Look inside The 5 Taoist Healing Tones listen to excerpts from the soundtrack & watch some inspiring videos
Text, Music, Videos and Photos by Ana Moves
“In my WhatsApp status I have put “on my way home”, because I have always had the feeling that life is that, a transit or transformation until I get to “ home”. I put them on in the morning one after the other while I was doing my daily meditation, because during the meditation, I had the feeling of being “home” of being part of everything.” Vicente García, a reader, commenting on his experience with The 5 Taoist Healing Tones”
This work and its 30 -minute soundtrack stands as the most comprehensive exploration to date, weaving together the rich tapestry of Taoist philosophy, the ancient art of Chinese Medicine and the theory of the Five Shen or Spirits, ancient Chinese psychology, with the 5 Healing Tones of Chinese Music Therapy. It is packed with specialized knowledge usually reserved for practitioners of Chinese medicine and often not covered in traditional teaching, all presented in an easy-to-read format, rich with poetry and inspiration. The text offers profound insights into the 5 Element Theory, the 5 Shen, the 5 Taoist Healing Tones, and the 6 Seed Sounds, along with a beautifully crafted soundtrack to suit each tone for profound meditation and healing purposes and to use both for personal reflection and professional application.
Excerpt from Chapter 3 Music as Medicine
The ancient peoples of China were so aware of the unbreakable connection of Oneness that this vision can even be traced back to the original pictograms in their language, in their understanding of the aetiology of illness as well as in the treatments contemplated by their medicine. The miracle of the power of the ordinary, our natural synchronicity with it and its harmonizing effect on the body–energy–spirit was expressed beautifully in the character for the word Music: Yuè 樂.
樂
Yuè is formed of the radical Mù 木, which means wood, Yāo 幺, which is representative of silk cocoons and Bái 白, which means white and its representative of the clarity and brightness of the sun. From the radical Bái 白 a trace emerges which symbolises a sunray which seems to emit something of an immaterial nature; like a frequency. Mù 木 and Yāo 幺 are the natural materials from which instruments and strings were made of, but it is the singularity of Bái 白 which confers it an energetic quality that radiates out.
樂 = 木 + 幺 + 白 Music = Wood + Silk + Frequency
Remarkably, the same character for Yuè 樂, music, it is also used to mean Lè 樂: contentment; a kind of happiness without object, joy as a state of being unrelated to external favourable events, an inner serenity, peace or harmony. Adding the radical Cǎo 艹, meaning grass or herb, to this character 樂 for music and joy you obtain the character for medicine: Yào 藥. Yào 藥 means medicine as something you can intake, drink, or do to heal.
藥
So looking at the history of these characters we find that Music is something immaterial, bright, of the same nature of light, energy and frequency, something that is synonymous with a state of being in harmony, in contentment and serenity. When you add to it a material component, grass or herb then it becomes a medicine, something you could take or prescribe as a medicine.
藥 = 樂 + 艹 Medicine = Music & Contentment + Herbs
The ancient Chinese used and prescribed music together with plant preparations to heal the body–energy–spirit as it is so clearly illustrated in Chinese language. If music, an immaterial frequency, can be prescribed to heal the body–energy–spirit then the causes of illness may likewise be rooted in something of a more energetic nature rather than just purely physical.
Excerpts from the Soundtrack
You can now listen to some excerpts from the 30- minute soundtrack that comes with the book.
You are listening to Gōng, the harmonising tone for the Earth Element. The instruments for Gōng tone are voice, a handmade hand-drum and terracota bowls.
Next is an excerpt from Zhǐ , the harmonising tone for the Fire Element. The instruments for Zhǐ are voice and two handmade nyckelharpas.
Next is a excerpt from Shāng, the harmonising tone for the Metal Element. The instruments for Shāng are voice, flute, tibetan bowls and bells, gongs, and wind chimes.
Next is a excerpt from Jué, the harmonising tone for the Wood Element. The instruments for Jué are voice, a handmade bamboo flute and a handmade shruti box
Next is an excerpt from Yǔ, the harmonising tone for the Water Element, The instruments for Yǔ are voice, drinking glasses, a quarzt bowl, a marble morar and pestle and a handmade Qing (Chinese prehistoric stone instrument)
Excerpt from Chapter 3.1
When we sit down in Nature to observe what is “happening” and let go of our biographical mind, we enter the realm of Shen. Shen can be fully appreciated when we quiet our minds, keeping our bodies still, releasing our desire for answers and action, and just simply listen, entering the realm of timeless time.
As healers, we come to these places to train and to work. It is our duty to come on a pilgrimage to get proficient in the art of offering and mediumship. We do not come here, as it is often believed, escaping suffocating lives in order to get some fresh air and counteract polluted living spaces nor to get some exercise and combat sedentary habits or to get some healing and neutralize a self-centred existence, nor to ask for guidance and balance a tendency of not considering our inner voices. As healers we have understood that we are indeed the instrument, so we have made conscious choices regarding the healthiness of the places where we live and the life we lead. As our home and temple, we work on our bodies and minds on a daily basis to keep our instruments finely tuned. We live a life of service and this reverts back at us like a boomerang and so we are greatly benefited. In living and deciding consciously, we have learned to love the treasure of our beautiful essence, and recognising its value, we live guided by it. It is the utmost love and gratitude that moves us to come to these places. We come here to offer the oblation of our presence and silence, to bear witness to the beauty of existence, to accompany these places for a moment, to show up for them out of a need of giving back.
Our best oblation is not to disturb, and in utmost respect we do not stand out, we are barely noticeable. As perfect guests we follow the etiquette since ancient times known: when in Rome do as Romans do. So we sit down in silence, and as guided by our host we empty ourselves, and becoming hollow, we are the flute our host plays. The more we come to these places the more accurate our melodies become, the more details and textures we are able to absorb and emanate. By emptying ourselves from ourselves we become the medium through which these places sound and reach to others. We become resonators of the harmonizing frequencies of Shen.
And so we do our work and then in the mountain we become the rock, deeply rooted in the slope, magnificent and immobile yet still affected by erosion, silent witness of thousands of years of change and transformation. We can also become the grass, deeply ingrained in the soil, containing the hillsides together and serving as sustenance for the animals on top. We can also feel the horses and the cows, their legs strongly connected to the earth underneath, secured in the knowledge that they don’t have to go far as sustenance is available just under their feet.
In the moors we can breathe in, the mystery of silence, the mystical mist playing hide and seek with the vast extension of rolling hills, the naked fingers of slim trees signposting along the brook banks. The wind howling like latent echoes of all the voices once there spoken, the enchantment even more noticeable with the caws of ravens.
In the plateau, we can embrace the limitless extension of the earth, expanding in every direction as it kisses the sky, so close at daytime as to offer the fantasy of touch, so far at night time as to reassure us of our real size.
In the woodland we become part of the essential dance of death and life. In autumn, suspending our notions and ideas, we actually fall in love with the fall, we realize we are entranced by the colours of decay, we can finally admire the beauty of death as it undresses the forest, leaving an alluring cloak of warm colours behind.
Out in the ocean we become the droplet that cannot be subtracted from the entire wave, the immensity endlessly moving in fluidity, the wake closing behind, no signs of the past, no paths in the sea, no marks to follow, just a fluid state of becoming if one realises that one leaves no traces and in resemblance one is untraced, unmarked.
Each of the natural landscapes of Earth evokes in us a beautiful sense of connection and interrelatedness that becomes available when we drop our biographical sensation of who we are, for a moment. These places emanate some silent music that heals the Spirit and harmonises the body. In our journey to find healing we have momentarily postponed our flight forward tactics into action, into the seemingly innocent quest for other and supposedly more exciting promised lands, higher encumbering achievements and deeper paths we can’t embrace since we are led by restlessness. We have finally paused, agreed, succumbed to the eternal standstill of the now.
The beauty of the Taoist Healing Tones resides in their being able to transmit the silent natural imprint left by these places through music and sound. The soundscapes created by the healing tones are like the landscapes they emanate from. In order to receive the transmission we delve deeper into introspection. Quieting the mind and stilling the body, we set our intention towards maintaining a steady, meditative simplicity that eases both the practitioner and the listener into the mystical realm of Shen. In the same way as, when out in Nature, we have stopped taking side paths and paused to absorb the ever unfolding now, when creating or listening to Taoist Healing Tone music, we avoid trying to find a musical resolution, some kind of climax or compositional conclusion. We rather delve deeper into the oneiric simplicity of an extended now, without beginning or end, the quality of an otherworld which extends infinitely in every direction alongside our known reality, going nowhere specific but ever present beyond time and measure.
Introspection, silence, stillness, faith, a willingness to be guided, momentary renunciation of the mandates of common sense, openness, focus: the pillars of healing.
Praise for The 5 Taoist Healing Tones
“I am already using it live and with prescription. Thank you Ana for your work, it fills me in on things I wasn’t aware of enough, I went through my notes and the information is identical to the course I had done. The tones last just long enough to get the impact, it’s great to see someone find their song and how much work there is behind it. The only problem is that I just found out that you have two others! And I’m not up to date.”
– Javi, El Roble Acupuntura
“Just finished the Five Taoist Healing Tones by one of my students, Ana Moves Tao Yoga. This breathtaking book blends music therapy, Taoist Philosophy and Chinese Medicine in a way that also offers a rich understanding of the 5 elements.”
