| WorldPeaceEmerging.com Stories An Interview with Dean & Dudley Evenson, Soundings of the Planet Co-Founders ~
Washington, D.C. - At the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan are receiving transitional and medical care before returning to their homes. Dean and Dudley Evenson, of Soundings of the Planet, have been invited to bring their healing music to the facility. To assist with the healing of trauma and emotional shock, the Evensons have been invited by the Army Chaplain there to offer their Peace through Music program to the soldiers and their families. Saphir Lewis interviewed them on March 6, 2006.
Dean: We feel that Peace is the place inside one’s self where you're most deeply connected to the infinite.
Dudley: What we’ve been doing these last twenty five years, is focus on Peace Through Music, through our record label 'Soundings Of The Planet'.
Dean: We create music that supports people's own journeys to find inner peace. The music itself assists the listener to reach a deeply peaceful state. Our music is designed to facilitate inner peace and healing for the listener, while creating more peace on the planet in the process. The more people are living a peaceful life and find peacefulness in themselves, the more there is peace on the planet.
Dudley: For a while we have been looking for ways to get our music out to the military because we see our young people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan having traumatic responses to their experience in a war zone. Many of them have extreme physical injuries. Apparently many are living now, when they might have died in previous wars, because of the modern medical attention they are getting. So we have extreme injuries, but even those who have escaped extreme injury have a deep emotional trauma that they need to express, and overcome.
Dean: It seems that war is not really natural for humans, although some people would like to think so. It creates such a stress response in people who are involved with war that it is becoming obvious that it’s not natural, it’s out of control. Guys come back and they have bad dreams, they have anger that is pent up, and many other emotions too that we will learn about as time goes on.
SL: That seems like an important point you just addressed. In your opinion, war is not a natural thing for people to be doing?
Dean: Yes, I think it’s been forced on us, to think that it is a way that “man” should be. If you think about it, it might be more natural that we were here initially in a way of balance, and lived our lives simply. But then the male testosterone process gets going and confuses the issues, and then survival overtakes compassion.... when really compassion is the ultimate survival tool.
Dudley: When we hear about post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), (we used to hear about it quite a bit with Vietnam Veterans), we are starting to realize that we have a very serious issue here with people coming back from the war. What we’ve come to undersand, the more we research and read about the situation, is that it seems like a normal response. They call it a disorder, PTS Disorder, but we feel it is more of a response, a natural response. Post Traumatic Stress Response, PTSR, makes more sense, because it doesn’t have the stigma attached to it. I think it is very important for people to recognize that their reactions to having been in a high intensity war situation are normal. It's normal that they would have an intense reaction, and that they would have difficulties that they need to address.
One of the first obstacles is to recognize that it is ok to admit that you have this situation. And then to seek help, to join with peers. There are two aspects: to join with peers and sharing, because it’s hard for a man to who’s been in war, (for women it's probably not as difficult because women have a little bit easier time communicating their emotions) and that's always been a challenge for men... but it’s extremely important that the people who are coming back are getting to their support groups. Asking for and receiving support, accepting support from their families, whoever can give it. Professionals are needed in many cases, the feelings are so extreme that these soldiers are experiencing. For one wife or spouse to be there alone, or one small family. it's alot. It takes a team. It takes extended family, it takes a community to be able to bring these people back into our society. To give them the honor and respect that they deserve for having put their lives on the line, but also for the needs that they have, these are different kinds of needs.
SL: Isn’t it a dramatic shift from the "buck up and endure" stance at war, to switch to “I’m having a traumatic reaction, it's ok for me to admit It, to experience it”? It sounds like a huge paradigm shift.
Dudley: It is. You’ve been an Army of One, you’ve had to protect yourself if necessary. There’s a huge factor that involves unwinding from the adrenaline state that they have been highly trained to be in, on guard.
Dean: They've been taught how to be strong, how to go out and do it on their own. To see that state of mind and turn it into how to be strong and deal with this incredible response they are experiencing, it’s so vastly different. Living in our lives here at home, there’s a feeling by some veterans that we are in a bubble that isn’t real. The reality that they know is a very intense situation where they are in danger, in danger of dying, of violence, where people are dying all around. To get to an understanding that it’s ok to…. to accept Love, that's what it’s basically coming down to. Knowing how to get to a place of peace in oneself, in ones own body system. That’s where we want to help. It’s going to take the whole nation to help these guys, the nation has to get behind it. That’s one thing we learned from Vietnam, we cannot treat these guys as outcasts, or problems or anything but with the highest respect.
Dudley: I think we have learned that part of it, we are trying to honor and respect, whatever our opinion of the war is, we still want to honor and respect the soldiers.
SL: How did your work develop?
Dean: Initially, as we were making music, we wanted to connect people to the earth and the balance that is in nature, and the teachings that we had received from Native American elders. We wanted to bring that into places where decisions were being made about the environment. After we started putting the music out, we got responses from all over, a children’s cancer ward in Canada, an Autistic center in Texas, places we didn’t know we were reaching. They told us that our music was helping the kids with cancer, that it was helping them reach the autistic children, and things like that. We began to see the music as having a much greater purpose than we initially thought. Of course, really when you think about it, the balance and the lifestyle that the Native American elders were talking about, is holistic, it is healing in itself, because it is putting you in balance with the earth.
SL: What teachings are you referring to?
Dudley: We’re referring to the respect for Mother Earth, the respect for nature, the environment, the interconnectedness of all life. These we were taught by Native American elders.
Dean: Respect for each other.
Dudley: When we first started recording, Dean went out into a desert canyon and recorded the birds at dawn, and then we added our own music of flute and harp, and our friend Jonathan Kramer added his wonderful cello. We were able to create a very peaceful musical environment, inspired by the natural sounds. For many, many years, that was the format we created our music with. We went to different eco-systems, the ocean, a forest or desert, wetlands, creating music that was reflecting the environment. The discovery by healing practitioners and people working with natural child birth, or those simply creating less stress in their lives, we’ve since come to accept as rather common place.... we just know that it works. But twenty five years ago, in the beginning days, massage therapy was a new thing and acupuncture was unheard of, chiropractic was unknown. These are all modalities that have come of age at the same time that healing music has.
In time, we came to know the music was working. The health practitioners, because they use it constantly, have been our focus. But we also realized that it was time to reach out beyond them to the people who need it in an extreme way. That’s why we started thinking about the military and our troops.
Dean: We began with Ocean Dreams, which we found to be very helpful for alot of people, many babies have been born to it (grins), because it helps with the pain and the processing. We sent over 400 cassettes to soldiers in the first Gulf War. And we started getting a few responses, One guy said that it gave him peace while he was listening to the SKUD missiles coming over head.
Dudley: We sent them to the military, and it ended up that some boxes were in a medical tent. We were in Tuscon once at a street fair, and a nurse came up to us and said she'd been in the Middle East and had gotten one of our tapes, and it had really helped. They played it in the medical tents.
Dean: I heard that General Schwartznegger, at one point in a talk, said that he had been listening to an ocean recording. The music reached some interesting places.
Dudley: Just recently, when the war was ramping up, we decided to donate our CDs to military families and the troops. We went through the I AM Foundation, who donates a lot of books and CD’s to various situations that need them. We sent them 10,000 CDs.
Again, I do feel that this is an important time in history, that we are considering the reality here and are trying to learn how to do a better job of integrating people back into society. This is a big leap from say, Vietnam or the Gulf War, or probably ever, as human beings. Although, Brigitte (Cantrell) was talking to us about Native American tribes and how they took care of their warriors coming back. They would do something to cleanse them, almost like cleaning the blood off their hands.
Having gone to war, a big emotion is guilt. They are either going to have guilt related to the fact that that they didn’t die and their friends did, their buddies. "How did I survive? Why should I live, when my friends are dead?" And the other one of course, is that they did kill people. Whenever they think about the war there are mixed emotions, there’s a lot of emotional challenge. It isn’t a cut and dried thing, “Wow”! I went to war! Now I’m a hero!" They come back and the reality of it starts to effect them. How do we support these people in letting go of the guilt? Guilt isn’t going to take them anywhere, as we know, it doesn’t take any of us anywhere. Its one of the most downgrading emotions. This is a place where Veterans can learn to return to a level of self respect. It is a discovery of self, it’s all a process that is going to be occurring.
We have an opportunity here, now, in our society and our nation, to look at these things deeply, to address them, to research and communicate, and to get together with people and share. Anybody who has a veteran in their family needs to be looking deeply, and rising to the occasion.
Dean: We know the music works. The feed back that we have gotten over the years has been a joy, a blessing, and a surprise to us, how effective the work that we do, is. We’ve gotten feedback from kids, from adults going into heart surgery, and people using the music to decrease their pain. One woman told me that she was in a car accident and had thirty fractures in her ribs. She went into operation and she didn’t want to use any pain medication, she used our album Sound Healing. The doctors were amazed, her healing happened faster, and she didn’t have to use pain medication. She was ecstatic when she told me this. That’s just one story. It goes on and on and on. Kids using it when they are say, ten years old to go to sleep. There’s a story of a fellow using it, not for pain, but for relaxing enough that he could go to sleep. He was going to college, and his mom was buying him another copy of Ocean Dreams because he had worn the other one out. He had to have his Ocean Dreams going off to college!
That’s part of it, the relaxation response. Learning how to relax, how to be comfortable with just being, re-learning how to relax. The music helps because it is paced that way. The sounds, the whole context, is for creating a peaceful place for people. Plus, it has the Earth Resonance Frequency in it.
SL: What is the Earth Resonance Frequency?
Dean: The Earth Resonance Frequency is, well, look at it this way: a bottle that you blow across makes a sound. Jugbands have big jugs that make a low sound because the jug is bigger. The earth has a cavity of air around it, just like a bottle cavity. Picture the way the atmosphere goes out from the land, out around the earth itself. That cavity has a certain frequency that it resonates at, just like a bottle does, just like a jug does. Some rooms have a very low resonance, you can feel it, especially if there is music happening in it. The Earth has a resonance frequency, that all of life on this whole planet, everything, is bathed in. We are all in the same bottle, if you will, we’re all in the same atmospheric cavity. The base harmonic of it is 7.83 hertz or cycles per second. That was calculated mathematically before it was actually measured by a mathematician named Schumann. He figured out what the frequency would be, and then they measured it.
There are multiple things that are interesting about it, because whales and dolphins use that frequency to transmit, crickets go off at that frequency. The interesting thing about humans is that it’s where our Alpha wave state is. The brain itself puts out frequencies and these frequencies are different depending on the state of mind we're in. In normal functioning we have the Beta state, which is a higher frequency, not very high, just higher. Beta goes from 60 cycles per second down to 14. The Alpha wave state, which is more relaxed, more contemplative, more meditative, is from 7 cycles to 14 cycles per second. There are other brain states that go down, the Theta state and the Delta states which are deeper states of consciousness. In the Alpha state, a person is still awake and alert yet highly receptive to healing. We fold the Earth Resonant Frequency into the recordings with an amplitude variation, kind of a tremolo. We fold it in so that you don’t hear it but your body attunes to it and helps a person into the Alpha state.
In addition to the Earth Resonance Frequency is the intention of the musicians. That, we found out, is very subtle. It happens on a subconscious level. The music made by musicians whose intentions are for healing, brings an energy that the music carries of the musician, just like a radio wave, it carries the intention of healing.
Dudley: One of the ways that the Earth Resonance Frequency works, and also that the slower paced music works in facilitating sound healing, is the aspect of entrainment. It begins to entrain your bodily systems, your heart beat, your breathing, everything slows down. We’re used to operating at a very high pace in modern society, getting on computers, going in cars and all the things that we do. Shopping and talking, all left brain thinking. But when you slow down your brain waves and slow down your body systems, you are taking the stress off, which allows healing to happen. The music doesn’t cause healing to happen directly, it creates the environment that allows your body to begin its healing. When your body settles down, the healing begins to occur, because the body is a healer. The music facilitates that.
Dean: When the body is in a high stress situation it doesn’t heal well. It just doesn’t allow the healing to occur when you’re on edge, being ready for something, or dealing with something. When you are in a relaxed state, the body, the cells, the system can get to its own work, which is healing itself and making itself whole.
Dudley: So that fits perfectly with the needs that our military people have, coming back from a war zone. They need to unwind, to let go of the high level they’ve been so well trained to, being on guard and vigilant. Now it's time to shift, and it’s going to be an 180 degree shift. We are offering the music to be available for our veterans to use. It’s not just entertainment or blissing out on head phones, it’s more on purpose, nourishing and embracing the soul. The head phones create a sanctuary, going inside, even if there is a lot of busy stuff going on around. It helps pace the breathing, just take a breath, sigh, and can even help going into the very difficult place of faith and trust, feeling a sense of safety. That’s a place they have not felt in a long time.
Dean: Of course, the natural sounds also help, because the body system knows that nature is a supportive place, it’s very comforting. When you hear the sounds of nature, to be in nature, to be able to just listen to nature, your body recognizes it as a safer place.
Dudley: Something I have also noticed about the music that Dean creates, and the other musicians we work with, is that it isn’t just slow music. A lot of people think healing music is just slow. It is going to be slower, but it also has a sense of joy, there’s a beauty to it. Music is an art form as well as a healing modality. We feel that it’s important that it's beautiful, otherwise it would be boring, moody and morose. If we just took a lot of slow pieces of music and put them together it could be ominous, or depressing. That isn’t what we are aiming for. Our music is uplifting, it lifts the spirit. This is an important aspect, we want to offer something that will give their souls a boost. Something to latch onto that will lift them up, let them feel a sense of goodness in life. There are so many things that they have witnessed that have not felt like goodness.
Dean: We are hoping to reach them with music that isn’t fast, making you want to move and all that kind of stuff. There’s a time for that, but a lot of these bodies need to rest. They need to find a centered place of peace that they can go to at any time. Once you learn how to go there, entrain your body, you can go again and again and again. That’s where bringing the tempo down can help them to rest.
Dudley: Sleeping is very difficult for these guys, they close their eyes and start to drift off and a bomb explodes in front of them or a sight that they witnessed comes back into their minds. The Eagle River video is going to be helpful too. We'll be playing video footage for the soldiers during our performance. It too, will be peace inducing, you can watch the river, the sun glittering off the water, the eagles, the salmon, there’s some hope here.
Dean: The eagles are very meditative, they’ll sit in a tree for hours. They just sit there, alert and just looking around, it’s not sleepiness. It’s amazing. At some point they will kind of gently fall off the tree and go into flight. It’s a very natural, easy kind of thing. They jostle with each other and that, but mostly they are set around the roost. It’s a wonderful meditation to be there with them… they cooperate with each other, and they pick a mate for life.
Dean: Seeing thoughts as little packets of information, is just like you get packets of information on the internet. Being able to sit back and watch your thoughts float by in meditation helps you let those things go. You keep saying "no, not this, not this, not this", keeping going. Eventually you get to a quiet place. Which is not as essential as knowing that we are not made up of our thoughts, that’s not who we are. We’re watching the movie screen, we’re not the movie. We don’t have to be enrolled in it when it’s just a movie. And again, the music seems to help people get there, we are thankful for that.
SL: Soon you leave for Washington?
Dudley: We are going next week for the performance. The Chaplain is going to get enough CD’s to be able to hand them out to everybody who comes to the performance. There are also going to be a sharing, and workshops. We teach about mindfulness and meditation, breathing, centering, toning and all kinds of things. We are going to teach the principles of music and healing, in between the flute and harp and whatever other instruments we bring. We will take them on a guided visualization journey and move through some relaxation exercises. We’ll have our video projections with us at that time too.
We will offer them ideas on how to use the music to add to their other programs. They have a very well developed stress and PTSD management process that they are already working with, and we will be bringing in the music healing aspect. We’re all learning and working together in this, with the psychologists and psychiatrists and counselors. Many, many Vietnam veterans are working in this field, and other veterans, to support these new people coming back. It’s an exciting time as we are tackling this head on, joining many other people’s efforts.
Dean: Hopefully we can see this all over the country. We’d like to see many musicians from around the world getting involved. The 'Peace Through Music' concept supports musicians around the country and around the world, to use music as a medium to create a higher level of peace.
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Purchase Soundings of the Planet CD's.... Stay tuned for the video release of Eagle River this summer. Brigitte Cantrell's workbook can be found at www.heartstowardhome.com
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