Becky Clemments Sound Therapy

By: Scott E. Rupp

 

Don't ask her to explain the experiences brought on by vibro-acoustic sound therapy, she can't, or at least won't. That's something she leaves to her clients; they are the ones benefiting from the work anyway.

Becky Clemments is a healer of sorts, and for over four years, has been filling her soul and changing the lives of those she's served just by going to work.

A sound therapist and Reiki Master working in energy healing is something Clemments has been doing since the latter half of 2000 after completing the massage therapy program at Safety Harbor 's Bhakti Academe.

Her eyes were opened to the power of energy healing and sound-based therapy long before that though, when her son was suffering from fluid in his ears and an infection doctors couldn't treat. She became intrigued with alternative healing routes after taking her son to a health food store, where the owner simply put her hands on him and the pain slipped away. Her son's experience was a first for her, one she had never known, but it sparked the desire to learn more.

The introduction to energy healing came in 1992, she found Tai chi, a form of moving meditation, shortly after that, and was introduced to sound healing in 1999 while a student in massage school.

As her fellow massage peers awaited turns to undergo the sound session, Becky decided she wanted to be the last one in line so she could get the longest turn, she recalled. Everyone before her described it as a sense of flying or melting and having all stress float away; and they all mentioned a strange spinning motion around them as they lay prone.

Of course she didn't believe in the work, and remained skeptical, but continued to watch, shrugging it off as malarkey, or simple tricks, until it was her turn.

Afterwards, she was changed.

"Everything in my body was jumpy," Clemments said, describing the first time she underwent the therapy. "I had answers to my questions - and then I couldn't move." She soaked it up and began to realize that there was something very real about what she had just experienced, something valuable that she needed to help pass on to others. She just felt better, clear and more aware of the world around her

Now, after more than a dozen years studying and teaching Tai chi - she's a founding member of Taoist Tai chi society that meets at 226 Oakfield Drive - and a stint in massage-geared therapy, the Brandon woman feels she has finally found her life's work: helping others alleviate stress, grief, find life meaning and grow spiritually, to develop a sense of peace and greater self-esteem and even find relief from physical pain.

It's simple; bring her your problems and she'll help take them away.

She's a facilitator, said client Harold Aldrich. "She provides a loving caring, space," Aldrich said, "She's a lighting rod for something larger she's tapping into."

The 58-year-old Temple Terrace resident continues to return monthly to Clemments for sound therapy sessions and has for the past six months. His most recent session, at the end of June, "just blew me away."

Sometimes his sessions are grounded and earthly, other times he feels like he is in a womb-like state; it just depends on what he is hoping to work through in his life at the time.

Each sound therapy session is different, but kind of the same for anyone who has one. She plays music, of various types, such as chanting, or tribal, drumming and Celtic, and every client lies on a speaker-filled mattress, the Somatron Body Mat, which distributes the therapeutic vibrating tones. The vibrations, along with the music, are designed to soothe and remain the key to the procedure, a practice Becky cites as dating back to ancient peoples, even a skill understood by composers and modern musicians for soothing listeners today.

The atmosphere, too, is the same: a small, dimly lit room, with a couple chairs, a stereo and a swirled patterned fabric hanging from a wall.

There is also that sense of circles spinning, seeming to descend upon each client as the session progresses to carry away pain, worry, frustration and even feelings of insignificance.

Those are where the similarities end.

Shirley Desrochers experienced the spinning; it started slowly, then got faster and faster, swirling around her head, in all sorts of colors, like a tornado, moving closer to the pain, closing in and then it just receded and took the pain in her side away.

Her doctors told her the pain, brought on by five abdominal surgeries in less than a year and a half, would be permanent and that she had better find a way to live with it. All of it disappeared, though, after just a one-hour sound session of Clemments non-invasive therapy and has been gone in the four months since, Desrochers said. Now she tells everyone about her experience, even her former doctors who said she was a hopeless case.

"I went to the doctors and told them what happened and they just said, 'oh, that's nice.'" Desrochers said.

The 72-year-old owner of Under the Gypsy Moon, located at 1500 N. Parsons Ave. , said unfortunately the medical community looks at those who use the energy healing that is sound therapy as though they are "just a bunch of tree huggers."

"I hope the main stream accepts this, that it's okay to do this without a pill," she said. "We need to get beyond the barriers we put up."

Dale and Julie McNitt, founders of the Bhakti Academe, have worked with energy and sound healing for 30 years and can't explain why it works, but it does, they say. Most people in science say energy work is "quackery," but Dale defends himself by saying they focus on spiritual and artistic realms, which science can't prove.

The couple is currently writing a book about their energy experiences and said even Einstein suggested that energy is in everything.

Dale, who has a master's degree in social work and is a licensed psychotherapist, said the goal is to have people become more aware and conscious of what's going on inside themselves.

"We hold everything in and create dis-ease in the body," he said

Dale said he started paying attention to the world years ago while he was in Vietnam during the war.

Like Becky, Julie McNitt works to free people from their emotional restraints and tries to let them know they have permission to feel what is already inside of them and to let it out. She remains contemporary in her approach, using music from artists such Alanis Morissette, Tracy Chapman along with more traditional meditation styles such as chant and tribal music.

Everyone can do this - use energy to heal - they claim, but most are drawn as if in response to a religious calling, like Becky, they added.

Becky, though, is more concerned about following her own heart, something a lot of people don't do, than worrying whether people care about what she does or who she helps, she said at her Brandon office at 131 N. Moon Ave.

One of her main goals is to help people find the clarity she discovered through the process, to serve them in their hunt for answers which she feels will lead to greater contentment and the ability to better reflect on life.

All of this from a woman with a degree in math, she said laughing. She claims she one of the world's few individuals capable of using both the left and right side of the brain, allowing for creative insightful reflection as well as carefully, calculated execution of plans.

Her work with Reiki, a laying on of hands type approach of healing, and vibro-acoustic therapy, she explained, allows one to move the universal energy through the body into or out of areas of discomfort for healing purposes.
Like the McNitt's, Harold Aldrich doesn't defend himself to others who may want to criticize his choice of healing.

"There's a whole branch of science that says this is pooh-pooh. It's okay that there are nonbelievers," he said.

It's a subjective experience that sounded appealing to him and so he decided to go for it.

Enjoyable, fun and a focused form of meditation is how he describes the therapy that makes him feel more connected to the world around him. No matter what, the therapy is a good thing, he said, which makes him feel more compassionate, even perky.

Sandy Aldrich, Harold's wife, who suffers from Lou Gehrig 's Disease, has also found comfort in Becky's energy treatment. Completely handicapped, Harold said his wife was physically stronger after a session and the treatment provides a small window from the disease's discomfort.

"And no, this practice is not against God," he said. "God is a word that represents something. Is there a Creator? I don't see how there couldn't be. God manifests in many forms and is equated with Love," and he feels lying on a table listening to music couldn't possibly be offensive to God or those who worship Him.

He just needed to find a break from the daily grind of caring for his wife, to go along with the Tai chi, to help shed the woes of years catching up to him.
And Becky Clemments will continue her work, for the love of it; to soothe the despair that comes through her office door and to help wake people from their day-to-day slumbers. She too believes in her role as facilitator, "conveyor of information" and doesn't expect to receive any type of acclaim for what she does.

Her work is for others, there's no ego in it, she said flatly, seriously.

"Some people walk through life asleep," she said, "this can be an awakening."

Like she said, the process in nearly unexplainable, so she doesn't waste her time talking about it. Try it, she says, because you are the only one who knows whether it's going to be a success or not.

Becky gives free demonstrations at any time and will resume her monthly workshops in September, which are also free. She can be reached in Brandon, Florida by calling (813) 684-8385 or by visiting her website at www.thesoundhealer.com.