Welcome Fall With Gong Therapy

Gillian Shapiro and Gong at Alberta Orchard Wellness

by Gillian Shapiro

Family Herbalist, Ayurvedic Health Counselor, Gong Therapy Practitioner, Kundalini Yoga and Meditation Instructor, Reiki Practitoner, GriefYogaTM Instructor

We have entered Fall season in the Western hemisphere, a season dominated by the vata dosha. Vata is one of the three doshas or constitutions according to the ancient science of Ayurveda, the sister science to Yoga which is over 5000 years old. The word “Ayurveda” means “science of life”. All of us are made up of a blend of the elements of fire, water, air, ether and earth. In Ayurveda. these elements are categorized into three doshas; namely, vata, pitta and kapha and we contain different proportions of the doshas in our physical, mental and emotional bodies. We’ll focus on vata due to the time of year. Vata is governed by the elements of air and space and is characterized by the qualities of light, dry, brittle, subtle, hard, rough, active, clear and cold. It governs movement. The colon is the main organ associated with vata. The auditory channel is the prominent sense, according to this ancient science, which leads me to the gong and its potential as an especially effective therapy given the time of year. If you are interested in determining your own dosha, follow the link to the online dosha questionnaire courtesy of my herbal mentor, Don Ollsin of Grassroots Herbalism: Dosha Questionnaire

Gillian Shapiro & Gong at Alberta Orchard Wellness

The gong, as a form of sound or sonic therapy, is a wonderful way to welcome this transition to Fall as the weather cools, days become shorter, and leaves dazzle us with their technicolor splendor.  The gong is a musical instrument but when played for meditation, it is used to facilitate health and vitality.

Everything is made up of vibration and the gong vibrates the cells in our bodies. In fact, we are made up of 70% water, meaning we conduct sound! Sound has the potential to profoundly transform us on a cellular level.

Among the variety of potential benefits of the gong are:

• A sense of security and grounding;
• Opening the higher chakras (energy centers); 
• Pain management (particularly migraines);
• Especially soothing for high vata constitutions, i.e., calming and unplugging the overactive mind, reducing anxiety, worry and overwhelm and relief for insomnia; 
• Encourages deep relaxation and a meditative state;
• Trauma and PTSD symptoms;
• Promotes emotional release when working through grief, by moving stuck energy, and breaking and releasing emotional and energetic blocks.

Gillian offers one hour gong therapy appointments at Alberta Orchard Wellness on Monday evenings  from 5-8 p.m. Please follow our two step process today to book your session for Fall.

Book Gong Therapy here and  Pre-pay for your session here or contact us if you need help booking via albertaorchard.com or drsaritaelizabeth.com.

The sounds are oftentimes magical and have been described as ethereal, cosmic, like being in outer space and also likened to ocean waves crashing over us.  The sounds can also be loud and intense, at times, to promote a deep release for the nervous system.

The gong activates the parasympathetic nervous system (also known as the “rest and digest” system), nourishing us energetically, thereby reducing stress and soothing the overly taxed sympathetic “fight or flight” nervous system that we tend to live in during these busy, stressful times.

A gong therapy session is a one-on-one private session, customized to your specific needs based on an intake questionnaire you complete at the beginning of the session.  A typical session lasts one hour and may also include breath work (pranayama), mantra, affirmations, stretching and/or mudras.

Gong therapy is an ideal companion to talk therapy, yoga/meditation, massage therapy, acupuncture, Reiki and many other modalities as well as conventional medical treatments.

The environment is safe, supportive, non-judgmental and soul nourishing.  No prior experience with Yoga, Ayurveda or the gong are necessary. Come with the intention to surrender to the waves of sound and vibration. Of course, everyone is invited to show up and participate when I offer gong baths, private sessions, classes or workshops around town that include the gong. Follow the “Beech Hills Wellness” page on Facebook to check out the schedule or email me at vegout.gillian@gmail.com to be added to our monthly newsletter to keep track of our wellness offerings.  Gillian

What inspired you to learn gong therapy?  I have loved the cosmic sounds and vibrations of the gong since I first experienced them in a yoga class in NYC, where I ultimately did my kundalini yoga teacher training. The gong’s ability to change our state of mind and our consciousness is so profound, as has been my experience. I initially learned to play the gong during a hands-on module of my teacher training that I specifically requested.  I simply could not get enough of this sacred instrument so I had to buy one when I moved to Alabama six+ years ago, where I actually had the space for it (unlike in my NYC apartment). From then on, I practiced and shared the gong’s amazingness with students in my yoga classes. I was called to go a step further and learn Gong Therapy to deepen my understanding of more specific healing protocols facilitated by the gong. Private sessions are unique in that way; I can play to a person’s specific body system, chakra or emotion that needs support.  

From Dr. Cox:

There is a lot of interest in sound healing from ancient Tibetan metal to New Age crystal bowls, from binaural beats (get a free download: https://free-binaural-beats.com/ ) to tuning forks, from to NASA recordings to Masuru Emoto’s photos of frozen sound portrayed in his The Hidden Messages from Water

For research regarding sound and resonance healing please visit the nonprofit, Sound Healing Research Foundation: https://soundhealingcenter.com/shrf/

Check out this Amazing 17 minute TEDx talk with Music Professor Anthony Holland with drug~less sound resonance healing with Cancer.

 https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-iba-1&hsimp=yhs-1&hspart=iba&p=sound+healing+TED+anthony#id=1&vid=3c71874722106f1a4a78e402e62df285&action=click

Gillian offers one hour gong therapy appointments at Alberta Orchard Wellness on Monday evenings  from 5-8 p.m. Please follow our two step process today to experience sound healing this Fall!

Book Gong Therapy here and  Pre-pay for your session here or or contact us if you need help booking via visit albertaorchard.com or drsaritaelizabeth.com.

Divine Feminine Divine Masculine: Guest Blog Post by Teresa Cribelli, PhD, Eminent Reiki Master

Reiki is a, gentle, compassionate method for bringing energetic balance and clearing on the physical, emotional, and mental levels. Because Reiki is about balance, it can be especially helpful at the changing of seasons.  All versions of Reiki are compassionate and loving with the capacity to bring deep peace and healing, while Eminent Reiki^TM focuses on balancing the feminine and masculine energies we all carry within us. Fall and winter, seasons that are energetically feminine, provide us opportunities to focus on our inner world.  In traditional societies located in parts of the world with changing seasons, the winter was a time of quiet and reflection (not inaction, but a turning to the inner forces that nourish and revitalize us).  It was a period of stored seeds and pickled vegetables and preserved fruits, of relying on the resources harvested and built up during the bright spring and summer months.  Winter shifts us from the outward, masculine seasons (yang) to the inner, feminine seasons (yin).

Murmurmation (Yin). collage. Teresa Cribelli

Reiki energy can help us calibrate our physical bodies with these seasonal energetic shifts.  During winter the focus may be on the feminine, but that does not mean the masculine goes away.  Rather, the changing seasons can be seen as a pendulum that moves between the inner and the outer, the revitalizing feminine and the energizing masculine.  Winter is in balance with summer; the two are part of the whole, and when they operate in equilibrium, each supports the other – the masculine and feminine in balance.  There is the very old Greek story of the goddess of the harvest, Demeter.  When her daughter, Persephone, is kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld, Demeter falls into a deep depression and winter remains well into the time of spring and summer.  The world withers into dust and grey skies and people cannot grow their seeds.  The feminine out of balance leads to inertia.  In another Greek myth, Helios the sun god, in the form of a charioteer drives his team of horses across the sky each day, bringing warmth and energizing light to the world.  When his son, Phaethon, steals the chariot one morning and loses control of the horses, the day lasts for weeks, and all of the plants on earth catch fire and burn. The people are thirsty and hot and again have no food. Too much yin and the earth stagnates, too much yang and it burns.

Divine Yang. collage. Teresa Cribelli

As we move from summer into fall, we can look at this as rebalancing on the macro and the micro levels – the masculine seasons moving into the feminine seasons both within and without.  While the seasons lean toward the feminine or the masculine, over the course of the year, they are in balance. 

This is a useful way to think about Eminent Reiki^TM; bringing balance to the feminine and the masculine energies so that we are nourished and energized year round.

Reiki Description

The practice of Reiki is an ancient healing art, one that is the energy of love and compassion. It supports us through clearing and balancing the energies of the systems and bodies, creating opportunity for health and wellbeing on all levels. Reiki can be received with the practitioner’s hands on or off of the body. The client simply relaxes and receives as the practitioner senses where clearing is needed and allows the Reiki energy to flow to the source of pain. Reiki energy can only be used for positive outcomes.  An all-purpose tool that introduces ease and grace into the lives of those who receive and practice it, Reiki is a cherished method of thousands. There are many types of Reiki practiced on Earth at this time; each variation is an expression of love and support.

Eminent Reiki^{TM is} a new approach to Reiki with a special male/female component unique to the Eminent Reiki^TM process. Not only are the male and female used together to create a special healing experience, they are specifically blended together into a new energy that is part of the Eminent Reiki^TM attunement.  A key component of healing is balancing the male and female within and Eminent Reiki^TM addresses this need specifically in the energy and approach to healing.

For more information, visit the Eminent Reiki^TM website:

http://www.eminentreiki.com and check these research links below:

Effect of Reiki Therapy on Pain and Anxiety in Adults: An In-Depth Literature Review of Randomized Trials with Effect Size Calculations

Reiki Is Better Than Placebo and Has Broad Potential as a Complementary Health Therapy

Reiki Reduces Burnout Among Community Mental Health Clinicians

River City Mural, collage. Temerson Square. Tuscaloosa, AL

Click here for the UA annoucement and more about Teresa’s  Ephemeral River City Mural Project. Catch it while you can! (east side of Coppertop Bar y’all)

What got you interested in Reiki?  What training have you received?

My pathway to practicing Reiki began with acupuncture.  About 20 years ago I consulted an acupuncturist for a chronic pain condition (an MD recommended I try acupuncture – traditional western medical treatments had not been effective for managing my pain).  I began to feel much better after two weeks of acupuncture treatments, and I found that when the pain returned at night (I had been having trouble sleeping) I could make it go away by meditating on the acupuncture points used in my sessions.  Through visualizing the acupuncture points I could attain the same level of relaxation I experienced when I was being treated.  It was an accidental discovery that ended up being life changing.  

In a sense, acupuncture taught me how to meditate and relax, but at that point I still saw moving energy as something outside of myself, I needed a third party to help make the shift.  About ten years later my sister became a Reiki practitioner and gave me a session after I suffered a painful miscarriage.  Her hands became hot during that session and it felt so healing – relaxing and calming on both a physical and emotional level – that I knew I wanted to learn how to do it too.  From there I took the Eminent Reiki^TMclasses in Colorado and received my attunements.  This past summer I received my level three Master Practitioner attunement in Eminent Reiki^TM, a version of Reiki that focuses on balancing the masculine and feminine energies we all carry within us.  My original intent when I first started practicing Reiki was to help relax and heal physical ailments, but in my self-practice I have found I focus more on emotional healing.  Reiki can be a wonderful method for letting go of worries and anxieties from the past.

What got you interested in collage?

I love illustrations and images – it is has been something I have been attracted to my entire life. When I was five I ripped all the horse pictures out of a hand-me-down set of story books.  I could not read yet, and I wanted to free the illustrations from the books.  I had so much fun arranging and re-arranging those horse illustrations before I realized with a shock that books were not supposed to be torn apart.  Nonetheless, I kept coming back to making collages.  I used to shellac images of animals from Ranger Rick magazine onto scraps from my father’s woodpile, and I still have a collage I made in second grade art class.  It contains an image of a plastic horse and cowgirl from a toy catalog, a sewing machine, some aluminum foil, and a photo of Evonne Goolagong,the tennis player.  I have no idea why I put those subjects together at the age of seven, but they illustrate the thrill and power of collage – juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images together in interesting ways.  For me it is a form of meditation.  It is a way of expressing my inner world, an aspect of myself that does not manifest in a linear way. 

How do Reiki and/or collage change your day to day experience of the world?

Both are a form of meditation, of accessing the calm center that is inside all of us. Reiki helps relax and release in the realm of energy, while collage facilitates self-expression.  Both help bring to consciousness what needs to be healed or understood or joyfully expressed.  It is a way to practice self-love.  As physical objects collages also become a meditation  – for me and the people who view them.  By contemplating the juxtaposition of images, we can, to quote the photographer Minor White, “[learn] to make chance moments occur by looking at anything until [we see] what else it is.”  This shift in perspective can facilitate healing and true self expression.

Teresa offers Reiki sessions at Alberta Orchard Wellness. Please utilize our online booking 2 step process or contact our office for pre-payment and scheduling: 

Click to pre-pay.reiki-treatment 

Click to book appointment