Tinnitus: The Unwelcome Gift?

Tinnitus is a bit of a bugger. I'm not going to lie. It keeps me awake all night because once my hearing aids come out, it is much, much worse than when they are in, but I have to say, in the exhaustion, the fatigue, the endless hours laying awake with sirens blaring in my head, all manner of creative ideas, stories, poems and songs arrive from this bleak darkness. 

It's as if there are crocodile clips attached to my brain and I am fully wired, being charged up with electricity all night, whirring around my synapses in wild ribbons of tangled rainbows. And all of this activity carves a route, a network that leads me to the central cortex, where, laying in a precious casket, is the one truth of who I am ... 

In many ways, this extra thinking, extra over working brain, this sleepless, creative matrix, is a gift given to me by my tinnitus, though I wish she could give it to me more quietly. Perhaps sometimes, the one thing that destroys us, is the one thing that makes us stronger.

Out of this all consuming din, comes strength, love, resilience. Every atom of my body rallies together to send me healing in the form of these beautiful little stories and poems, mantra and songs. I am so grateful to my body, my heart and soul for this incredible rescue remedy, sending the mind stories, poems, songs and ideas to ease the pain.

Back to Bhakti with Jim Fox

Since losing my hearing I have increasingly shied away from group situations. Indeed, I have restructured my whole life around being still and quiet. But when we lost Dad last week, something shifted. In that moment when he exhaled his last breath, I felt my own breath in the most profound way and I decided then and there that I was going to take steps towards reconnecting to song, rather than be almost bullied by my hearing disability to turn my back on music.

Before learning to live with tinnitus and hyperacusis, I was immersed in the deep joy of regular Bhakti devotional singing 3 times a week. It is the most heart opening of experiences and it is one of the only times that I feel totally connected to self.

Namaste: Kirtan with Jim Fox

So when my dear friends, Jim Fox and Kiera Jones from The Centre in Swansea invited me to come and join them in the recording of a double album of Bhakti Yoga, at the beautiful Yoga Place Abertawe in Clydach as part of a Kirtan, I felt every cell of my body wanted to say yes, but fear made me say that I didn't think I could make it.

Jim & Kiera have both had a major impact on my life, having trained with Jim as a Sound Therapist and trained with Kiera as a Level 2 Reiki Practitioner. I really wanted to join them.

In addition, the profits raised from the double CD are going to Skanda Vale Hospice, where I volunteer as a Storyteller & Poet in their sacred space.

Today was the day of the recording. I wrote to Kiera thanking her for the invitation and asked her if I could come for just 1 or 2 of the mantra so as to be a part of it. She very kindly said yes.

Kiera Jones

This was such a huge step on my healing pathway. It was the most amazing experience. As I sang with the 50 or 60 other people who had come to join in with the recording, I physically felt myself lift beyond my body. 

Jim was absolutely amazing. I knew he would be and he had just the most amazing musicians with him. When the tabla, tampura & flute joined in I couldn't keep still. My whole body wriggled with the beats, I felt my actual soul smiling.

And the people I was sat with felt the same, though we will never talk together about it nor even see each other again, we shared a knowing smile, a connection of soul through chanting.

What an incredible privilege to be part of something so absolutely human.

I stayed for the whole of the first half, but I didn't want to push myself too far so made a swift exist after pre-ordering the double album ... I can not wait to hear it ... 

You can pre-order it too if you like by contacting Jim Fox HERE.

apples in the rain: NEW CD RELEASE

 Today is a very exciting day; A very exciting day indeed. This weekend myself and my very kind friend, Jeff Beer of Zero One Guitars (who used to be my husband but that's a whole other story for another time!) have been in the studio mixing my live recordings from my time as a Resident Sound Healer at an Orchard in Lower Normandy, France, earlier this year.

From earlier blogs you'll remember that I spent the whole of September at Orchard Gites owned by the very lovely and fabulous Artist who runs courses there, Alison Smith.

At 12pm every day, I sat beneath the Ancient Apple Tree outside my tiny gite.

I recorded most days but although the sun came out every day, it was a case of dodging the showers, marvelling at rainbows and kissing the stubborn breeze that found her way to my little tascam recorder or video camera.

Why is this particular collection of recordings so important to me?

There are lots of reasons but I will share here first, the most personal one.

10 years ago, I was very seriously ill. The NHS saved my life, for which I am very grateful, but along the way, a few 'rare side effects' left me with a blocked bile duct and a damaged pancreas.

I have been managing this new addition to the catalogue of missing or faulty parts of my body just fine, except about 3 years ago, I noticed that when I woke up in the morning, I had no voice. I mean absolutely no voice at all. Nothing would come out.

This makes going to work to lead engaging song workshops in community settings quite tricky. It also meant that performance was not possible because as time progressed, it wasn't just the morning that my voice disappeared.

In the middle of a song, I would sing and nothing would come out; absolutely nothing at all. It was so odd. I would be singing, but no noise came. Not for the whole song, but here and there. 

I became more and more miserable because I believed singing and my voice was who I was. Without these things, how would I possibly continue to be me?

It was part of the reason I decided to go back to Uni and do an MA in Drama. Perhaps this would give me a new outlet for my creativity.

And it did. I learnt how to be wonderfully considered, to strip back. It was mind blowing.

Jodie Allinson, my MA supervisor, asked me a question that would change my life:

'I am struggling to see where your authentic self is in this performance. Where is your authentic self?'

Off course, I was wounded. What did this mean? That somehow my performance was fake? When I was putting my whole self into it, heart and soul.

For the rest of the MA, I focussed on ethnography and then auto ethnographic work, deeply searching for a sense of self.

And then it dawned on me. Since my illness I had lost a sense of self. I didn't know who my authentic self was anymore. Instead I lived day by day, grateful to be alive and thanking the universe by spreading myself thin and giving all of myself to anyone and everyone who wanted or needed me. This would surely be why I was saved.

But what if ... the Universe ... had saved me  ... just to be me? And who was this me with 'a deteriorating voice'?

When I re-visited the specialist after my MA, he told me that the bile from my duct was eroding my vocal chords and to stop singing all together. 

So, I did. I composed stories on the ukulele such as The Tethered Fairy Ring, made books, wrote poems & cried alone in the silence.

And then I bumped into Jim Fox from The Centre in Swansea. I bought a little singing bowl from him and when I used it within my arts research with people who are living with dementia, little miracles started to happen.

People remembered things, laughed, opened up. My little singing bowl could sing for me.

I started to sell my jamboree of instruments collected throughout my life, so as to fund new ones, considered, meditative ones, from around the world.

Then at Christmas, I treated myself to a Sound Bath at Jim's place.

I had never been to a Sound Bath. I was quite nervous. We all sat in a little room at The Centre, Swansea and then Jim came in. He explained what was to happen, showed us how to breathe and guided us into meditation. Then he begun to play all of his beautiful instruments, laid in their own sacred space upon, what can only be described as, a Sound Altar.

It was singularly the most incredible musical experience of my entire life. When I came back to this planet, I overheard Jim telling someone he was qualified to teach others to become Sound Healers/therapists.

'So, I can learn to do this?' I butted in, feeling my heart beat so loud I thought it may have been replaced by a ceremonial drum.

Jim smiled, 'Yes.'

When I got home, I wrote to Jim about the training, which is accredited by the Association of Sound Healers, and booked in.

Now there was the matter of the course fees! Just under £1100.00 for the year if I paid all at once, cheaper overall than arranging monthly payments.

I decided to leave it in the hands of the Universe. I put my Martin guitar for sale on facebook and it sold over night to my dear friend Lorraine King, who is just the most lovely singer songwriter, so I could be sure Lily May, my guitar, was off to a great home.

My new Sound Studio

I decided to do the course intensively and be qualified within a year. You can do this if you are prepared to put in all the work. In hindsight, I can see the benefit of spreading it over a longer period as I have seen such a radical and immense change and growth in my life, that emotionally at times, it has been an exercise in faith that may have been easier over a longer period. Also I did the course on my own. Now this was a great privilege. I felt as though I were coming to see my very own Sound Guru.

My life became filled with immense joy. I found joy in being still, quiet, and journeying to inner self. I began to incorporate this into my work with primary school children, teaching them how to 'be' rather than focussing on 'doing'.

At last, I felt as though I were coming close to the authentic self I had searched for on the MA and I realised that the way to find self, was to not search at all, but to enable myself to 'be'. 

When I was very small, about 2 or 3 years old, I remember singing. I remember it feeling as if I were coming alive. Being so lost in the music, in the song, in the universe that I felt joined to it, as one to the whole. That nothing else existed.

Sound Healing brought me right home to this child, this inner seed inside me that shines when she is lost in sound, except I am not lost in sound, I am found in sound.

And then Jim and I got to the part of course where we would study Mantra. 

'I can't do this Jim because my voice is deteriorating. The Consultant has told me not to sing.'

In fact, because the Consultant had told me not to sing, I had decided that next September I would take a month out to be silent in France.

'Let's see,' said Jim, 'you might be surprised.'

And he was right. My voice loved mantra, the mindful repetition of sacred and spiritually connected melody ... not only gave peace to my mind, but my whole body rejoiced at welcoming home the vibration of my voice throughout my chakra.

And this was the birth of my intimate and integral relationship with the absolute joy that is Mantra. I knew immediately that mantra would be integral to my life from then on. Because of my daily relationship with mantra, my voice is no longer deteriorating. It is my healing voice. And this makes me smile a smile, like I have never smiled before.

So much so, that when I went to France for a month in September, instead of being in complete silence, on the contrary,  I went as a qualified Sound Healer and Therapist, chanting mantra to give love to the Universe for enabling me to 'be', to return home to self, to see the joy and love in the world, to understand that if we are doing what we love, then all avenues open to make it possible. To live my authentic self rather than a representation of her.

And that is why after a lifelong career in music, this CD is the most personal, the most loving, the most raw. It is just me, my healing voice, meditative music & mantra. It is not a representation of me, nor a me that I think I ought to be. It is who I am in the now.

The Universe has long tried to ignite a mantra relationship within me. When I was working as a Volunteer Musician in India 15 years ago , I set up a project for girls to learn the rites of passage mantra and was taught mantra alongside the girls by local women who kindly came to the orphanage. But I saw it as something I was enabling for the girls and I did not see how one day it would come to enable me. And I cannot help but think of those beautiful girls now they are young women. I often wonder about them, where they are and how there's lives became.

apples in the rain

My new CD is a hand- picked, hand -made collection of authentic live recordings from under the ancient apple tree, with whom I fell in love and also secret recordings at  St. Quentin les Chardonnets church in the village, where the doors were left open in the daytime, just long enough to pop in and record mantra.

I have completely handmade the album using my water colour pencils and my lovely little printing kit. And nothing in my entire life has given as much joy, other than perhaps collecting shells from the beach or acorns from the forest floor.

I have called it 'apples in the rain'

My friend Miles asked me why. 

When I was playing with my paints, designing an apple design, I spilt some water on my work and it made me smile. It reminded me of those September showers in St. Quentin les Chardonnets where I had to keep ducking into the little gite in-between the sunshine, to miss the showers, or rushing in to put on a cardigan against the weighing breeze. 

And then I thought about why I am here, in this studio, making these very fragile, yet somehow beautiful contributions to the universe. 

Apples need rain just as much as they need sunshine. 

As I listen back to my recordings of this new voice, this healing voice, it seems to me that the apples are an analogy for life.

I took my voice for granted. I won't do that again. Reiki has taught me that I deserve to love myself and for the first time ever, I love myself enough to do what I love, and in so doing, I pass the love to you, my friends.

Track Listing

1. Gayatri Mantra sung in the little church at St.Quentin les Chardennets one morning when the doors had been left open.. The Gayatri mantra is the oldest known Sanskrit mantra thought to be the universe herself.

 

2. apples in the rain: Sound Healing with my meditative instruments sat under the ancient apple tree at Orchard Gites with a handful of beautiful guests.

 

3. OM Hiranya on the lawn with Fudge the dog & my African Djembe, under the old apple tree, joined by the bird chorus. This is an ancient heart mantra.

4. Om Kali Vimanas calling upon the assertiveness, wisdom, strength and resilience of all womanhood, acknowledging all her suffering in asking her to mend my broken heart.

5. Less is more sung with my shaman drum from Canada and Tibetan Singing bowls, stood bare foot in the vegetable patch at Orchard Gites, Lower Normandy.

Thank you

Many thanks and so much heart love and reiki light to Alison Smith for welcoming me to her Orchard gites as a resident Sound Healer.

So much love to Jim Fox for being sent to me and his beautiful wife Kiera for teaching me to love again with reiki.

Biggest respect to Jodie Allinson for having the courage to question, nurture, expand and encourage the growth of this middle aged woman.

  

You can download your copy of apples in the rain from Bandcamp. Here's the link:-

https://cherylbeer.bandcamp.com/releases

Namaste

Listening to the Universe

 My dear friends

While in France chanting mantra in an orchard for the month of September, I struggled to blog for a number of reasons. First, the blooming internet coverage was a tad patchy but even when I could get on line, I could not get blogger to upload. 

I carried on writing but went completely old school. Yes, a pen and paper! And do you know what, it felt wonderful.

Also while I was there, I started making concertina books. 

Alison Smith who owns the gites is an Artist and she showed me how to make some lovely books and taking her lead I got myself well and truly book - hooked. 

So, this is what I think is going to happen now, although I am leaving space for the idea to grow. I am going to write a book about my time in France, sat under the apple tree in the orchard. You know, a strange thing happens when you spend this amount of time with a tree. I really did fall in love! 

I didn't think it was possible to fall in love with a tree, but it is and if you listen very carefully, she has so many lessons to teach. And this will be the central focus of my new book.

I'm not sure how many books, or if I will hand make them, or how it will work but for now all I know is that I am writing a book about my relationship with a tree in France 

and that I like making books.

 

I think these 2 things fit together well.

Off course, through Parlor Press, my community publishing company, I have made it possible for literally 1000's of people to be published over the last 15 years but this time, it is me that I am empowering to live the dream. 

And what is great is that it doesn't feel selfish, or self absorbed, it feels right and kind and loving and self caring.

Present in the Park

Whenever I am home, I take Maisy, our pooch, for a walk over the Park. She loves it. We walk the same way every time. We get to the hill, I let her off the lead, she runs down, sniffing the same places and taking the exact same route. We then go to the river, she runs in it laughing and jumping. I wait for her, we walk back.

I am not present in this place. I am walking Maisy. My joy is watching her joy. It is her walk that I am facilitating for her. It is not my walk. 

So today, I decided that I would go back to the park this afternoon on my own to explore the notion of presence and mantra.

To be present is to be deeply within the period of time happening now.

The first thing I did was enter the Park at the opposite end to usual to see it from a whole new perspective.

I then found a tree and sat underneath. I'm not sure why but I felt a bit embarrassed. No-one ever sits on the grass area, leave alone a middle aged woman singing mantra. Plus it was quite busy because it is the school holidays.

I decided it was not possible to be present in the now if I am frozen with embarrassment, and that actually, I had as much right to be sat under a tree singing mantra as the dog walkers racing around the path stretching the cricket field, as much right as the tennis players knocking their ball back and for in the tennis court and as much right as the novice canoeists navigating on the river.

I made sure I was sat and comfortable and then listened.

I could hear almost everyone that was in the park, all at the same time. In addition, I could hear leaves rustling, even though the distant trees appeared still. I could hear birds singing to each other and the river mumbling over the rocks on her journey.

I breathed in through my nose as deeply as I could and then sighed outwardly. I breathed in again and I noticed I could smell a new smell, someone's dinner cooking, a casserole or maybe lamb cawl.

I opened my eyes. The sky seemed more blue than I remembered before closing them, the clouds billowing, some white, some grey, undecided as to whether or not to drizzle.

I felt drawn to touch the earth. The mud and grass were slightly damp, like my skin after I have had a bath and towel dried, still holding the memory of the water that it had been soaked in.

I felt an overwhelming desire to smell the ground.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a family in the distance with their  children and their dog, now staring at me. How could I sniff the earth with them watching me? Their dog was intrigued, he came running over. They started shouting very loudly for him to come back to them, but he was more interested in the woman sat under the tree. He sniffed me. I smiled at him, he tipped me a wink like he understood, and ran back to his humans. The parents took hold of him and their children and pulled them away.

Alone again, I bent over and smelt the earth. At first, I could only smell the familiar aroma of grass, but as I breathed in more deeply, I could smell the very earth itself. Instantly the smell made me smile inside and out.

I sat upright, closed my eyes and sang an ancient mantra in Sanskrit known to hold space. I wanted to hold this space within and around me forever.

I noticed where my voice was coming from, which chakra it was passing through, how it felt in every orifice of my body. I imagined it entering the Universe from my body and where it's vibrations were reverberating.

I sang for myself and for women that I love whom need love and light just now. I imagined my mantra reaching from my heart into theirs'.

And when I had finished, I opened my eyes. I felt myself sighing out loud. The world seemed still.

As I got up to leave, I felt sure that when Maisy and I come here tomorrow, it will no longer be a dog walk, it will be our walk.

Personalised Sanskrit Mantra Blessings

The Healing Vibration

What an absolutely phenomenal weekend! I haven't worked this hard on my own work since the Finals of my MA Drama last year. 

I started thinking about devising my piece on Friday night. I sat very still. This was the key.

Saturday morning I woke up and worked right through til 4.30am completely engrossed. 

Then I woke up at 9.00am today on just 4 and half hours sleep and couldn't wait to start again. 

Now, here I am at 11.35pm writing this because I feel I must share with you how wonderful the world is when you unconditionally allow yourself to 'be' who you are in the now.

somakAnta is a 13 piece collection of healing mantra. A journey from the birth of a girl child, delicately tracing her love and heart ache until she returns to the nurturing bosom of Mother Nature, waiting to be re-born.

Accompanying myself with traditionally Hand- beaten Tibetan singing bowls somakAnta creates the vibrational infinty of the Universe to bring about inner peace and love.

I will be sharing the collection in Ireland next weekend in 13 venues across the 3 days of The Promenade festival in Tramore, Ireland. 

In the stillness of quiet

I become more adept at listening

The infinite vibration of the Universe

Embraces me with her whisper

'Child, Be who you are'