The Sacred Chants of Devi (adventures in healing pain, trauma, iatrogenic injury)

I continue to do a lot of meditation while listening to evocative music and tones. It can be profoundly healing. I can in fact nip a migraine in the bud with this: OM — healing, soothing, transformative sounds (for me can also end migraines) Other healing experiences are more subtle but remain undeniable.

I’d like to underscore that when these chant like pieces of music have been helpful for acute pain that it’s not in the way western medicine has come to expect. Western medicine aims for getting rid of the pain. It aims for avoiding all suffering. I’m learning that healing, real, deep and complete healing, sometimes hurts. And for me, that’s meant creating containers in which I can deeply experience the pain safely. These chant like pieces when used for pain create such a container. A space in my psyche where I can deeply sink into the pain and experience it. I’ve learned that pain has information. We miss out on what it might teach if we do all we can to avoid surrendering to its lessons. This does not imply masochism. It’s a process to get to this place. Early on when my pain was insanely acute I would only practice surrendering to it for 30 seconds at a time. (Yes, a conscious diving into it…to experience it. I called it being curious about my experience) see: Life as a meditation: my contemplative adventure

Slowly I built up the capacity and as I did this the pain began to change as well and now when I use these chant like tones and pieces of music to help me surrender I find that as I dive consciously into the pain some sort of alchemical process happens and it is transformed. The pain often dissipates , dissolves and transmutes over the course of listening and meditating for an hour or so. I am guided to heal myself this way with the aid of music and sound. Herbs often help in this manner too. Helping create a space to deeply experience the pain and thus begin a process to transmute and heal it.

Working with pain for me has been either like a spiral, changing each time it revisits on another rung, or alternately, like a unlayering process of trauma and conditioning. In either case, healing is happening. I’ve written more about natural pain relief here: Adventures in natural pain relief — some of what I talk about in that post are methods I no longer use as my needs have changed and evolved. This included methods that were highly effective but are no longer. Such has been my healing path. things are always changing.

Most important in this process is kindness and gentleness to oneself. That means not pushing ahead with something that doesn’t feel right. It’s taken me years to get to this point and early on in the process I couldn’t listen to any music of any kind because the sensitivities were so severe. I have learned to deeply respect the needs of my body regardless of what others think they may know. I have learned to trust my own inner guidance because by and large, we have to find our own way.

Here is something I’ve been listening to recently that has helped a lot with this phase of remaining pain.

If this music doesn’t do it for you, something else may. It’s always changing even for me so we cannot expect to respond to the same thing others do at any given time as well.