Natural Harmony

The Power of Sound for Coming Home to Ourselves and the World

Welcome to the Soulful Impact newsletter, where we explore a path to impact and success with a whole new level of fulfillment and freedom.

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Upcoming Gathering: The Soul Alchemy Retreat

Join us for a rejuvenating and inspiring weekend in Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley. Featuring a deep dive sound ceremony, the medicine of Mother Nature, community connection, art, and embodiment practice. April 4-6. There are still a few spots left.

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Natural Harmony

I’m writing this on the plane back home from Joshua Tree after completing an incredible week with

Quddus Philippe

and the Sound Sanctuary Academy.

The Academy is a sound practitioner training and transformational rebirth. We learned to skillfully facilitate sound meditation, which I now believe to be the most effective form of meditation practice around. In addition, thanks to experiencing the power of sound ourselves and with the support of Quddus, we dove deep within and connected with the profoundly resonant tone of our embodied inner knowing.

Here are my key takeaways from the experience:

Harmonic Overtones: A Little-Known Powerhouse

In the words of Alexandre Tannous, former professor at Columbia University and the originator of the particular lineage of sound meditation practice in which we were just trained, working with sound and harmonic overtones as a meditation practice allows us to be “immersed in nature’s true harmony.”

“Harmonic overtones” are two key words in that last sentence, because most of the music and instruments that are popular in our culture today do not have them. In the 16th century, a new musical standard was adopted in Europe to create consistency in sound and support musicians from different locations in collaborating with each other. This was the origin of musical scales and keys in the form we now all know of them (think of the black and white keys of the piano, each with a 1/2 step in between).

The downside of this change is that it drastically reduced (effectively eliminated in most cases) the presence of harmonic overtones in culture. Instruments and musicians became more focused on only playing one specific note at a time, as opposed to what happens with overtone-emitting instruments, which actually play many notes at the same time. If you strike a Tibetan singing bowl in the key of C, for example, you will hear the tone of C but also a multitude of other notes that are in harmony with C.

When you put these harmonic overtones on a graph, you see a beautiful and very full range of sound waves — from the big, tall, slow waves of the low range notes to the small, short, fast waves of the high range ones.

Screenshot from Tannous’ TEDx Brooklyn talk, which you can view here.

This is a good time to remember that sound is a physical phenomenon. When that Tibetan singing bowl is played, it is sending literal — physical — waves of energy out in all directions.

Yes, those waves strike our ear drums and our brain translates them into the actual audible sound that we experience. But don’t you think it would make sense that they would have a broader impact on us than just that? Doesn’t it seem plausible — likely, in fact — that they would create a more holistic effect on all levels of our being?

To you music lovers out there, this comes as no surprise. We all know the power of a good song to drop us into our hearts, quiet the monkey mind, and bring us back to our true selves.

But the logical extension of this is where things get really exciting. If each of those sound waves has an impact on our being, that means that experiencing harmonic overtones would have an exponentially stronger impact than the average music or sound that most people might be listening to today, which has a much reduced and narrowed range of sound.

Based on Tannous’ research, as well as my own and thousands of others’ anecdotal lived experience, the amplified effect of harmonic overtones to elicit harmony and resonance in our minds, bodies, hearts, and souls 100% real.

Ancient cultures have known this from their use of overtone-emitting instruments for thousands of years. But modern scientific research is just now starting to catch up. More research is needed in this area, but the results of the early studies are pretty astounding. To see more on that, check out Tannous’ TEDx talk here and his resource-rich website here.

Inner Coherence

If I had to describe the impact that these overtone-emitting instruments make in two words, it would be inner coherence.

I have dedicated a lot of time to exploring and applying various practices to improve the consistency and depth of my state of presence. By presence, I mean being fully aware and here now, in a non-triggered, non-reactive state. I also mean being deeply in tune with my innate inner knowing.

What I experienced through the practice of sound meditation this past week was unlike quite anything else that I have come across so far. The speed, consistency, and ease with which this practice brought me into a state of presence and clarity was dumbfounding.

The key to creating that result was to engage with the sounds of these overtone-emitting instruments in a very intentional way, like a meditation. I wasn’t just passively zoning out. I kept bringing my mind back to a single point of focus — the sound.

We also created a lot of intentionality around the experience of listening to the sound itself. Thanks to the very thoughtful structure of the retreat, I knew exactly what I was there to learn and transform within myself. I knew how to focus on and engage with the sound, and then I simply got to let the sound do the rest.

The result was a remarkable level of clarity about various different parts of my life — topics with which my mind had been spinning in question and doubt in the months leading up to this experience. As David Lynch writes in Catching The Big Fish:

"Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper"

The water that Lynch is referring to, of course, is our state of consciousness. Our inner knowing is always in us. We just need to drop in to a deep enough state of conscious awareness — beneath the usual noise of our surface-level patterns, habits, and discursive thinking — to connect with it.

This is why I am such a huge fan of the styles of work that I already employ with Soulful Impact. I’ve long known the power of tools and allies such as wild nature, plant medicine, ceremony, and coaching to help us drop in and reconnect with that inner truth. Now, I couldn’t be more excited to add sound meditation to my list of favorite modalities.

The sound and harmonic overtones — “nature’s true harmony” — helped me re-tune myself with nature. This made it astoundingly easy to then remember and come back to my true nature.

Earth Love Warrior

One of the biggest pieces of clarity that came through for me this week was deepening my conviction and clarifying my vision around a role that I feel called to play in this life on a soul level.

In the words of my friend

Rebecca Wildbear

, I am called to be a “Love Warrior for the Earth.”

Before going into the deepest sound experiential of the past week, a multi-hour sound meditation in a ceremonial setting, I set two intentions:

My first intention was to let go of the racket of exhausting myself.

Coming into the weeklong retreat, I was carrying a lot of stress and fatigue in my system. This had been cropping up and creating less than ideal results in several different places in my life. Going into the ceremony, I still didn’t know exactly how to let go of it, but I knew it was time. I could clearly see how the self-exhaustion was rooted in a lifelong pattern of being “never enough” — feeling like I don’t belong and need to constantly stand out from the crowd to prove my worth.

My second intention was to let God guide me.

Earlier in the retreat I had identified that though I have long considered myself a spiritual person, I was still carrying baggage around the word — and the idea — of “God.” Spirit, Mystery, Life, and the Universe all felt like fine words to use to reference the divine, but God still had some religious and patriarchal baggage attached for me.

After a powerful exploration of this, I decided it was time to let that baggage go. I got excited about the new dimension of relationship with the divine that felt like it was ready to open up to me by relating directly to God himself. (My connection to Goddess, through my deep reverence for and relationship with Mother Earth, was already super solid.)

Then during the ceremony, the most amazing thing happened that met both of my intentions at once.

I realized that the reason I was still exhausting myself in my “never enough” pattern was because I still wasn’t operating from a fully integrated place of faith in God.

Because I didn’t fully trust God, I was still often thinking that I had to figure it all out and do everything by myself. That would subtly anchor my identity in the ego, the small “me”. And that little me is really good at doubting and worrying that he is never enough.

Then God gave me the message I had been waiting for. It didn’t particularly come as a surprise, as the message sings in harmony with the person that I already am. But it did something significant for me on the foundational level of how I perceive of myself and the role my soul came here in this lifetime to play.

“Earth Warrior,” the booming voice echoed in my awareness. “Earth Medicine.”

I wept. The words struck a chord deep within my heart.

I wept for their truth. For the grief that comes with the knowing inside that I am called into deeper service. For the letting go of the time in my life where I had been blessed to enjoy a more selfish existence. For the untold uncertainties that lie ahead for me on this new path.

And I wept for the Earth. She showed me her pain. She showed me that her pain is my pain. Our pain. All pain. My heart broke wide open, again and again.

With not a slimmer of hesitation in the entirety of my being, I accepted the assignment. At the end of the ceremony, I shared:

“I don’t want to fight. But the Earth needs our protection. She doesn’t need to be saved — that would fail to recognize her power. She needs to be honored, and protected.”

Being recognized as Earth Warrior — the one who carries Earth Medicine — was an experience of being seen on the deepest level of my soul.

I don’t know exactly where this path will lead. There is much more for me to discover and explore about who exactly this Earth Warrior is who I am called to become, and how he came to be. I am totally willing to let that further understanding unfold slowly over time. Soul moves slow, and I’ve come to trust that.

But some key ingredients are already coming to light. As Earth Warrior, I am called to work in service of protecting the earth and facilitating full-spectrum human development through the gifts I carry of Earth Medicine. Those two pieces go hand-in-hand with each other, because fully developed humans remember ourselves as interconnected members of the great Earth community, and live our lives in alignment with that truth.

Much of this will continue to come through the existing channels of work I lead through Soulful Impact. There are some new offerings I’m cooking up to build community and organize others around this mission: Bimonthly Tribe Calls (beginning next month) and the inaugural Soulful Impact Summit (tentatively planned for September 2026).

And some of it will emerge through new channels. In ceremony, the vision came through for me to start a foundation to operate in service of this mission. If you or someone you know would be interested in supporting or co-creating around that kind of effort, please reach out.

As always, thanks for reading. I’m honored to share this journey with you.

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Connect with the Soulful Impact Community

Two upcoming opportunities to connect with fellow full-spectrum humans who are committed to creating Soulful Impact:

The Soul Alchemy Retreat

• April 4-6

• Private mountain sanctuary in the wilderness of Colorado’s breathtakingly beautiful Roaring Fork Valley (within 1 hour of Aspen)

• Includes: Sound ceremony, in-depth connection with nature, space for deep self-exploration, cozy lodging and nourishing food

The Tribe Call

• April 24th, 10-11:30am MDT

• Complimentary community gathering via Zoom where people committed to making Soulful Impact gather to drop in, reconnect, support each other, get inspired, and get clear on whatever key questions are currently in your heart

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Community Shout-Out: The Prismara Circle

I am super excited to share and promote an incredible new offering from my dear friend and fellow creator of Soulful Impact,

Kelly Wilde Miller

: Prismara.

“Prismara” emerges from two potent forces: Prism—a vessel of light, revealing the full spectrum of color, clarity, and infinite possibility, and Mara—a whisper of transformation, the cyclical dance of creation and dissolution, where endings give birth to new beginnings.

Kelly’s soul journey has led her into a devotion to creativity. She is the author of Creative Dysregulation, a brilliant book that will help you heal your relationship with your creativity and unleash your full creative joy and potential.

I am thrilled to be joining Kelly as a Prismara Mentor for her inaugural cohort this spring.

Prismara is a 6-month journey for project-based transformation. It’s a living dojo for leaders bringing their authentic work into the world where creative wholeness meets real-world expression.

If you have done the inner work necessary to know what you want to create during this next chapter of life and are looking for a creative council of like-hearted humans to hold you in your journey, then The Prismara Circle is for you.

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