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An Interview with Jonathan Goldman

Lese Dunton: What are some of the possible benefits for an individual who chants vowel sounds?

Jonathan Goldman: First of all, the resonance of the chakras is extremely powerful and extremely important.

I teach vowels as mantras when I'm given the opportunity to give workshops to people for 2-3 hours - and I want to do something that's experiential as opposed to left brain "here's how sound works" etc.

For me, it's the single most powerful introductory tool that will change people's lives. One of the reasons for this is the fact that our chakras are interrelated to our physical body, first of all.

For example, the solar plexus chakra is associated with the energy of digestion. So if someone had a digestion problem, it could potentially be healed by working with the solar plexus mantra.

By sounding and chanting a chakra you can put yourself in physical alignment. That's just one of the benefits. Also, when you are making self-created sounds all sorts of beneficial things occur, including causing the release of endorphins, of melatontin, and of nitric oxide.

Nitric oxide is probably going to be one of the major molecules of interest in the next decade because it's a vascular expander and it's associated with the healing process. In addition, other specific physiological effects that occur when you make self-created sound include: increased levels of oxygen in the cells, lowered blood pressure, and lowered heart rate.

LD: And then there's good old-fashioned peace of mind.

JG: That's something that I'm most interested in. If you do the vowels as mantra as an elongated exercise, you can go into really deep states of mediation and relaxation. To me, this is so very, very important. People become out of touch with the Source.

LD: Explain more about chanting the Divine Name. [Editor's Note: The Divine Name has won the 2011 COVR Visionary Awards for Best "Alternative Health / Healing" Book.]

JG: It's important to read The Divine Name book and to experience the interactive Instructional CD that accompanies it together. To just quickly mimic the sound is a little bit like eating plastic food.

You don't get any sonic nutrition from the experience. You need to be able to 1) feel the vibrations of that sound resonating from your crown chakra down to your root and back up again and 2) have an intention for it. Otherwise, it becomes entertainment or performance art. That's not the purpose of it.

What's really important with regard to the Divine Name is that even though I spend a portion of the book talking about it as a personal name of God – from the Judeo-Christian tradition to the Torah – it's really important for people to understand that 1) this is a universal sound and 2) it's not linked up with any particular religion.

When you work with these vowel sounds in the specific order I discovered, you first become aware of a descending and then ascending series of harmonics inherent in the vowels. As you experience this through making the particular vowel sounds, you do hear an extraordinary auditory phenomenon - you hear this ancient and sacred name of God - and at the same time, you also have the resonance of the chakras. That's the only thing I know for sure. It occurs! It may be purely coincidental or it may be something much more. It is for me the most powerful sound I have experienced in my over 30 years of work – powerful and universal!

LD: Tell me about the vision globally that you have.

JG: I believe the major purpose that the sound was rediscovered for was so that it could be used as a tool for creating balance on the planet.

I think the Divine Name is just such an extraordinarily important and powerful tool for really restoring balance. What is really important is that our consciousness is beginning to coalesce into a coherent waveform.

The heart and the brain, if they are in a state of coherence, then the heart actually creates a field that has been measured as being 5,000 times greater than that of the brain, and actually is being shown now to interface with the ionesphere – the geomagnetic field of the earth – which is truly amazing!

I was at a book signing for The Divine Name and I was trying to explain it to each person one by one, and then I gathered about a dozen people around me at the podium and began by saying:

This book is the result of a discovery I made 15 years ago. It's about a universal sound, that when intoned, can basically resonate your chakras, going down to your root chakra and then back out the crown chakra. Regardless of your belief system, if you've learned to intone it the way I've presented it in the book, you'll experience it.

LD: Regardless of your belief system...

JG: That's really important. It's not a belief thing. The sound is a vibratory phenomenon of physics, and the harmonics that are associated with each vowel sounds are an aspect of the physics of sound.

I said to the people at the book signing: "It's going to take you between 4 and 6 hours to read this book with the accompanying material, but after that you will have an extraordinary tool."

Then I said: "Are you willing to a) to make the commitment to do that? and b) once you have this tool I ask that you use it to assist in creating balance on this planet."

That was the talk I did to every 10-12 people, just so they got it. So the first thing is going to be - you have to read the book and work with the interactive instructional CD. Once you do this, that should be enough to allow you to gain the ability to intone the Divine Name. There are a few other things that can be done to help, if you like, really relate to making this sacred sound, such as working with vocal harmonics, etc.

LD: So you teach mantras as vowels, chanting the Divine Name, and also vocal harmonics.

JG: Yes – we do all that in a live workshop and it's extraordinary. Learning to help create vocal harmonics is indeed one of the things we teach when we're do a live workshop and it's great to do in person. I also have a recording for it called "The Healing Sounds Instructional" which includes teaching vocal harmonics. It takes an afternoon to experience and it's really quite good.

Every year we do something called the "Healing Sounds Intensive," which has about 100 people who come from throughout the world to study with us for 9 days in July. It's at a place called Sunrise Ranch in Loveland, Colorado. The next one is July 16-24, 2011.

The Divine Name is basically the last thing we share at the intensive. This year, 2010, we were intoning the Divine Name, sitting in a circle with a crystal grid in the middle, and I'm going through all the different methods of using it as prayer – as communion with the Divine – that are in the book. Suddenly, I'm hit with one that's not in the book.

I said, "I want you to visualize a holographic 3-dimensional image of the Earth floating in the middle of this crystal grid that we have and now let us intone the Divine Name, bathing the planet with energy of Light and Love through Sound."

We started to do it and I had one of those "Ah-ha" experiences. What happened was that time froze. I looked around and I saw this blue white light coming from people's mouths, going to an image of the Earth in the center of the crystal grid. I hear this voice say, "This is the way it is to be done."

And I understood. Because I have been focused on the power of people throughout the world sounding together using the Internet – particularly by using a website we manifested: www.templeofsacredsound.org – the world's first interactive sacred sound temple. But I realized that the way to do it most effectively was first to have groups physically together on the planet and then have the groups link up via the Internet.

So you get the energy of the live group happening and then, you have as well, this energy linking up through the Internet, as a live global event. It's all very synergistic and quite powerful.

Each year we have an event-World Sound Healing Day, which takes place on Feb. 14th-Valentine's Day. People throughout the planet sound forth with an "Ah" at noon New York Time, sending a sonic valentine encoded with the energy of Light and Love to our Mother Earth. Many go to www.templeofsacredsound.org and find this really assists the process. There has actually been scientific data about World Sound Healing Day which indicates that intentionalized sound is able to interface with the field of the planet, effecting global consciousness.

Currently, we focus on the heart sound "Ah." I think that learning to Intone the Divine Name is the next step in this work – truly creating this most extraordinary sound and using it for this most beneficial result: manifesting balance on the planet. It's my intention to have some live Divine Name events on the Internet, in preparation for the winter equinox of 2012. Perhaps we'll be combining intoning the Divine Name along with the "Ah" sound. I believe this will be a truly amazing frequency shifting phenomenon, especially if we create this sound with the energy of clarity, kindness, and compassion.

Remember, we heal ourselves, we heal the planet. We heal the planet and we heal ourselves. I invite anyone who is interested in helping make a positive change on this planet to join us for World Sound Healing Day 2011. We have a whole section of information about this event and the power of planetary healing sounds on our website: www.healingsounds.com.

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JONATHAN GOLDMAN is an international authority on sound healing and a pioneer in the field of harmonics. He has worked with masters of sound from both the scientific and the spiritual traditions and has been empowered by the Chant Master of the Dalai Lama's Drepung Loseling Monastery to teach Tibetan Overtone Chanting.

Jonathan is author of HEALING SOUNDS, SHIFTING FREQUENCIES, THE LOST CHORD, and TANTRA OF SOUND: Frequencies of Healing (co-authored with his wife Andi), winner of the 2006 Visionary Award for "Best Alternative Health Book", the best selling THE 7 SECRETS OF SOUND HEALING and his latest THE DIVINE NAME.

He is director of the Sound Healers Association and president of Spirit Music, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado. A Grammy nominee, Jonathan has created numerous best selling, award winning recordings including "THE DIVINE NAME" (with Gregg Braden), "FREQUENCIES: Sounds of Healing", THE LOST CHORD", "2012: ASCENSION HARMONICS" and "CHAKRA CHANTS", double winner of Visionary Awards for "Best Healing-Meditation Album" and "Album of the Year". He is a lecturing member of the International Society for Music Medicine. Jonathan has dedicated his lives to the path of service, helping awaken and empower others with the ability of sound to heal and transform. He presents HEALING SOUNDS lectures, workshops and seminars worldwide. Jonathan lives with his wife Andi in Boulder, Colorado and may be reached at: www.healingsounds.com, (303) 443-8181, or by writing to P.O. Box 2240, Boulder, CO 80306.