Can Vibration Enhance Healing? A Survivor’s Journey To Coherence & Calm

A cancer diagnosis at 27 can steal your breath. On today's episode we share Lauren’s path from stage III melanoma to a career blending ICU nursing with Reiki and sound therapy. 

We dig into the practical side of Reiki & how it can downshift the nervous system. Then move into the benefits of sound therapy: crystal bowls that lift, metal gongs that move energy deep, & drums that mirror the heartbeat. 

You’ll learn more about how it all works as well as how vibration travels through our water-rich tissues to nudge cellular balance, reduce inflammation, & enhance coherence.

Here's some of what we're covering:

• Reiki as intentional relaxation and safety
• acupuncture, yoga, & mindfulness for nervous system support
• sound baths and brainwave entrainment
• bridging hospital care with integrative modalities
• building a personal healing toolbox and protecting rest

If you’re navigating cancer, caregiving, or burnout, this conversation is a roadmap to capacity. And if this resonates, don't forget to subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show.

More about today's guest & how to connect with her:

Lauren Nielson (Aloisio) is a New England–based Registered Nurse, Shamanic Reiki Master/Teacher, and Sound Practitioner/Teacher. A melanoma cancer survivor, Lauren brings a uniquely integrative perspective to healing, bridging evidence-based medicine with supportive energy practices.

After being diagnosed with Stage III melanoma in 2015, Lauren turned to tools like Reiki, sound meditation, breathwork, and mindfulness to support her nervous system, emotional health, and overall resilience throughout treatment and recovery. These practices became foundational in both her personal healing and her professional work.

Lauren went on to bring the first offerings of Sound Therapy to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she supports healthcare staff in managing burnout, anxiety, and caregiver fatigue. Her mission is to increase education, awareness, and access to integrative wellness practices as complementary support within mainstream medical settings.

👉 Website: https://laurenaloisio.com/

👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.energy.nurse/

👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@energynurse

👉 Insight Timer App: https://insighttimer.com/energynurse 

PLUS resources shared on today's episode:

👉 Book: The Healing Power of Sound: Recovery from Life-Threatening Illness Using Sound, Voice, and Music By Dr. Mitchell L. Gaynor

👉 Book: The Tao of Sound: Acoustic Sound Healing for the 21st Century By Fabien Maman and Terres Unsoeld

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Ground and Root Podcast. I am your host and holistic cancer dietitian Deion DeTraz. I am so excited to share with you today that we have a very special guest who is going to share her personal story through healing, a cancer journey, but then also how that influenced her work in the world. I had the absolute delight of getting to receive from Lauren a couple of years ago, maybe two and a half years ago now, at a retreat where she was doing a sound bath for us, and you're going to learn about what that is today. And it was such a delightful, just I can't even describe it. If you've never experienced sound healing in that way, it was profound. So we're going to talk about that more. But I connected with Lauren, I learned about her story, and I knew right away, we've already had her inside the group to share with our clients. Like I knew right away she needed to be a resource for all of you who are looking for ways to bring in more integrative and complimentary modalities to your healing journey. She has a lot of really cool things to share. So I'm going to give you just a little brief bio and then we're going to let Lauren take it from there. She is a very unique, I think, blend of a traditional registered nurse working in the hospital. She's she lives in New England. She works at Massachusetts, a general hospital in Boston, but she's also a shamanic Reiki master and teacher, as well as a sound practitioner and teacher. And she's a melanoma cancer survivor. And so her experience with all of these things has made her who she is now. And I think you're going to really be inspired by her story. So without further ado, Lauren, hello, and thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Hello. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for that intro. It is interesting to think about the blend that that happens when you live life as just a regular old person. And then life hands you what it hands you and you navigate through. And yeah, it's true. I've been I've been a nurse for over 15 years in downtown Boston. And then when I was 27 years old, I was working in the ICU at the time. I was diagnosed with stage three melanoma. And throughout my journey with cancer, and then the after cancer, if you will, it doesn't ever really go away. But it's one of those there's a before cancer and an after cancer in someone's life. And in the aftermath, there was this trying to figure out who I was and how I wanted to continue to show up in the world and how I wanted to heal myself. And not just that, but really find what my new normal was. And a lot of that included really figuring out how to relax, how to meditate, how to reset my nervous system in a way that felt good and easeful for me. And that's where the sound healing comes in. The Reiki, I actually was certified in Reiki before I got cancer. And then my Reiki master encouraged me to get my Reiki Master certification actually in between or in the middle of all of my cancer chaos. And that really helped me throughout my journey. So yeah, it's been, and even now, however many years later, let's see, it was 2018 that I really started working with sound. And then it was 2013 that I became a Reiki practitioner, but all that bubbled up into obviously COVID times. I really started sharing it more in the hospital where I work because it was one of those things that I found being a nurse and then being a holistic practitioner. There was a discord in my what I did for my work. And I wanted to bring them together. And it continues to be my mission to bridge that that gap in modern day medicine with the more holistic and therapeutic modalities. So yeah, that's what that's what I think I'm here for.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Which is so needed, truly. Having started in the hospital, that was my background too as a dietitian before I started my online practice. And the more we can bring it to the actual hospital setting, how beautiful. Like that is the first contact that people typically have in this world, right? Before they start searching for us online. Wonderful that you're blending that, blending those two things in the hospital. I'm curious. So you just to go back a second about that kind of like your timelines, you were working as a nurse and you were already interested in Reiki before this experience. So tell me about that. Like how what was your first exposure to Reiki? Because not everybody it's not like totally mainstream, not everybody knows about that. What was your introduction?

Surgeries And Staging Realities

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah, so my mother's a nurse as well. And she was offering to do volunteer work at a hospice. And one of the things that they would offer patients was Reiki. And my mom was curious about it, and she had an opportunity to study and become a Reiki practitioner. And she feels like my daughter Lauren would like this. So she literally said, Do you want to do this with me? And I said, Okay, sure. And so we took the training together, and I ended up falling in love with it. And she remained a Reiki One practitioner, but I fell in love with the idea. So for those of you who aren't familiar with Reiki, it has Japanese roots. But I like to think of it as an intentional practice of realigning someone's energy. So at a cellular level, this is where the nurse part comes in, where it's like we zoom in on ourselves, we're all energetic beings. We all have little atoms, molecules bouncing around. So when we're in states of dis-ease, we can tend to be get diseased. So really helping our body get back into that equilibrium, that homeostasis place. So Reiki utilizes the idea of intention. So intentionally sending our energy from other sources, whether it be it has no dogma. So there isn't a sort of religious connection with Reiki. It's really for wherever the practitioner feels energy comes from, the universe, God, wherever. Just again, your intention in itself, the idea of prayer and how powerful prayer is, the idea of saying mantras or words, or again, just what our brain does, what our consciousness does. And so it can be utilized with hands-on touch or hands-off touch, as well as distant. So, in short of it, it's that intentional piece to bring to someone back into a state of balance. And the practice of it was really fun for me when I was first learning because I was a nurse. I would ask patients if they were interested in me using Reiki on them. And so a lot of times it was just the idea of like therapeutic touch. I'm putting a hand on their shoulder, maybe I'm holding their hand and giving them Reiki while they're getting an IV placed. Just the simple small insertions in places that I worked. And then I started seeing friends and family and slowly started to build my confidence in sharing this modality with other people. And one of the probably unanimous things that people would say after receiving Reiki is I feel relaxed. I feel really calm. And what I'd tell people is even if you don't even think that this works or that it's not real, if you just sat still and received for a short amount of time, there's something that shifts within you. And so, yes, there's the idea of if it actually really works for some people who aren't, don't believe in it. Maybe not, but it can't hurt to try. It's called do no harm. There is nursing and in the medical realm, that is one of one of the biggest oaths that we take as healthcare professionals is do no harm and Reiki can do no harm. And so in my years of sharing Reiki before I got diagnosed, it was really an exploration of understanding how energy works and how, you know, this different modality than what I was so used to as a nurse for utilizing medications or surgery or something that's very instant, instantaneous typically for using versus something that's much softer and gentler. But what again, I unanimously found was people were just more at peace and more relaxed. So often people had a hard time going to sleep at night, just giving them a brief 10-minute Reiki session. They just tended to be a little bit more relaxed and calm and really ease into the evening. But yeah, it was as far as the initiation of then getting diagnosed. I was working in the ICU and I was, I had a skin biopsy done like a few weeks prior, and I really hadn't thought much about it. And I was at work and I was like, I wonder if those results came back. And so I typed in my information and up came my results. And I had not been prior, I had not been called prior, and I saw in the screen, staring back at me, malignant melanoma. And I was like, that's not good. That's not good. And I did not have a phone call that told me. So I found out at work in the middle of the ICU at 5:30 in the evening and instantly called the office and said, you know, what's it was closed. And so it was a really rough start to being diagnosed because I didn't even get to be told by anyone. It was I found out on my own. And yeah, from there it was the rug got ripped out from underneath me. And I think two days later I was in the surgical oncology office being told that I needed to have surgery to remove further tissue and check my lymph nodes if it had spread. And but Reiki was something that I was like, okay, like I had enough introduction to connecting into the spiritual self as well as the energetic piece that it was like, okay, I gotta take one step at a time in navigating this. And so I'd be giving myself Reiki and I reached out to my teacher. And so there was this community that had already been formulating around me that unbeknownst to me that had would be this massive support as I continued to move forward through my journey.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Wow. In some ways, like what a blessing you already had that ready to go for you, which I'm sure it evolved into something even more as you moved through your journey. But yeah, that's I imagine that was very helpful. So what did once you got over the initial shock and like the diagnosis itself came together? What did your treatment plan look like? So you mentioned surgery, was that it? Or did you need to do other things? What did that entail?

Immunotherapy And Working Through Treatment

SPEAKER_00 11:24

So being a nurse, I was like, okay, I'll just get surgery and then it'll be done. I think I I don't even think I told my coworkers that I was, I maybe told a few that I was like going out, but I was like, I'm just gonna get this skin removed from my arm. And my mom and I went to the oncologist and said, shouldn't we be checking lymph nodes because of the spot that it was? And they said, if you're someone who can't sleep at night, you should probably get your lymph nodes checked, but that just will elevate things. It's gonna be a more invasive surgery. And I we were both like, I was 27 years old. Yeah, let's do it. So again, it elevated things. And the, you know, for those of you who are on the more spiritual angelic realms of numbers, my surgery was on 1111. And so that number will always have this like little special sprinkle fairy dust because it was really one of those days that just felt like, okay, something big is happening. And I had something called a sentinel lymph node biopsy, where they basically inject dye around the area that I had my melanoma and check to see if that dye gets uptaked into any areas in the lymph nodes. They take those and test them. And so at this point, it was like it's just precautionary. Oh, we've caught this early enough. And recovering from surgery after was okay, I had an incision on my arm with several sutures and staples. And then I had a smaller incision underneath my arm and I felt okay. And then it was probably around Thanksgiving time, and I found out that the lymph nodes were positive. And so this elevated things quite a bit because it wasn't just skin cancer being removed. Now it turned into okay, now it's metastatic. Now it's shifted, it's changed, it's spread somewhere else in the body. And that was when it really got scary. And that's when I felt like, okay, this is not just skin cancer, this is bigger than that. And the plan from there was to then go to surgery again and have all my lymph nodes removed from my underneath my arm. And then from there, I would, after I healed from that surgery, I would start medical treatment, which at the time things have shifted so much with melanoma and the research they've done has literally changed many times, even in the past 10 plus years. And so I was given a drug called interferon. And I was on that for about a year. And so that journey from that time of diagnosis originally, then to the advancement into the further staged melanoma was full body PET scan, a brain MRI, really scary stuff for a 27-year-old who was otherwise healthy. And it was this looking this illness in the face of am I gonna be okay? Am I gonna make it through this? And so again, leaning in on those modalities of trusting that I would get through this. But yeah, I had drains in my arm, I ended up with an infection at one point, there was an ER visit. It was quite quite a chaotic time, but I was so determined to get back to working as a nurse, which for those who understand, you know, having cancer, it's all you want is the normal that you knew before. And for me, it was being a nurse in the ICU. And I was so hellbent on doing that. And I ended up going back to work. I think it was my first shift back was New Year's Eve, which is crazy because it was like quick to do that. But I did, and I went back and I healed up from surgery. And then literally about 10 years ago to the day, around this time, is when I started my medical treatment. And that was a whole different ballgame, just outside of the surgical realm, it was the medical treatment. And for those of who don't know, melanoma isn't often treated with chemotherapy, it's treated with immunotherapy just because of the way that it works in our bodies. It just doesn't react, like doesn't react the way that it does for other cancers for chemo. So immunotherapy is typically the route. And they're constantly changing, evolving different treatments now. But at the time it was the drug interferon. And my initial treatment for that was one month of every day I'd go in for IV infusions of this drug. And it was a drug that made you feel pretty crappy. I often said that it was like flu-like symptoms. So I had like body chills, aches. There was many other symptoms that came with it as well, but it was tough. And then again, I got an infection from one of the IVs and had to have a pick line place. There was just all these little things that kind of kept derailing me from my healing journey, which was really tough. But again, it's just one of those things that you can't plan for this. This is just you have to just put one foot in front of the other. And I then, after my one month, they call it like a loading dose of the drug, I was then giving myself injections basically every other day for almost a year. And I was getting CAT scans to make sure that nothing was showing up or popping up anywhere in my body and constantly getting lab work done and getting checked on by my oncologist. And yeah, it was a really tough year because I also, because it was not chemo, it was immunotherapy. I was not technically immunocompromised. So I did lose hair, but I didn't lose all my hair. And I otherwise looked normal. I didn't really look like a cancer patient. And because I was so hell-bent on being normal, I worked. I still worked in the ICU. And my oncologist used to ask me and say, I have no idea how you're doing this. And I'd be like, I don't really know either. But it was hard. There were days I would lay on the floor, the bathroom floor, and just be getting ready to go to work and say, just get there. And if you have to leave, you can go home. And I'd get there and then I'd be like, All right, just make it to lunch. If you can get to lunch, if you can't get to lunch, then you can go home. And it was kind of like that, like pretty much every day I worked. And yeah, it was tough. It's crazy to even think that's how it was, but it was. It really was.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I'm curious though, in retrospect, Lauren, do you think pushing yourself to do that ultimately was really helpful for you, even if it was like the mindset piece or like now that so much time has passed, looking back, what is your reflection on that?

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Yeah, even though it was hard, because it was really hard. I'm not sure at the time I had the ability to allow myself that space to just be. And I think this is a lesson that I've learned from having cancer is that it's okay to not be in production all the time. It's okay to rest. And we need to rest to be able to do all the things. But I think it was a motivator for me to keep going, to keep pushing because I wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to be there. I didn't want to lose my job. Not that I would have lost my job, but it was, it gave me a sense of purpose to keep working and take care of my patients. And I had help. And there was never, you know, I remember saying to my boss, like, if there's ever a time that I don't feel safe, like I won't be working. And that was a big thing that I wanted to make sure. Cause that was for me something that was, I was very adamant about that I would never want to harm anyone if I was in a place of not being able to take care of my patients safely. That was something that I think really did just give me purpose to keep biting and keep waking up each day.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

I have heard that from other clients too. I feel like, of course, there's no one right way to do it. And everybody, some people will go to part-time, some people will quit entirely and just focus on their healing. And then some people like don't want to stop their work at all. And I think part of that probably also has to do with your relationship to work and how much, like you said, like work gives you purpose or you feel passionate about what you're doing, as opposed to just like another stressor that you're adding to your plate of something that you don't want to be doing, right? Like that's a very different work experience. But I think in the clients that I've had who have kept working, it was really important to them to feel like they they didn't have to just think about cancer all the time, right? Because think about a whole year of treatments, right? It's if you're just like a cancer patient for a year. And if you don't feel like you're doing anything else, that can also be just really negative and like heavy to carry.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

100%. Absolutely. And that's the piece that it's funny because I when you say, oh, it was a year, I had the calendar in my bathroom that had like all the months for what my the countdown for my treatment to end. And that was a big piece of it was like this like purpose of getting back to being able to do all the things I was doing before, but the strength to keep fighting, the strength to keep going. And my coworkers were amazing. They were people who were supporting me. They knew I was going through cancer treatment. So there was definitely, I'm sure, some special treatment that maybe I didn't even know was happening. But just to be able to be literally checking in with my coworkers and people who work in the healthcare world understood me and understood some of the stuff I was going through. There was a support in that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Through this year of working and receiving treatment or giving yourself treatments, what else? And you had Reiki, like what else did you bring in to really support your journey, your resilience even through this year?

Finding Support And Community

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah. So this was really where I started to explore like other modalities outside of Reiki. And prior to I had massage before, but acupuncture was a newer offering that actually in the hospital during my sessions that I'd go to get my treatment, my IV infusions, there was an acupuncturist who was there. And so I would get acupuncture during my sessions. And I really enjoyed it. And so I was seeking that kind of realm of extra treatment, yoga, slow moving yoga, like nothing intense, but even just flowing through mindfulness, the idea of mindfulness. I started toying a little bit with breath work, more so after my like cancer treatment ended. But that I was more or less the idea of meditation was something that was kind of on the newer end to me. Because someone who, as I'm someone who has a very busy brain, it was hard for me to always meditate. I never really understood the concept of meditating because I'm like, all I can think about is my to-do lists or what I need to have done, or I think of something else. And now, many years later, I've understood a little bit more the concept of that. And it's not about not having those thoughts, it's just about accepting them. And and sound was really a big thing for me then, but that's a later one we can chat about. But really during my during my season of treatment, those were a lot of the things that I tried for sure. And even just reading books and connecting with other people. One of the biggest things outside of like a treatment perspective was the connection with others. And there was certain young adult cancer groups that I connected with that made a huge impact on me. I was that summer, I was on treatment. I attended a all-paid for trip to go rock climbing in West Virginia and with this group called First Ascents. And I often say it was like the first time I really remember be smiling and laughing during that year. And it was just to be understood and to be heard by these other young adults who either had been in treatment prior, were in treatment, or in chronic treatment, long-term treatment. And there was just this like knowingness of someone else who could understand what I was going through and the new way of life that I was navigating. So yeah, it was like a nice plethora of different modalities that helped really support me through that.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

All of those things, though, for any for those of you listening who have listened to the previous few episodes about nervous system, right? All of those are supporting your nervous system, are helping you calm your stress response, right? To enhance your energy, like you spoke to, and even your emotional wellness. And I can't help but think too, just how many people have said as well the having because I think there's two types of support as well, right? Obviously, you're you had your family members, you had your friends, your coworkers who were supporting you. But there is a difference between people who actually like have walked a similar path, like really understand what you're going through when you're moving through cancer. And I hear that all the time. Like you can be surrounded by love and support and still feel really isolated and lonely in your journey because nobody understands unless they've done it. Or they've walked with somebody else who's done it and they're like, I get it. So I love that you were able to find not just like even like now it's a little bit easier maybe to find online support groups, but to like we actually went and did an excursion with them. And that must have been just really incredible for you.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Yeah, it really was. And they are such an amazing organization. If any young adults out there are interested, we can make sure to link to it in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Absolutely. Because it's good to have resources. Okay, so tell us a little bit more about sound. What was your introduction to that? What did that look like? And obviously, it must have been inspiring enough for you to decide to study it. So tell us about this.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

So sound came a little bit after my treatment. And a friend of mine, so this is on my like journey of figuring out how the heck do I meditate when I have such a busy mind. And a friend of mine was like, come to the sound bath with me. And I'm like, what is a sound bath? Do are we gonna get wet? Do I need some bathing suit? What's going on? And she's no, just bring a yoga mat. And I was like, so we went and I laid down. And I remember in the room there was a gong and she had some chimes, and she literally hadn't at this time another thing I had remembered was Yoga Nidra. That was another yoga one that I had done. But so I had been familiar with the idea of going to a space in a yoga studio usually to be guided and meditated or guided with into a meditation. So it started off that way, and then she started playing these sounds. And I was laying there and I just remember feeling full body tingles. I felt like I was floating, physically floating above my body, and I had no drugs in my system. And I was like, what is going on? And afterwards, I just remember feeling like I was like stuck to the floor. And then getting up, it was like, wow, I felt so good. I felt like I did this whole experience and it was like felt like only a few minutes, but it was like over an hour. And being a nurse, I'm like, okay, what just happened in my body that that created that sort of response for me? How can I get more of that? And so at this point, this was 2018. So I was about a year out from finishing treatment. And I was like, I need to find out how to learn how to do this. I need more of this. And I was living in Boston at the time, and I remember typing in gong sound bath or sound bath near me. And the only thing that kept popping up was like Tai Chi. So there's like some Tai Chi that have the word gong in it. And so it was like, but it was not anything with sound. And so my friend who had brought me to this sound bath was like, okay, we gotta find something because she loved it just as much. And so we ended up finding a like sound trainingslash retreat in New York, Woodstock, New York, or in the Catskills in New York. And we spent a weekend, it was like a four-day-long weekend, and my whole body-brain world was just totally blown open in a way of learning about sound and learning about all the different types of sound in the outside of the concept of like music or music theory, where it was like a chime or a tuning fork or a gong or a crystal bowl or a flute, and how being in the space of just receiving, doing literally nothing but laying there to receive this sound, and how profound of an experience that you'd have. And the reality is that there's so much science behind a lot of it because similarly to what I mentioned before with Reiki and our bodies and energy, is we're almost 70% water. And so we make these great conductors of sound. So sound is literally physically moving through our bodies, and then we have these little crystalline structures in some of our cells that get ignited by some of the sounds that are played externally. Then our brains are actually in training with the sound that we hear externally. So it helps downshift our brain, our brain waves into these lower, more relaxed states. So it's literally like helping you meditate, helping you get into those places of that the lower theta and delta brainwave states that help you get to those meditative visions or those meditative places, or even falling asleep sometimes. And I could keep going, but our bone structure, like the calcium and our bones, like it all responds to the sounds. When you see a live band, boom, you're feeling that physically in your body. And so thinking of it in the context of more on the relaxed end, where you're going to feel things physically in your body that help you downshift those busy brainwaves. And again, I did the deep dive into learning and studied from many different teachers. I did a virtual course with a woman, Susie Shefflin, who's out in LA. I studied with a shamanic Reiki practitioner for learning more about the drum, Peter Blum in Woodstock, New York. There's just so many different people. And this is such an ancient modality as well, where our ancestors were making flutes out of bones, drums out of animal hides. And so music and sound is really part of our history. And to think of it, how it can so influence us on the inside and bring us back into those really natural states of rhythm is something that I'm very passionate about because of my own personal experiences. And then fast forward to all the learning into starting to teach people how to do this and share with people about this. In 2020, when I was working as a nurse still, I was given the opportunity to share about sound because it was the one thing that like we didn't have to touch people. We could use sound without everything staying further away with COVID. So I was able to share virtually a sound experience for my coworkers. And it was the first time to be able to really bring the idea of sound therapy to Mass General in Boston and to really open the doors of something different to start to help us with burnout, help us with the caregiver fatigue, and really come into that again, that balanced state, that lower brainwave flow state, getting into that parasympathetic nervous system instead of being up in the high sympathetic. And yeah, I can get really nerdy about this.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

I love it so much though. I just, yeah. And it's interesting as you're talking to, like so many thoughts are popping into my head. Even just thinking about how ancient this is. Like, I wonder if there's a level of just cellular memory around some of these sounds, too, that helps bring the cells back into coherence. That was something we talked about last week with Tracy Peng with the psychiatrist, as well as some of these research studies looking at coherence and how cancer cells are incoherent and like chaotic. I love that. I think I'm gonna use your when you're like, it was the cancer chaos for the year. I think that I think that so represents so many things. Like it is chaotic. But like the cells are chaotic. And this, there's been research around what can we do if we help the cells come back into coherence? Yes. Could they even just like re like rebalance, reheal as opposed to as opposed to removing getting rid of the cancer cells? Like, could we just even bring them back into coherence? And sound is such a beautiful strategy for that.

Discovering Sound Baths

SPEAKER_00 33:08

There's been study some studies done. There's, I have a couple books too, I could show you. But there's Dr. Gaynor, who worked with, he was an oncologist and he worked with cancer patients and started utilizing sound in his sessions with them. And while being a nurse, I also understand the power of science and I believe in the power of surgery and medicine, but there's also something to say about the like integrative therapies that can really help. And he would utilize sound with some of his patients, and a lot of them would sleep better. Some of them went into remission for many years due to being able to utilize sound therapy in their daily lives. And he studied some of the cancer cells like under microscopes as well. The book, The Tau of Sound, shows literal cancer cells going under the sound waves and how much it would change the sound, the actual cellular structure of the cancer cell. So there is some, there is definitely something to it where we haven't fully utilized the right research yet to figure these things out, but it's happening. Like it's happening. And I think once we really figure out the way, I mean, we're already using sound waves to break up kidney stones. Like it's using it in different ways that you don't think of it using it as, but they've done studies where they do a pinprick and look at the blood underneath the microscope and see the ways that the blood is flowing, how it's a little bit more inflamed or just not really moving very fast. People were underwent a 20-minute sound bath and then they repricked their finger, looked at the cell or looked at the blood underneath and the cellular structures. Things were moving quicker, there was less inflammation noted, and that was a 20-minute sound bath. It's very small, not a super budget.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

Like a double blind controlled study or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Right. And so, but yeah, just that in itself obviously shows you okay, something, whether we know exactly what it is, something is happening inside of us when we tune into this and virtually versus in person. In person, we absorb the sound through our skin, we absorb the sound through our ears and like our bones, but like virtually, you can still receive some of the benefits, as you know, from yeah, gosh, when was that? That was a long time ago, I feel like a couple of years ago, sharing virtually with your group. And it's received and still, 100%. So there's a lot of power to this and really untapped potential of the research that we can do for learning more about this. And yeah, I'm in the works of finding people to begin some research studies of really seeing what this can do for people. Even if it's just I feel more relaxed, or I it doesn't have to be some big huge thing, but the potential is there for sure.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Yeah.

unknown 36:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

To me, I think with a lot of these tools, it's like you're gonna have the immediate benefit of feeling more calm, more relaxed, more regulated in your nervous system. And then there's like that alone, better sleep, that alone could be plenty to be worth doing, but then just even the potential that it could be going deeper into the cell and shifting the way your cells are operating. It's to me, it just feels like, why not?

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Why not? Like just you're gonna feel good and it might even help you heal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Absolutely. Absolutely. And there's, I just have to share this one little thing. I often being like I said before, someone who had a harder time meditating and finally finding sound and being like, oh, that's it. I share this sounds with my coworkers quite often. And one of the nurses, it's a little older, and she was a bit skeptical of what the heck are you doing, Lauren? What do you mean? You're gonna play these bulls and I'm gonna relax. And I'm like, just come, just sit and just receive. You don't have to do anything. That's the best part about this stuff, is that you don't have to do anything. You just sit there. You don't, you just listen. That's it. And sure enough, it was like a 20, 30 minute sound experience. And she could not believe she's, I can't believe it. I feel so relaxed. I feel like I wanna, I'm just I feel good, I feel happy. I don't feel and she even sent me a message again the next day, just saying like how much she couldn't believe how relaxed she felt, even just by just sitting there listening. And so again, these things, it's one of those modalities that to just try it, try, see what it feels like for you. There's met plenty of different practitioners and plenty of different sound tools too, keeping that in mind. But yeah, it's quite a quite a unique experience for each person. But I really do find that most people really enjoy what ends up happening.

The Science Of Sound And Relaxation

SPEAKER_01 38:06

So I really appreciated too, because I had one experience with sound in person before your the retreat where I met you, and it was with the crystal bowls, which was beautiful. And I have obviously it was a very great experience. But what I but I also really loved that you brought in so many different instruments. Like you had the bowls, but you also had gongs and you had, like you said, tuning forks and flutes, like you had so many different things happening. I felt like it was just an even deeper experience. Do you want to speak just a little bit to some of the tools and like what that means?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Absolutely. Well, like you had mentioned earlier too. Like I teach about sound now and teach people how to do sound experiences, and it's like choosing your tool. So, you know, the crystal bowls are very soft and gentle and tend to elevate you and lift you up higher. And metal, so the gongs, the metal bowls, like Tibetan singing bowls, the drum. Sometimes it feels like that more like deeper energy. Some people don't like those sound tools, but it does give you this depth of movement of energy. You think of the metal and how much more it can really shake up your cells and really shake up what's inside, the energy that's inside that maybe hasn't moved in a little while, the stagnant energy. And so listening and being in the presence of these, they actually, the metal, specifically with the gong, it creates something called a plasmom bubble, which is basically like uh energized electrons in the air that help. It's like when you go to the ocean and there's all the salt ions in the air. There's something that physically happens in your body when you go to a beach. Like it's similar to that in that realm, but with the metal. So the metal excites the air and it really does get into a deeper place to move energy, but it can be intense. So sometimes people who aren't really familiar with sound or familiar with meditative sound journeys can be a little overwhelmed by that because it can feel like your body's quivering or your shake. Sometimes people shake, and it's not anything to be scared of, it's just allowing it's energy, it is simply energy. It's moving, it's moving emotions are energy in motion. When you don't feel emotions, where do they go? It's not like magic, they don't just disappear, they absorb to places, so we absorb things. So oftentimes when people experience a sound bath, sometimes they cry or sometimes feel emotion because it's moving the energy. So yeah, when we take the like part out of it, because of course that's in there too. But when you really look at it as science-based thing, it's moving energy, so it's going to elicit a certain response for each person differently. Yeah, the different sound tools certainly it's like picking what kind of tool you want to create an experience with. The drum is going to be a little more ancestral. It's also very similar to our heartbeat. So there's a little bit more guttural relation to it. Same thing. It could bring up different, like you said, even cellular memory. There's so many different layers where one person might think the sound of a certain instrument brings them back to a memory they had as a kid. Or for someone else, it might make them think of something scary or overwhelming. So that's the other piece, is just knowing that each experience is going to be unique to each person, as well as every time you come into a sound experience, you're at a different frequency, you're at a different vibration. So you're going to receive those vibrations and frequencies differently each time. So just having the awareness of that is quite a quite a perspective shift for some.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Yeah, that's actually a really good point. But of course, where your current state is going to influence how you receive the experience. Like that makes a lot of sense. So I'm assuming sound and Reiki are still very important parts of your wellness routine. So now that you're how many years has it been since you officially finished your cancer journey? Quote unquote finished, because I know it's like you still have to go in for like checks and scale things.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

It's never totally done, but I was originally diagnosed in October or September of 2015. And then I finished my treatment in the fall of 2016. So it's almost it'll be almost 10 years that I've been on the other side of finished the treatment realm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

So I'm curious, a decade, almost a decade, which is amazing too. But like, how much has changed? What do you so you have sound and Reiki, obviously a big part of your life, but were there other things that kind of came from this experience with cancer that now you do differently? Like, how does life look different for you now?

SPEAKER_00 43:12

Oh, I think I touched on it a little bit too before, but you know, and I'm sure many others would agree that it really does shift how you look at the world and how you perceive problems or life. And of course, day-to-day stuff, it's hard to get yourself out of it. But when you really zoom out and look at the perspective of being alive and being here and being able to be given that idea of a second chance of being present, it's the idea of just one day at a time. That's really all we can ever do. And so often we don't want issues or problems, but that's also the reality of being a human and living, but utilizing the strategies and things that work for you. One thing that I often say to my patients and my clients is there's no Guidebook for life for each of us. There's certain tools that we can utilize to get through the challenging stuff, whether it is if sound works or Reiki or breath work or mindfulness or yoga or talking to a therapist or friends or family. There's so many different modalities to utilize, but it's figuring out what works best for you. And a lot of that might be trying things. So just trying things out, whether it is like maybe it isn't for you, maybe it's for a friend, or maybe you just got to know that there was something that wasn't your tool of choice, but really giving yourself the grace to navigate hard stuff in whatever way you need to. Because again, so often, I think at the time when I was 27, it was like all I wanted was to go back to my normal young adult life. And now knowing that like that never happened, I never went back to my old self. It was this acceptance of a new normal, a new way of life. And I've been asked before if you could go back and not have cancer. It's a hard question to answer, but at the same time, like I think of all the things that it has brought into my life and where I'm at now, like still a nurse and still doing Reiki and doing sound now, and sharing both of those with other people and bridging that gap between the modern medicine world and using integrative therapies. So there's this like appreciation for the challenge that I had to go through to be able to be the person that I am today. And we don't often get a chance to always do that zoom out and just know that all we can ever do is one day at a time. And as simple of advice or words that it is, that was one thing that I remember someone telling me, like when I first started all my cancer journey stuff. And I was like, all right, whatever. But then it really was like, that's all we really ever have is one day at a time. We don't have tomorrow yet. Yesterday's gone, like we have today. And as cliche as it sounds, it really is like a positive way to keep that mindset of living because we really only have today.

Instruments, Intensity, And Emotional Release

SPEAKER_01 46:18

Yeah, yeah, and just really being in the moment and appreciating what we have right now instead of worried about what's ahead or fretting about what's been right. It's just let's just be right here, right now. That's beautiful. So if people listening, I'm assuming that they're inspired. They're like, where do I do sound or how do I learn more? Or what about Reiki? Obviously, I know people can connect with you if you live in the New England area, maybe even in person. But do you offer virtual things as well?

SPEAKER_00 46:51

I do. I certainly do. Yes, I have virtual sessions, like one-on-one sessions with Reiki and Sound, as well as in the works of creating some virtual platforms to learn more about sound. Yeah, it's in the works. So that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Okay, we will make sure to link to all the ways that people can connect with you if they'd like to learn more from you. And then also if there's any other resources or books or things that you mentioned, we'll make sure to have those in the show notes too, in case people would like to explore further. But before we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to add or say before we say goodbye?

SPEAKER_00 47:28

I think again, I know I just said it, but really just creating your own toolbox for whatever you need to navigate life with. And your toolbox is gonna look different from everyone else's, and that's okay. And just knowing that one day at a time, and you will we're always in a state of finding back to that place of equilibrium, that place of balance. And it's up to us individually to be able to get ourselves there and really finding that creating that toolbox for yourself is a wonderful way to take care of yourself, mind, body, and soul.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Yeah, beautiful. And thankfully, there are a lot of tools available. It's just part of my goal with this podcast is even just exposing people to the tools in case you hadn't even considered this before. Maybe you've never even heard about sound healing and sound baths. So now you have another tool that you could explore and potentially love, like Lauren and I do. Yep, exactly. Thank you so much, Lauren. I really appreciate you being here with us today. I'm sure our listeners do too. And for those of you who have been following along with us on the Ground Root Podcast, just please remember to share, spread the word so we can help get this information into as many ears as possible. I'm always so appreciative of that. And I look forward to seeing you again on next week's episode. Bye for now.