Christine Stevens – The Healing Flute

The word lodge holds many meanings. The English definition is “shelter,” while the Native American tradition refers to structures that house sacred gatherings. When you enter a lodge, you leave the outside world behind and focus on inner realms.

You’ll experience the gifts of technique and how to make learning part of personal healing. Christine will show you how to play the two different modes of scales — major and minor — and how to use them for personal healing, which is very empowering.

Playing the Native American-style can help you undo negative messages you carry about your personal creative expression and Christine will explain the brain science behind the neural network of enlightenment.

Learn flute-playing techniques and healing applications with a reflective and personal approach in which the flute is a metaphor for the human instrument.

Discover the healing gifts of each technique Christine shares, including:

• Using the extended breath in tone as a tool to focus your mind and body
• Playing the 5-note pentatonic scale with no wrong notes, as well as balancing the major and minor — or solar and lunar — modes
• Dancing scales, which ground you in the present moment so you can begin your journey into improvisation
• Embellishments that invite playfulness and fun by decorating notes

Discover song medicine as a tool for your personal healing.

We return to songs time and again in times of need because they restore us. When we play songs on the flute, Christine says, we embody the lyrics with our mind, while expressing the wordless melodies.

Begin building your medicine bag of tools — songs — for times when you need them the most…

… while also practicing preventive medicine by playing music simply for yourself.

In this session, you’ll:

• Learn 2 healing songs with provided fingering charts — a lullaby for soothing and a sacred chant of personal empowerment
• Explore the technique of playing a song in the 4 directions — new beginnings in the East, the playfulness of the South, the power of release in the West, and the quiet of the North
• Experience how playing songs transforms you and identify the origin point of each song’s intention and application in your life
• Discover how to turn any favorite inner mantra or affirmation into a song

How can you heal what’s hurting? How can you maintain your wholeness as a well-tuned instrument?

Sometimes, we can be our own worst critics. Playing music from a place of patience, intention, and inner support is a self-compassion, self-care practice. You may already have healed some of your challenges — mind, body, and spirit — using sound and music.

Start shifting your energy toward wound repair. Christine will demonstrate in real time ways of playing the flute for a variety of issues that you and your co-participants are facing.

Practice “earthing” — playing with your bare feet on the ground — first through imagery and then as an actual practice.

As you learn how to play the Native American-style flute to access your inner guidance and soul wisdom for your own healing, you’re likely to notice emotions coming through that you weren’t aware of or didn’t expect.

As R. Carlos Nakai says, “You must play with emotions. Always have the flute available when you need it.”

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn the 3 keys to healing, and practice them with your flute playing
• Practice creating a mindset that fills your breath and sound with love, light, and healing tone — and notice how it changes your sound
• Discover 3 tools for making your flute become your ally in spiritual growth and self-healing — long tones for deepening and slowing down, improvisation for finding answers through playing, and receptive listening for emotional attunement
• Develop your capacity to create playfulness and healing with the 2 pentatonic scales — major and minor

We all face social restrictions and taboos around sadness and processing loss, which can make us uncomfortable with our own — or other people’s — visceral expressions of grief and other shadow emotions.

When Christine’s father was making his transition, she was guided to create a grief flute. She decorated the flute and wrote his name and things she loved about him on it. As she played it daily during his journey with hospice, she honored all the emotions of loss, anger, denial, sadness, and gratitude. When the process was complete, she released the flute to the fire.

Through this process, Christine discovered how to modulate her emotions and avoid the overwhelming rush of grief that can bring us to our knees. She felt fully present for her father’s transition in a beautiful way as she tended her soul needs through playing the flute.

Christine won’t ask you to create a grief flute during this course. In this session, though, she’ll guide you to work with emotions through your flute-playing.

You’ll:

• Experience 4 rounds of a grief lodge, releasing layer after layer of emotion through the deep sound held by the minor pentatonic scale
• Honor and identify grief and personal loss that need to be released
• Experience a collective releasing of sadness through sound to honor the Earth’s loss of species
• Close the module with a one-note practice of unity, and see where that note takes you

The origin story of the Native American flute is one of love. In fact, it’s known as the courting flute.

How can you cultivate greater self-love, self-compassion, and joy? How can you access the wisdom of heart-centered consciousness and use it to play the flute from your heart? What happens when you play the flute for just you, as the most divine gift you can offer yourself?

HeartMath Institute has demonstrated the power of coherence between the brain and the heart. In this session, Christine will guide you in the Golden Breathwork techniques developed by Aaron Gannon (which are included in the bonus material for this course) to make space in the energy centers of your body and bring it into your playing.

You’ll discover your own personal anthem, a song that’s sung in the heart and brought into your life, creating the song that’s yours to carry. To play that song just for yourself is an immense gift to cherish!

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn the 4 musical notes that correlate to emotions, to enhance your playing and your life
• Explore and create your own personal anthem on the flute and experience the power of playing music for just yourself
• Practice the Golden Breathwork techniques to bring the breath, heart, and mind into coherence
• Listen to and improvise the heartsongs of others

Why are you here? What’s the greatest vision you hold for your life?

Music holds the keys to your intuition — information you can’t access through thought or rumination.

You’ll enter into a process of question and answer with the inner guidance of your soul through playing the flute. Without using words, you’ll learn to listen to the tonal quality of energy in your playing, to discover your life purpose.

Christine will share the five steps mapped in the Life Visioning Process by Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center…

… to help you listen to your highest truth and clear obstacles that prevent you from being your fullest awakened self.

In this session, you’ll:

• Explore using the flute for self-inquiry, as an information carrier for your soul to receive answers to your deepest questions
• Discover the 5 steps in the Life Visioning Process
• Hold sacred space for yourself and your co-participants in a process of profound listening and sharing
• Practice a technique for answering a question on your flute

In First Nations cultures, the notion of Beauty Way is practiced in community ceremonies that are guided by the rhythms of nature, the seasons, moon cycles, naming celebrations, and special occasions.

Some people say that they’re “cracked open by beauty.” When this happens, tears become medicine rather than an expression of sadness.

You’ll be joined by guest teacher, master craftsman, and flute maker Guillermo Martinez, founder of Quetzalcoatl Music. He’ll show you how to call in the directions and smudge the space around you. He’ll also use a pow wow drum he made to create space for you to share your prayers — with the flute — as part of the ceremony.

You’re invited to bring something personal to the community altar, smudge at home, and dress to honor the ceremony.

You’ll learn how to create personal ceremonies for your life, family, and nature as you continue to walk with the Native American Flute as a healing ally and tool of prayer.

In this final module, you’ll:

• Learn a medicine song to honor the Eagle Nation
• Learn a Beauty Way song to anchor your life in the consciousness of good
• Experience the healing power of connecting to Spirit as you play your flute, and honor the 4 directions in a powerful drum ceremony
• Understand how to put your prayers into the flute as you play from your spiritual center
• Discover how to use the flute in personal ceremonies whenever the need arises and for healing, gratitude, grief, and new beginnings

Golden Breathwork Techniques for Playing the Native American-Style Flute
Video Class With Christine Stevens and Aaron Gannon

In this highly instructive hour-long class with Christine and Aaron Gannon, Golden Breathwork facilitator and founder of Earth Sky Schedule, you’ll learn two powerful breath techniques to help you enter the doorway of your self-healing nervous system. Christine interviews Aaron about the spirit and science of breathwork and the physiology that supports playing the flute and for self-healing. They’ll illustrate how to practice diaphragmatic breathing for five minutes to clear stagnant energy and stuck emotions that block clear tone and breath in your playing. Aaron also guides a practice using the monochord, an instrument with over 30 strings, to support direct access to your parasympathetic nervous system.

Earth Songs Teachings From the Sound Healing Summit
Video Teachings From Christine Stevens, Mary Youngblood, and Guillermo Martinez

In this enticing package, you’ll bathe in the wisdom, knowledge, and music of two master flute players — Guillermo Martinez, founder of Quetzalcoatl Music, and “the First Lady of the Native American Flute,” Mary Youngblood. Guillermo is a Native American-style flute maker and player. Mary is a 2-time Grammy-winning flute player and composer. These heartfully curated sessions focus on the Native American-style flute as a tool of healing. You’ll explore the “Three Sounds of Creation” and how to develop a healing style of playing.