Brooke Gillespie is healing the world through sound.

Since childhood, the visionary vocalist, sound healer and composer felt a special pull towards music. Her family fostered that interest and, ultimately, she found a way to marry her passion for peace with her love of sound.

Having studied with some of the most respected sound healing maestros, today Gillespie spreads her vibrational message of universal love via Pink Sun (a ceremonial shamanic music group) and Dream Seed (a sound meditation ensemble).

Here, Gillespie―who will be gracing the upcoming Live The Process with The Lunchbox Fund wellness event on April 5th―shares her vision for helping us all realize our greatest potential:

Live The Process: Have you always been drawn to music and recognized its power?

Brooke Gillespie: Always. I am really grateful to both of my parents for being so deeply connected to music and for supporting my love of it from the moment I was born. My father is a great musician and songwriter, as is my grandmother on my mother’s side. As a child, I would sit with my little tape recorder for hours and sing and record and play the piano. My love of music and appreciation of its power is a daily practice that is constantly transforming. I realized very early on that sound and music are a deep and profound way of life, that these things are working at the internal levels. Each time I work with sound, I learn something new; I see a new aspect of its power like a diamond with infinite facets.

LTP: How did you come to learn about music as a healing tool? What is sound healing exactly?

BG: Music and sound create a universal language that transcends cultural boundaries. Sound and music are the medicine of the Age of Aquarius. This is what Taino elder, Maestro Manuel Rufino, and his lineage recognize. It is an ancient science whose power is just beginning to be recognized again by modern culture, although indigenous cultures―shamanic and sacred traditions from around the world―have always recognized sound and music as sacred tools that transform consciousness and heal.

I have been blessed to study with Maestro Manuel Rufino, learning about shamanic sound healing and related intertribal Native American practices for the past seven years. I have also had the great honor of working with Tito La Rosa, a masterful sound healer and musician from Peru whose flute music creates a transcendental and healing experience that is deep and profound.

We are vibration; all life is in a state of vibration. When that vibration becomes disharmonious, disease can come in. Sound is used in an intentional way to bring harmony and to reconfigure the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies of a person.

LTP: Where can people hear your music and sound meditations? Can you recommend a starting place for people who are new to this concept?

BG: Currently, I am part of two musical projects that are coming out of the Golden Drum community: Pink Sun and Dream Seed.

Pink Sun came together around a vision of bringing sacred music to all people around the Earth to help encourage peace and understanding through transcendental “prayerformances.”  Pink Sun has four main members: myself, Aneta Ptak Rufino, Matthew Canale and Mateo Bazgier, as well as other rotating members. We have spent the last two years cultivating our sound and performing mainly at Heart & Mind Festivals in Poland and a few places in New York. We are just about to release a sound healing track featuring myself and Aneta on vocals and ngoni; and we are now getting ready to record our first album!

Dream Seed is a shamanic, sound meditation ensemble/collective that creates sound baths that are deeply healing and transformative.

For incredible sound healing music, I highly recommend listening to any traditional music from North, Central and South America, Africa, India, Tibet, Siberia, Japan, Indonesia, Australia or Hawaii―really from any place in the world. Each culture has its own special music that is a key to different state of awareness and knowledge. One of the most incredible sound healers and musicians I have ever heard, and with whom I have had the blessing to study, is Tito La Rosa from Peru. I also recommend Kevin Nathaniel Hylton, Didac Ruiz Lazaro, Rosalia Mowgli, Dr. James Hopkins, Craig Pruess, Ali Farka Toure and Rainer Scheurenbrand.

LTP: Are there other wellness practices—besides sound healing—that keep you feeling balanced?

BG: The breath is the main tool that we have to bring peace and centeredness to the being. I have a lot of personal wellness rituals that begin with getting up early, practicing yoga and music and doing special prayers and meditations with the cosmic energies to harmonize with the energies of the day. If all of my morning practices can be done before 7:30am, this allows for a very productive day.

LTP: What does happiness look like to you?

BG: Gratitude, equanimity, harmony, balance and love.

LTP: What does it mean to you to “Live The Process” and how can we all do that more each day?

BG: I think that living the process is about being present and being able to maintain a level of integrity and honesty within ourselves. It is coming into harmony with our community and expanding our worldview to see the entire Earth and the environment as our responsibility. It is recognizing the interdependent relationship of everything and doing our part to be of service to those who need it. To “Live The Process” is to push ourselves to go beyond our comfort zone in an effort to awaken to our true potential.