By Iyan M. Bruce
“At any moment, you have a choice, that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
Before I discovered sound as a powerful method for healing, I had spent the previous 15 years working in corporate america as a marketing professional for the entertainment industry. One of the most fulfilling aspects of my job was the truly wonderful people I had the good fortune to work with - many of which are some of my closest friends today.
Those of you reading this who have experienced the corporate life know it can be very rewarding, but it can also come with its own unique brand of stresses including: re-orgs, layoffs and internal politics to name a few. Over the years, I remember seeing many of my colleagues suffer from a variety of stress related conditions including: skin rashes, insomnia, panic attacks, complete exhaustion, cancer and nervous breakdowns. Prescriptions for Ambien, Xanax and anti-depressants seemed to be everywhere but all they did was mask the symptoms while leaving the root cause, (a nervous system stuck in permanent “on/panic” mode), completely untouched.
When these corporate stresses eventually began to intensify on me, (and I developed a stress-related skin rash), I discovered meditation. Meditation was an excellent way for me to rebalance my body, mind and create a sense of overall calm. I continued to meditate regularly for the next seven years and developed a clear understanding of the mind-body connection.
As William Shakespeare once said: “Nothing is, unless our thinking makes it so”. What we believe in our mind becomes our reality. Since our mind and body are connected, whatever we believe in our mind also manifests itself in our body – good or bad. For me, the bad was:
Stressful thoughts = itchy skin rash and an unhappy Iyan.
Solution? Just control your thoughts, Iyan! Be happy! Breathe! Easy right???
While my meditation practice would help calm and rebalance me during moments of daily stress, I could feel something troubling was building deeper inside my nervous system. Eventually, a great opportunity at a different company came up so I changed jobs. I figured changing employers and environments should also solve whatever problem had been building up inside my nervous system.
The company I transitioned to eventually went through several rounds of senior management changes and massive re-orgs. The employee morale went from cheery and cooperative to confused, angry and frustrated. This was the first time I had experienced a work environment which became truly toxic, and it continued to spiral down over a two-year period. While I continued to meditate, my daily meditation practice was providing only mild relief.
When the situation reached its ultimate pain point, I heard my inner voice yell: “Get out!” So I left… No plan. No idea where I was going or what I would do next. I only knew I needed to get out of there as I was beginning to feel sick. This was going way beyond a skin rash.
I eventually developed a stress-induced disorder called Alopecia Areata. This is a condition where massive and prolonged stress can cause confusion in your immune system. The stress causes the sympathetic nervous system to be stuck “on”, so the body is constantly preparing for an attack. When the immune system becomes confused, it believes the attack is coming from the body itself. In my case, it mistakenly attacked my own hair follicles as it would an army of invading germs. As a result, I lost half the hair in my left eyebrow.
"The mind-body connection I professed to understand was clearly no joke. I was allowing stressful thoughts to influence my thinking and their effects were becoming visible in my physical body."
While I considered whether or not my new look might qualify me to be a new super-villain character in a Marvel film, I had two very big revelations:
1. The mind-body connection I professed to understand was clearly no joke. I was allowing stressful thoughts to influence my thinking and their effects were becoming visible in my physical body.
2. All of this was happening despite my meditation practice! It seemed all of that accumulated stress had caused something deep in my nervous system to remain stuck in the “on” position, and I couldn’t completely shut it off through meditation.
I was clearly in need of a cleansing… mind, body and spirit.
As Dr. Wayne Dyer, (one of my heroes), states: “If prayer is you talking to God, then intuition is God talking to you.” It was shortly after I developed Alopecia that a friend introduced me to the documentary Heal. I remember seeing Dr. Jeffrey Thompson and his work with sound wave therapy and Bio-Tuning featured in the film. This technique really resonated with me as I had recently experienced the power of sound waves at The Integratron in Landers, California.
If you’re not familiar with The Integratron, it’s a specially constructed building that allows sound waves to move powerfully throughout the meditation chamber. During the session, I could feel waves of sound vibrating through my body and, (at one point), could feel a wave etching the section between the left and right hemispheres of my brain. When the session was finished, my body had an amazing sense of calm that I had not felt in years. So after watching Heal, I followed my intuition and scheduled an appointment with Dr. Thompson.
Since I had already experienced the power of sound and its positive effects on my body, I decided to focus specifically on Bio-Tuning. This is a technique developed by Dr. Thompson, which uses a modified heart rate monitor to observe your autonomic nervous system on a computer screen. A spectrum of frequencies is delivered through your body to determine which one is your specific “Fundamental Frequency”. The Fundamental Frequency is a tone which resonates with your brain like a big “Ahhh, I like that!” When your body hears & also feels this tone (through vibration), it brings your autonomic nervous system into homeostasis – its normal, balanced state. It’s like hitting the reset button on a computer - but the computer is YOU.
Dr. Thompson created a custom soundtrack consisting of my Fundamental Frequency tone, binaural beats and nature sounds. I listened to this for 30 minutes, while lying on his custom sound table. When the session was finished, the readout of my nervous system on the computer screen had changed dramatically. Instead of being stuck in “Fight or Flight” mode, it was functioning more normally - passing between Sympathetic (“Fight or Flight”) and Parasympathetic (“Rest & Relax”) modes. He gave me my custom soundtrack to take home and during the next week, I listened to this soundtrack twice-a-day for 30 minutes.
The change to my nervous system was remarkable. While the circumstances of my life had not changed, my body’s response to stressors had undeniable changed. Now, when I had a stressful thought my body did not internalize it. It was as though a buffer had been built, which prevented my body from going into stress or panic mode. My meditations became deeper than I had ever experienced and my sleep improved considerably.
So many people suffer from stress and stress-induced conditions. I realized I had just been given a tremendous opportunity to help other people, so I decided to train directly with Dr. Thompson and specialize in his revolutionary technique. Sound has been used for centuries as a healing modality in cultures around the world. Now, through science and modern technology, I’m able to apply a 21st century solution to a 21st century problem - and it doesn't require a lifetime of drugs.
If you suffer from stress or stress-related conditions, please contact me and let’s discuss how I can help you heal!
Easier Than Meditation.
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Drug Free Results.
With Gratitude-
Iyan