How Sound Heals: Ancestral Wisdom, Music, and Deep Transformation with Helane Marie Anderson

Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral. I'm James Barry. I am truly excited to share our next guest, Helene Marie Anderson. She's someone I actually have known since my oldest child was born. We really enjoyed getting to know her then. Later on, I learned about her involvement with sound therapy. I just was so excited to share her gifts with you. So I'm going to read her bio because it's, it's pretty long and amazing. Helene Marie Anderson is a multi-layered musician and composer, singer, pianist, harpist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Her unique style of working with sound blends her years of studying healing modalities with contemporary music and sound healing. Helene is currently a featured sound meditation producer and artist for Apple Fitness Plus/Platoon, releasing more than 15 sound meditations in 2023 and 2024 that are available on all streaming platforms. Also in 2024, she co-produced and released an album of original songs and mantras entitled Listen to the Trees, featuring 9 singles and remixes. On the wellness front, Helene is the bestselling author of You're Meant to Sing, which is 10 Steps to Unlock Your Inner Voice, a transformational voice coach, certified craniosacral therapist and bodyworker, sound healer, yoga instructor, and teacher. She has served as an adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music for the past 14 years and was previously artistic administrator at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she produced concerts at both Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. Helene holds a Master of Arts degree from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Music degree in piano performance from Salem College. She also holds a certification in sound healing and sound therapy from the Globe Institute in San Francisco. Helene teaches her own courses in sound healing and vocal alchemy through her business, Sacral Sounds, which she founded in 2014. She's truly a beautiful person and artist. I'm very excited for you to listen and make sure you stick around because she actually gives us a taste of her some sound healing at the very end of the podcast. So here we go. Welcome, Helene-Marie Anderson. What came first, you being a musician or the sound healing? And then when did the healing part come into the music?

There's a long version and a short version. I'll stick with the short version for now. I am a lifelong musician. I, my parents used to joke I came out of the womb singing, but actually it was more like screaming. So I always sang. I sang in choir my whole life, like from the moment that I grew up in a church and would go to the choir when I was 4 or 5 years old. Like, I always sang. So it was really in my DNA, music, but not in my literal DNA. Speaking of the ancestral lineage and the name of your podcast, my parents were not musicians at all. In fact, they hated piano lessons, so they weren't going to force me or my brothers to take piano lessons. So when I was 9 or 10, I basically told my parents that they could keep my allowance if they let me take piano lessons because I was so self-motivated. In my entire life living at home, they never once told me to practice, but there are a number of occasions where they had to tell me to stop practicing. So that is the origin of my, of my musical training. But I went to college as a piano major and a minor in arts management, actually. And then I— Went to Amsterdam for a year on a Rotary scholarship, studied piano, and then I started studying voice more seriously. I always took voice lessons, but it was— my major was piano. And then I came back and went to graduate school and got my master's at Indiana University in arts administration. But while I was there, I was accompanying people for their voice lessons, and I was taking voice lessons myself. So I never stopped Doing music. I just— my primary focus for a long time was doing the administration, and then I would do music for myself.

It's funny because in today's day and age, you just always hear people saying, I want to perform. I want, you know, look at me, look at me. Like, what kept you from embracing the performance aspect at that age?

Well, as a classical musician, it's very challenging, and there's such a high level of perfectionism in the way that it is taught, the way that people interact, the way that if you're not one of the top people that touring all over the world or winning competitions, the place for you is to go be a professor at a university, get your doctorate at some school. And then I also recognized if you don't have an international performing career, you wouldn't be able to choose or be choosy about where you live. You would have to go wherever you got a job. So it was a very practical thing. I actually was planning to start my master's in piano when I came back to the US and decided to totally change course. And do the administration route. And there were two things, and it's ironic too, because it's something I want to touch on of just shifts in myself and also relates to the original question of getting to sound healing, which I'm getting to. But this idea that my ego was very driven by wanting to be the best at something. And I knew I couldn't be the best pianist or the best classical singer. I knew I'd be good. I was good, but I wasn't the best. But I knew doing administration that I had the business mind. My dad was an international businessman, so I was like, oh, I can be in the arts and be the best and run a major arts institution. So at that time, I was just motivated by different forces. So I chose to do the arts administration because I wanted to live in a big city. And at that time, I wanted to live on the East Coast. I was like, okay, I'm going to live between Washington, D.C. and Boston in one of the big cities. Ended up in New York. That was very specific that I was like, this is my life. I want to run Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, or Brooklyn Academy of Music. And that was my trajectory. And then I went on that trajectory and had the jobs that were the springboards to do that. And then my father passed away and then all these things changed in my makeup. And this was like 2007. And all of a sudden it was like all these things or gifts that I had in the healing arts that were kind of more my hobby and things I would do on the side, or I'd still play for myself here or there, or sing for myself here or there, I was ignoring them. And it just all of a sudden went on this very long journey to shift it all around. And so the way that sound came to me, I met a couple of the very early on sound bath practitioners in Los Angeles before it was really a big thing. And in fact, hired one of them to do a sound bath for my birthday. And I think that was 2011. I wasn't even at that moment called to it. So it's what's interesting about my thought process. It more just all of a sudden happened as my voice started to open up and I started to do more with my training in craniosacral work, but I really took a polarity therapy class that was a cleanse and a business class and getting clear that it was like, no, actually you're a musician first. You're like a musician before you are a craniosacral therapist, before you are an administrator, before you are this. So I had to kind of break down a lot of things to where it came into play. And I had a long journey with plant medicine that I've stepped away from now. It's, it felt like we had a completion. I had a completion for that part of my journey, but I remember the first experience I had in that realm, I was getting a very clear message that I was going to be the intersect where music and healing intersect. And at that time, I didn't know what that meant because in the more intellectual brain or of what already existed, music therapy or becoming a music therapist was the only kind of option. This whole idea about being a sound healer and sound baths didn't exist in that moment yet, not the way it does right this moment. We're at that like kind of tipping point where it's kind of very saturated right now and things are changing. But this idea at that moment, I didn't know what it meant. And so I started to explore this idea of music therapy and realized it was just a little too clinical for what it was that I felt like I would like to experience. And so I did do a sound training in San Francisco. It was 2013, 2014. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh yeah, this is where it all kind of starts to come together, all these aspects of who I am. But it's constantly shifting. And then lockdown happened. I had tried to learn to play the guitar multiple times in this life, and it just never spoke to me to play it. It never felt quite right in my body. I just never clicked the way piano clicked for me, the way other instruments click for me very easily. The guitar, for some reason, I liked the guitar. I just didn't like to play it myself. And so it just never quite felt right. And one of my friends, after trying to teach me a couple lessons, this is probably now we're talking April of 2020 when everything was locked down. And she said, well, why don't you just get a harp? She'd bought a cheap harp on Amazon and was starting to play. And I was like, oh, that's a good idea. But I knew, being a classical musician, I'm very particular about instruments. So I knew that playing a cheap harp off of Amazon was not going to work for me. So I asked my friend who was a harpist. I went and got a decent small harp that was kind of a starter harp. And I was like, oh, I'll just dabble. And I currently own now 4 harps and a minivan. So. You know, I am a childless woman in middle age who owns a minivan. So it's a consistent joke about that. And, and that kind of exploded my range of being able to not just tour with an acoustic instrument, but to learn a complicated instrument later in life. And it was a very strange thing where people are like, haven't you been playing the harp the whole time? I thought you were playing. I was like, no, it's been less than 5 years.

Is the harp like the guitar though? Like, so when you're going to retreats or events where you're doing the sound healing, are you bringing all 4 harps?

No, I only bring one harp at a time.

Okay. So it's not like one is providing a different sound or pitch than, than the other or something?

Well, no, they do. They have different purposes. And so I have now a small travel harp that I can take as a carry-on. That's an electric harp. So I have to plug it in to amplify. And I needed one that I could travel with. It's newer. And so I have that. And then I have a 27-string that's the same size as the first harp I got, which I've recently sold to a beautiful person because I was not needing 2 harps of the same size. And that's my warhorse harp that I take when I do sound therapy sessions in rehab clinics, or I go to small events, or I do that kind of thing where I'm not amplified, but it does have a— plugin. And then I have my slightly bigger lever harp that has a really big sound. It's great to record in and for smaller events. And then I now have a smaller pedal harp. And the pedal harp you can play in all the keys because the pedals change 3 different notes where the lever harps can only do 2 notes per string. And the, the layout of it though, where the guitar is very much like the chordal system of what happens, the layout of the harp is the same as the piano. It's like the keys are in order. So I already wasn't learning music. It's more the technique of the finger strength to be able to play harp, which I'm still learning and getting better at every day. And so it's just a slightly different thing. But being a classical musician, I just really appreciate having an acoustic instrument. I can play keyboards and I record stuff on MIDI and I have facility, But if I can't play a piano, I would rather play an acoustic instrument because there's a response, an emotional response from acoustic instruments that you can't get from electronic instruments.

That's interesting. Sound healing therapy. Is it any instrument or do people kind of fall into something like the harp? And does it also always involve the voice or is it just instrumental? Like, is there a kind of a specific definition of sound therapy or is it any sound and in any modality in any way?

Well, that's a really interesting question because this concept of sound bath is a Western concept, right? We're Western interpretation of how this sound therapy thing is. The instruments themselves are based on more ancient things like Tibetan bowls have been around for thousands of years. Some of the instruments in India have been around for thousands of years. The way that the key structures work in Indian ragas, is different than the Western system. There's a whole school of things that have been considered music as therapy or sound healing as therapy that's spanned over multiple different decades and thousands of years and eons or whatever the right word is that wasn't coming to me. But this idea that the instruments themselves, now you have this kind of gong and the crystal singing bowls, and people see this as sort of the standard You're doing a sound bath, you're playing crystal singing bowls, you're playing gong. Now, there are people that claim that voice is not sound healing, or people that claim that you can't hit the gong in the middle of the gong because that's not good energy or something. And I just say, there's a lot of this kind of rhetoric that goes around in the sound healing community that's not based in fact. To me, voice is the original instrument that came before anything else. So for me, the idea that the voice isn't healing in that capacity just doesn't make sense to me. The idea that you wouldn't hit a gong in the middle, which is the fundamental pitch of the instrument, doesn't make sense to me. And so this is the part coming from the musical background. Now, there are people that do sound healing that are not musicians that are also very effective sound healers because they understand the energy around it, because you are working with energy, with sound. Every instrument carries different vibration. I will use hand pans or tongue drums. I use Native American flutes, the harp now, and I didn't used to. When I first started, I was mostly using the crystal bowls and the gong. And then when lockdown happened, the gong just felt way too intense for what most people need, because the gong is a very intense energy for people. And that was more an intuition that it's not what's needed right now. And the harp, I feel like, came into my life at the right time to carry in the vibrational energy of what was needed. And so that's been the evolution. So kind of long answer to your question, but it's very subjective is the most accurate answer to your question. And certain people are going to resonate with different things. And even when I started doing sound baths, whatever, decade plus ago, my original approach was that there was all of this stuff happening and everything was intense and people wanted transformation. So A lot of the sounds or the things I was working with were very intense and sometimes kind of loud and they were really kind of opening it up. And I feel like my own evolution has been really back into this, okay, I'm relaxing the nervous system. I'm not transforming because sound therapy can have both effects. Now, if somebody comes to me and they say, I want more energy, then they might get a much more intense sound session to kind of— bring that energy out. But for the most part, everyone's nervous system, and I say everyone as a collective, as most people that I know have needed more regulation in the nervous system, then really intense sounds are too much for them. So it's really less about the choice of instrument. It can be because instruments can have specific medicine. Shakers are good for moving energy, for example. Drums are good for moving energy and getting people into more of a trance state. Any kind of rhythmic pattern can bring people into a trance state, but then you want to also bring in drones, and you want to bring in this element that people can really drop in or feel like they're held. So it's about understanding the nature of the different sounds and how they work. That's why handpans can be very relaxing for some people because they mimic this trance state with the rhythm. If there's somebody that's playing it, then it's very effective.

So a big piece of this is understanding not only the vibration of the instrument, but the effect it has on the human body. What effects do you see happen in the human body from this sound therapy?

It goes all over the map, what people experience. I always try and let people know who are not familiar with sound healing that what sound can do is bring things to the surface that are ready to either be seen, felt, or released. In the beginning, when I didn't explain it as well, or I was learning how to explain it better, people would feel a lot of anxiety or they would feel pressure or something would happen and they would just want to leave. They would have this really intense experience and they wouldn't stick it out. And now I'm very clear to explain to people what's happening in the beginning, if there are people who've never done sound before, because it doesn't happen all the time and it doesn't happen to everyone, but oftentimes people will have Reactions where they feel really anxious all of a sudden, or a sound is triggering for them. I had this experience myself because I had a teacher that would play a conch shell. I still don't like the sound of the conch shell, by the way. It's just one of those sounds that doesn't work for me. When he would play it, I would have this really visceral reaction. Oh, I don't like this at all. And he pointed out, well, then that's kind of what you need. It's kind of like sometimes the medicine is the thing that triggers you, is the thing you need to heal that. And so I remember he played it again after that conversation, and I still don't like the sound, but I was able to let it relax me instead of fighting it.

It sounds to me almost like certain sounds may have the resonance of, let's say, a trauma that you have in your body. And so to your point, like if that instrument or that sound vibration is tapping that trauma, that is sometimes what you need to actually access the trauma to work through it. Is it tapping into some, like, other life experience with that literal instrument, or does the sound vibration carry that emotional weight of sometimes triggering trauma?

I think it's both. I don't claim to have control over what happens in anyone else's experience, because people will often ask me, well, is this the right experience? Should I be experiencing that? There is no right. experience of sound. It's your experience, and your experience is valid, whatever it is, which also relates to life in general. The way that the singing bowls are tuned, for example, to get to the answer of your question, is they're tuned based on the C major scale. So you have these 7 notes that are of the C major scale. And so most singing bowl sets, you'll get 7 bowls, and you get those 7 white notes on the piano keyboard in the middle octave. Sometimes it's the octave below, depending on the bowls and the size of them. When you buy a chakra set of bowls, it is those notes on the piano keyboard. Now, Western tuning and the system and all of that didn't even exist, I don't know, 500 years ago, 600 years ago. It didn't exist. So this idea of Western notation in housing all of the blueprints for sound healing doesn't really make sense because there's evidence in the hieroglyphs and things and All the obelisks when you go to Egypt, because I've been lucky enough to go and you hit them and they're a tuning fork. So we don't really know, but it is our Western system interpretation of sound in other cultures and how it is translated into the way we approach sound healing. However, because we are Westerners, And we have in these last however many, 400 or 500 years, really listened to music from this concept of Western tuning, if we've grown up in Western countries. So our way of relating to music is based on this scale. We have a familiarity with it in the way our body responds to it, the way we listen to it in secular music and pop music and classical music and all of that. We have a relationship to the different key structures because this is the music we've listened to our whole lives. And so this approach to sound healing, it brings in that Western element. As a musician and a trained musician myself, I feel like it is important to understand the language of what it is you are presenting to other people. I kind of feel like if you don't understand at least the basics of the music theory, It's complicated for me because I do feel like it's going to teach a language in a class of a language you don't speak yourself a little bit, because very important to me just to understand. And then your intuition can still do things and people can still do really effective healing sessions with one singing bowl and a percussion tool. And when I teach people, I show them you can still do effective sound healing sessions with very few instruments. However, understanding the language helps you because certain bowls will work, and knowing the notes, if you're going to buy other instruments, if you're going to maybe eventually bring in a harp, or you're eventually going to bring in a xylophone or a handpan, understanding what key they're in and where the chords are is going to help you become a better player and understand which bowl transitions well when you're in a sound healing with people. Because that note matches this note on this instrument. So it's, it's kind of like the tool of how you piece things together. I personally feel is really important to understand.

You mentioned tuning forks, and I know that there is some bodywork where they actually will place them on the body. When you're talking about sound therapy though, is that, is that an example of sound therapy or are you, is sound therapy really more the sounds around you and how they're affecting you versus actually touching the body with the physical tuning fork or the instrument or something like that?

It's both. It's considered sound therapy. If I do a private session, I might put a bowl on someone's body and I might use the weighted tuning forks. That's what they're called. They're weighted tuning forks. And then I will use that on people and play music. Usually now these days I play music that I've recorded myself because energetically I understand what's happening in the space. I'll use both, but anything that uses sound and vibration falls under the category of sound therapy. You may just define it a little differently if someone's doing a private session in a room, like a massage room or something, and you're using other sounds around the body, or if you're doing a sound bath, which means you're doing it in a bigger space for a group usually. Although I've done full sound baths for just one person before.

So let's say someone's hired you to do sound therapy, what is the process? Obviously you sit and talk to them first to get an idea of what's going on. And then the second part of this question is how much of the actual sound therapy is inspired by the moment and how much of it is actually calculated based off of that conversation before you actually go in to start the sound therapy?

There's 2 different answers to that Question, because first, if it's a private session, I would approach it similarly to how I approach craniosacral therapy sessions. We'll have that brief intention setting. What are you here for? What are the ailments in your body? What is it that you are hoping to gain from the session today? And then I would put them on the massage table, and then I would probably do some hands-on work and some work with the tuning forks as well as Do some work with some of the bowls or that. I generally don't bring gong if it's just one person in a small room, because it's a little too much, I find, for people. It can be a little destabilizing. That's just been my experience. Some people only use gongs and that's totally their medicine. Everybody finds the medicine that works for them. And then if I go into a private sound session, because I'm often hired to do private sessions for people in their homes or— in locations that they rent, and when that happens, it depends on the occasion. If it's a birthday, if it's a bridal shower, whatever the occasion might be, I ask them what their intention is. I generally will direct it to the person of honor or the person that they're being remembered, or whichever is the intention that they're holding in that space. And then I will do a very brief intro of kind of what to expect. Let them lay down, guide them through the breath for a little while, and then drift off into the sound. I only plan what instruments I'm going to bring. If I'm doing a really big event and it's outside, then I will bring all my sound gear and I'll do a lot of live looping and things like that. If I'm doing just a small in-home sound bath, I just bring my acoustic instruments. I bring my small harp, I bring Tibetan bowls, I bring some crystal singing bowls, some chimes, Native American flutes, and usually a handpan or a tongue drum. I will switch them out here and there, but that very much has been working for me lately. So it would just depend on the event what I would do. Now, I didn't used to at the beginning sing songs. It would all be very esoteric things that would come to me, or it would just be— I know people say it's like channeling, but it would be sort of vibrationally listening to what's happening in the room, and just whatever comes, comes, and it's all improvised. Since I've been working throughout the pandemic a lot more diligently with mantras and Sanskrit mantras and things, and writing a lot of music, I find a lot of the songs that have been coming through that I've recorded and released, they want to be played more often. Now, I will incorporate those into the sound experience, usually towards the end when people are very dropped in. So that's changed. Like I said, that evolution, when I first started doing it, of that transformation of things being super intense, now it just feels like my sound baths and the things and the singing that comes through is just much more gentle. It just feels like everything that's coming through is much more gentle than it used to be.

You mentioned the sound looping. If you're up there alone and you're looping sounds, then you are basically a music producer at that point, right? I mean, yeah, whereas versus the healing experiences where there's multiple musicians and you're all just kind of stuck in your instrument, you know, your specific area of expertise, but you're really pulling your music theory knowledge if you're doing multiple instruments and you're doing sound looping. I mean, that's— That sounds pretty awesome.

I have to admit, I probably had all the looping music in my head for a good 5 years before I dialed the technology in. I had a friend that helped me, and then I just felt so overwhelmed if things wouldn't work or whatever. And then I get frustrated and I just kept doing my thing. And then finally, one of the other advantages of lockdown for me was, okay, I learned to play the harp and then I learned how to produce finally. How do I livestream? How do I do this thing? And that idea of dialing in the technology and being able to start looping and doing it live. And the mastery comes more of what to do with the equipment when something goes wrong. And that was the moment I knew that I was ready to try it live because I was starting to understand what I needed to do if something went wrong.

From your experience, how does just electronically pushing the music out versus being in a small room where there's maybe no speaker, no sound amplification, How does that affect the therapy piece or, or does it?

I find it's just as effective. And to be clear, I don't really use electronic music on it at all for sake of space. When you're setting up all the electronic stuff and the other instruments, I've prerecorded all of my singing bowls. So they're in a MIDI controller, but it's actually me playing the singing bowl. And I have it set up with the effects and mixed and whatever so that when it comes through the speakers, It sounds pretty good. It sounds like the singing bowl in that moment. And so when I'm doing that, and then I can loop my voice live, I don't prerecord any of that. I do it right on the spot. And the same with the harp. I will play it live and then I'll just loop it in that moment. And for me, honestly, it felt so fun because it was like this whole way to play with sound in a new way. And also because I have a large range with my singing voice, I can now sing with myself. I can create these soundscapes where I can sing in multiple ranges all at the same time, where I couldn't do that without the technology. So that's a way where I've found technology has really worked for the experience and people enjoy it. But acoustically, just to finish the answer to that question, in a small space, using the technology doesn't quite work because Smaller spaces are not really designed to have a big speaker in the room. And so it doesn't always work so well. It works better when there's a much bigger space.

Well, to be more specific, I guess the question is really more around actually just playing an instrument with no electronic stimulus versus having, you know, EMF kind of like electrical responses. Amplifying the music, like, have you experienced, does that affect the therapeutic part of the sound versus, you know, just being in a room where you're playing the harp and there's no amplification, no EMFs, no digital anything, and it's just you and the instrument, very clean, very pure, very ancestral versus you now have wires, speakers, digital devices that are now entering the energetic space?

I wouldn't say it's less effective. I would say it's different effective. That would probably be how I would answer it. I think there's preference. I think some people prefer just to have the acoustic instrument. I tried to do it live in one space I perform in quite often, and it didn't quite work in the space. And some people loved it, wanted to be on the speaker, and other people were like, oh, I just miss hearing it very like your voice kind of carry in the space. And I just realized that those smaller spaces, they just don't, it doesn't work the same way because you can also hear the delay a little bit. You can hear the acoustic at the same time. So it has to be a bigger space. Now, when I was doing it every week at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, for example, that was such a big space that the speaker carried great and people still had really amazing experiences. So I would say the experience feedback I've had is people have had just as profound experiences with both experiences and whether or not one prefers one or the other or likes both, or I've had people that like both. I have people that only really like one. So I think that the experience of it is more subjective, what people gain from it, but I've had people express really positive experiences and more transformational experiences from both.

You mentioned the craniosacral therapy. Let's dive into that piece a little bit, because it sounds like You incorporate both. I mean, you're basically incorporating craniosacral therapy, voice sessions, and sound healing. Not everyone knows about craniosacral therapy. So could you just dive into, A, what that is and how it affects people?

So craniosacral therapy is a type of bodywork that is pretty gentle in terms of the way it works on the nervous system. And the premise of craniosacral therapy is that you hold The bones in the body to mimic the memory of being in the womb. Because when we are in the womb, then we're connected to the mother through our belly button, but also the nervous system. When we are in utero, the first part of the nervous system that forms is the base of the spine. It's not the brain. The brain comes last. So the stems grow up the spine and then the brain forms as the last piece of the nervous system. And so this premise that when you hold someone underneath the pelvic bone, these sessions are usually generally done with clothes on, or you go under a sheet if somebody's also doing a combination with massage, but you hold that space because it mimics the body's memory of being in the womb. And so what happens is, is that then the body starts to heal itself. It's the idea that you go into the parasympathetic nervous system. Mm-hmm. And the body starts to go into homeostasis because the tension that's held in the body starts to release on its own. Just as an example, with deep tissue massage, you'd go into someone's muscle knots and then you hold it and you are really hard and hold it until it starts to dissipate. This is kind of the opposite premise. You're holding under a specific pattern and allowing the body's pattern to unfold on its own. And so you do this in various places on the body. The main focus of craniosacral therapy is like the name, it's the cranium and the sacrum. And so it's like that space in between, but it also, you can touch the feet. It can be a full body experience as well. And most people, especially if they come over time, they tend to have these experiences where they'll go into lucid dreaming states pretty quickly. Or the body will start to move and almost like writhing because it's releasing a pattern of holding that's been the tension buildup in the body. And it's giving the space. So an experienced practitioner, I've been doing this work for 15 years, you can really follow where the body is. And because I have really sensitive fingertips in general, because I play the piano and the harp and I do the cranial work, it's this idea I can sense vibration in my fingertips. So I understand where it's kind of going and unwinding in the body. So it's often called craniosacral unwinding.

And do you find images or awarenesses come into you when you're holding someone in that space? You know, and then when you bring it to them and you say, hey, you know, I got this image, you know, does this mean anything to you? Do you find that it does have meaning for them?

Yeah, that happens to me quite often. And I feel like I don't particularly relate to the word of saying I'm psychic or that kind of energy. It's more that I'm tuning into that person. And I think we all have a vibrational field. And when you really stop to listen, you can pick up things from the person you're standing next to if you're really paying attention, right? And so this idea that if I'm paying 100% attention to you and I'm touching you in a place where you're holding trauma, then I can tap in. And often I will see an image or I'll see that. And I liken it as that person's letting me see this. Because it seems to be related to this part of the body or this part that I'm touching right now. So I will hold under that space and often, yes, I will share, will say to them that I do see this picture of this. Well, I don't know what that means. And often it will be the memory tied to that holding pattern in the body.

Interesting.

So it makes a connection. And that's really why I love the craniosacral work so much is because it gives people consciousness around the patterns that are held in the body. And the mind. And so when they leave, it's a lot longer lasting, I have found, than a lot of other healing modalities, because it empowers the person to understand the origin of that feeling.

And then thus be able to maybe release it.

Yes.

You mentioned that your relationship to music changed when your father passed. Now you've been doing this work for a long time. Has it changed again?

Yes, it has. It's changed quite a bit. I feel like it's interesting because one of the great ironies of my life I find is that from my 20s, a lot of my career I built up in the classical music world was that I worked with modern composers, composers of contemporary classical music, and That was one of my areas of specialty, and that's why I originally got hired to work at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, because I worked at a music publishing company and I promoted composers and that. And I think it's taken me this many years to be like, I actually, I'm a composer. I've been a composer the whole time. And I just was doing all these other things and kind of not claiming that aspect of myself or my own gifts because I had some work to do on myself and my own confidence and my voice. And it's been a real blessing. I released a full album earlier this year. I released them as singles and actually just today released the full album again in the order that it was meant to be listened to. So it's almost an hour worth of music that I did, and I'm playing almost every instrument. I have a few friends that came on as guest artists, but most of it is all me playing and singing. I'm the only one singing on the album, and I feel like I'm just getting started. And then I've been producing sound meditations for Apple Fitness+ and Platoon. And I've been very blessed to be able to do that. And I have 18 sound meditations that are now released on all streaming platforms under that as well. So this year alone, I've released well over 6 hours of music on streaming platforms.

That's so interesting because, you know, you talked about not seeing yourself necessarily as a musician, seeing it's like, well, that's not really the career because it's so challenging. And so then you went down administrative paths, but then ultimately you became a therapist to support people in opening and finding their voice. And in many ways, it sounds like you've found your own or refound your own, the one that was most attracted to music even when you were a kid. Maybe you retapped into that. Would you say that?

For sure. And of course you have that hindsight 20/20 where I'm like, ah, if I figured this out a while ago, then my life would've looked very different. But maybe not. You know, it's just, it's one of those funny thoughts. It's not necessarily helpful. It's more just a reflective moment of realizing that I was very in the whole classical music realm of how things were and how they had to be. And this kind of really highly critical and judgmental realm of performing and performers and composers. And I had to choose composers that were commissioned for certain things, and it was just always very challenging. And I just didn't see myself kind of in that category, so I didn't really have the confidence necessarily at that time. And so when I look back on it, I find it kind of amusing that I was immersed in this environment and realized that I had just had this whole other idea of how I felt like it should be, but it didn't exist yet. I mean, if I'm really honest, I mean, at that time it didn't exist. Like the kind of work that I'm doing now didn't exist then. So I mean, I could have started doing it, but I would have been like, you know, that original trailblazer, like where you think of the original sound healers and a lot of them were in Colorado actually. But this idea that they were doing this kind of thing 20, 30 years ago, and so they were really on the outskirts of society and now it's becoming more mainstream. I mean, even this releases with Apple, that's something they've just started doing last year. So it's just really putting it into context that maybe everything actually is at the right time, no matter what it is.

Before we go into you giving the audience a sample of sound bathing and sound therapy, I'm curious, you know, when you're playing the music and your intention is, you know, to support that person therapeutically, Do you find that it's actually also therapeutic for you, or are you just so focused on the other person? Because it almost sounds a little meta, a little bit like, because it's sound, right? So not only are you having the intention towards supporting the person or the audience that you're providing the sound for, but your own body is hearing that therapeutic sound. So is it almost like a duality of like, I'm giving, but I'm receiving, giving and receiving, you know, back and forth constantly while you're doing it?

Rarely, honestly, because when I am in my practitioner role, I'm very clear that my primary objective there is for the person, the people, the group, whatever that I'm doing. For example, if I'm doing a sound bath and somebody is having a lot of anxiety release or moving around a lot, I'm going to very much be working energetically with them, with the sounds that come through or what is being called. And so for me to go into that state where I'm fully receiving means I'm not going to be fully conscious for everyone else who's there. I maybe used to do it more often, but I also saw in certain healing platforms how important it is as the practitioner to stay 100% grounded and fully in my body. Because often when you receive sound, it's very easy to kind of go into that lucid state and not be fully present in the physical realm. It's not that something's not happening, but I am providing a service and I am in a role. Now, on rare occasions when it's groups that I feel like the whole group is in the same space, when I have a whole group where I sense everyone has dropped into that really deep space of homeostasis, then I feel like what's happening, I can become more a part of it.

Mm-hmm.

But that's more rare that the whole group falls into that space together.

How do you feel after a concert therapy? Are you drained? But then also, what do you do to kind of fill your cup post these sessions and/or general? Like, do you have some daily habits to support your own grounding and your own self-care so that you can be the best practitioner you can be?

In the past, I will say this year has been a little different, but for me, it's a lot about exercise, just making sure that I do something every day, whether I go to yoga or I hike up the stairs because there's a lookout right behind me in Culver City, or whatever I end up doing, that I, I try to do something like that. I've had very, very disciplined meditation and chanting practices for myself in the past.

What does that look like? Is it a certain amount of time every day?

Yeah, I mean, there were times where I was meditating an hour a day, and sometimes more. And then there are times where I would get up and chant my mantra 108 times with my mala beads every day. And this year has felt like kind of a reset of what my operating system is. And so I think I'm recalibrating what my daily thing is. And I, 'cause I think that this year I realized I needed a lot more rest and allowing myself to just rest. And if I wanna watch something kind of more cathartic, not necessarily life-building on Netflix, that that's okay. I can just watch something that's a story. So, so I've had this kind of really interesting observation of what I feel like I need in this moments. And I find I have 2 cats, and they're both very cuddly and needy. So sometimes my recharge is that I lay on my couch, and my cats both come and lay on my legs, and I watch something that is a feel-good movie or whatever. And I find that has been very helpful for me. And so it's been an interesting observation, and I feel like it was a recalibration of all the music I released this year and other things, and just kind of observing that It's been about a lot of shifts, and not so much about the diligence of checking off my list. It's been trying to like go in and out and listen to my body every day. What does it need today? What does it like need to eat? What does it need? How much exercise do I need today? Instead of being on a rigid discipline, which I've been on rigid discipline for many, many years of my life. And so I feel like going into this next year, I'll probably go back to that element of more rigid discipline. And then also, just to be clear, self-care. I usually try to receive some kind of healing session at least once a month, if not twice a month, from practitioners that I work with, whether I get a massage or whether I get a cranio session or have an energy healing session. I recognize that when I'm working on a lot of people and I do a lot of sessions, it's necessary that I also receive.

Yeah, that's well said. It sounds like you're recognizing the challenging times within your own body.

Mm-hmm.

But a lot of people are experiencing, you know, challenges that are different than maybe we've had in the past. And there's delicacies, like, around existence right now, in many ways, for some people. How we negotiate boundaries and challenges within these modern times is kind of a very necessary piece to existence. How does the craniosacral therapy, the voice sessions, the sound healing, how would that help people that are struggling with kind of our modern times right now?

Well, I think first of all is kind of coming back into the body. It's really important to be grounded. And this is speaking from someone, I lived a lot of my life in chronic pain and hid it really well. And fortunately I'm not in pain anymore, but my body had to catch up after I had the surgery to take care of what was causing the pain. In retrospect, I think this idea of understanding your voice, what your values are, what your boundaries are, how certain things make you feel, how certain relationships make you feel. And I think when I explain that about this year, I've had a lot, a lot of reset in patterns with people, with things that have been kind of happening, and recognizing the setting boundaries in that space, right? And, and I feel like when you are in that state of receiving and you're in that state of decompression, or you're in that state of— listening to sound and you're allowing yourself to really just listen, to listen to the higher self, to listen to your guides, or however you interpret messages that come to you, being able to drop into that space where you not only have the ability to listen, but you have a witness to the transformation. And I find even for myself, having a witness is kind of the Deeper healing happens when someone witnesses the things that maybe you don't want to say out loud, or the things that are releasing from the body. And that happens in all of those sessions, in the sound, in the craniosacral work, and in the voice sessions. And so this idea that you can totally be yourself and that boundaries are healthy, because most people who experience trauma struggle with healthy boundaries because they feel like, oh, if I set a boundary, then that person won't like me. Or if I set the boundary, then— All my relationships go away, or all of these kinds of stories. And I think it is a very challenging time in the world right now, and it's very chaotic, and there's a lot of division, and relaxing the nervous system just helps be able to deal with it better and get clarity with the self. Because all of my work, I'm trying to empower people to listen to themselves.

Hmm.

I always say, like, I'm not a guru. I'm a mirror over here. I'm a mirror and a witness, but your thoughts, your opinion, where you are, like, we don't have to be the same. It's more that you feel empowered in your choices and your values and who you are and what you're creating for yourself. And that's the piece that when people feel like they can stand in that space of being all that they are, that's very deeply healing. I always say relationships are a reason, a season, or a lifetime, right? The old cliché, but it's true. I think sometimes we think relationships are meant to be there the whole stretch, and they're just not. And the older you get, you realize that. And you also, for me, I know I've seen just a lot of disillusionment with things that I thought were super helpful or that, and there's no one way. There's no right way. And I always say, if somebody tells you that this is the only way to get to X, then run the other direction because it's true. Because then that person is trying to control you. Like, you have to always have this free will to choose. I'm not always right. And what is right for me might not be right for you. I mean, my diet's gonna look different than the person next to me cuz everyone's built a little differently. And I mean, you know that just from all the work you've done in nutrition and Everybody's body functions slightly differently, and you have to have the nuance of being a practitioner. And I feel like that's what you learn and the wisdom of working, for me, thousands of people over the last decade plus. I feel very fortunate for the work that I've done and the people and the clients and all of the things I've been able to do. But it's also, I find I've become a better practitioner too, because I've learned of, I've made mistakes. I've said things that maybe, okay, that might've been too much too soon. There's a nuance here, and we're all learning. Everyone's learning. And so all of this work and people, it's really about honoring and admitting how you feel, and then having a safe witness that's not going to be in judgment because those are feelings that you're having. And I think it's really important that we work on that space. It doesn't mean you're neutral. It means that you're holding space as a practitioner for that person. To feel safe.

Yeah. And to be present. Yeah. That's lovely. So everyone listening, we're going to share how you can get in touch with Helene. You can find her, all the socials. You can, we're going to put the links of where you can listen to her Spotify tracks, kind of dig deeper with her therapies. It's going to feel like we're ending the podcast now, but if you stick around, After we say this part, Helene is actually going to give us about 10 minutes of sound therapy healing. Some of you might be listening to this while you're running, while you're driving, and that this may not be the time for you to hear sound therapy. So we're going to feel like we're ending the podcast now, but stick around or come back to it when you want to experience this sound healing for yourself.

Because of the name and the title of your podcast, The Everyday Ancestral, I just want to tell people too that I'm leading a retreat in Norway in June with sound and yoga and meditation, and we're going to go kayaking in the fjords and that. And it is my ancestral country. I'm 75% Scandinavian, like Norwegian and Swedish. And so I just thought I'd throw that in there of like influences.

What city in Norway are you doing it?

It's in a place called Vadhal that's in the middle of the country. It's at this really beautiful glamping site that has this amazing greenhouse where the yoga and meditation's gonna take place. And it's very intimate retreat. Everyone receives craniosacral therapy as part of it as well. And so it's gonna be really special, but it's, I'm excited to lead a, lead a retreat in a country that is very much my lineage. So it's the first time I'll be doing it. So I'm excited.

We'll put the links for that. That's gonna be in 2025. When I was just in college, I was backpacking through Scandinavia and we came to Flåm, I think it was called Flåm, Norway, and it's in the fjords and it was so beautiful. So I'm, that's what I'm visualizing as you say you're gonna have a retreat. And I just remember when I was there, there was kind of, you know, there were all these waterfalls surrounding the area and there was a river running right through the middle of everything. And I just remember looking at going, if I could choose a place to die, Mm-hmm. This is where I'd want it to be. It was that gorgeous. So don't die when you go to Norway, but, but maybe check out the retreat and enjoy the therapies and the environment, and Helene will bring. So we're going to put the links to the Spotify pieces you mentioned, but how can people find you? Website, socials, whatnot?

My name is the easiest way to find me. Helene, H-E-L-A-N-E Marie. Anderson. My website is sacralsounds.com. My name, Helene Marie Anderson, is me on Spotify. And it's also my handle on Instagram. Those are the best ways to find me.

Thank you so much, Helene, for joining me on this podcast. It's been such a joy reconnecting with you for this hour. I remember back in the day, you did some craniosacral on me. I've had craniosacral over the years and I, and I absolutely attest to the power of it. I have not had much sound therapy, so I'm very much looking forward to your performance right now. I thank you all for watching or listening to Everyday Ancestral. Please share it with a friend. We want to spread the word about these powerful guests we're having. Follow us for future episodes. And now Helene will perform some sound therapy.

Thank you so much for having me, James. It's been a pleasure to chat with you and I'm excited to share. So I'll just invite you to go ahead and if you're in a position to close your eyes, you can go ahead and close your eyes. So just welcoming you back.

We hope to see you next time on Everyday Ancestral. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.