Helping People Heal
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By Natalie Downey
By Natalie Downey
T H ROU GH SO U “ItNblew D me&away,”TO UCH she says. She recognized the
he sits on the floor of a dimly lit room, surrounded by bowls of various sizes. Moving her arm serenely to one bowl and then another, she gently strikes them with a mallet, and a frequency fills the air, flooding the
power behind Reiki, a Japanese healing technique which uses hands-on techniques to move energy through a patient’s body to encourage both physical and emotional healing. At the time, Alison was volunteering with hospice patients and saw the potential for using Reiki with them. With a passion for helping people, she was able to use Reiki as a means to extend a hand to those around her and completed training to get her certification as a Reiki Master/Teacher and begin the practice in her own life. At first, Alison practiced Reiki in her volunteer sessions with hospice patients, but a growing interest in private sessions led to her branching out and building clientele, and with it, continuing to gain
room in vibrations of confident calm. Patients exhale, relax their shoulders, close their eyes, and settle in to listen and appreciate the music of Certified Therapeutic Sound Practitioner Alison Mills-Long. Growing up, music was always a part of life for Alison. She began formal training during childhood and continued even through her college years, starting with piano and then eventually decided to switch to the organ. “I realize now that it was about the vibration, but at the time I didn’t know the term ‘sound therapy’,” Alison explains. Drawn to the vibration of music and sound at an early age, Alison remembers standing beside speakers at college parties. “Feeling the bass was amazing,” she recalls. Alison received her B.A. in music from Agnes Scott College. While she had a strong foundation of love for music, Alison had no idea exactly how integral sound would be in her future. experience with hands-on healing. In 2006, Alison experienced her first Reiki session. In 2009, Alison attended a conference on sacred sound and music led by the Edgar Cayce Foundation. Known as “The Sleeping Prophet” and the Father of Holistic Medicine. Her interest in Edgar Cayce, a popular writer and figure in the clairvoyance and dream analysis movements, can be traced back to an ice storm she experienced when she was young. During this storm there was no power, so her mom gave her a book to read about Cayce, and she became fascinated with the topic of dream analysis. Fast forward to the conference Alison found herself at, and she was brought face to face with sound therapy. Naturally interested in sound and vibration, as LocaL
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JUNE-JULY 2022
