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An Interview with Shawna Carol
As you wake up from this addictive complacency, a passion for life feeds you and becomes the fuel for further empowerment. During such transforming times, it is helpful to have a touchstone, a person you feel safe with, a special and sacred place to sit in, or an activity such as meditation or toning. These can assist you in releasing and cleansing the anxiety, fear and depression that otherwise suppress your essential light and authenticity in the overly materialistic and medicated society we live in today. The healing of our authentic voices is Shawna Carol’s passion, and she helps people do this through SpiritSinging, a process of toning and singing without words to free your voice, access your authentic sound and help you enter into a deeper relationship with Spirit. She believes that SpiritSinging is a powerful medium for personal and even political change because it fulfills two primary purposes: first, to release any "dis-ease we are carrying, and second, to connect us with the creative source." I’ve known Shawna for years as an inspiring and prolific artist, and a compassionate and dedicated teacher and healer. Recently, I had a chance to talk with her about the relationship between healing and politics, as well as her new book, The Way of Song.
When did you first connect the healing power of song with politics? I woke up to the power of song as a political force through being a child of the 60s. As a young person, I saw civil rights protesters march into police and dogs all the while singing, "We Shall Overcome." Those songs literally gave them courage. And it worked. They dismantled the segregated south, the Jim Crow laws. The protest songs were central to that movement. I saw it again in the Vietnam antiwar movement, how song inspired and empowered people to protest and speak up. Song first woke me up to social justice issues, and then it woke me up to a spiritual life. In the mid-1980s I learned how to use a process of toning and singing without words. I began to practice this and as I developed it further and began teaching, I named it SpiritSong in recognition of the spiritual force that comes through the song that heals. After almost 20 years of practicing this way, I’ve come to understand that the song we sing, our authentic song, is a living intelligence. And it has power!
How does your healing work relate to politics? There are a number of reasons I think healing is political. The first is the awareness that when people heal, they release some of their personal disturbances. Then, when they are not as distracted by their own personal story, they become more sensitive to the broader ills in the culture. Once this happens, it actually becomes a revelation to most people that much of the material that they thought was personal actually has larger political and cultural dimensions. But when someone is really suffering from personal wounding or illness, they are too self-referenced to do this. They need to experience some relief from their personal distress and discomfort. Only then can the necessary space open up for a larger awareness to enter in. I believe that it is inevitable in the course of one’s healing to examine not just yourself, but the world in which you are living. Today, less than 40% of Americans vote. If we substitute the word voice for vote, that demonstrates to me that many people don’t believe they have a voice. I think people care but they feel profoundly disempowered because the corporate money interests have undermined the democratic process. I believe that the 60% that don’t vote think it doesn’t make a difference. When you do the work to heal with your voice, you know that your voice makes a difference because you have experienced this healing power within your own body. This very private and personal experience translates into knowing your voice does matter. Once you’ve had such a measurable, intimate experience feeling the power of your voice, I submit it is inevitable that you will feel your voice makes a difference. I’ve seen this take root in my community here in Boston as people are getting more politically active. We recently backed a green party candidate for governor. This was the first time that much of my community had been involved in electoral politics. They are going beyond their personal pain and participating in outer political action.
Can you say more about how you define healing and the role of the community in healing? Our culture defines healing as an activity where someone goes to an expert — for example, a doctor — to be healed or fixed. I see a very different model of healing. I believe that healing comes from spirit and that everyone has ability to connect with spirit. Song is a particularly effective vehicle to make this direct connection. Changing this paradigm has political implications because the empowerment lies within the client, the patient or the singer rather than the healer. Because I work a lot in song circles, and not just as an individual one-on-one healer, I don’t view healing as an isolated process. I think that the community is very important part of healing, and that healing lies within the community. The SpiritSong work really encourages community through people coming together to practice using their voice for healing and expression. Not too long ago, I received a powerful vision about Sacred Council, which is when a community gathers to speak the truth in their hearts about matters that are often both personal and political in nature. I am using this form in a monthly healing gathering called, Daré, which was introduced to North America by my mentor, the poet and writer, Deena Metzger. She learned it from Augustine Kandemwa, an indigenous Shona healer from Zimbabwe who believes that healing is enhanced by the community’s participation. In the Daré tradition, besides the intent to heal, we also come together to speak the truth in council. For example, in a recent meeting, each member of our community spoke about the United States’ involvement in Iraq, and we discovered that as a community, we hold a passionate hope for peace. This was extremely empowering for us to acknowledge out loud. I also began to understand that this process of a community coming together to sing and speak their truth will ultimately have a direct and profound political impact because speaking our truth to one another strengthens our ability to articulate the truth to those in power. I believe strongly that this practice of meeting in council and speaking the truth to one another will eventually dismantle the corporate oligarchy. The corporate oligarchy includes multinational organizations (MNOs), which are currently subverting democratic institutions worldwide through the use and power of non-government organizations like the World Trade Organization, the International Money Fund and many others. The ability for oppressive and unfair policies to be in place is a function of people’s silence. This particular activity, healing with sound, unblocks people’s voices. It brings them out of a place of silence and stuckness and into a place of self-expression and energetic movement. And if you combine that with the support of a community then you have a potent brew for political action.
The idea of being authentic is very important to your work. In your book, The Way of Song, you call it the ultimate freedom. What do you mean by this? What impact does this have for people in our society? Imagine that you felt completely comfortable being who you really are. Well, being who you really are to me is the same as being authentic. If you and the entire community around you are practicing listening without judgment and if you are singing your true song, you will have an experience of being accepted and honored for the way you really are. You will become more authentic in your self-expression. And then being authentic becomes a habit. You drop the old habit of judgment and pick up the new habit of being at ease with yourself and expressing what you are really feeling. If we can do this all the time, in all circumstances, then we’d experience a profound sense of freedom. The specific practice that I teach in SpiritSong, which is to sing without words, helps people learn to be authentic because singing without words is more of a primal expression. By its nature, the SpiritSong work is more essential. We don’t get lost in our words. We don’t bypass our emotions. So it is easier to experience yourself as you are. Without using words, it is easier to be free of the culturally imbued judgments inherent in language. So this is a particularly wonderful practice for authenticity.
How do you use SpiritSong to connect with spirit? The dominant culture believes that we need intercession — a priest, a rabbi or an expert to talk to God for us or to interpret God to us. But we don’t need experts because Spirit is speaking in every moment, in the now. I call this awareness, this transmission of spirit to us, the Living Word. It’s alive. It’s in this moment. It’s a living transmission available now. SpiritSong facilitates this connection because it a way of directly experiencing this living spiritual intelligence. Simply put, each of us can sing, so each of us can directly experience and know Spirit. The SpiritSong work is a spiritual and personal healing practice that has profound political implications because it gives people an empowered sense. When people awaken their inherent spiritual connection to God/Goddess, they don’t have to wait for the word of a priest or a text to find out the will of spirit. They don’t have to wait for permission to speak their hearts or truths. I call SpiritSong a practice, like meditation for example, because it is something you do in an ongoing basis. All of these things I have spoken of — healing, the ability to listen to spirit, feeling the power and strength of your own voice — grow in time, grow with practice. The more you practice, the better you get.
Do you have a global vision for SpiritSong? I have two visions. One is that in every town, people are meeting in SpiritSong circles. The second one is about world peace. When I visualize world peace I see concentric circles of people raising voices in a tone and singing. That’s what I see when I visualize peace. I see circles within circles within circles all over the globe singing. That’s what peace looks like to me.
What do you think true personal and global empowerment is? How does one shift from being focused on outside authority to acting from an internal empowerment? I think that true empowerment is a combination of the following: Knowing you can be in direct relationship with Spirit, that you don’t need an intercessor. Knowing that your genuine self-expression is bless-ed. Knowing that your voice is worthy to be listened to. Not waiting for someone else to give you permission to speak or express yourself. Ultimately if you have a deep sense of your own validity, you no longer are looking outside yourself for the authority to express what’s true. Empowerment also implies responsibility. Once you take on the mantle of your own authority, you are also being called to a deep responsibility that this power implies. And it is a responsibility to the highest good, to the highest good of all beings. The key to empowerment is not to be afraid. And to do this, people need to ground in spiritual practices like SpiritSong or meditation. When you have a strong spiritual life, you don’t get afraid by temporal power. You know there is a greater power. And you are nourished by this power even in the midst of the most difficult of times. Shawna Carol is the author of The Way of Song and the composer of Goddess Chant: Sacred Pleasure. Shawna will be in the Seattle area to: lead a SpiritSong retreat on Whidbey Island July 10-13; give a talk and book signing at East/West Bookshop on July 14; and as part of a Goddess Chant choral concert on July 16. Call (206) 860-2843 or visit <www.wayofsong.com>. |
There is a power
in being authentic that can change the world, one voice and one
person at a time. When you squelch your authentic voice and override
it with rationalizations, you give your power away. When something
disturbs you, and you ignore it and say to yourself, "It’s
not that important" or "Why bother?" you dissipate
a little of your life energy. You begin to deaden your emotions,
the very ones that warn you when something in your life or in
your world is out of balance.