reprinted with permission from Catholic Women's Network Magazine July/August 1999, Issue No. 64 published by Catholic Women's Network

Intuitive heals with sacred sound by Norma Gentile

Music is simply the physical translation of the natural presence of spirit. We each has the ability to hear the music of spirit in our own way. Just as an artist specializes in the visual, there are those who specialize in the audible expression of spirit.

Because I am a singer, people often assume that healing sessions with me will include singing or tones. It takes a while for clients to catch on to the inaudible tones behind the physical world.

When I was a child I would awaken to the loving sounds of a symphony orchestra. I would lay in bed, drifting in a dream world, listening to the music. At age 3 I begged my mother to teach me to play the piano, so that I could learn how to write down this marvelous music.

Composing didn't seem all that difficult to me, it was merely a matter of taking dictation! It wasn't until I graduated from college and could actually write music down, that I realized the symphony I was hearing defied direct translation into musical notation.

As I sing nowadays, I often hear this symphony accompanying me. Sometimes I hear it resounding in a sacred space, the spiritual substance humming as a welcoming pool of warmth. Other times it is as a single tone, telling me that I have indeed turned my attention inward to spirit, and opened my heart to hear.

Over time I have learned to sort out the various tones that sound in my head and ears and around my body. I have found that by focusing on single tones I can bring their quality into and through my body - stepping the sound down into physicality.

When I then sing the tone, the particular quality of spirit behind the tone becomes palpable to those listening. The sound acts as both a carrier wave for spirit, and as a means of magnifying it's presence.

In a concert setting this translation of spirit comes through chants by Hildegard von Bingen. I use her music because I find that it provides a structure which allows those qualities of spirit to come through that are most useful at the present time.

As I sing her music, I can feel compassion and love being drawn out from those listening. The room fills and reverberates not just with the audible sounds, but as the spiritual substance grows the tones of those angels present are also revealed. In this setting, one's experience of spirit as a living, breathing life-force is unquestionable. And people take their own personal leaps of faith here, knowing that it is well, and safe, to do so.

In one concert a woman who had not sung in twenty years began to hum. This was the breakthrough that led her eventually to sing in public and begin recording her husband's songs. Another woman felt the presence of her recently departed daughter, and exchanged a loving embrace with her that was missed at the moment of death. Uncounted others simply shed tears, not of sorrow, but of release and relief at coming home, into the presence of spirit.