Music gets your mind and body right

I loved the purring kittens that were working on my lower back, but I couldn't stop chasing the figurative butterflies that were flitting around in my head. Maybe it was because I was so focused on counting the number of times I inhaled versus the number of times I exhaled.

I had come to Purple Sky Healing Arts for a private session on the vibroacoustic bed. Therapeutic musician and sound practitioner Robin Burk uses it as a method of healing and had said earlier that it feels like "lying on a bed of purring kittens."

Well, I was obviously excited about that.

It seems to me that a person's attitude about going to a place like Purple Sky is dependent on how that person feels going in. The person who slept well the night before and who lives life on a daily basis relatively pain-free is maybe less likely to understand how spending his or her hard-earned cash for an hour of sound therapy might help. But, the person who hasn't had a good night's rest in years because of stress or chronic pain completely understands the quest for anything that will make him feel better. And, if it makes you feel better, it's worth every penny, I say.

Some folks like a pill. Some like to meditate. Some visit a chiropractor regularly. Some feel better after a yoga class or a long run. If it works for you, it's gold.

The vibroacoustic bed is located in a room about 8 feet wide and 12 feet long just off of the main, open studio. It looks like an examination table with a soft padded cushion filled with transducers through which sound waves are fed, offering non-invasive, energy-based relief from pain or stress. Such beds have been used for nearly four decades to help treat people who have had everything from strokes to hip replacements.

One manufacturer of the beds says on its website that, "The vibration is delivered so cleanly that the brain interprets the stimulus as Sound, not Shaking."

I climbed on top of the bed, and after a few minutes of quiet instruction on what to expect from Burk, she covered my eyes and placed headphones over my ears, through which was playing a soothing, repetitive soundtrack. She'd counseled me earlier to keep my breathing numbers in the X-2 range, meaning if I inhaled for six seconds I should exhale for four, but the more I thought about it, the more I couldn't do it. Like not hitting your drive into the pond on the golf course after somebody points out the pond.

Once I was able to stop thinking about the breathing, however, the butterflies went away and everything actually went purple inside my head. A very calm, serene, deep purple. More on that later.

Burk has studied and practiced therapeutic music for years, and says she travels to workshops, classes and seminars around the country on a regular basis looking to improve her craft. She has studied ways to use the practice for stress relief and deep rest as well as the special needs of those in the final hours of life. In fact, she is a certified music practitioner, trained through the Music for Healing and Transition Program to provide live therapeutic music at the bedside of the ill and dying.

She also practices Reiki, the Japanese healing technique in which the laying of hands is used to adjust a person's "life force energy." Adding Reiki to a sound session can deepen the experience and provide the benefits of Reiki energies, she says on her website, purpleskyhealingarts.com. I decided to start small, though, and did not opt for this addition.

Burk conducts weekly group and private therapeutic music sessions at Purple Sky, using instruments - stringed instruments, native and world flutes, drums, rattles, handpan, metal tongue drums, kalimba, chimes, bells, gongs, tuning forks and tubes - to create sound waves that pass through the body and mind to relax muscles, calm nerves, destress the brain, lower blood pressure and generally make you feel better.

In addition to the private sessions, which run $75 for about one hour, Burk does group sessions with the bowls and other instruments for a little more than half that price, depending on the group's size. Most groups are between six and 12 people. These sessions are done in the large main room with participants lying on mats in a circle around Burk.

Some people go once a month and others go when they feel the need, she says. Some couple the music therapy with other forms of healing there and elsewhere. Burk says no two sessions that she offers, or the sounds she makes, are the same.

Not everyone has the same experience, of course. Not everyone sees purple, or any colors, like I did, and it doesn't necessarily happen every time.

Therapeutic musician and sound practitioner Robin Burk plays her metal singing bowls during music healing class at Purple Sky Healing Arts on East Main Street.

"Some see colors and have far-off experiences," Burk had said before our session.

"Some go really deep. Some experience beta waves and some go all the way to theta," she added, referring to the different levels of brain-wave activity exhibited during different actions such as everyday thought or deep sleep - or dream-like states.

Then she mentioned something about the sound waves impacting my vagus nerve. Basically, the vagus is interconnected with the heart, lungs and digestive tract and "is the longest nerve of the autonomic nervous system in the human body," according to Wikipedia. (I had to look it up.)

Until my conversation with Burk, I had given zero thought to my beta or theta waves, much less my vagus nerve, but I do understand the concept behind such things. "Thanks" to a painful sciatic nerve issue, I fully believe that the body is made up of interconnected parts. I also firmly believe that music can affect how we feel in many ways.

While much of what Burk says and does has a New Agey ring to it (see what I did there?), it's hardly new or unusual, as I'd venture to say almost all of us listen to music as a way to relax or otherwise alter our moods. So I was both curious and excited to undergo a private session on the vibroacoustic bed.

I did feel my muscles and body in general relax quite a bit as a result of those "purring kittens." Mentally, not so much, but staying focused is not easy for me. In addition to thinking about my breathing, I ping-ponged between thoughts of things I needed to do after the session and the voice in my head telling me to stay focused - or unfocused, actually.

I do wonder how a second or third session might go, now that I know what to expect. I think I might like it. For people like me, who rarely take a few minutes, much less 30 or 60, to relax, clear their mind and let things go for awhile, decompression is probably a good idea. And how can you say no to purring kittens?