This is a guest blog post by Suzanne Wigginton, Wellness Guide who will be cocooning us in restorative sound during the 2022 Rooted Retreat in Phoenix, AZ.

I’m delighted to be part of the Rooted Retreat, and it’s my honor to offer a SONIC COCOON for the group on the final evening of your stay. A Sonic Cocoon is my rendition of a “sound bath” or described in other ways: a non invasive sensory therapy, a full-body listening experience, or a magic carpet ride for your spirit.

In one-to-one work with clients, I create deeply relaxing and restorative experiences using guided meditation and a variety of sound healing methods to help sensitive people who feel depleted. I have facilitated small group meditative experiences over many years; combining craftsmanship, experience, wisdom and intuition when I create as a vibrational artist and sound healing practitioner.

During our time together at your retreat, I’ll be sharing the therapeutic application of sound and vibration. You might wonder, what is so special about sound and vibration?

I’ll offer a few ideas to ponder, but please don’t consider this a comprehensive description:

• Everything is vibration, and we are wired for sound.

• Sound opens up space in us. Within spaciousness we can unwind and release layers of subconscious tension bringing us into greater ease and more flow.

• Therapeutically applied, sound can be used to calm, excite, disrupt, dislodge, harmonize, resonate and restore.

• Sound knows what to do and where to go, flowing like a river.

As we are all unique vibratory beings and will respond to sound and frequencies in our own way, I won’t tell you what your experience will be. That’s presumptuous and unhelpful. However, I can paint a picture of the possibilities and share my intention to create a restorative container to support you in integrating the experiences of your time on the retreat and help you begin to energetically organize and gently prepare for reentry into your home life.

First, we’ll take time to get you settled in and cozy, creating the most comfort possible in our setting. Using imagery and storytelling, I will guide you gently toward an altered state of consciousness (aka meditative state). Here you can commune and conspire with your own organizing intelligence as we settle into our soundscape with gongs, singing bowls, drums, chimes and bells.

You may remain very present; relaxed and aware. Or, you may find yourself swept away on an inner journey where you become momentarily unaware of your physical surroundings; traveling into the sound where you might find a dream-like landscape to explore. You could shift back and forth between various states of awareness throughout. Please know the therapeutic value available can be received at any level of consciousness.

There is no right or wrong way. Only your way… in that moment… on that day… in that space. You are still. You are quiet. The sound is active and productive; the experience profound.

If you’ve ever participated in a sound bath experience that overwhelmed or felt loud for the sake of loudness, rest assured that’s not my style. My Sonic Cocoons coax, never bully. Moments of intensity will merely accent a soothing sound carpet built and maintained to hold you as you receive.

We’ll also incorporate the most important and often ignored secret ingredient in all sound healing methods. SILENCE. It’s in the bits of silence — once the sounds are released — where you coalesce in coherence, where you deepen abilities to hear your inner world and where the magic flows.

On this last evening of your retreat, we’ll partner with the energies of this liminal space between “almost” complete and “not quite”. I’ll facilitate an environment to inspire harmony with what you’ve received on the retreat and wish to carry homeward, as well as permission to surrender what you’re ready to leave behind as you return refreshed, revitalized and ready for what comes next.

During our time together, your spirit can delight, rest, integrate; whatever you’re most needing at this juncture of your journey.

I’m SO looking forward to being with you!