Caroline’s Journey
with Sound
Caroline’s journey with sound came at an early age as a young girl singing in church groups and choirs and performing on stage. She first learned about the healing power of sound and voice while travelling and singing accompanying a yidaki (didgeridoo) sound healer in New Zealand.
In Cork as she undertook her years of shamanic training, Caroline held sacred space for a dedicated healing women’s drumming circle, primarily using the drum to create, in the moment, a tapestry of voice and sound, facilitating a connection to the inner fountain of creativity in spontaneous expression, a flow of voice in celebration and song. In recent years she dove into studying the deep tones of jazz and blues and just recently completed a diploma in vocal studies.
Caroline’s Journey
with Sound
Caroline’s journey with sound came at an early age as a young girl singing in church groups and choirs and performing on stage. She first learned about the healing power of sound and voice while travelling and singing accompanying a yidaki (didgeridoo) sound healer in New Zealand.
In Cork as she undertook her years of shamanic training, Caroline held sacred space for a dedicated healing women’s drumming circle, primarily using the drum to create, in the moment, a tapestry of voice and sound, facilitating a connection to the inner fountain of creativity in spontaneous expression, a flow of voice in celebration and song. In recent years she dove into studying the deep tones of jazz and blues and just recently completed a diploma in vocal studies.
These days, during her sound bath meditations Caroline allows herself become a vessel for the singing voice of spirit to flow through; there is no thought, it’s from a place of conscious emptiness.
While living in Tokyo and training in the courtly Kabuki music traditions of Japan, Caroline learned the importance of the concept of MA; where the silence between the music notes is just as important as the notes themselves.
“Ma is defined as an emptiness that is full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled” (wikipedia).
Years later, during gong training with Gong Master Don Conreaux, Caroline would again be reminded of the importance of the space between notes: Don calls this space between notes, “shunya”.
Caroline also studied wadaiko in Japan which is a style of drumming choreographic in style, where the movement and flow of the body plays an intrinsic part of the performance and where the poise and grace of arm and leg movements lend an elegance to the performance.
Over twenty years later, thanks also to her explorations of Movement Medicine and Five Rhythms dance practices these embodied movements all inform Caroline’s approach to playing the sound healing instruments. In particular, the gong, but especially the sensitive surface of the crystal bowls which need a finesse and a subtlety for the sounds held within their delicate surface to emanate from within.
During each and every sound session Caroline brings full presence and intention to each note, and to the silence between each of the notes, so that the instruments can take the peace of her resonance and prayers and amplify these into the field.
“Space is not emptiness but fullness of being.
Space is the highest possible conception of the Absolute,
of that which is the eternal reality of Spirit and matter as one”
– Don Conreaux, from the ‘Mind of Rudhyar, A Music of Wholeness’
Honouring Teachers on the Path
On her quest of spirit and soul over the last twenty years, Caroline is grateful to have travelled to seek out several masters in the field of consciousness and their teachings, and these teachings inform the presence that she brings to her work. Some of these masters include:
Marianne Williamson for the union of mind and spirit and for her spiritual and psychological approach based on The Course in Miracles; Don Miguel Ruiz, his son Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. and the wisdom of the Toltec Nagual shamans; Alex Grey to stoke the fires of artistic expression and creativity and to link in with the lineage of contemporary spiritual artists; Mike Booth and the teachings of Aura-Soma colour to examine consciousness as a light and colour phenomenon expressed through the crystal, colour and plant kingdoms.
Closer to home, Caroline spent a couple of years training in the indigenous Celtic shamanic traditions of Ireland at Dunderry Park. Along with much experience of the crystal kingdom gleaned from eight years of managing Dervish Holistics book and crystal store, Caroline’s studies of energy healing from the shamanic to the angelic further inform her sound sessions, writing and artwork.
Training & Education
- Sound Healing Practitioner, Diploma in Integral Sound Healing, Sound Healing Academy UK
- Member of Sound Healers Association by Johnathan Goldman: an organization dedicated to the research and awareness of the uses of sound and music as therapeutic and transformational modalities
- Aura-Soma Practitioner
- 2018/2019: Acutonics Integrative Medicine Levels 1-4, Tuning Forks & Planetary Gongs, UK
- Gong Yoga of Holistic Resonance Training with Gong Master Don Conreaux, Integral Yoga Institute, New York
- Diploma in Professional Musicianship, BIMM, Technological University, Dublin
- 2005-2016: Aura-Soma Colour System Teacher, (200hrs+ including Counselling Skills),
Art & Science International Academy of Colour Technologies, UK - 2013: Integrated Energy Angelic Therapy
- 2006-2008: Shamanic Practitioner Courses
The Irish Centre for Shamanic Studies, & Slí An Chroí - 2007: Reiki Level 1; Certificate in Permaculture
- 1994: B.Arts Hons English Literature, French, University College Cork