Sonic Resets: Healing Through Sound – A Sonic Journey Through Grief and Loss

Please find the transcript for this Sonic Reset below:

This is a Sonic Reset brought to you by Sonic Connections.

This Sonic Reset is all about exploring grief.

Not to fix it or get rid of it, but to let it shift and move with the sounds.

Music is permission giving and helps us open up, recall memories, and move through whatever we’re feeling.

And so we’re just going to let the sound do its thing.

Let’s start with a breath in and sigh it out.

Call to mind an image or a word that represents what you might be grieving.

Maybe it’s the loss of a person or a pet.

Speak their name, either silently or out loud.

Maybe you’re grieving an injury or a change in ability, or an expectation that you had to let go of.

As you call this experience to mind, what physical sensations do you notice?

Maybe you feel present or spacey and disconnected.

Maybe there’s a tightness or a tension, or maybe there are no physical sensations, perhaps a numbness.

Whatever it may be, just notice.

Don’t try to stop or interrupt.

Now bring your awareness to your heart center.

Simply feel your heart holding the grief, being filled and stretched.

Rest with that for a moment.

See if you can direct the air of your next breath to surround your heart, to help you hold this grief.

If there are other physical sensations you notice, like a pressure behind the eyes, a tightness in your shoulders, direct the air there too.

Let it cushion and support those parts of you.

Let the sound waves of the music follow the same path that your breath just took, surrounding and comforting the places that are holding so much.

Now gently bring your attention to the emotions that are present.

Can you look at your own grief, anger or regret, maybe a quality of love or nostalgia?

Just notice the emotions that are arriving without judgment.

Try not to starve them or feed them.

Just let them be.

Emotions are like the melodies and the lyrics that tell the story of our grief.

And like all things in life do, they change, repeat, intensify and soften.

And just like a song, our emotions can get stuck in our heads when we least expect them to.

But if we could let our emotions rise and fall, just like the guitar melody, we can give them space and a voice, because they may have something to teach us.

Change is one of the hardest things to accept.

It’s the only thing that we all experience, and yet each of our experiences are so beautifully and tragically unique.

So gently sway your body, maybe giving yourself a light hug or squeeze, if that’s accessible to you right now.

And let your unique experience of grief move and sway with you, knowing that others are moving and swaying with their unique experiences, maybe even to the same song.

And remember that you didn’t choose this, but you can choose how and whether to move with it.

Thank you for trying this Sonic Reset.

This song is called The Grid by Damian Parini and Beth Killian.