About The Star Songs

         In early 2011, just before I was planning to do some personal sound work with my friend Thea Basis, I heard "The stars want you to sing for Gaia".  It was a quiet, light inner voice that cut past any doubt or questions: it was a gentle request and matter of fact statement all at once. Certainly, it seemed a simple orientation to surrender to for a sound exploration. So as Thea held sacred space for me, I followed my intuitive guidance and using my voice, drums and bowls I entered a sound journey.
​        As I began, I found myself naturally singing to the Earth, and what felt like the ancestors of the Earth. Eventually as I continued to sing, I saw inside myself a wise crone throwing lines of light--like silvery ropes---up over several stars. I watched as I toned and drummed, their light seemed to travel down those guide-wires into the heart of the Earth below. It felt very clear that the Earth had a soul, and I was in relationship with her through this journey. I felt embodied as the crone, with her confidence and wisdom as the sound come down in layers over the center of Earth, where Gaia seemed like a baby, and I was crooning gentle blankets of sound to cover this young being with the deepest motherly love, to bless her for the journey ahead. My friend and I were in tears when I finished, the room was filled with such an ancient-feeling love.
         As the sound continued to shimmer outwards, it felt like the work was 'done', Gaia was gestating with those blessings. My intellectual mind was perplexed, it was an unexpected turn of events, but my heart felt complete. I was aware of the great galactic turn of the wheel being discussed about the Mayan Calendar at the end of 2012, but this experience made that cosmic story seem quite personal. It reminded me of a perhaps apocryphal story I heard in Seminary about a culture in Africa where mothers learn the song of each child before it’s born, then teach it to the community who sings that song to them throughout their life and then finally as they die, as both a reminder and recognition of who they are as a soul in the world. My singing to Gaia felt like an audible extension of the songs those stars must be offering all the time. I was invited into 'companioning' the Earth on her journey as a soul. In the deepest part of my being, I felt I was joining them in singing, "we care, we remember you, this is who you are!". The impulse was one of love.
        Some months later, when I shared this recording with my teacher at the time, Tom Kenyon, he noted that there were "interesting 'sound envelopes'" in the sound journey I made. I didn't have a clue what he meant! Fortunately, my friend Paula Grimaldi could also hear those 'sound envelopes'--and felt they were the beginnings of other songs---the individual stars' songs. I still could not hear them myself, but I trusted her guidance. A few weeks later while receiving bodywork, I became aware of an array of stars lined up over my head, with lines of light coming down through my crown and into the Earth. At that point I understood that I was indeed to sing for each of those stars, that those lines of light were somehow going to be ‘songlines’ for my/our relationship to the Earth herself---conduits of intelligence and healing. At that time I did not fully understand what this meant either, but after the star songs were recorded and over the years as I grew to appreciate what was in them, I know that this is true. Much like the aboriginal songlines, the starsongs audibly and energetically transmit stories about life on Earth across time: Creation songs are woven together with sonic gifts for understanding the journey, and guideposts to help us move forward into our best possible futures. Each starsong offers a particular story, a few of the stars tell potent ancient Creation stories, or the beginning of a new Creation Story.
      I felt compelled to participate in the journey---it was never a 'demand', but a gentle if insistent invitation to something that felt like it held beauty, strength, and sacred honoring. I was blessed to know Cynthia and Rick Quintanal who offered their recording studio to capture what came through so I could listen later and share these journeys with others.  As the months rolled by, each of the recordings was scheduled as a star would show up in my meditation---always above my head---the timing was completely dictated by the star itself. I rather deliberately kept myself ignorant about their astronomy, folklore, or any other ideas about what those stars meant in a 'left-brained way' beyond my own understanding at the time. In fact, the first recording was made without really much preparation except the simplest of prayers. I was intuitively guided in my meditations to choose the instruments used in each session, and each of the recordings were done in one take. The first star was Arcturus, recorded in December of 2011.
          Stars continued to show up in my meditation, and I continued to record the sound explorations they directed throughout 2012. These recordings are shamanic-style sound explorations, deeply transcendent inner journeys in which one track leads to the other telling a story. I found myself guided to tone, sing and speak in monologues of sound and Ancient languages as I played drums and bowls. It was all a kind of ‘conversation’ I was hosting between the star to Earth and back. I named the first three starsongs 'To and From' because of the way I felt in relationship to the star (The sound was both to and from the star) and it spoke to my experience of being transported to and from the star itself within the sound journey. In the later starsongs the star so dominated my consciousness that I simply named them after the star itself. My inner experience was of naturally stepping into an elevated frame of consciousness in which I became an embodiment/conduit for the what I eventually recognized as the ‘Original Woman’. Her consciousness is evanescent of Prajnaparamita: She embodies all of life, both the Divine Feminine and Masculine and is centered in the deepest space of love, reverence, wisdom and humor. A variety of different ‘voices’ or aspects of consciousness came through from this level of awareness. My inner wise crone for instance is a form of the Spiderwoman of Indigenous traditions, using webs of light in linking me to the stars. Some voices were quite deep, earthly and powerful, others light-filled and angelic. With each sound offering, it was immediately apparent that while there were many aspects of the inner journey that related to my own personal life, each Star's song felt aimed at the wider collective journey of life on Earth, they were more than just 'my' song.
       As a psychiatrist doing this, it might seem that such a multitude of voices or spiritual beings speaking 'through' (or as) me would present a problem for me! On the contrary, the process and the journeys felt so completely natural, I felt like I surrendering to a lesser-used intuitive aspect of my own being that was cohesive, grounded and wise. In the years before this, I had had previous beautiful spontaneous experiences of altered states in which I was guided to use my own voice---and beautiful singing or speaking in non-native languages happened. Those experiences were always gifts to me, and to the few others they were meant for, so I had some confidence about my intuitive abilities. But these star journeys felt much more expansive, transcendent, and deeply shamanic. It was interesting in retrospect that whenever during a recording I would feel doubtful or distracted, I would find myself narrating (speaking rather than toning) a kind of wise and gentle reassurance that kept me in the right state of mind to continue the sound journey from the highest level of wisdom and integrity. I was grateful for this built-in support! Allowing this inner guidance, though the energies and information coming through me were often quite intense, I usually found myself at the deepest peace and ease---and curiously non-attached during these journeys.
       It was certainly helpful to my personal process that others, starting with Cynthia, Rick and my husband Ed who were there for the recording sessions, could hear and feel the journey I was taking as I sang: it was evident that we journeyed together much like a typical shamanic process might evoke. Their reflections were tremendously validating to me, for these songs were really done at the early stages of my development as a Sound healer. We compared notes after each session and found consensus in our shared experience of the energies that came in, even the visual images we experienced. I had some profound realizations about life, the Earth and time during these sound offerings. I also learned a tremendous amount about myself and the humbling process of offering myself in service to something much bigger than myself. The most important thing to me has been to see that these songs always seem to land in listeners in a way that brings benefit: healing, discovery, wisdom and support. I am grateful and encouraged by the many friends who have offered me their feedback and support along the way.
       It was fascinating to me to experience how different each star’s energy felt. For instance, the energy of the song from the Sun was deeply masculine and grounding, while some star songs (like Arcturus) typically leave listeners in a ‘very far away’, expansive frame of mind. The unifying feature of all the 2011-2012 recordings was that they ‘speak to’ different aspects of our human life across time on Earth and bring sonic guidance and multidimensional gifts for a peaceful, joyful, life-affirming and highly evolved future together.  As the stars continued to come, I began to understand that these were songs for ‘The New Earth” ---we were passing an important Galactic threshold as we approached the end of 2012 and singing to Gaia was my contribution to this new chapter. Now, several years later, we are clearly in need of tools to connect us to the Earth's needs, and guidance for a better future. The experience of listening to these starsongs continues to offer such support to me and to those I have shared them with so I am making them available to a wider audience now through this website. 
         The star song from Mulu Bat recorded in 2014, is also included here, though it came much afterwards. I learned about Mulu Bat (Iota Virginis) in my follow up research about the Pleiades. Both stars, it turns out, have been associated in traditional folklore with death and dying. For whatever reason, when I fully turned my attention to Mulu Bat I could actually hear music! It was such a beautiful sound, like an angelic choir! I found that music sweetly compelling---like an invitation to another dialogue. So I decided to honor that with another trip into a sound studio to prayerfully connect with Mulu Bat. The sound journey that came was a powerful experience of listening/learning (as I sang and played) to wisdom which is all about death and dying, a kind of 'transitional coaching' for us as humans. 
           On each star's page, I have briefly summarized some of the ‘content’ of the recording based on my own inner journey and the consistent feedback from many listeners that may be useful orientation to the sound’s content and benefits. However, I would not want these summaries to be limiting to any listener’s experience.  The true nature of the sound here is multi-dimensional, for the recordings are filled with various forms of light language---layers of energy transmissions within the sound that are literal ‘downloads’ for your being. Indeed, my own appreciation of what is in these sound recordings has evolved significantly in the past few years. These star journeys offer blueprints for energetic activation and subtle body guidance that will continue to support your human journey in the days, months and years ahead. I hope you enjoy them, happy listening!