful is [00:12:00] going to come out of this, spoiler alert, it has, 

what if tomorrow is better, it usually was, not always, but usually,what if this healing journey is a portal to a new life.

It has been. So, just, and I would, I, on my computer, I would just journal all these things and on really horrible days, I'd go back to those little rays of hope or quotes by other people or passages from books. And I just said, okay, my mind is my medicine and I have to do this. I have to use this because it's real easy to go down the rabbit hole of despair.

Right. but meditation. Meditation. visualization, that kind of journeying really saved me. It did.

Kara Goodwin: Wow, that is so inspiring. I mean, I can't imagine the level of pain that you were in, and five years

is such a long time to be bedridden.

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Oh, yeah. When [00:13:00] you're young, it's horrible. Right?

Even if you're old,but it's a terrible thing. It's hard to 

imagine. 

Kara Goodwin: that was in 2016?

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Yes. 

Yes. 

Kara Goodwin: been a couple of years since you've come out the other side of that.

Kathy Harmon-Luber: and I have, and that's the beautiful, joyful part of this So when I wrote the book, it came out of my journal. Every chapter there, I don't even remember, like 38 little tiny chapters. Every one is a tool, and I continue to use every tool in the toolkit. And it worked! All of it.

And so, that is what got me to where I am today, and not losing hope. But also, I don't want to say I pushed myself, because I really was all about, if I have to be, resting, to recover from going to the doctor, I would allow myself that. And self care became something totally different. it used to be taking a bubble bath and going to the spa and, having a spa weekend with the girls.

Yeah, in all of [00:14:00] this, these five years and beyond, like even now, self care is, not as intense as it was, of course, but it's a priority. 

if I need a day to recover from an intense, like long workday. day. 

I take that time. And in the past, I might've pushed through it. And it's the lesson that we got to really, it's about self love and self compassion.

And so often we have that for others 

and we don't give it to ourselves. Right.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah.

Kathy Harmon-Luber: that was a big part of it, but applying all the tools got me to this place where I'm very active now, I'm 

back to an almost normal life. There are things I'll never do, I can't ride my bike.

I can't go for hikes. I live on a mountain. I can't go for hikes in. The mountain trails, I can't do that, but it's okay. I've discovered other things, 

and that's the beautiful part of it. The way I like to look at this is our healing journey, whatever that is, like some people are healing from heartbreak, from 

a breakup or [00:15:00] divorce or

Trauma Trauma is a big one, 

loss, grief, there are all kinds of healing journeys, right? So, but 

our healing journey is embedded in our life's journey, which is embedded in our soul's journey. And I write about this in the book 

because, 

Kara Goodwin: that.

Oh, you've just given me so many chills.

Yes. Yeah. Can you say that again?

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Yeah, I love this. I hold on to this and I held on to this every day while I was going through it once I had that insight, which came through meditating the inner work, right?

Your healing journey is embedded in your life's journey, which is embedded in your soul's journey. And the way I like to think about this, Cara, is that we all. are alive right now on purpose, this is a very challenging, intense time on planet earth and every one of us alive is here for a reason.

And we have these soul gifts that we [00:16:00] don't always recognize can be a gift to the world. And so I really. I had a lot of time. I was still working during this time, but I 

have a lot of time to think, I work as a grant writer. So I was able to do that from bed, but I was able to think a lot about this and think about what is my purpose.

I always thought it was, yeah, I work for nonprofit organizations that help homeless kids get off the street and help traumatize children and youth and the environment and lots of good things. And I thought, well, that's my purpose, but there's a deeper purpose. we all might even have multiple purposes.

Purposes in this life 

on earth, and then shining a light on that. And that is where sound healing. I've been a musician since I was a little girl. in addition to flute, I play a lot of other instruments and about. 20 years ago, I got really into sound healing, going to sound healing sessions. And then I started noticing [00:17:00] more than just the relaxation and stress relief, which is why I originally started going.

I had really bad anxiety from work. I started going to sound baths as they were, which is simply an immersion in sound, I started going just for like anxiety. and stress relief. But what I started noticing was it began to help other things, autoimmune issues, which also could have been the stress reduction.

But I started studying sound and then I started studying Reiki and I started putting all of these things together and then offering that to people. And even while I was flat on my back, I could do online sound baths. They helped me enormously. And then when I was able to be up and about a little bit more, I started using my crystal bowls and a Tibetan bowl and,little Zephyr chimes that are really just lovely and can just totally change the energy of not only a room, But within us, we begin 

[00:18:00] after, they say, after about four or five minutes, our bodies come into entrainment with that vibration.

And It is a felt thing, 

and then I got a gong, gong is one of the most healing instruments because it has the lowest lows and the highest highs in frequency. and here's the really exciting bit in my studies. this is a study that came relatively recently in the past couple of years out of UCLA, a guy by the name of.

James Jemczewski, he working at UCLA as a researcher with medical doctors have found that every cell in our bodies has a frequency, like the heart cells have a frequency, the brain cells have a frequency. And the amazing and fascinating part of this discovery is that they would look, they'd observe the cells, blood cells, or otherwise.

When cells were not working, if they were, damaged, or just otherwise dying, atrophying, those [00:19:00] cells stopped emitting their cell sound. And what brought those cells back to life, really reinvigorated them was that frequency applied to it. So in other words, a tuning fork, think of a crystal healing bowl.

They're all at different frequencies. So by applying a certain frequency to cells, And because our bodies are, they say anywhere from 60 to 75 percent water's a better conductor than air is. Our cells really respond to that and cells can be, regenerated or recharged, rejuvenated. And so when we think about it in that way, that is the science behind.

Sound healing and there's a lot of research on this sound healing is being used in hospitals and nursing homes, not only throughout the United States, but in Europe and other countries all over the globe. And so [00:20:00] it is really kind of the future of. of, I think, I'd call it complementary medicine, not alternative medicine, but complement to Western medicine.

I always encourage my clients, yes, talk to your doctors. they do 

brilliant things. They save lives. They've saved my life, like 

a number of times actually. And always go there, start there and then add things like energy medicine and sound healing to your little repertoire. and it was when.

Like a couple of years ago, when I really started turning the corner on this, I started integrating sound into my life daily. I don't miss a day of sound now, and I'm sure, some of your listeners are going to think, well, she's got all the instruments. She can easily do this, but no, it, anyone can do this.

And I have a couple of short, free, largely easy things that, that your listeners can incorporate. of course they can always go to a sound bath at a yoga studio or [00:21:00] other meditation center. But, If you can do this at home, it really adds a level of reset to our bodies and recharge and reinvigoration.

Five minutes of sound. Okay, so examples of this are, they have found, and this is decades ago, Jonathan Goldman, 

humming, 

Kara Goodwin: I love Jonathan Goldman. Yeah.

Kathy Harmon-Luber: he amazing? 

Yeah, 

I've learned so much from him. Humming. And singing as well, but humming in particular stimulates the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve is the wandering nerve through our bodies.

And it's responsible for all those things that we don't think about heart rate, blood pressure,breathing, all the things. And so humming five minutes a day, I hum when I'm outside in the garden, I hum when I'm in the shower, I hum when I'm cooking. it's medicine. 

like sound and music are medicine.

Similarly singing, you do not have to have a good voice at all. [00:22:00] You can just sing and it's healing. And, one of my teachers, John Stewart Reed, he has said that even listening to music, it has to be music you love. It has to be music, not too loud. As to disrupt the brain or your ears. But if it's music, you love 20 minutes of music you love.

has been scientifically shown to help at a cellular level 

and I think that is just an amazing Thing and I have one quote here I just want to share with you for any people who just might think this is all too woo woo for me There's an oncologist by the name of dr. Mitchell Gaynor And he tells us this and I quote sound can redress imbalances on every level of physiological functioning and can play a positive role in the treatment of virtually any medical [00:23:00] disorder.

Kara Goodwin: Mm

Kathy Harmon-Luber: that's not only amazing, but like I was saying, it could totally revolutionize the future of healing. And he's 

an oncologist 

and,I, anyone can go, I think it's on YouTube and look up, Dr. Mitchell Gaynor and he actually, has videos of him doing a sound session, walking around a room with numerous cancer patients.

 And, and, 

Kara Goodwin: wild.

Kathy Harmon-Luber: his, his results, yeah, are amazing.

Kara Goodwin: yeah, you don't see a lot of like Western medicine practitioners who are at this point really embracing things like that. So it's amazing. I was just at the dentist, like right before we, hopped on our recording here and they were playing, well, first of all, it was just like a 70s station, 70s, 80s or whatever.

And it was fine. It was low, but. I was kind of laughing to myself because at one point they were playing Aerosmith and I was [00:24:00] like, I would love to go back to Aerosmith when they were recording this music and tell them one day, this will be played in a dentist's office, because

it's I imagine that is like their worst nightmare.

Like my music is too edgy to ever be at a dentist's office.

But I also thought. They're missing an opportunity here because we could be playing because like you say, I completely agree that how healing music can be, but there are extra benefits when the frequency is such that it is promoting to healing.

So not

all music is created and produced at the, at a healing

Kathy Harmon-Luber: That's right. 

Kara Goodwin: frequency So I do want to caution people who, if they're like, Oh, okay. I just have to listen to music. I like. It may not be the pop music that you, or the rap music or the country music, or that, it, because it's just not at that frequency that promotes healing.

[00:25:00] So there is some finesse there. the classical music tends to be very,kind of low hanging fruit if you like classical music at all, but then there are lots. Lots of, there's lots of music like, Jonathan Goldman and lots of artists out there who are putting the music at certain frequency.

But I would love to go into your standard dentist's office and walk in there and have healing tones on, where

it's you don't even have to be noticing it. Like I'm sure that 80 percent of the people who sit in that dentist chair that I was in today. Don't even notice

the music that's on because it's, it is low, so it's wouldn't even be something that you would. really even have to consciously tune into, but then the fact that the frequencies are building, the energy is changing and building and amplifying in that space. And then you walk into it and it just helps you to have a different vibration, a different [00:26:00] experience while you're there.

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Absolutely. That is spot on. And there are lots of free resources out there, getting back to what people can do at home. a person I've studied with is Jeralyn Glass and 

Kara Goodwin: Oh yeah. I've had her on a

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Oh, have you? Oh, she's amazing. She has a lot of free content, free, YouTubes that are, like, I, she does one that's healing the endocrine system or, sound healing, and these are the crystal bowls.

sound healing for grief and loss. I mean, very targeted things. and so, so it's easy to find access to these things, even if there's no sound healing place nearby. One of the other wonderful things that people can do at home, in addition to humming and singing, listening to music, as well as, finding some of these online sound baths,is.

tapping on the body. And one of the things like I play frame drum, which is an incredibly healing, amazing [00:27:00] experience that I started playing about five years ago. And Again, it was something I could do while I was flat on my back and I loved it. I got good at it and it's very, very healing, but you don't even have to have a drum.

you could tap on a table just to get rhythm going. The reason why it's healing is it sounds like the heartbeat. One of the easiest things to do is just tap rhythmically on your chest. and, in, in, in this one class that I've taken on frame drum, Our teacher has encouraged us to, whether you're sitting outside, walking down the street, whatever you're doing, just rhythmically tap a little bit.

It's very grounding. 

And so those are a couple of things. The other thing is there, there are very small, maybe three or four inch, Tibetan bowls. 

that are very affordable in the 20 to 30 range. And I have, a couple of those as well. and one has become my evening, right before bed, sound can change the atmosphere, basically, the [00:28:00] vibration of a room.

And so. Before I go to bed, I just, I ding it like three times and it puts me, it's my signal to myself. Ah, it's time to put the day behind me, do my gratitude practice, relax. And get a good night's sleep so it's part of this little ritual that I do. I have other bowls, throughout the house, actually, in addition to my, my, sound room.

but as I walk in and out of the front door, I have a larger Tibetan bowl and I just ring it and it's oh yeah, right. Mindfulness, Kathy, be present, be in this moment, they can just have a very subtle and those things, even it sounds so simplistic, but just bringing our awareness to the present moment, it is healing because we're not.

Perseverating about the fact the past we're not catastrophizing about the future if we're in a bad situation, you know We're just living in the right now and that's that is a very healing thing and it's [00:29:00] so simple But we so often don't do it We find ourselves in our minds or monkey minds are going crazy and we're running around or oh 20 minutes this morning I'm good.

We're really not. Like it, it helps to have kind of a reset throughout the day. And so sound can bring us into that moment of mindfulness of just listening to the ringing of a bowl or, 

what, yeah, I say to, to my clients who don't have bowls or other things and, they try to sing and hum, but if you have wind chimes in your yard, When you go out to the garden, just ring them yourself for a moment and just be present.

Close your eyes. Just listen to that and it's a reset for your body. It gets us out of adrenaline mode, 

brings us grounded. 

Kara Goodwin: it's so true. You, when you're listening to music, you can't, if you're just with the music, wherever it is, you're not jumping ahead to the end and you're not back at the beginning, you're [00:30:00] being carried on the waves of the melody and you just are where you are. And so it, I love that as it being like that focal, an easy way to kind of bring our focus to the now.

So powerful.

Kathy Harmon-Luber: It is powerful and healing and for my clients who say, Oh, I can't meditate. My mind is too noisy. I've tried doesn't work for me. One of the things I encourage them to do is to put on like a sound bath CD or otherwise, you know what I would call meditation music. reiki music,whatever a person happens to enjoy listening to, put that on and just focus on the sound.

Just follow the sound. You don't know what's happening next. You can't 

jump ahead, right? 

So you just stay with that sound and you are meditating. 

And it's often a good entry point for meditation for people, like I said, who just feel they can't meditate, can't clear [00:31:00] their minds, can't focus on their breath.

the sound, if we really focus on the sound, it's a similar kind of thing. It takes us into a different brain state. And that's what it's all about. That's very healing. Yeah.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Thank you. I love that. Well, Kathy, this has been really beautiful. Can you tell people how they can connect with you and remind people of your book and where they can get it?

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Yes. Thank you, Kara. I appreciate that. My book is called Suffering to Thriving, your toolkit for navigating your healing journey. And it is on amazon. com and Barnes and Noble, and you can access it also on my website, which is sufferingtothriving.Com. There people can, see other podcasts and I'm sure I'll put our podcasts there.

people can read articles I've written for, I've written three recently for yoga magazine and I also have information there on how to work with me, both [00:32:00] in sound and Reiki and, other things. And I'm excited to say that I have a free module coming up in the next couple of months in partnership with an integrative medicine doctor, Dr.

Charlize Davis. And we are going to be doing a, rather in depth module on healing the heart chakra. And so that will 

be a free offering. So people stay tuned to my social media. You can also connect to my social media. through the website. So it'll all be there. So thanks for that.

Kara Goodwin: wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Kathy. This has really been heartwarming and, and practical and fascinating. So thank you so

Kathy Harmon-Luber: Oh, good. Thank you for having the conversation with me. It's been great.

Kara Goodwin: Absolutely.

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