I walked across the parking lot and into the casino, meeting Lisa and Mary Alyce at their studio. Lisa pulled the chunk of luggage that was the reiki table, out into the waiting area of the lobby. We unzipped the black canvas tote bag and unfolded the table under a massive painting of a buffalo. I thought the buffalo was such a fitting totem to share this space.
Lisa and I went over all the parts and pieces of the table. It was a beautiful green table with solid yellow pine wood. It had barely been used. She had stored this extra table in her studio space for several years and did not need it. Since the price was right and I had cash, we made the exchange. An exchange that took a great amount of courage, given how slim my finances were at the time and how much I questioned my ability to do healing work. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. The next thing I knew, I was strapping the bulk of a mobile reiki table across the casino parking lot in the fresh spring air — after this international meeting between the Japanese healing arts, Native American Indian traditions, and a bit of Celtic spirit from my Scotch-Irish roots.
I heaved the reiki table, folded up in its bag, over the gate of my truck and slid it into place. I patted it, visualizing it shrouded with protective white light for safe travel. I climbed into my cab, shut the door, and breathed in . . . and sighed out something other than relief. Was it a sigh of commitment? Was it a breath of “Wow, we’re doing this?” Whatever that breath was, the exhale came with a bit of sound.
That tweak of sound leaking from my throat “pinged” every thread in me momentarily. That tweak of sound brought something to life, to light, inside of me. I wasn’t sure what it was. I’d not really ever made a sound like that. Curious in an unsettled way, I turned the key in my truck’s ignition. The engine thrummed to life, and I backed out of my parking spot, maneuvering out of the parking lot to the highway.
That’s when the spark of curious sound that had twitched in my throat, sending my nerves on alert in a good way, began to flow a little more. A trickle of sound now began to hum and then sing through me, sing through my throat. My truck climbed the weaving road out of the valley from the casino and back to the high rolling prairie.
By the time my red truck and my reiki table and I were full-throttle humming on that black highway back to the cabin, somehow, my throat completely opened up in full, angelic-like sequences of singing, of toning with no words, no agenda of “song” — yet the sounds coming through my throat were completely unexplainable, inexplicable, phenomenal. I’d never sung like that. Ever.
I felt so good with springs of musical chords rushing through my throat to the open air of the sky, the boldness of the mountains, the roll of the green prairie. I arrived home to our cabin in a flush of goodwill. Of feeling lifted. Of “doesn’t it feel good to be alive?!”
Of course, it took me some time to put two and two together: That I’d never toned like that, or even knew I could tone like that, before I had my table. That the toning coming through my throat never left once I had the table. That the toning coming through my throat was connected to that table. That the toning coming through my throat that naturally showed up while clients were on my table in session was connected to their healing. That toning certain tones with the human body and energy field helps move and shift energies in very specific ways. That the harmonic energetic scale of 144 is possible to flow through the human voice in a way that creates miracles.
And finally, the key piece — I eventually learned that the woman who sold me the table was the granddaughter of the medicine man of the Southern Ute Nation in Ignacio. Somehow, the ancient ones — the grandmothers and the grandfathers of that tribe — had seen fit to allow the release of a key healing piece from the tribe to a white woman.
When I finally realized all these key pieces, flooding together in a picture before me, the thunder of stampeding buffalo rolled through my body. It was one of those moments confirming that I had returned from death and the loss of my son for a reason.
I could not have been more humbly honored to receive the reiki table and the tones that came with it.
And ever since, I have honored this healing gift; when the tones begin to roll up through my body, my throat, I do not stop them. Even when I feel that it might be embarrassing, I allow the chords to roll through.
There are times when I wonder but still tone, feeling the power of the Angels and the Indigenous with me. It’s in those times that random confirmations arrive — much like the professional DJ who heard me tone at the opening of the Whole Expo (metaphysical fair) in Durango, Colorado, this year. When he heard me, he did not know where I was on the floor map, but he heard the opening tones I let roll through my throat box. Halfway through the show, he finally found me and asked — “Have you ever had any training? You have an opera voice.” And I told him, “No. It’s my throat box, but the sound you hear is Spirit, the Angels, the Indigenous singing through me.”
Now, the reason I told you this entire story is so you know the impact, the gravitas, the joy, and the power of the Solstice this year — the second half of this story.
This year, Solstice night was filled with the darkest dark of the longest night of the year. The darkest dark of a new moon. And the darkest dark of a welcomed snowstorm rolling through our valley.
Bob, my husband at the time, had lit up our lives in that darkness with white Christmas lights on our outside plum tree. Multicolored lights on our deck. Lights on our inside Christmas tree. And lights strung through our living room.
Ironically, Bob was in bed, ill with the flu, and I was alone with the pets. We were in all that darkness, lit up with the light that Bob had gifted us. The day was nearly done. The dishes were washed. Things were tucked in. And it was time.
I bundled up, not in a coat but in a thick blanket. I lit a pillar votive candle. I selected a stem of sage, grabbed the salt from the kitchen, and went out into this rich, snowy night alone.
Though I went out alone, I felt everyone in my life around me, connected. I felt the world. I felt the lighted stars of who we are, connected, in the lighted web of life around the globe — much like the white lights Bob had strung, glowing in the plum tree, soft in the big snowy flakes.
The prayer I said to the four directions and the Ancients that night in the wind and snow, in the lighted glow, felt extra special. Extra powerful. The white salt mingled with the snowfall in honor. The candle flickered in dance as I held it up to the night sky, meeting the snowflakes. The smoke of sage swirled around us. And when I asked for the singular prayer of peace with my entire self, the thunder of a thousand buffalo pounded through the sky, swirling around me.
That’s when my throat completely and utterly opened with the lighted reins of chords and notes, flowing through the wind from here to the four directions — the Ancients, the Angels, the Indigenous Ones —Toning for Solstice.
Dana Stovern is founder and coach of The Magic of Somatic Money, and author of the blog Along the Learning Curve of Life. Even though her profession is body-based money relationship coaching, her first love is words, writing and exploring the depths of the human conscious (or unconscious) condition in body and soul development.