How I De-Stress with Monochord

A Self-Practice for Difficult Times

By feeltone Trainer Joule L'Adara

Like so many of us, I began January saying "2020 is going to be my year!" I was hitting the gym 5 days a week, doing my meditation, visualization, and sounding practices, and making a commitment to my personal growth as an artist. Then March came, and with it the news of community spread of the Coronavirus in my Upper Manhattan neighborhood. I went inside my apartment on March 6th and from then to the time of this writing — over two months later — I had not been outside except to take my garbage to the side of my building.

Some friends were aghast when they heard about me spending so many days in isolation. But while I greatly looked forward to the moment I could be in nature and resume a life of full healthy social engagement, this time period brought a different sort of gifts.

My daily practices became an absolute priority. No longer simple commitments I knew would make me feel better — they became my life preservers: what I must do when I feel like I'm about to go out of my mind.

Why Meditation Alone Wasn't Enough

During the worst days of the outbreak, so many well-intentioned meditation offerings online couldn't provide what I truly needed. They were asking me to take too great a leap from where I was to where I needed to be, and my body, mind, and spirit couldn't make that jump.

There's an important concept in Music Therapy known as the Iso Principle. When a trained therapist works with a client using this method, they first match the speed, cadence, and rhythm of the client as they are, then slowly and almost imperceptibly move them to a different way of being over time. This allows the receiver to feel met, seen, and understood — and be facilitated through an organic transformational process.

I believe when we get messages from the body of real danger, we need to not just go into meditation to quiet them down — we need to ask the body what it's trying to tell us. So much of how we have all lived our lives up to this point is unsustainable. Really taking time to delve into our own deeper truths is so important, even if the messages and realizations are painful.

How I Brought the Monochord Into My Practice

During the worst days, I needed a practice that would meet me in my heightened state. I needed to shake, wail, moan, make crazy sounds, run around my apartment, cry, howl. Only after doing that for a good 5 minutes at full intensity until I utterly exhausted myself could I then start to make more soothing sounds to comfort my nervous system.

Later, I realized I could bring the monochord into this practice. In the Level 1 "Secrets of the Monochord" Training, we teach a meditational playing method called the "Flying Carpet" technique — steady, hypnotic, and therapeutic. But during difficult times, it's often not where I can start. First, I need to express my pent-up feelings on the instrument.

I play it robustly! I make grand sweeping gestures up and down the strings, bang across the surface with my palms, use my thumbs, claw at the strings with my fingernails, and make all kinds of sounds with my voice and breath. It's super cathartic — drawing out the excess energy from angst, fear, anger, and trauma, and transforming it into something epic, explosive, and even at moments: surprisingly joyful.

After some minutes of this, I start to feel an opening. Something feels satisfied within me. I begin to slow my pace, even out my strokes. I drop into steady, rhythmic playing, and my breath and heartbeat fall into a relaxed rhythm in sync. With more minutes of simplified playing, I'm able to find calm as the harmonics of the instrument soothe my nervous system. I hum along and feel my own harmonics within. I'm finally able to reach a sense of relief and neutrality.

After the last stroke of my hand releases, I listen to the reverberation tail with the harmonics ringing out, still twinkling in the air. Once the sound fades to silence, I am finally silent within. I sit still in meditation. I've been able to find my center.

A 15-Minute Monochord Practice for Stress Release

1. First 5 minutes — Full Expression
Play your monochord wildly and passionately. Allow all your feelings to be expressed: horror, grief, anger, fear, anxiety, celebration — anything that comes through you. Play using all five fingers in either direction, bang on the strings like a drum, release with your breath and voice. Make some noise and allow all of what you're feeling to be emptied out and expressed.

2. Next 5 minutes — The Flying Carpet
Slowly transition into the "Flying Carpet" method: playing in a steady, repetitious rhythm down the monochord face with one finger, as one hand comes down first with the next hand beginning before the previous hand ends, so that the sound is infinite. Relax into your breath and allow your playing speed to match your inner rhythms as your heart rate and respiration come into calm.

3. Final 5 minutes — Stillness
Release your last strum and listen to the sound reverberation decay. Sit in silent meditation, allowing the feeling of the sound to continue reverberating inside you.

Practice this daily for best results during times of difficulty.

Since 2009, Sound Therapy Practitioner and Experimental Vocalist Joule L'Adara, MFA has been leading trainings, retreats, and online courses reconnecting people to the power of sound through their voice. Joule has been a certified feeltone Trainer since 2015 and teaches the Secrets of the Monochord Training in NYC and personalized training sessions online for We Play Well Together customers.