🎙️ Healing Grief Through the Power of Sound with Jeralyn Glass EP 403

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Close your eyes and imagine. What are the things in life that cause us the greatest pain? The things that bring us grief are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow, to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed, we've been planted? And having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is Grief to Growth. And I am your host, Brian D Smith. Welcome back to Grief to Growth, where we explore life's deepest challenges and the wisdom that helps us to rise above them. I'm your host, Brian D Smith, and I'm here to guide you on this journey of self-discovery, resilience, and transformation. To all of our new listeners and those of returning, I thank you for joining us. This podcast is dedicated to help you navigate grief, define growth, and unlock a deeper understanding of the world around us. Today we have a truly special guest. Her name is Jeralyn Glass. Jeralyn is an internationally acclaimed singer, musician, and Hay House author who's devoted her career to the power of sound healing. With a rich background perform— with a warmer, rich background performing on Broadway, opera, and concert stages worldwide, Jeralyn brings a unique approach to healing, blending her experience in music with the transformative science of crystalline sound. She's created platforms like the Sacred Science of Sound and the Crystal Cayton Sound Healing Studio, where she curates and trains others in using alchemy singing bowls to help facilitate healing and transformation. In our conversation today, Jeralyn will share how sound frequencies can support us through difficult life experiences like grief, illness, and emotional pain, and how music and sound can nourish both the body and the spirit. We'll learn more about the inspiration behind her journey, hear stories of transformation through intentional sound, and discover ways to incorporate healing frequencies into our everyday lives. Join us as we dive into the world of sound medicine and discover its potential to soothe, to connect, and elevate. And remember, to keep this conversation going, connect with us at grieftogrowth.com/community. And if you're watching us on YouTube, make sure you hit like and subscribe. To get future episodes. And with that, I want to welcome Geralyn to Grief 2 Growth.

Thank you so much, Brian. I think I'm in the right place.

Yeah, it's great to have you here today. And I'm really looking forward to getting into the subject of sound healing. So I just to get started, tell me, how did you get started with sound healing?

Oh, gosh. So I've been a professional musician my whole career since I'm 19. I started on Broadway. And then I got led into classical music, so I eventually moved from New York to Germany where I lived for many years and enjoyed a wonderful career singing opera and concerts. I became a professor and I, I love teaching, also teaching singing. So I had discovered the crystal alchemy singing bowls, which are fairly new instruments. They emerged in the year 2000, so I discovered them around 2006, and I bought a set of 7. So knowing briefly that each note of the 7 corresponded to a chakra— C, D, E, F, G, A, and B— and I brought them home to Germany and I started playing them for my students and my family and my friends. But it was more like an instrument because I had heard many, many instruments in my career, but I had never heard anything so pristine like the sounds of the crystal singing bowls. I had worked with the metal singing bowls, the Himalayan singing bowls, and I loved those. And I used to use them, like I'd put one on my belly and I'd tone with it and help me prepare for performances, just like a meditation. But the crystal singing bowls were something very, very different. And at that time, about 18 years ago, I was not— I was not trained as a sound healer. I was a musician. I knew what it felt like to be a singer and to feel that our body is our human instrument. So, you know, I would have to project sometimes in 3,000-seat theaters over a 100-piece orchestra with just my two little vocal cords. So you have to train to be like a vocal athlete. So I understood, I would say, the deeply spiritual power of music, but it wasn't till 9 years ago when my, my only child passed— he was 19 years old— that music actually really became my medicine, Brian. Like, it was, you know, as you know so well, like, there's no pill that can help you with the grief. Not really. You know, I wish there was, and I wished that there had been a pill that, that would have brought my son back because I would have taken that immediately, right? But it's like I recognized, oh boy, you have to be able to dive into these feelings that we just go I don't, I don't want that. No, please don't give me that one. No, no, right? And music became this safe container, and that opened this whole world to sound healing and music as medicine.

Wow. So tell us about your son.

Oh, this is him. He's my big angel now. Um, his name was Dylan Sage, and Dylan means born of the sea. And he was really like a water baby. When I was pregnant, we swam with wild dolphins. And then when he was a little boy, we swam twice with wild dolphins. So he really, yeah, he stole my heart from the very beginning. And then, you know, my heart was shattered. And yeah, Dylan, he knew the singing bowls since he was about 7, and he loved them. He was like, Mommy, bring me to bed with my sound blanket. And he loved to play them. He loved to, have me put them on his belly and say, give me my sound tickles. But he had a very interesting experience with them, Brian, when he was 13. I had created a children's foundation in Germany that was called Kids for Kids World Foundation, and the whole concept was to train young people in, um, theater, dancing, singing, playing instruments. And then we would put together an original show every year in Munich, and, and also we took it on tour. And with those shows, we raised about $35,000 every a year to support music therapy. So we created our own music therapy program, and then we worked with an organization that was, uh, called Tabaluga in the south in Bavaria, where children, 80 children, were living. So the whole idea was kids could express themselves creatively through music and dance and the arts, and then that energy that they were putting out helped other children in need. So it was a win-win for both, and When Dylan just turned 13, many of the students in the productions entered a national musical contest in Germany called Jugendmusiziert, and he entered it in voice. And it was in the field of musical theater, so he had 5 songs, a choreography, and a monologue. And he made it to the semifinals, and a week before his semifinal audition, he was like, Mom, Mom, something's happening. And his voice had started to shift. I don't know how it was for you when your voice shifted, but at that point in time as a professor, I had never guided a young man through a voice change. And many of my colleagues said, it's fine, you know, just make sure his voice stays open and make sure that he feels comfortable. And so we actually worked with the singing bowls because he knew them so well. So he picked a little, a little citrine singing bowl that was a G note. And in the chakra system, in the Western system, the G corresponds to the throat chakra, and citrine corresponds to your solar plexus chakra, which is about courage and confidence and your self-esteem. Now, I didn't put two and two together at all at that time. You know, it was just like, okay, he used the bowl, and I'd have him do things like, ah, ah, ah, you know, to make sounds to release his jaw, because you want to keep the throat very open, and the larynx is changing. It's growing much bigger. There's much more blood rushing to the throat of a young man. And, um, so we worked at the singing bowls, and that was one of my first experiences that they helped to ground him in confidence and helped him to keep his voice open. And he stood up to sing his audition, and he said, my name is Dylan, and since one week, I'm no longer soprano. And everybody laughed, and I was like, wow, this is crazy. Like it could be so vulnerable for him, but he was very confident and very funny, right? So that was one of my first experiences. So he was a great athlete. He was a football player, a track star, a ski racer, and he loved music. He played the guitar and the piano and he sang. And yeah, yeah, you know, I think that when we deal with death and an untimely death, I think nothing really prepares you for that. Like, there was no way that I was prepared for that. And we were so close in life. And on the night that he died, he— I, I walked down to the ocean there where I live in Southern California, and I saw this huge shooting star, Brian. And like, I grew up in LA, like, I've never seen a shooting star in the city. I've seen it in the mountains, but there was this huge shooting star that just crossed the LA basin and landed in the mountains behind LA. And then I heard his voice, "Mom!" You know, and he was big, you know, he was 230 pounds and 6'3". He was like, "Mom, it's like we always talked about." And he was referring to the times I'd bring him to bed with the bowls and we'd pray and we'd meditate. And he said, "I'm home, I'm with God." And it's like, Oh, like, I mean, you can imagine there's the shock of, did my child really die? And is death is really final? And wait a minute, what is happening here? And then the precision that I knew I heard his voice. And I knew I saw that shooting star that actually looked like this big upside down smile, which he had such a great smile, right? And that began, Brian D Smith, this, this world that I've entered into since 9 years of really profound communication and understanding that we're made of energy. That energy gets compressed into this human form, and we are sound vibration, we are light, and there is a bridge. And music for me became that bridge to reach him and to understand that love is truly eternal and love defies time and space. And it's been, it's been a wild ride, um, you know. And I know the listeners, you know, when, when you go through grief, it's just like you have to find your own way through it, you know. There's not a— there's not a one way that says do this, this, and this and you'll feel better. It's such a personal journey. So he's, you know— and I, I came to realize that I understand that we had a soul contract and that he was going to go before me. Now, I didn't remember that, but I was told that by a psychic, you know. She pulled me out of a group and said, "Somebody in here lost a child." I raised my hand and she said, "You know that he was never gonna live a long life." And every hair stood on end because something in me recognized, oh my gosh, she's right. And she said, "If it wasn't at 19, it would have been at 22." He never was gonna live a long life. And I tease about it now and I say, "You know, Seth, I don't remember signing that soul contract with you. And when I see you again, you and I are gonna have a little talk about that." You know, and he laughs. I can feel him laughing. But it's like when we recognize there are things that are bigger than us and bigger than the plans that we have in our life, and we can accept those, we can begin to heal. And I think music is just— it's a language everybody understands. Because there was so much that I could not put in words. I was in talk therapy. I tried to talk it through. But I couldn't talk through the grief, and it wasn't until I started playing the bowls and really playing them that I began to keen and groan and make sounds that never came out in talk therapy. It was the grief was going, knock knock, lady, let me out, you know. And there it was in training with the crystal singing bowls. And sometimes, Brian D Smith, the sounds of the bowls sounded like nails on a chalkboard. And I recognized they are reflecting my grief. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up. So you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper, thoughts I don't always get to to on the podcast, essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it, the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing, listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories. Who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there. Wow, wow. Thanks, thanks so much for sharing that. So when you had that experience of the shooting star and hearing Dylan's voice, was he with you physically when he passed, or was he somewhere else?

No, he was somewhere else. I got the news, you know, and it's just like you get that phone call and you go, I don't think so, not my life, not my son, not— no, no, I don't think so. Boom, right? And I write about it in my book, Sacred Vibrations, and it was a very vulnerable, as you all can understand, time and moment because not long, maybe 2 hours or 3 hours after the call came, there's been an accident and I got a call from an official that said, "What do you want to do with his remains?" And it was just like, wait, what? Yeah, don't go there with me, not yet. Like, and that's what I mean, like, I think in our culture and in our lives, we don't talk about death so much. I mean, obviously, if it's an older person, you know, and in the grief therapy, we talk about when you lose a parent, you lose your past. When you lose a partner, you lose your present. But if you lose a child, you lose your future. And Dilma has made it very clear to me, Mom, you didn't lose your future, we just have another future. And it's just, I guess in our lives, you know, it comes down to, can I accept what shows up for me? Can I accept it? Can I embrace it? Can I live with it? Can I work to heal it? And once again, I come back to music being the language that I knew so well. You know, I sang in so many different languages. It didn't matter, you know, if it was Italian or French or German or Czech or English, Spanish, it doesn't matter because people get it. They get the vibrations of what's in the music. Yeah, it's—

Wow. Well, thanks. Thanks so much for sharing that. And I'm sorry for your loss. I know I can relate to what that feels like, that sudden loss. My daughter was 15. So, you know, you have that vision of their future. And it was, it was just as sudden. It was like she went to bed one night and didn't wake up the next morning. So that feeling of disbelief, that feeling of shock, um, I can relate to that. It's really interesting to me because I, I love music. I mean, like, I'm— there was a show, what was it called, um, Soundtrack of Zoe something. There was a show a few, a couple of years ago, this, this girl, when she would be having emotions Everybody in her mind would start singing and dancing. And that's how my life is. It's like I have an emotion, I have a feeling, and a song pops into my head. So I understand that relating to music and really feeling it deeply. But to go from that musical career to this very specific, you know, where it's the sound, and, and so explain to me the crystalline nature, crystal sound bowls, or say metal sound bowls. And when we were— before we started recording, you mentioned something about 432 megahertz. So what is— what does that mean?

Yeah, there's like— I teach over 120 hours of training. Like, there's, there's so much depth in this world, you know. And I— one of my students was a well-known therapist, and she was like, Geraldine, I couldn't imagine what you could possibly teach me. You know, you tap the bowl, you tap it over here, you swirl it, you swirl it this way. Like, what else is there? And she said, my mind is just blown because I think there really is more and more emphasis now on music as a medicine. I was privileged to speak in Washington, D.C. last year at a conference, Music as Medicine, with the Kennedy Center, the National Institutes of Health, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Renee Fleming Foundation. And they had never heard the crystal singing bowls before. So it was some of our leading scientists, medical medical doctors, music therapists, and researchers. And, you know, there's a lot being done with dementia, with Parkinson's, with cancer, with hospice, with PTSD, with anxiety. There's just— with pregnancy, there's, there's so much. I mean, it's music, as you said, you know. And, and yet me as a musician, I have albums where I've put the bowls in songs, you know. And so that's a whole kind of different thing. The bowls are holding a— I'm going to just name it a sacred space that brings another kind of instrument that's very ethereal. And I'm going to say that when you hear the sounds of the bowls, your mind goes, oh wow, that's music! Oh, you know, so like if I, if I tap this for you just to— so if you hear this, oh wow, that's music, that's cool, right? And in the moment that you hear this sound for most people, the mind becomes still. The mind begins to focus, and in that moment when the mind is focusing on the sound, you drop down deep in your body. So we can say that you come pretty easily from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind, and that's really where, where healing can happen. Like, you know, you drop in your body. So with the singing bowls, they As I said, they're relatively new instruments, and being crystalline and pure quartz, they can be received quite easily by our own bodies because our blood and our bones are quartz-like in structure. So again, like, I love the metal singing bowls. I had a set of them. Dylan loved them too. We had those since he was— I had it before he was born. Um, but when I heard those, it was like Wow, it was something so different and so beautiful, and it reminded me of sounds that I knew. I can't explain it, just it was familiar to me, those sounds, and they felt very comforting. So the bowls, if you think about them as instruments, they can be tuned as music can be tuned. So normally today we tune to 440 Hz, is the A note. So all the orchestras, most of all the pop music and everything that you hear today is has the tuning of 440 Hz. With the singing bowls, I can work with bowls that are tuned lower. So in this case, the A is 432 Hz, and that's the set that I, I prepared today for, for us to share. Now what makes them unusual is that the pure quartz is fired at high temperatures and then it's infused with substances, alchemies, precious gemstones such as emerald or ruby, earth substances such as frankincense or charcoal, minerals from the earth such as vanadium, or precious metals such as gold and silver. So those get infused and fired at high temperatures, and then quartz being an amplifier, a transmitter, and a receiver— when you hear the bowls, those elements are also being amplified. So, you know, at the beginning as a professor, I was like, wow, these are really cool, but it was like, okay. And when I got into it. It's like, no, Geraldine, there's, you know, because there's a lot of talk about woo-woo and, you know, it's kind of out there, etc. But in the meantime, now there's more and more science that is being put behind what sound really does. And it is truly very different if you play a platinum bowl or if you play a ruby bowl. So like this first one here is a ruby bowl. Ruby has the elements, let's say, of nobility Red connects with the root chakra. There's an aspect of ruby that's very much about transformation. And again, ruby's been revered for years and years and years as a beautiful stone. So it's different if, if I play that than if I would play a platinum bowl. You people will probably feel different things. But important to understand is that with the singing bowls, it's not again like grief, it's not a one-size-fits-all. You might say, Geraldine, I love the sound of that red bowl. And somebody else might say, oh no, I love the brown bowl, you know. So it's very personal, just like our tastes in music are.

Wow, that's really, it's really fascinating because I really didn't know that there were— I thought like a note was a note, A is A and B is B. So that's not true.

No. And you know, when I was singing opera at the, for example, at the Zurich Opera, we did a Scarlatti opera and it was with a Baroque orchestra. So the, the A was tuned down. So for example, the notes that I knew so well in my throat— let's say an F note was lower than I knew it— and I remember thinking, oh wow, this feels, this feels good. It's different, it's kind of warmer, it's, it's not as brilliant. And the whole, the whole story about tuning is very interesting. There was— there became a standardized tuning for music in 1939, and And more because, let's just say, a violinist came from Japan to play in London, or, you know, a soloist came from Germany and came to play in New York, they'd have to be able to tune to a standard kind of tuning. So that was set in 1939 as 440 Hz for the A note. But imagine before that, musicians just got together and maybe they played together and tuned together, right? Since that time, we do use technically 432, the lower A note. Then there's another tuning that's used quite often now that's 528 Hz, so that's a higher tuning. And you know, you can't say one is better. Once again, it's really different for each person, but all of them are unique and all of them bring different elements. So like when I'm working with people with grief, or when I'm working with cancer patients or hospice patients or veterans Um, I'll switch it up. It's, it's not that I go in with one tuning and say this is the be-all and end-all. Not at all. Each bowl orchestra is unique.

So you, you said you started playing the bowls as an instrument, and then you were working with Dylan, you found that they could be used as sort of medicine. And then how did it evolve from there into becoming what it is now?

Gosh, sometimes I look at my life and I just go, how did that happen? I think, you know, in those moments, as you know so well with your daughter, like, it's just like, how do you, how do you make sense of anything? How do you put your life back together? But you can't put it back together because it's never going to be what it was, right? And it's sort of, it's like It just happened step by step, and there was a moment where it was pretty hard for me to get up out of my bed, and, um, I just made the decision that if I didn't do something to help other people, I would probably never get up out of my bed. And so I made a call to the Cancer Support Community, which is a local organization that offers alternative ways of health and wellness to cancer patients and their families. And I said I'd like to offer a crystal singing bowl meditation. And they were like, great, we've never had that. We've had the metal singing bowls and gongs, but what's the crystal bowls? And so Brian D Smith, if you could imagine at that time, I've never led a meditation. I, I'm still deep in my own grief, and I wrote myself a script and I came with my set of bowls and I started playing and I created really a sacred circle. There was about 25 cancer patients, and we talked and shared, and I felt like, wow, this is a group of people that know and understand what I'm feeling without having to speak any words about it. They understood what this kind of serious— seriousness is about. And I started playing the bowls, and it grew into such a relationship of love and friendship, and I've been doing it for 9 years. And they helped me to learn my craft. And there— I laugh now, you know, there came a moment where I was just like, okay, I'm glad I have my script so I can make sure that I do things accurately and with integrity. I'm glad their eyes are closed so they don't see that I'm, you know, using my notes. And at one point it was just like, Gerald, just let the script go. Like, open your heart and work. Open your heart and allow everything you know about music and everything you know about healing to come through. That was a big moment. That was, that was a big moment to really trust, like, you are where you're supposed to be. No, you don't plan that your child leaves before you, but you are where— just like what you're doing. I'm sure you didn't plan that, right?

Absolutely not.

And it grew out of a deep desire to help yourself and help others. Yeah.

So you, you mentioned, um, we touched on soul planning a little bit, and you mentioned that Dylan is, is your big angel. So do you feel like he's your partner in what you're doing now?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he was big in life, you know, and we were very, very close. But he's bigger now. And there's things that I write about in the book, like for example, there's one story that's incredible to me. It was a few years ago, at, at right in December, at, uh, before Christmas. And I do consultations, so I help people put together singing bowl sets for themselves. And I had a woman on the screen, um, that was in another state, and she was sitting in front of this beautiful Christmas tree with purple and turquoise balls. And so we were talking about perhaps what notes, what area of her body she wanted to work in, and I hear him— and he comes most often on my right side— Mom, go get her the purple ball. And I knew exactly what he was talking about. I was like, no, son, I decided to keep that bowl for me. He's going, Mom, go get her the purple bowl, and don't even think of bowl hoarding. That bowl is for Brenda, right? So Okay, I go get her the bowl. She loves it. So then further on in the consultation, he's like, go get her the small D note. I'm like, and the small C note? No, son, that's really in my private collection. He's like, no, Mom, that belongs to Brenda. So those two bowls went to Brenda, and, um, we built her a little set. And a couple of years later, she called me crying. She was right before our Level 2 training, and she said Geraldine, you won't believe what happened. The table that I had my bowls on, I was ready to do a presentation to some of my clients. I heard this huge crash in the other room and the bowl shattered except for those two bowls.

Oh wow.

Those two bowls were sitting on the top of all the shards. And it's like, Brian, you can't make that up, you know. So we eventually built her another set based on those two bowls, but I understood, and she understood what those two bowls were about, um, and why they fit her work and her so perfectly. And they did not— I mean, that was a miracle that they did not break.

Wow. So when people get started at this, um, because you talked about consulting, you talked about sets of bowls, do people usually start with one bowl? Do they buy a whole set? I assumed, I assumed that they probably came in sets, but it sounds like you mix and match them.

Yeah, they're one of a kind. So what you see on the table, it's all one of a kind. And I'll feel into who I'm working with and, you know, what do they need. So for example, I work with, um, Janae Aiko, a singer who's doing beautiful work, and she's integrating the bowls into her music. She— this is a whole different thing, but as a musician, she loves to sing in particular keys. So she loves the note of E, and that's where we started. So for example, she did the Triggered Protection Mantra, which was, uh, just her and her voice and 3 bowls. And we worked with that E as the basis to it because that is the note that she just absolutely loves. Now, that E also has to do with your solar plexus, once again, your power of a thousand suns in your belly and, and your self-esteem and courage and confidence and that. Fits so perfectly with her. I, I write a little bit about that kind of individual work in the book, like, because, you know, and since we've done other things depending on what song she has to sing, but if someone comes to me and they're a musician, then we'll talk through, um, keys. And for example, I work with Victor Wooten, who's an incredible 5-time Grammy Award-winning bass player, and he can play in any key. So he's not a singer, right? So, um, With singers, you want to find keys that— musical keys that really feel good to their voice. Victor can play in any key. So like, we did a piece called Bowls and Bass that's in the key of E-flat. So it, it really depends, very individual, you know. Are you working with children? Um, what, what is it? And it's again this whole path of self-expression, self-discovery, moving through grief, moving through physical pain or illness is very, very individualized. And each of those bowls there's over 600 bowls here in the studio. They're, they're one of a kind. Each one is a unique piece of sonic art. And I think that's the thing that helped me so much, especially working with the bowls, was what soothes my soul right now. Do I like that, um, 432 Hz tuning? Do I prefer to play it with music today? And then I have other instruments that I sometimes play with. So then they're all in tune. It's, um, it's really a beautiful creative journey to discover what feels good. So sometimes people start with one bowl. It also depends on, on the budget, on what, what's in your budget, because they're, they're not inexpensive. And, um, and then we put sets together. But you can also just sit, you know, you could sit with one bowl. For example, if I chose Let's just say I chose this bowl. And I might want to just work with a hum. So I might want to do, mm, and feel my voice entrain with the sound of the bowl. It's very comforting. I might want to do something like, ah, ah. So there were times like when I first worked with the grief where I just made sounds like that, and it blew my mind because they were, they were keening, they were groaning, they were sounds that you don't express when you talk, and they weren't music. They were just guttural sounds of pain. But the bowl, by playing the bowl, it— and I used one single bowl at the beginning— by just playing that one bowl, it became like, it became like my best friend in that moment. It was hugging me. It was going, "Jeralyn, you're okay. Let it roar, you know? Let it express." And that I'll never forget. When I— after he died and I first started working with It was one bowl. It was selenite, which is that crystal is about grounded white light. And I groaned for like 50 minutes just playing that again and again and again and again. And then I got up, went to the bathroom to wash my face, and there was light in my eyes. So I was like, okay. And besides that, I felt my son's presence. So when I started—

sorry that you mentioned selenite. Oh my gosh, I hold this when I'm doing my interviews. I just got this in Arizona a few weeks ago and, uh, it feels really good in my hand, so I just hold it when I'm doing interviews.

It's a palm stone. So, you know, um, our card deck, which I had shared with you before we started, we made a special edition and it comes— one of the versions of it comes with a selenite palm stone that has the Flower of Life carved on it. Oh, wow. It's just beautiful. That selenite is— it's grounding. It's, it's a bridge, heaven and earth. It's cleansing, it's clearing, it's, it's, it's a very special stone. That was the first bowl that I really started to express the grief with. And then I saw there was light in my eyes. And I felt this— I felt Dylan's presence in the room when I started, like I felt he was guiding me. There was like a selenite-ish, like, sort of misty white presence in the room. So I felt safe. And I think when we go through grief, One really important thing is that you feel safe, because the feelings are so huge that you've never, you've never felt anything like that before.

Right? Right. It's interesting, as we talk about grief, and you mentioned going out and helping other people, because, you know, there are, there are no stages of grief that are set, and they don't go in a particular order. But there's some things that we generally kind of experience or go through. And for a lot of us, like, maybe the final step is helping others. But it's interesting for you, it sounds like they came pretty early in the process and that kind of drew you, drew you out.

Yeah, I, I remember that I had one moment where I just thought, I can't go on. And I had a moment where I thought, I'm going to go in the kitchen, I'm going to get my kitchen knife and I'm going to end it. And I was just like, Geraldine, what are you doing? And I called my mom And she knew exactly where I was. I didn't say her those words, but she knew exactly where I was. And she just said to me, if you take your life, I'll kill you first. And it was just, it was so sobering. I never fell to that level of despair again after that. But it was just that moment that the grief is so huge and overwhelming. And you know, you can't change the fact.

Right.

It's like, so you're helpless and you're— yeah, but I never fell that low again.

Thank you. I appreciate you sharing that. I think it's important that we share all those emotions that can be, I guess, maybe shameful for some people. I've, I have felt that. I felt it getting a knife or driving my car, you know, off of a bridge or something. I've gone through that. And I remember when I was early in my grief, and I was listening to a podcast, it's one of the reasons I do what I do. And I heard a mother who had lost her daughter, and she talked about feeling like stepping in front of a bus. And just her saying that made me feel more normal. And I think a lot of people hold that feeling and shame and think I shouldn't feel this way. But when you lose a child, you know, your son was technically over 18, but I would say it's still a child. And, you know, a teenager, as a parent, you know, our job is to protect them. It's to be with them. And, you know, you want to, you want to be where they are. The pain is so intense, you don't feel like you can take it. And you know that, as you said, this is not going to change. This is going to be this way, quote, forever. So those feelings combined can make you feel despondent.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's huge. It's huge. And, you know, I don't wish that on my worst enemy. I just— it's, it's so big for a parent, and yet there is healing possible. And I see it in my— I saw it that first night when I played the bowl, and then I saw light in my eyes and joy. It was like, wait, this is— this is what's happening here, you know? Like, and Dylan communicating with me, Brian, like, it was also when I would fall into that really deep space, I couldn't find him, and then I'd start to panic. And when I was able to lift myself out into some version of hopefulness, he communicated with me. So in my book, I tell all kinds of stories of the signs. And there's a film that we made that's a 20-minute film that comes with a book that you see all the different pictures and videos of the signs. It's, it's pretty— it's been such a comfort to me. And I want to make people understand that that is definitely possible for all of us, that death doesn't mean they're gone. I mean, he's, he's as— I mean, just like the story I told, you know, like, Mom, go get that for Brendan. It's like, son, leave me alone. You know, it's like, he just— he, he's become sometimes my, my angel boss. And we laugh about that because again, he was a very big and strong kid. But there's such a humor in all of it and such a love in all of it. And I know that he's helping me to help others. God, I wish it were different, you know, but again, as I've learned, it wasn't our destiny, and I have to be able to accept that, and I have to be able to really embrace that and understand there's a bigger picture to our lives. And, you know, I will see him again, and I feel him now every day of my life. I was just telling someone who was really in deep grief, that there came a moment, um, and she, she didn't lose a child, she lost actually a limb. And, you know, her life changed without that limb, you know, and she became an amputee. And we were just talking about the moment where you recognize— I could feel Dylan so strongly, and I recognized, oh my goodness, he's imprinted in my heart. Forever. Like, he's, he's here, he's, he's a part of me. And so we were talking just about that body part. It's always a part of her, you know. It's important that we can, that we can embrace the loss in a way that we can integrate, that it can uplevel us. But because I'm thinking there's one of our hospice doctors here that talks about there might not be a cure for everything, Brian. There might— we might not, you know, might not be our destiny. And there might not be a cure for everything, but everybody can heal. Yeah, I think that's so profound to understand. Like, we can, we can heal. We might not be able to cure, and we don't know the bigger picture of our lives.

I think that's so important. And as you said that, I was reminded of two things. I have a friend who passed from cancer, and she went to see a healer, and then it was few weeks or months later, she, she passed. But, you know, we're like, she healed, Brenda, she, Brenda healed, she, she had a lot of trauma that she'd gone through. She didn't really accept herself as she was. She did all that before she, before she transitioned physically. So she did heal. And I interviewed a doctor, it was Brad Stewart. And he talked about that as a doctor, you know, you're trained that you have to cure people, and you can't always cure everything with the body. But understanding, understanding that you have an understanding that I have, that there's a bigger picture, that there, there was pre-birth planning. Uh, I blame my daughter for that, so I plan to have a talk with her when I see her too. But, uh, there is, there's that, and there's also this bigger picture that we don't, we don't understand. And when people sometimes hear this, they think, well, are you saying it's my fault that my, my child died so I could, so I could have this? So now I feel guilty. It's, it's not that at all, because even though they're sacrificing some time here on Earth, they're— we're all in it together. We're all cooperative going through this, right? So they've got their role, we've got their role to play, we've got our role to play. And I, I kind of jokingly say my role is the harder role. I have to stay here, and this place is hard. So, um, our kids are still with us, they still care about us, they still love us, and What I love about talking to someone like you that's further along in this journey is I think we can give hope to people that are early on because we, we know that feeling of having no hope at all.

Yeah. Again, I don't wish it on anyone, but when people are in that situation, there's— I just know that sound can embrace you and hold you and help you. But again, there's no words that anyone can say it's such a personal journey, and I could feel it happening with me inside myself.

Mm-hmm.

You know, that again, there'd be great despair, and then I would be able to bring myself higher. And then like, there was one situation where I fell asleep and I was dreaming about Dylan, and I could feel him. I could smell his cologne. He loved, you know, different kinds of cologne. I could smell his cologne. He was talking to me, he was comforting me, we were laughing. And, and then I drifted back off to sleep again. And it was so real, Brian, that the next morning when I woke up, I jumped out of bed and I ran to his room. I was like, oh, he's there!

I—

this whole thing was— I had dreamed it, you know. He's not dead, right? And then it was like, what did you do? And I dragged myself back to my own room I sat down and then I looked at my nightgown and there was a white feather embedded in the thread of my nightgown. And I'm like, this is insane. I took a picture of it because I don't have anything with down in my house. I'm very allergic. And there was this white feather embedded in one thread of my nightgown, just like, hi, Mom. And it was like, I think that's what they call a visitation. I wasn't sure, you know, but it was so real. He was warm. I could smell him. I mean, it was just like, oh my gosh, he's not gone. Like, it was, it was so instinctive to just run to his room. And then to, you know, realize the ludicrous, how ludicrous that was. But there he was.

Well, it's, it's not ludicrous. The thing is that, for my understanding, is wherever our loved ones go, where we go, it's, as my friend Farrah Gibson says, it's just Heaven's 3 feet off the floor, as she puts it. They're right here next to us. And when we, when we dream at night, we, we travel. We actually travel. We don't remember most of that, but every once in a while we get a chance to bring a memory back with us, and that's, that's what we call a dream visit. So absolutely, absolutely, that was, that was a visit.

Yeah.

So for people— oh, go ahead.

No, you go ahead.

For people, I mean, we're talking about sets of bowls and we're talking about musicians and stuff. For someone that's listening now and they want to say, I want to get started on sound healing journey, where do we start? Where's a place to start with that?

I think that you make a consultation with me if it's something that you want to purchase a bowl. But otherwise, like, Dylan was like, Mom, you have to make this available to everybody. So we created— he inspired me to create a YouTube channel. I think we started in 2017, and there's like a big free library of over 200 pieces of music and meditations. So that's there for people to listen to, including there's 3 2-hour loops. So if you want to just put the sound on and just immerse yourself in it, there's that. And then he inspired me to create this app. So we just soft launched it. It's going to come further out now in the market, but it's a platform where there's 20 visualizers and you can learn about the science of sound. There's longer meditations on there. There's a meditation for children. What does constructive and destructive sound like? You learn from many of the pioneers in the field. And that was the other thing. I was sitting on the couch one day with my mom and he was just like, "Mom, we gotta make an app." I'm like, "Son, I'm busy." It was the same thing that he did with Kardec. "Mom, we're gonna make a card deck." "No, son, I'm busy right now. Like, I don't wanna do that." But when he gets insistent, and again, he was a big kid, and when he, goes like that, I know that I have to listen. And we started the app before COVID We started the app 4 years ago, and it's just built and built, but it was the same idea, same with the card deck. So the deck is, um, is that the Crystal Sound Healing Oracle, and each card has a QR code on it so you can play with the cards and listen to the sound of your singing bowl. So those are 2 inexpensive ways for people— 3, the YouTube channel is free— but the card deck and the app for people to really listen and explore. And as Dylan said to me, Mom, you know, they got to have it in their back pocket. It's like, okay, son, you know, you try to make your mom cool. Okay, I get it. Like, you know, we have to stay up to date with all this technology. Um, so those two things. And then they can make a consultation appointment at our website, crystalcadence.com. I teach an introductory class that's 4 hours. I teach, um, a 32-hour Level 1, a Level 2, a Level 3, and an advanced retreat. So again, it's over 120 hours of training. It depends how deep you want to go. And, you know, we've had all different kinds of people, from doctors and nurses and lawyers and yoga teachers and Reiki masters. Um, it really is who are you and how do you want to integrate sound in your life? Is it just for you? Is it just for your— you and your family? Is it for friends that you want to give sound baths to be able to give them to friends? Or do you really want to be— become a practitioner? So it really depends on what you want to do, you know. And the field and the concept of music as medicine— like, I just had a pretty incredible experience happen when I was teaching at Victor Wooten's camp in Nashville. And one of the professors that was there, we did an exercise where I had everybody toning, so everybody was just making sounds with their voices while I was playing the bowls. And moving a little bit, moving their bodies. And he just raised his hand afterwards and he said, 'Jeralyn, I'm, I'm flipped. What happened?' He said, 'I, I have Parkinson's and I just experienced no more dizziness. My legs were stable. I wasn't wobbling anymore.' He said, 'What happened?' You know, so, and I've had the experience with Parkinson's patients before where working with them with sound and the sound stops the trembling. And then the concept is, okay, how do we go further with that, that they can integrate that into their lives more and more and more?

Mm-hmm.

So it just depends, you know, do people want to have a bowl themselves? Do they want to just— and many people just want to work with their own prayers and their own meditations, and they use it when they get up and before they go to bed. Or again, it's, it's very individualized. And that's why I love to consult virtually, you know, just to see who's, who's they're across the screen from me, and what are they feeling? What do they need?

Yeah, yeah.

My little, my little angel guide that helps me.

Yeah. And you touched upon your books, and tell people what they'll find in your books. It sounds like you got a lot of stories about, about Dylan and, and you.

And yeah, so this is the book Sacred Vibrations. It's released by Hay House, and this image is actually from a scientific instrument called the cymascope, that measures and photographs what sound looks like made visible. So this is actually a small f-bowl, and it has 22 of these little antinodes. And so if you think about the beauty of this image, is inherent in each crystal bowl, and each one is different like a snowflake. Um, and those are circulating in the fluids of our bodies. And if we you know, say that we're about 70% water in our bodies, just imagine that as you hear the sound, there's more and more coherence being created in your body. So again, like, another thing with my mom, like, she used to upset me very much, just, you know, how parents can be, and they say something, you feel criticized or judged or whatever. But the more I played the bowls, I just saw and felt like she's love. There's just love between us. She could say whatever she wanted to say, and it might have triggered me in the past, but after working with the bowls intensely, it didn't anymore. The bowls helped me, I think, to just recognize we are love and to keep building that bridge of love as much as I can, you know. Um, so in the book, it talks about partly my experiences as a musician and, and how my career, I think, led me to finding the bowls and all the miracles with Dylan. As I said, there's a 20-minute video that is attached to a QR code on page 233 of the book. I talk about the science of sound, some of the history of the crystal singing bowls, and then we created these little— this is that— this is the story of the feather that I just told you. That's the feather. Oh wow. Wow. Um, but we created these little, um, sound RXs. So there's little, um, there's little stories, little prescriptions of different things that myself or my practitioners that I've trained have experienced with the bowls. And then, um, there's different stories by musicians and some of the leading scientists so that, you know, I want to make sure also as a professor that people understand, like This isn't woo-woo. Like, there's really science and there's a whole bunch of healing happening. And, you know, as some of the leading scientists have said to me, like, where is that crossing of science and spirituality? You know, that partly is where music is. It crosses because music uses a particular structure. There's the theory of music that I'm working with, and then there's, as you know, Brian D Smith, there's the ineffable, there's the miracles, there's the um, the spiritual side.

Yeah, well, I, what I would say, that the supernatural is just what we can't explain yet. Um, I, I don't, I don't know that, that fine line between what's supernatural. Um, you know, if you think about, if you went back to ancient societies and you showed them technology we have today, they would, they would say that's magic, right? That's, that's impossible. You can't, you can't communicate wirelessly. You can't see an image on the screen of someone who's 3,000 miles away. And we say, no, that's, that's easy to do, and we can explain how it's done. We know exactly how it's done. And I think that what we call supernatural now is just what we don't really understand yet. And part of that is because we have this mindset that says it's impossible, that if someone passes, if their body stops functioning, then their brain stops functioning, and therefore they're no longer conscious, so they can't communicate with you. And that's the blinders that we put on as a society. So once we open our minds up to the possibility, then it all becomes, you know, I think, really clear to us.

I mean, I remember the moment, and I was very terrified because as a child, when my grandparents or great-grandparents passed, we didn't— it was sort of kept from us, right? So I never experienced what death looked like, and I was terrified to experience it with my son. But, and I write about it in the book, that it actually became one of the most beautiful and touching moments of my life because we're all going to go there and it's, it's important not to be afraid of that. And, you know, just being able to connect with his body and I washed it and I mean, it was just, it was a beautiful and sacred moment of parting, but he wasn't there, Brian. Yeah. He wasn't there. I mean, he was, but he wasn't. And then when he started to communicate the night he died with the shooting star, it was just like, wow, there's so much beyond what, you know, we want to try to track with this. And this just— this can't do it.

Yeah, exactly. So these experiences can, can open us up to these possibilities. And, you know, people have asked me, and would you be doing this if your daughter hadn't passed? I'm like, absolutely not. I was actually on a kind of a spirit— I was on a spiritual journey. I was studying the afterlife because I had a fear of death. I had a massive fear of death when I was young, for the first 35 years of my life, probably. But when Shana passed, then that really launched me into like, really understanding it, right? And then having to learn how do I Heal and grow with this. And then, you know, as you were saying, it gets to the point where it's like, how do I help other people understand this? Because I'm looking at these other, you know, people that are going through that and thinking, I don't want people to be living with no hope, with no understanding of— I— you can reach out to your loved one and you can find ways to raise your vibration to match more closely with theirs, you know, that, that that harmony, that where we can start to resonate and feel them. And as long as we stay in a very low vibration, it doesn't make it impossible. It just makes it a lot more difficult.

And as I had mentioned, like, that's what made me so afraid when he would— I could feel him and communicate with him, and then he was gone. And recognizing, and Geraldine, you, you have a job to do. Like, you can't wallow in your despair and your grief. Because when you do, he can't find you. Just exactly what you so beautifully said, Brian. Like, we have to find ways to nurture and keep our vibrational frequency higher to really be able to be the bridge.

Yeah.

But when you're deep in grief, it's like, okay, how do I do that?

Yeah. Well, that's, that's what you're helping people do. So we've talked about the book and we talked about the app and we talked about the cards. I assume people can find that on your website. So Tell people what your website is again, please.

It's crystalcadence.com. And we actually— I'm very proud of this— we, we came out with two pieces of music. One is Pentatonic Visions, it's an album, and the other is Joy Reboot, it's a song. And all that, all our music is on our website too. But so there's also lots of music to listen to. The Pentatonic Visions album is based on the pentatonic scale, so it's built on 5, and there's a lot to say about that. When I was living in Germany in 2008, they discovered these little bird bone flutes that they, uh, then traced back to 40,000 to 60,000 years ago, and many of those bird bone flutes were tuned to the pentatonic scale. So there's something inherent in that structure of sound. And so I— it's an hour and a half, the album, and it's also in collaboration with Chris Scholler, who's a beautiful, beautiful musician. And so there's soundscapes, half of the album is soundscapes, and half of it is just bowl meditations, and then there's two spoken guided meditations on it. So I'm really, really happy about that album. And then the Joy Reboot was, uh, it's kind of what we've talked about, the power of music to unite us, and it's based on the melody of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven. So it's based on that melody, and I sang that Ninth Symphony many times in Germany. And I— the last time I sang it was— I was pregnant with Dylan, and after he was born— first of all, he came 3 weeks early— and then after he was born, whenever he would cry, I'd put the symphony on on, and boom, he was still as a mouse.

Yeah.

So that was also one of my first experiences of music as medicine, being able to quiet my, my, my boy. But it's a combination of different styles of music. So there's some rap in it, there's some— Johnavi Harrison, who's a devotional kirtan singer, she's in it. So it's how does music unify us. The piece itself, the Ninth Symphony, was played when the Berlin Wall fell down in 1989, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and the theme has become the theme of the European Union. So I feel like now also, just where we're at in our country and in the world, like, music has the power to unify us, and we have the ability to drop all differences when we're, when we're grooving together, when we're enjoying music together. And I feel like that's going to become more and more— it's important. That we find ways to unify. Yes, of course we have differences, but how do we find harmony? Because in the end, we're all human beings, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm gonna definitely check that out for myself. That sounds really interesting. Well, Jeraldine, we're coming to the end of our time. Thanks so much for being here and for doing this today. It's been a pleasure to meet you. Any parting messages you want to leave with the people that are listening?

Sure. Let me just play you a short little experience. Is that okay for you?

Absolutely.

Okay, so I invite everyone to allow your breath to slow down and to deepen and to know if there's anything that's heavy in your heart So allow the sound to embrace you, to hold you, and to know that you are never alone. So I set an intention for healing, for transformation. And send your great, great love through sound. Thank you, Brian, so much for having me. Thank you for all that you do to help bring love and healing to humanity. And I just give everybody a big sonic embrace, and thank you for listening today to our conversation. Thank you for allowing me to go so deep, and just, I treasure this, Brian. Thank you very much.

Yeah, it's been awesome. Great to get, get to meet you. So have a great rest of your afternoon. Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 lessons that you can learn from the near-death experience without going through all the trouble of dying to learn them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience. And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons. And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe that NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. www.grief-the-number-2-growth.com/NDElessons. I hope you enjoy it.