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December / January 2015

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then emits a long whistling sound that penetrates right into my womb. " is is a sound that is very feminine, related to the uterus, to the origin," he says. He instructs me to align my breathing with my pouring. I breathe and tip the vessel in synch, as if I were doing a yoga asana, and I can feel the waters in my own womb stirring, then something settling deep within my center. It feels like a kind of primal magic. " e vacija silbadora, the whistling vessel, is not a musical instrument—it is a being," says La Rosa. "We call these vessels 'the Guardians of the Tradi- tion.' e intention is to open doors within." A descendent of Quechua Indians, trained so- ciologist, musician, composer and recording artist, La Rosa—a tiny man of enormous humility and at- tentiveness—has spent more than 10 years recov- ering, preserving, studying and intuiting the an- cestral music of his native Peru. He's been invited to work with Stanford University archaeo-acous- tics researchers at the pre-Inkan temple of Chavín de Huántar, was featured in the Smithsonian trav- eling exhibit, Heart and Hands: Musical Instrument Makers of America, and was honored in 2014 by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture as one of the art- ists who has done the most to disseminate Peru- vian music globally. Every year he makes rounds through California, Oregon and New Mexico to off er workshops, ceremonies and sound-healing concerts. In April I attended one called, e Heal- ing Power of the Ancestral Instruments of Peru. For fi ve hours we were immersed in the ancient Ande- an cosmovision, which teaches that the earth took form while the Creator sang, and that all beings are made of sound, rhythm and harmony. It was a po- tent, heart-opening experience that has continued to reverberate in my being. Some 80 years ago, the medium Edgar Cayce predicted that sound would be the medicine of the future. But 2,000 years earlier, the indigenous peo- ples of the Andes were trilling condor-quill antaras (pan pipes), pouring water through vacijas silba- doras, rustling shakers made of dried leaves, and blowing bamboo fl utes in order to balance body, mind and spirit. "Sound healing is the original medicine," notes Teri Wilder, a San Diego-based certifi ed sound healer who attended the workshop. " is is the medicine that came way before pills and machines." Western science backs up the idea that sound can heal. As UCLA nanotechnology pioneer James Gimzewski has shown, cells emit sound. Trauma, disease, toxic substances and other disturbances alter the healthy aural frequencies of cells; sound healing can bring these frequencies back into proper harmony. ese days, skilled practitioners are using sound for everything from stress and pain relief to remedying sleep disorders and assist- ing the dying. Sound has been shown to be eff ec- tive for pain control, increasing circulation, stim- ulating acupressure points, breaking up gall and kidney stones, entraining brainwaves and a host of other scientifi cally verifi able purposes, as well as for more esoteric therapies, such as balancing the chakras. " e unique thing about sound healing in terms of it being sort of a medicine is [that] it has a blend of scientifi c and intuitive aspects," says Christo Pel- lani, a longtime Los Angeles sound healer/musician who is trained in numerous healing modalities. With no existing documentation, we can guess that the ancient Andeans likely worked more on the in- tuitive end, much as La Rosa does today. "I drink from the tradition," La Rosa explains, "but then I try to recreate things on the basis of what I feel." Photo: James Mellard 24 wholelifetimes.com

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