ABSTRACT

This chapter starts with an example of how crucial the making of sound is to the health of the body/mind, explores sound as a major vehicle for ‘coming into being’ mythologically and personally, and describes how sound points to invisible mysteries and spirits that gave the early shamans their healing songs in the first place. It also describes how sound is the most important attribute for awakening individual religious experience and resonance with what Jung described as the two-million-year-old man in the human psyche: the self. The sound of our human voice, it is suggested, is unique to us, although our voice may not necessarily represent our most authentic selves, having become overlaid with defensive cramps and rigidities that counterfeit our ‘given’ voices. Jung’s example of the voice of the inner person is described, and the author’s experience of this voice recounted. The implications of the attribute of sound in the psychotherapy situation is explored, as we learn to listen shamanically for the music between the words of our patients. How we listen to the deeper sounds connected to unconscious emotion is emphasized, and an example from the Secret of the Golden Flower is produced. Finally, the author’s re-discovery of her own authentic sound with her voice coach Joseph is described, and she demonstrates how sound awakened early somatic feelings/memories previously unconscious and far beneath her words.