Suzanne: This is before the afterlife. All about healing spiritual growth and how to be happy before you go… I am your host Suzanne Falter. We are coming to your from Oklahoma, California.
Is it possible to heal a broken heart with singing? May I never want to suspect it as singing is about the last thing you feel like doing when you are down and out, but now looking back I can say it has actually been a big piece of my own healing since my daughter Teal died in 2012. But, believe me I didn’t start out that way.
After Teal’s death, I refused to sing for more than 03 years, even though singing was always one of my great loves. Over the ways, I performed in New York cabarets and regional theatres and French festival circuits. Teal was also a singer. In fact our theme music in this podcast is sung by Teal. But, slowly and eventually I found my way back to happiness again by singing. First it was Kirtan, some people call it Kirtana. This is a form of chanting that lives in the world of Goddesses, Yoga, Hindu, Vedanta. I found Kirtan where I did Yoga each week when Kashi my Yoga teacher would suddenly start to play a small Harmonium, like a little organ at the end of each class. Somehow, the call and response we did as a group was extremely soothing. Even though I really had no idea of the Sanskrit words that I was singing.
I just knew it felt marvellous and I wanted it more. Pretty soon I was a regular at Kirtan get downs all over town that featured drummers and dancers and all kinds of layers of sound. Just hearing the entire room of a hundred strangers chant the universal sound for God… “Om”… and then my soul breathe a huge sigh of relief. Not long after that, I began singing backup with the Lesbian rock band called “Leave it to Diva”. Already I had the same sensation even though this time I was singing harmony on oldies, like science heal delivered and yours and dancing in the streets.
I found oneness not only with my fellow musicians but with all those gyrating, dancing women sweating it out on the dance floor in front of us. Again I found that innate connection that make singing so gratifying and so special.
Now I sing in a Unitarian church Quire and Oakland that covers both Gospel classics and J S chorales. I am lit from within as I drive into these pieces and I find both styles of music really fill me up to the broom. Now I am working with a simple piano accompanying men that start with the bass, Saxons, guitars and the drums but that hardly matters.
As I tune to the voices around me again I am surrendered to the oneness of our sound and I am soothed. This is the magic of singing. And it’s exactly where Galitta my guest in this episode goes to heal others. Listen as she explains her work in our fun and exuberating conversation.
But before we go, why not do something fun right now? Why not join me in a quick Om..! Wherever you are and whatever you are doing that’d just make your day go a bit better.
Are you ready? One, two, three! Ommmmmmmmmm…..
Hello everyone its Suzanne, and today I am interviewing the extraordinary Galitta.
Galitta does many healings and creative things all of which I have found on her website are woven into this gorgeous welcoming abundant… ah, I just want to say zestful presence that I couldn’t resist when I found her work I just had to interview her for this podcast, so I am very happy that you have come to join us today.
Galitta: Very much thank you to you!
Suzanne: So Galitta, how would you begin to describe this unique healing work that you do?
Galitta: It is a combination of few things, it is the creative and performing of arts, combined with some very heavy beauty of mystical techniques like Shamanism and Kabala and the expression of those depths into art forms. So, I find that very powerful and it helps me a lot. So, I spread it around.
(LAUGH)! I love that and in terms of, I mean this is such a cool thing that you can take an artistic expression and make it a healing tool.
Can you tell us more about that?
Galitta: Well, I believe that all the creative forms have a power to heal. We are all by essence of creative and when I say creative, it’s not only singing and painting and dancing. It is definitely that, but the essence of us is very much in connection to the big picture like the Divine and from that comes creativity in the way we express ourselves on earth.
So I was a singer and I was performing Jazz & big band and I love everything about singing music but when my daughter was in Intensive Care, there was a very scary moment where I had to leave the room and leave her with the doctor doing a scary procedure and I remember that been in the room of the parents and there was no family for me around. The only way I could breathe was singing.
That was my turning point because I started to sing a chant that had a secret language, it sounds like Hebrew, but it just connected me to the fact that I breathe one by one in connection to what I am asking for her to go through all the survive. So, that turned me around realizing that music is not only for entertainment… which was my background but, it has a profound effect on our wellbeing and our connectedness to the Divine force and to our body.
So, I am definitely in research since then and that was my past.
Suzanne: Well, there is we could just spend the next hour talking about that because although I am sure we will find many things to touch on our conversation. You know a lot of my work now around healing is informed very much by my experience of my daughter who passed away in 2012 and her life is a healer and her most emphatic request was that we tune into our bodies and we listen to our bodies that our bodies hold these big repositories of wisdom. So, say more about that! Would you?
Galitta: Yes, I once worked with the traumatized women in a shelter and I was very much afraid to go there because those women went through the worst nightmare I can imagine! What really surprised me that working with them with their voice and their body and let them find their singing voice their speaking voice in the most playful theatrical way, brought a part of them out that healed me. I never realized what a connecting power it is when you move your body in dense and you express yourself with a voice when we do it very physical… in our theatrical world we do those things in a very physical level and use the body and the singing and the dancing and the touching to let the giant brilliant part of us comes out. This was something that showed me that even in the darkest moment when a person is really went through a lot. There is a way to bring them out into themselves. And because I also paint and I work with the people on all kinds of creative things because I myself cannot create! When you connect people to their creativity even that I love to people think they are not creative because in western thinking there is a different way of looking at creativity which is supposed to make money from it only then you are worthy and only then you can do that and it is completely against my upbringing. I come from a tribe where creativity is woven in everything; in the way you do your daily life, you practice, your spiritual practice. All of my family are… now we live in the western country but all of my family are doing embroidery and jewellery and the cooking. It’s very creative tribe as a way of life. And I see more and more of that when people come and connect to their voice and to their creativity and bring their true essence through the thing they express whether if they paint, if they dance or if they sing! Magical things happen. You see them making a connection to the biggest power they have which is the “Themselves”. So I am very passionate about this and this is about healing of healthy people, the regular people, people who want to expand their lives more than it is but when you do that with the sick people… that have also a dimension that is undeniable.
Suzanne: So, this brings up this question for me at least; this Chanting, Kirtan, Gregorian chant, the history of singing in spiritual guidance and spiritual connection; do you suppose that was all originally… I mean I learned a little something about Gregorian chant recently that it had to do with the fact that these monks were needing to recite these very long prayers eight times a day and they got bored. So, they put them to music! But, isn’t there a kind of a healing essence to all of that religious music that started so long ago and now for so much chanting has come back with the Yoga movements for instance. I really have observed that and I just think that you know there’s something about the vibrations of music in the body that it tunes us because I sing as well and when I sing everyone deny in a course like I sing with and I come home and I am just buzzing in a totally different frequency. I feel so lit up and alive and I couldn’t possibly sit down in front of the Television, I feel energized!
Galitta: Well, singing is the healthiest thing you do. It really opens all of your vibrations, all of your cells and all of your meridians and it doesn’t have to be a good or it does not have to be formal. I see people singing in the shower just because it opens everything.
So, I developed a method called the “Four voices” in the Happy Goddess thing, because I wanted to sing as a child but I didn’t have a voice. I literally lost my voice of most of my childhood. So, when I was working very hard to develop my physical voice in singing, I discovered that the physical voice was not the only voice and it came first from my inner voice, it came from a connectedness to something bigger and this inner voice was one voice and then you have the physical voice and it connected to the emotional voice which was where the emotions are and every artist will tell you your emotions are one of the biggest tools you have to express and really connect to your audience.
And then there was also the mental voice. So, I realized that not only that is good to sing physically, if you do anything connectedness to the bigger part of you do in your chant, doesn’t matter of which religion you are! You do that in connectedness to the divine force and you bring your emotional in and you use a formation like you are doing Mantra. These “four voices” together is one of the most powerful things and the most joyful thing you can do. And that’s why I say a Happy Goddessa means the soul and the personality work together and then there is happiness. When the personality can get out of this little fear, jealousy and doubt and all of those things that sticking on it and connect to the soul that is eternally joyful. It will bring us that unity and I find that all of the art form does it and I call it all one of your voices doesn’t matter what art form it is, if it’s singing or speaking or painting or dancing. It’s all a lifeline to greatness and to happiness.
Suzanne: Beautiful!
Galitta: Anybody should do that!
Suzanne: What do you say then to a person who has never done anything creative anything! You know they are just like they really run away from hit backs, may be they were the kid in high school or a course and or a great school and I just told them out the words and to not sing, or may be there, they think they can’t draw or so they are afraid of paint. What do you say?
Galitta: I will say that you have so much power in your mind and your body and your voice and in any expression you will choose. Scribbling on a paper which nobody sees, actually I don’t believe that there is a person who never did that.
I believe that any person will tell you about some aspects of their life where they do feel. Even if a person is fixing motor bikes and has nothing to do with creative arts, they can find this channelling of bringing their own unique expressions.
I think everybody has a genius part that… if it expressed a little bit then it’s a petty, I think my job in the world is to encourage people to express that unique part of them.
Suzanne: Beautiful!
Galitta: They do need to know who they are. So the first thing always goes like learn about yourself and that self been expressed that tell you this is the express way to peace and happiness.
Suzanne: Tell us more a little more about Happy Goddessa and what that it is and how you began it?
Galitta: Okay, I realised lately that it’s actually started 19 years ago, which was very slow cooking and it started when I had a big crisis the world fell on my head and I lost everything and really thought that there is nothing beyond. So I thought if I hide myself in the house and not see anybody I will just shrivel and die. I really thought that would have help me release myself from the pain, but what actually happened is that I closed the world so I could go in to hear my own voice and then I had a period when I really went in what we call in shamanism the underworld. The world of our subconscious way I got connected into my pain into my mother’s pain into my grandmother’s pain and to the whole family line and start to realise how I became who I am and that started my spiritual journey. Now the last few years with everything what I do Happy Goddessa, became from doing workshops and teaching the principals of the femaleness of us which is a subconscious which is the emptiness which is a divine feminine, which were all creation comes from it started to become something that I could take all of those tools that I developed and I bring it out for people to discover their own power and on their own voice. So in those years that I closed my self for 2 years I didn’t see anybody which was kind of drastic. I felt of died but what happened that I started to write songs started to write stories I started to create all kind I became compulsive creator because it was my way to access to the unknown and to bring the knowledge from there and then I got connected to, it sounds may be funny but King Solomon is one of my ancestors King Solomon and Queen Sheba came in and then I wrote a book with her and it introduced me to the world of the femaleness.
Suzanne: Alright, so first of all none of it sounds funny to me because I am doing all these podcasts and everything with my now dead 5 years child so we all are aligned on this believe me but listen this feminine… Please talk about this feminine Goddess presence that you connected with in this period of introspection.
Galitta: Okay, so what I will say is now is something that we learn in Kabala, something that we learn shamanism, something we learn in healing styles, all of those moralities that I work with and enjoy. But, it’s a universal knowledge that the world we live in also a science catching up to that. The world we live in is the 1% out of the 100% percent.
So, Reality is 99% not seen by us, it is in our subconscious. That part the part where everything comes from , the part where everything is been born out of the void what is the native American call and the emptiness the unknown is the feminine aspect of us as a species so the balance between the female and the male we have both the manifestation of it is the muscular part of it is electric, its going forward, it has this energy of doing as I say this word you can see that in the life we live in ,especially in western society its very masculine it is a conscious part of us the doing the achieving the wanting to conquer not that it is bad exactly part of us that we need. The other part of us is the part of us that is the female the empty the huge giant creation part where everything we know in our daily life comes from. It’s where we come from and where we go back to, but in a practice we all have both and we all need to balance ourselves out between the right brain and the left brain and intuitive and the intellectuals between the conscious and unconscious, between the expressive part and introspective part. So, I found I was so driven and I worked so much with my young energy, the muscular energy that I crushed myself more than once because my female heart could not be heard. I wanted so much to have a different life than my mother and my grandmother and I left my tribe really going crashing into this wonderful western life where individualism and freedom is and I forgot the part where, where we are quite where we are connected to the universe through our inner world. So when I say Goddessa, a lot of time people think the Happy Goddessa is for women which it is because the whole work of working with women to find their power in their voice is even more complex than the one I have for men but it is about the balance between the female and the male in ourselves and when you have it okay with yourselves by the mind, heart and spirit then it’s the way you balance it out in your relationships. So, a family or love relationship has also a balance between the yean and the yarn, the female and the male, it sounds very abstract but I can bring it down to the practical things that we need to do so that everybody know that if you meditate, if you take time to recharge yourself with your inner world you become a stronger person in your outer world and that’s basically it. The creative world will always connect you to this inner kingdom of yours and that’s where your power is, that’s why I am so passionate about helping people find their voice through the creative arts.
Suzanne: How does one can get going with that? Now I am sure we have people listening to this podcast to our sitting or going to out everybody with me because I wouldn’t have any idea how to get started creating to get back to a more whole happy self. What would you say to that person?
Galitta: Well it starts with an intention, I made a video actually say in 5 minutes in four steps, How to get connected to your inner world. It’s very, very simple, first you have to decide that what you want first you take these 5 minutes to say I am going to go and see what it is and how does it feel , very simple it’s a decision if you do it consciously its it more clear if you take 5 minutes time to do that you are already coming closer to you yourself and then closing the eyes which is also very simple but it does something in our brain where we close out the outside world and we go within.
Then breath, even if I am not goanna teach you know anything about the breath, just becoming conscious about with our breath and then giving your suffer clear instruction of what it is that you visualizing. It’s such a huge world just by closing your eyes and saying I would like to meet myself when I was 10. Even such a specific intention if you say I have to go to this party and I feel nervous about it reminds me this let me talk with myself the part of me that is afraid to go like that and I was 10 these things happened and now I would like to talk to the that part of me. It’s simple, but if you have intention to do that and you take a minute and close your eyes and you give yourself the breath that helps your body and mind quiet in you already can start to feel yourself in another reality.
Suzanne: You know what I love about this and thank you for that very clear break down Galita because the thing I really love is it’s acknowledging something that I have found it to be very true which is if you listen the creative expression is always there. It’s not like you have to suddenly become a great artist to be Picasso and like pick up a paint brush and do something brilliant. It’s not about the quality of the output, it’s about connecting with the part of this soul to express itself it has not a platform to be heard.
Galitta: Exactly… So the moment you give it permission if you say it today I am to be creatively and you are just going to invite the giant part of you to be with you while you driving your car while you are cooking into your family and you do that with consciousness, you are only entering on the creative’s.
Suzanne: I love this! This I knew the min you look to the website you are going to have this some extremely juicy fertile beautiful ideas to share here, because I really anybody listening to that you have to go see Galita’s website. It is so fun and alive to this morning I was getting ready for our conversation. I posted one of your videos which is just so fresh and so fun to watch and it has such a great message and it had a healing effect you know! I have shared it on Facebook such delight I think you see I think there is a such a quality to what you are talking about what you are creating in the videos that I have seen so far and I even I listened to some of the cuts on your album that’s on iTunes, there is that specific energy that informs really fresh creativity with genius in it. You know, it’s got its very distinctive, very individual voice to it and that is only accessed when you go within, you remember once there was this guy when the time Michel Jackson’s success that he is going to be the successful as Michel Jackson by copying everything that he did and he became a sort of Michel Jackson’s clone and he was not successful! Why? Because he was not happy in his genius he was trying to tap into somebody else’s and he was not even his genius to tap into on the first place. That’s what we are talking about here. We are talking about here the innate ability to heal.
Galitta: Yes and finding your authentic voice so that what I say that I am interested in doing is really unique to you, I mean if you will get how powerful you are your specific qualities from your DNA to your soul family to your experience to the vast knowledge that you are storing in your subconscious is so genius & so beautiful if I think how do we make the world a better place, just unleash this power, just every person take responsibilities from bringing themselves to happiness and to fulfilment and nobody can say they don’t know how to do that because we have enough tools and we live in the time where we reach, we reach this knowledge and connectedness and I know we are stretching our arms & we are shrinking the darkness and that’s what we wish for this world I any way do that.
Suzanne: Well I to do and the purpose of this podcast is to spread happiness and joy through healing and we are all capable of doing that what you have been teaching us today is a very specific process for connecting within and what I’d say as we began to end this conversation is that I would invite people to go within and tap into their inner knowing just to know Galita is been describing us just to see what is there because you never know? today I will just give you a share of little thing I belong to business networking group a fellow approached to me who is a very serious business man and a very serious profession and he said a hey I have a historic novel I wrote, can you help me to show it to someone and I thought aww that is so juicy good for him for being somebody who is not just about a serious business, but has a historic novel obviously oh how cool is that!
Galitta: Yeah, I think actually you can say that there is an epidemic world, a lot of the time the people we are hearing their inner voice and they are making shifts in their work in their life in their relationship because they have to honour it we really cannot avoid the authentic voice and that’s the only way we can really be into what our soul wants us to do and that’s the path to happiness, to be in line with your soul.
Suzanne: Oh yeah! a 100% yes, you know we need more champions for the soul because really the soul is all about love and is all about embarrassing what it is and all about the flow of life and allowing ourselves to just go with the flow instead of over thinking or being caught in the ego and the jealousy just like you were describing earlier and our soul all the healing happens as well as great creativity and really our own personal genius.
Galitta: Yes and it’s our duty and right to bring it out to this world specially now.
Suzanne: Galitta will you talk a little good just to help our listeners understand how they can work with you, what is the happy Godessa teaching programme that you are doing right now and what’s about to connect the people to.
Galitta: Yeah, I will say I am doing now something that I would like everybody to join, its free and I do that because I believe it has the power to change a lot, it’s called an “Inner World Peace” and this is we need online, it is a kind of a live meditation that I take all of us live, virtually we see each other on video and we go through a sound journey, meditation that I create. I create these sound journeys, which is a combination of guided meditation with shamanic drumming and with sound healing and I found it after years doing it with people that is the fastest way all I can bring people into the power of the inner kingdom and when we create a meditation like that and we do it together so we synchronise our intention and our voice and our heart, in our physical body in this time and space, we are not only bringing ourselves into inner peace but, we are cultivating feels, so I have a dream having a thousand people meditating with me and singing with me at the same time.
So, I just started at last month, re-continuing every new moon and I invite everybody to join me on that.
Suzzane: And this is something people can connect with virtually online?
Galitta: Yes, Yes and also if you cannot make it on the same time and you get the recording and it is all in the same energy of being connected to from my inner peace to world’s peace, that is the basic idea.
Suzaane: Will you put a link to this on your website and your other free offer which looked really intriguing which was what is your intuition super power, a little quiz all of that would be in that show on our page so people can find you and connect with you, such a great thing you know you are a giver.. You are a giver with a great heart and that’s what we love to attract here and before the afterlife podcast. Well thank you, thank you immensely, very touched and delighted to connect with you and to meet you and again please go to Galitta’s website and look at her fun videos because they are just so alive and they were a delighted discover as are you.
Galitta: Thank you so much Suzanne.
Thanks for listening to “Before the Afterlife” today, there is more to explore in today’s shown notes and on my website suzannefalter.com, also please consider leaving us a review on iTunes because it’s good for your carnal.This is Suzanne Falter signing off.