Healing through Sound

Healing through Sound: Awakening Your Audible Body
Vickie Dodd
979-8888500316
Findhorn Press
$18.99

Vickie Dodd hooks you right away, opening with a compelling description of her Ozark upbringing, where granny healers were common and “doctoring”—going to see a medical professional—was an indicator of upward mobility. As a child, she “had the nerves,” that is to say, she was perceived as being overly sensitive to the point of anxiety—and indeed she was. As she grew older, Dodd learned how to tune out the excess noise of others’ moods and tune in to her own body, to heal her nervous system by teaching herself to listen to the messages of her body and translate these instinctively into sound. In addition to internal perceptions, her teachers were plants, trees, rocks and rivers. She also began to work with other people, beginning with adding intuitive soundings to massage, and eventually she began teaching how to perceive and heal with the inner ear. In Healing Through Sound; Awakening Your Audible Body, Dodd provides guidance for any reader interested in learning how to perceive and respond to the deep wisdom of the body.

Dodd’s engaging narrative carries you along as she describes her journey—don’t be surprised to find yourself having trouble putting the book down! Healing Through Sound is more than her own story, though. The book is structured as a guide to healing yourself and others through listening to and expressing sounds. In each chapter, she outlines the topic and provides instructions, practical advice and exercises, while simultaneously offering anecdotes and remembrances, which are, of course, their own teachers. She begins with listening as the primary form of inner perception, describing for the reader how to become aware of the body’s messages and advice—whether your own body or another person’s. Subsequent chapters cover humming and other sounds, emptying or releasing the suppressed and unexpressed aspects of your experience and aligning or attuning the body. The entire work centers on the concept that the body has wisdom to share and that listening to it and engaging with the parasympathetic nervous system is a path of healing.

The last two chapters and the epilogue will be of particular interest to readers of The Witches’ Almanac, covering shadow work, the spiritual experience and power of sound and a discussion of trusting the body as an aspect of the awakening of the divine feminine. With a foreword by noted herbalist Rosemary Gladstar, anyone interested in natural healing and the connection between mind, body, soul and nature will find Healing Through Sound an indispensable read.