When you're feeling discombobulated, stressed, or angry, people usually advise you to take a breather, meditate, or calm down. But how can you do that when you don’t even know how to? At work, school, or even at home, you could feel so tired, unmotivated, and it can make you miserable. It’s important to partake in learning to combat these feelings and take control over your mood. To investigate how we can practice ways to feel calmer and more balanced, I asked my friend Michelle Belegrin to talk us through her ways to refocus and boost her mood through coveted practices! I attended one of Michelle’s healing sound baths and it really made me feel so relaxed, calm, and motivated!
MM: Michelle, what do you do as a healer?
MB: I use sound as a tool to guide people to deeper relaxation. I work with the nervous system to reprogram different patterns in the body, and to recreate and rebuild new neural pathways in the brain. I use ancient practices, breath work, meditation and visualization, and mind tuning, and I use sound to move others into a state where we're more receptive to change and transformation.
MM: Do you have to go to college for it? Or did you just decide, like, I want to do this?
MB: I didn't go to college for it. You don't need to do a full degree for something like this, but it’s helpful if you study a lot. And it's also intuitive. I've been really passionate about healing, well being, since I was probably a little bit older than you. I tested things, I tried things. I lived in six different countries, and throughout that, what kept me as balanced as possible, was coming back to practices of wellness and well being.
MM: As a teenager it can be very stressful, and school can be a demanding environment, and relationships can be very hard. Your sound bath that I went to was very calming for me. Does it do the same thing for you?
MB: Absolutely. I naturally run higher energy. I could wake up very, very early thinking about a million different things, and my mind would race, and some of us are that way naturally. We are born with information within us that's passed down from generations. So our nervous systems are impacted by not only our human experiences, but the experiences of generations before us. And sometimes they went through a lot of... trauma. No one has a perfectly easy, smooth life with no bumps in the road. That wouldn't be as rewarding. But because of that, our systems are impacted. And then there is everything that we are around every day, the noise of New York City, the fire trucks and the honking, experiencing school for you.
And with this type of work, you get to reset. The first level is deep relaxation. We move the brain wave states from beta, which is to do lists, getting from point A to point B, all of the day to day. We slow down the brain waves to another phase, which is called alpha. In alpha, the brain begins to slow down. As it slows down, we begin to relax more. That is considered a flow state, a creative state. And then, through sound, we can move into theta, which is more... to reprogram. It’s deep meditation programming, which they use in hypnosis. It's very, very, very calm. Super calm right before sleep, which is Delta. So when you move into these states, you can begin to change patterns, change thoughts.
For instance, sometimes, for me, I thought I was never good enough. So that was one thing for me, and I did a lot of work to get through that. But everything that I saw in my life, for a number of years, reflected back at me this belief that I wasn't good enough. Until I did work to unravel that, because we're all good enough. We have certain lenses that we see life through, and you can begin to change those.
MM: Is it hard to go through those levels?
MB: That's where the instruments come in, and the sound does that for us. It brings us back to this relaxed state. And it does that to the body too. So it works with sound and vibration. So you can fall asleep and still feel the benefits of the sound bath. You're not necessarily hearing, but you're feeling the vibration, and you're still getting incredible benefits. Whereas if you meditate, generally speaking, it takes longer to get to meditative state, and sound brings you there much faster.
MM: How do you meditate?
MB: There's no right or wrong way to meditate. I usually do 20, 30 minutes minimum. You can use a mantra, you can use the breath, focusing on the inhale and exhale, and the air just coming through your nose and down into your belly, and then following it back up from your belly to your nose. The act of following the breath is one way to quiet the mind.
MM: What's the mantra?
MB: A mantra is a mind tool that draws your mind back to stillness. You could repeat it aloud, or you could repeat it to yourself, but it calls in and that creates the vibration of an intention or a goal within yourself and you're drawing it in. And in meditation, anything that comes to you is okay. So meditation thoughts are allowed to come and go. Everything's allowed.
I've had many mantras in my life, from love to self love, to forgiveness, to hope. The repetition of whatever it is brings your mind to stillness, and attracts that vibration, like a super magnet.
MM: What’s a super easy meditation for someone who is stressed at school?
MB: There is one breath and one meditation I could suggest. Let's start with the meditation.
I would do a body scan. Anyone can do it. You could either start at your feet or your head, and you would start by closing your eyes, connecting with your breath. Notice your feet, and just bring your awareness to the bottom of your feet. At the top of your feet and your toes. And then just imagine your feet, just relaxing and releasing. It's getting heavy, softening. And now bringing your awareness to your ankle, imagining your ankles relaxing, and then your calves. Bring your awareness to your knees. Imagine your knees relaxing. Then to your thigh, then you bring your awareness to your hips. Your awareness to your abdomen. Your lower belly, your lower back. Your chest. Relaxing. Your arm. Your fingertips. Your neck, your head. Basically, you kind of go through the body, and by bringing your attention to the thought of relaxing, you do relax.
For the breath, I always use left nostril breathing, which is super easy. You inhale through your left. Now, you close off your right. Inhale through your left. And then switch, close off your left. Exhale through your right. And you do that for three minutes, and honestly, you feel the shift because you're working directly with your vagus nerve, which is basically a super highway to the major areas of your body.
I think making time for yourself every day and really creating that space for yourself is so important. If we are constantly working, constantly going, we burn out.
MM: So many people are dealing with insecurity right now. Is there something special that someone can do to calm them down from comparing themselves?
MB: So what I've noticed is the more we look outside of us, the more insecure we become. The more we can relax the body, believe it or not, the more secure we feel.
In this world with so much around us, we have access to people doing amazing things, always looking stunning and perfect. And it can be tough. My best advice is to take the time for yourself. Yeah. Any type of practice or relaxation technique brings this back to the truth of ourselves, which is our best self. When we're stressed, or anxious, or busy, or tired, or hungry, our perspective is... one way, and then we'll relax, and we're calm, we feel safe. It’s not always easy, but it’s pretty simple.
MM: Personally, I'm always trying to figure out how I can be a better version of myself. And the internet is like, you should buy this, you need to buy that.
MB: I've actually been thinking about that a lot lately, this idea that we need ‘this’ to feel good. We need ‘this’ to feel better. I just went to Sweden, and we hired a floating sauna on an archipelago outside of Stockholm. I brought my tuning forks, which are these rods that basically emit sound and vibration that are really powerful healing tools. And I got there, and I got the forks out, and I put them down, and I just sat there. And I realized that we don't need more. We keep reaching outside of ourselves to get this thing, but it's just a dopamine hit. Just checking off boxes. It's all really within us.
We all have the tools within us to create the most love, the most joy, the most abundance, the most health.The highest level of health is really not outside of us. It's when we feel good, when we take care of ourselves, and we love ourselves.
MM: I want to come back to school this year not so affected by when other people are unkind. Do you have any tips?
MB: I think a pause is really important in that, because once we're in the reactive state, our ability to make good judgment calls is lessened, right? We might say something that we don't mean. We might do something we don't mean. And so that pause is probably the most important thing. Take the time to say, I might need five minutes, I might need half an hour. At our most natural state, we're actually the most loving, the most kind, the most joyful, inspired, creative, abundant people.
Techniques like this will give you something lasting that you can do anytime, anywhere. I have been teaching a little bit more in my classes the idea of building new neural pathways, and repatterning the nervous system. Once you begin to feel different and think different, your whole life will change. You don't have to make $10 million to feel abundant. You don't have to have this partner that checks these boxes to feel loved. We have all of that inside of ourselves. My goal is to empower people to realize that they have this ability to choose. The thing we want to achieve is already inside of us. In a sound bath, we're in a very suggestible state, because we're in the theta state. So someone will have their intention, and then I'll guide them through feeling that intention. And once you feel that intention, you are not only vibrating at that frequency, so you're attracting it to you. And you can easily do it again and again and again.
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