This is a transcript of the conversation between myself, Brandi Fleck, Host of the Human Amplified podcast, and Nashville-based Dr. Megan Galaske, pediatrician turned sound healer, where she breaks down the science behind music (from EDM to sound baths), vibration, and healing.

If you’d rather listen than read, you can do that here, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Meet Dr. Megan Galaske: Holistic Healer and Sound Therapy Advocate

Brandi Fleck:

What does being human mean to you?

Dr. Megan Galaske:

I think being human actually means being fully human and fully divine. So holding that seemingly dichotomous truth and understanding that you are imperfect because you're in a human body and you have a human brain, but that you are also perfect and whole the way you are because you're in a human body.

You are created in divine image and a full vessel for divine knowledge and kindness and love. So that's kind of what it means to me.

Brandi Fleck:

Wonderful. Thank you.

All right, everyone. Today we are talking to Dr. Megan Golaske. She is a holistic allopathic medical doctor with training that spans Western medicine to Reiki to psychology. She has found a non-traditional path in treating the whole human, mind, body, and spirit and focuses on a combination of sound healing, medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, coaching, and energy healing. Her special interest is in how music, sound, vibration, energy, and movement aid in healing, as she has experienced great personal healing through these modalities. She practices in Nashville, Tennessee, and offers sound baths through Intuitive Bodywork TN.

And today we're going to be talking all about how music is medicine and a little bit about her sound baths. So Dr. Golaski, welcome to the show.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Thank you so much. I'm really glad to be on.

Brandi Fleck:

Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. And just for our listener and viewer's sake, we've worked a little bit together at Intuitive Bodywork TN. And so I just couldn't wait to bring some of this magic to you guys, too. So but before we dive in, what else do you want listeners and viewers to know about you?

Dr. Megan Galaske:

I think that what I want people to know about me is that I am a human like them. And I think sometimes we can like view healers as some kind of like, I don't know, someone who's above or like further on in a journey and they're going to help you through it. And that's not the way I view myself as a healer. That is the way I used to view myself as a healer in the way that I was trained in Western medicine. That's kind of the mindset that you're taught, that you are a guardian and a carrier of this information that may not be readily available to others.

But I really diverged from that line of thinking and to thinking of myself as a healer, as someone who simply holds space for other people while they go on their own personal healing journeys. And so that's how I walk through life with people now. And mainly because I have gone through a giant transformational healing journey myself.

After medical school when I was practicing traditional medicine, I was severely depressed. I was obese. I was 200 pounds. I was alcoholic. I was very sick in a lot of ways. And so all of the healing modalities that I practice now are really a direct result of what I found healing in myself through my journey, where I was able to step out of those really hurt spaces and, I'm still on the journey myself. I'm not like some healed being or something.

But it's an honor and a privilege now to be able to say, hey, and it's not like exactly the path that I followed is going to be the path that works for someone else. But to know that I'm a fellow human and that I have had dark times and hard times and my body has suffered and my mind has suffered just like everyone else. But there's a space beyond suffering.

And I hope that I can embody that for people so that they can have hope that there's a space beyond suffering that they can get to. So that's how I like to be with people. I say that I like to hold your hand on the journey.

Brandi Fleck:

Yeah, that's really beautiful. And especially coming from that Western medicine perspective, where it is so different. I'm glad to hear you saying that and normalizing that. So thank you. And I know we're going to dive a little bit into your personal healing journey, but let's lead in with what does the statement “music is medicine” mean? What does that mean to you?

Dr. Megan Galaske:

It's so broad. When you asked me that, it forced me to think about it more because it's honestly just a statement that comes from my heart, from my deepest knowing, I call that with like a capital K, right? Like that has always been a truth to me. So thank you for the challenge of thinking about how to put it into words.

I think that if I had to narrow it down and just crystallize the thoughts, music to me is a language that is universal to humans and goes beyond cultural barriers, language barriers, geographic barriers, anything that we view as something that if we traveled to somewhere else, we may have a barrier in communicating with another human.

But music transcends all of that.

You can go to Mexico and hear bachata and be in rhythm, in sync, and understanding of the fellow human being right next to you without understanding a single word that they're saying. You can be dancing that within someone's arms in a very personal space, in a very personal way. It awakens that thing in us that we know, “the thing,” the core thing. And also music, there are very few people, except for some maybe, there are some that are neurodiverse, that music may be a trigger for them. But other than that, music, you don't hear people say, I don't like any music.

And even those on the spectrum, that traditionally what we might think of as music would be a trigger for them. Often we'll find that white noise or other certain frequencies are actually a calming modality for them. So it even, again, transcends differences in ability and cognitive perception.

So to me, it being medicine is that core thing that connects us as people and as humans.

On a more, I guess, tactile level, there is more and more coming out, and I know we'll dive into this more, about how music and vibration actually are medicine for the human body. And actually might be reprogramming us neurologically and on a cellular level. So that's very exciting to me as an allopathic doctor to think of it with my scientist brain on because I'm a very dorky scientist. And so if you show me some good studies on new things that are coming out, it just really excites me and makes me happy.

And as a woo-woo person, as a spiritual person and someone who feels very connected to the oneness of all things, that underlying vibrational frequency that we have here on Earth and every living thing is something that ties us together.

So I know we'll dive more into all of those things, but kind of on a surface level, that's what I think of when I talk about music is medicine.

From Burnout to Breakthrough: Dr. Galaske's Personal Healing Journey

Brandi Fleck:

Wonderful. Yes. And oh, I'm so excited about getting into that.

Tell me too, though, how did music find you? Or did you find music? What was that journey?

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Yeah, it's funny. I'm like sitting here. You see my piano, the piano's behind me. I am sitting, I'll show you. I'm sitting at my keyboard. I'm sitting at a different keyboard. I'm sitting with my DJ decks here. I've got speakers around me. I've got a microphone and like multiple guitars over here. So that's my life. This is where my computer is set up. I didn't stage this.

Music has been the main part of my life since birth. My parents met doing the musical Camelot in high school. My mom was Guinevere. My dad was Lancelot. Music has been and is a part of my extended family's kind of DNA. And so I was born into that.

My dad was getting his master's in music education when I was born. And so he was doing a lot of study on movement with music and childhood development. And so I was on a stage. I don't remember the first time being on a stage because I don't remember a time not being on a stage.

Brandi Fleck:

Okay.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

So I was baby Jesus when I was a month old.

Brandi Fleck:

Wow.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

I was put into that world. Of course, it comes with its own traumas as well, being on a stage to perform since that age. But I was kind of on a path of doing musical theater as my life's work and was doing acting, singing and dance since four. And through high school. And then it was time to go to college. And I didn't know if I just wanted to do music theater in college.

I was also a little bit discouraged by my parents, by my dad, which threw me a little bit of a curveball because he was also my voice teacher. And this is kind of a hard, difficult part of the personal journey is that I didn't feel like I was good enough to go into that based off of what he was telling me. And so coming up from my father and my vocal teacher, that was difficult.

So I thought, well, what can I do? I also love to draw and study the human body. That has always been something I've loved because of my love of dance and ballet specifically. And so I thought, I will do music therapy. And this is a long time ago because I'm old now. And music therapy was not even an undergraduate degree at that time. It only was at like five graduate schools in the U.S. So that looked like a difficult path. It just was not at colleges. So then I thought I will do physical therapy so that I can be in the theater world. I'll be a physical therapist for like the New York City Ballet or somebody where I can still be in that world. And I can still help people because I just I have always felt like I wanted to help people and heal people and be in the arts. And so I started college in that realm and then quickly was like I want to know everything. I'm like I want to know it all, and so I was like I'm just gonna be a doctor I don't know I I didn't I will be very honest and say I had no idea what that meant and what was in store for me I didn't even know that like all doctors do residency at that point. It was crazy.

So I just kind of dove in and went that path, went to medical school at the University of Tennessee. I was a worship leader during all of that time. I play guitar and sing, and I've always written songs on guitar. And so I was still in that world all the way through medical residency. And that was my outlet for sure, for my own connection to myself, my own connection to God, the Universe, Source energy. And I really loved being in worship services with people who were connected in that space and connected to Source. And of course, I always call God, and I don't care what you call it these days, I literally don't care. Call it what you want in our podcast, but that space when you're connected specifically with the people around you and whatever the underlying current that connects us all is. That's my space. That's where music was to me.

Fractured Faith and Leaving Music Behind

Then I had a big fracture with music because I did have some challenges in my faith. And to that, the way I had been raised, I was very strictly religious.

And as we all challenge our faiths at some point in our faith journey, I didn't know how to continue music on into what my beliefs were changing into, because I didn't even know what my beliefs were changing into.

So I stopped playing guitar for a very long time. I stopped singing. I stopped writing. I stopped dancing. And then that's when I got really ill in my body. And I was only practicing medicine. I was not doing anything for my own self-worth. I was numbing feelings with food and alcohol and shopping instead of doing anything that was serving my highest good. And music went out the window with all that.

The way that I returned to it was when I decided to quit traditional practice as a pediatrician and understood that I had to heal myself first, which you're always told, but it's not actually encouraged here.

You know, heal or heal thyself is like the biggest thing, but that's not what's actually taught. It is definitely a martyrdom of physicians in the West, and that's why patients feel so disconnected from their physicians. Why would you listen to a doctor who's 200 pounds telling you to eat healthy?

It's because the expectation is that you have little to no time for self-care. And then primary care doctors are not making enough money in our country to subsidize that with time or vacations or good food. So I was eating fast food every single day. I knew that disconnect from myself and my body and my mental health and physical health with what I was trying to teach patients was just feeling impossible.

Rediscovering Music: Healing Through Sound and Movement

So when I turned and went back into my self healing phase. Learning how to feel my feelings was key and not bypassing and not thinking, separating thoughts from feelings, understanding that I am in control of my thoughts and therefore in control of my feelings and really learning how to feel in the body and then thank the brain for all of its myriad of thoughts that it might offer, but I may not need to believe all of them.

And reintegration of music was key in that time. So really just started by listening to music. I started branching out in what I was listening to. And that's when I first discovered sound bowls and sound baths and started hearing them on relaxation things.

And I was like, this works. I don't know. I'm just sitting in the bath for an hour listening to these bowls on Alexa, you know. And uh so for me I could feel the change happening. I didn't know anything about the science or anything, I just liked it. I liked what it was doing then I started to go to some sound baths in person here in Nashville that were spectacular feeling the vibration in person is quite a different experience than listening and we'll talk about that more then i felt i felt safe to start exploring myself. I picked my guitar back up, decided to relearn my guitar. I would sit down at the piano more. Again, things that have been extremely traumatic—practicing scales, something I could not have done. I could not have done it all five years ago. That's tied to too much childhood trauma. Now I sit and practice my scales.

And so getting back into that songwriting, singing and then, I went to Bonnaroo in 2023 which was my first music festival and it changed my life and it was I felt like I was at home for the first time. I had wanted to go to Woodstock since I was like five I thought I was born in the wrong time era like for real I used to wear bell bottoms. I used to iron on peace patches.

And so to go to Bonnaroo and be like, this is just Woodstock now, changed my life. And being surrounded by music 24-7.

I had hated EDM, electronic dance music, pretty much up until that time. I liked like a few songs, but overall, I was like, I don't get this. Bonnaroo, being there in person with huge crowds of people, and we'll talk about that in a little bit too, like what's happening? Why do people talk about raves so much? Like, what's the deal? But for me, it was, did it. It just reset. Now that's how I am so reincorporated into music in all of these different realms and all these different aspects.

And I know you're going to ask me more about that later too, but that's been the musical journey and the overarching. And to me, it has mirrored my spiritual journey, which makes a lot of sense for me, how it was so deeply tied to spirituality in a specific way in which I was taught in Western Christianity.

Now into a much deeper, broader understanding of spirituality and music and how music connects us to ourselves, connects us to the earth, connects us to the universe, connects us to other people. And man, I feel like I'm just at the beginning of my learning journey. I will tell you, I am not an expert in any of this. It's just a continual growth learning curve, but I'm just like eating it. I'm eating it up. I love it so much.

Brandi Fleck:

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. There is so much here that is so important. And I feel like one of the big takeaways just from what you were saying is that when you're looking at Western Christianity or Western medicine, there's some kind of disconnect from the whole human, the whole self that sort of invites disease or dis-ease. And when you come back to yourself, it sort of heals.

I mean, so yeah. So there's so much there that we could say on that, but let's move forward in the energy or not the energy, the sound healing stuff. But I I just, my mind gets stuck on that topic of like Western medicine and the disconnect. And so maybe we'll hold that for another day.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

We can pop back into it. Let me say one thing about it so that people understand what's going on. Doctors don't like it.

No one I talk to, especially female physicians, like the way that the system is right now. And people are very fed up. We're losing. doctors are quitting at the highest rates because when you go into it, you have this certain thing, a certain ideal, and then the way that our system, it is a systematic problem, a systemic problem rather. And when you get into it and you go through the training and you get into practicing and the way that the insurance system is the main problem, the way that it's set up has now repressed the way that physicians can even operate within the system. So they feel, we feel as if we are cogs in a very, very broken system.

So I really get defensive of my loves of my fellow physicians if people are like Western doctors, because it's not Western doctors. It is the Western medical system that is very, very broken. And doctors feel just as much of a harm from that system as patients feel harm in that system. So I have to always plug that because I don't think people know that, but that's all of what we're talking about on all our online forums or in the hallway every day.

I mean, yes, you have some surgeons and maybe certain people who operate a little bit differently, but especially in women physicians and especially in primary care, it is the disconnect and the fractured system is deeply felt. I mean, I'm part of an online Facebook group called Multidimensional Female Physicians.

I won't say how many of us there are, but there's a lot. I'm not the only one saying or doing these things. So it is, we are hoping for change. We're hoping for systemic change. But for right now, a lot of us are finding these alternative paths forward. And then I'll be practicing in an alternative setting coming up. I'll be starting seeing patients here in Nashville again from a holistic approach. Which is really exciting. Yes.

And so I will get the opportunity and it's just direct care without insurance. So it gives me the freedom to practice that way. And a lot of people are going towards that so that we can go back to how it used to be without a middleman dictating what we can and can't do so that we can provide the care to our patients that we feel that they deserve. And patients are happier, physicians are happier.

So that's the reality of what's going on behind the scenes in Western medicine. And I think we are at the preface of big, big change. I think we've hit the wall. There's enough people fed up. I think in 10 to 15 years, you're going to see it's going to look really different, which is exciting.

How Sound Unifies the Mind, Body, and Collective

Brandi Fleck:

Wow and yeah just the beginning okay. Well that is very good to know.

Pivoting back to your music—so I know that you enjoy everything from raves to singing bowls and you mentioned that a little bit. How are they related.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

That's such a good question. So in more ways than you would think.

So I'll give an example of the most recent fun thing that happened. So I really, I love raves. I love the energy of those spaces and I love the sound of those spaces. My favorite artist, my favorite EDM artist’s name is Sarah Landry. She does um hard style and hard techno and I don't know if everyone doesn't know what that style is—it's the one that you probably don't like—it's like 140 beats per minute, it's fast, it's deep bass. If you're just like turning it on in your car you're probably like what is this like a lot of people it's not their taste. It is my absolute favorite kind of music now, and my journey led me to that music.

And Sarah Landry, I was introduced to this fall and instantly fell in love with her. She is a very witchy woman. She is very tuned in and she has her own production company. So she produces her own music.

And she had a new album out in October and immediately listening to it, I was getting rewired just immediately. And then, I mean, the first song on the album is called Devotion.

But it is, I'm going to look it up because this is where I have to look at things because I'm not, the album title is Spiritual Drive-By. And the first song is called Devotion 396 Hertz. So when I saw that, I was like, oh, she's in it. No wonder I feel this way. She knows what's up. She's doing the thing. So I went to see her in the fall. And it was my favorite show, favorite rave I've ever been to.

And I experienced that unity that kind of happens when you're at a rave. And I don't know if you've seen videos, but especially at hard style and hard techno raves, you'll see the crowd in synchronous motion. And that's because of the vibrational frequency that the artist is putting out to the crowd, that the sound designers and engineers are putting out to the crowd, and the energetic connection that we have with that music and with each other in the way that we're feeling the music in the body, which is why it's different than listening to it on your car stereo or whatever.

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And so anyway, I leave that show and I'm like, I'm charged up. I like her so much. I'm fan-girling watching her Instagram stories and stuff. And of course, the next morning, she puts this beautiful sound bowl on her stories. And she says, I have a new baby to add to my collection and puts it down with all her other bowls and her stuff. And I was like, I knew it. So I knew it. She's in it and she knows what she's doing.

So, If I had to guess, especially the women DJs and producers in electronic dance music know a lot more about vibrational frequency and healing effects than you might guess. I bet you there's a lot of us that play sound bowls. No, that was like my most recent story of how I was feeling very edified in that camaraderie space. So I like all of that range of music and I write I'm a singer songwriter and I write like Americana and folk on the guitar and that style and I write EDM. I'm learning how to DJ so that I can play whatever we write and we've written everything from some ambient music to hard style to like melodic EDM I really don't like.

Being confined into a genre and what I like to listen to or what I like to play because I think that we all embody this wide range and we're seeing it happen in the music industry as a whole that people don't want to be confined just to one genre because we are not put we can't be put into boxes like that either as artists or as listeners and so that it makes me very excited but yeah we can talk much more about how, how is this calming, relaxing space where you're laying on a sound mat, uh, the same as when you're in a club with a bunch of lasers and the bass going. And for me, I will tell you the more relaxing, the more, um, when my body feels the most at peace, uh, and relaxed and calm out of those two spaces is at the race.

I feel much more calm, much more, much more calm at a rave than laying on a yoga mat.

Brandi Fleck:

Why do you think that is?

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Well, firstly, I'm not neurotypical. So that kind of explains that. But I mean, what is neurotypical? We've got a bell curve, right, of the way that our brains and peripheral nervous systems work. And like, most people fall within, you know, that range within a few medians of that or means of that range. And you've got people on either side. And we know that creative people, a lot of doctors, a lot of neurodivergent doctors with ADHD and stuff might be on those edges of the bell curve. And so it's common to hear, you know, us maybe say something that sounds counterintuitive to how other people may express it. So that's kind of where I lie.

Do you want to know like what's going on when we when we're doing sound bowls? Would that be helpful? Am I skipping over things if I go to that?

Brandi Fleck:

No, it's totally okay. I was going to ask you how the sound actually heals us. Let me mention too that as you were talking about the rave, you were talking about things like unity and synchronous motion. And I feel like that's all related. So yeah, let's hear it.

The Science of Vibrational Medicine

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Let's get dorky.

Brandi Fleck:

Yeah.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Yay! Okay. So I'm going to go super basic and talk about sound. When we are measuring sound, it is in hertz, which is basically the frequency that a sound wave is going over one minute. So one hertz is a sound wave over one minute.

That doesn't exist. One hert is like, no. What we hear in physical human, in our ears, through our ears—I'm also making sure that I'm saying what we hear with the ear because what we hear with the ear is different than what we feel with the body because everything is vibrating all the time. And we don't hear that with our ears, but we might feel that with our bodies. Most of what we hear, most of what you hear is going to be between like 300 and a thousand hertz. And it can go way up higher than that—20 to 20,000 hertz is what you can typically hear.

Everything is always vibrating, like I said. So you're vibrating, I'm vibrating, this cup is vibrating, and the Earth is vibrating. As things vibrate, what they're giving off from that physical vibration is an electromagnetic wave, even if it's not giving off a sound wave, that's perceivable to the human ear. But it is giving off an electromagnetic wave that is changing the shifting the air between that and another subject.

This is what is on my phone.

Okay, well, you're going to see a song. This is two points. So say this is you and this is me. We are giving off vibrations all the time. And then in between us, where those vibrations meet is an interference pattern. So you are giving off vibrations. I am giving off vibrations as our vibrations hit and meet. It's called interference and that's creating its own kind of totally separate energy. That's a really cool phenomenon. That's happening with everything all the time. Not just people, not just animals, everything all the time.

Brandi Fleck:

Okay.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

And whereas before in science in the past two to three hundred years, we've really focused on mass and physics. We've focused on mass, we've focused on particle physics, how things are made of atoms, how the atoms interact, blah, blah, blah.

In medicine, that has translated to thinking of the body as a biochemical process, where we have receptors in our cells, we have receptors in our nerves, and biochemical reactions are taking place where they're binding to those receptors and causing something intracellularly to change and shift.

With the growth of knowledge of quantum physics and quantum mechanics, we are changing that understanding to understanding how vibration, frequency, resonance are affecting the material world. This 50 years ago would have been called pseudoscience.

Even now, people are hesitant. So people will listen to this podcast and say, she's not a real doctor, she's a quack, whatever. They can listen to it in 20 years and then they'll be fine with it, right? This is just that we're just at the beginning of understanding quantum physics and the quantum realm and how it how it affects our reality and so with music, it is a more, I mean…you can't hear the vibration of this cup, which is called its resonant frequency. Whatever this cup typically naturally resonates at is called its resonant frequency. It's giving off a frequency as it's just sitting here. So like if an opera singer sings a really high note and a glass breaks, that's because she has hit the resonant frequency of that glass. And it has lost its molecular integrity.

Brandi Fleck:

That's cool. Okay.

The Role of Resonant Frequencies and Brainwaves in Healing

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Yeah, and so everything's vibration is always affecting, like I said, that interference pattern is always affecting everything else's vibration around it, how we perceive it visually, how we perceive it tactically, how it is interacting with the rest of matter. And so you have a resonant frequency and which can change. And some of this people have different opinions on. Some people are like, you're always at your same resonant frequency. Those are the same people who would say like, people don't really change or whatever. I don't think that. I think people are very changeable. I think that we have a huge amount of neuroplasticity that we don't even understand. And in such, I think we can change our resonant frequency. And I think, in fact, it just changes all the time through the days. But everybody has experienced this with either between other people or with music.

We'll talk about people first. Everyone has met that person where before you even say a word, you get around them, you get into their energy field, into their aura, if we want to call it that, and you just feel that they are aligned with you in that moment. You can feel it. Both parties can feel it and it doesn't need to even be spoken.

That is a case where the vibration that your body and your mind and your electromagnetic waves are vibrating at, literally if you're looking at it on an oscilloscope screen, how many cycles is it doing per minute? What hertz are you resonating at? That person is resonating at that same frequency and so your hertz are aligning and there is a connection that happens there.

And I can't wait for there to be a lot more research into that, into what is happening there. What are our resonant frequencies? How do they change? How do our frequencies change based off of our emotions and our learning and our environments and then with another person?

Conversely, we've also been around someone where before we ever talked to them, we just know that there's no way that we're in alignment with them. It's not a hatred. It's not like even a dislike. It's just like a knowing that this isn't my person right now and that's okay. That's how it is interpersonally.

With music we can obviously—music is hitting all these different frequencies all the time through every note that is played and so we are listening through our ears to these frequencies that are being processed by our central nervous system, processed by our ears, but especially if we're in an environment where the speakers are loud enough to literally vibrate the air. You know, you've been at a concert where the bass was real loud and you've been up there by the speaker, you can feel the air move. That is because the sound waves are—it is physically changing matter.

So it's silly to me that doctors would even argue that this isn't a thing. I'm like, go stand by a speaker. It's real. It's physics. It's not woo-woo. It's physics. And so you're feeling that. You're feeling that change. And your body is processing it in a way.

And when we hit certain frequencies with groups of people, we can all start changing.

And this is all kind of theoretical too, but to me, it just makes sense that we can all change our physical electromagnetic waves. Our brain waves, which are electro, basically your brain is, your neurons are electric. They're carrying electric currents like phone wires from one to the next. And you all know that, you know, there's different brain waves, alpha, beta, theta. Theta brainwaves are those that are present in REM sleep, in daydreaming, in flow state, in deep relaxation, with intention, so meditation.

And there is some research to show that when we're at those shows where the energy from the speakers themselves and the energy from others around you align in a way that even our brainwaves get us into theta. And that's like a trance-like state. And this is why I love it. And this is why I feel the most relaxed at a hardstyle rave. Because I am in a trance state there.

And, you know, people might look at it and be like, it's drugs. No, it's literally just my brain aligning. I don't do drugs to get there. It's just, I'm like, just me, I'm here. And you get into trance states.

Then if you're doing it with wide groups of people, we know that those resonant frequencies and those brainwave changing to theta brainwaves and don't know as much about—we don't know as much about the peripheral nervous system and how it's changing, but we can see it in real time when we look at a rave or a festival where everyone seems to be moving together.

So how it's moving, how people's bodies are moving together, you'll see people doing similar body movements. And that's not just because you look around and you're trying to dance like the person next to you. You'll see people doing finger movements. You'll see people doing headbanging. You'll see people doing kind of flowy free arm movements. And you'll see this in men and women. And you'll see people doing a fist bump or whatever the thing is. That's not because they're looking around—how does other people dance. If you close your eyes and you feel that music and you go enough times, you're going to move your body that way.

Which I would love us to have more information in.

It's not just music to me. Dancing to me is on par because physical body embodiment of the music is just as important to me. From kind of a scientific geeky, geeky, deaky standpoint, that's where we're at. Where we used to think the body is just biochemical, we're having these reactions.

So like all of pharmaceuticals are based off of that. You're taking a pharmaceutical that is a chemical to change the internal chemistry of the body. What we see in music and sound therapy is that we are taking an external source of sound, of vibration, to see how it might affect the internal milieu of the body, the intracellular structure, the space between cells, how electricity is conducted between cells, brain cells, heart cells, all of those types of things.

So that is everything to the very beginning of all of that research. And it's very exciting to think about how the actual vibration and frequency of our bodies and our minds are changed and affected by what we hear and what we feel. So that's kind of the geek science behind it.

On a more basic level, there have been some new studies showing that sound baths, which is where you play crystal courts and other crystal singing bowls, Tibetan singing bowls, etc., different drums, rattles, gongs, can just be kind of more on a simple basis of stress reduction, can decrease cortisol levels, can be helpful with blood pressure control, and can aid in anxiety, depression, feelings of worry, and get into deep relaxation. So that's really cool too.

Those have just come out maybe in the last two years as these things are being taken more into consideration as healing modalities.

Rewiring Your Nervous System with Sound Therapy

Brandi Fleck:

Yeah. And all this stuff is really cool. And so I've noticed as we've been talking throughout this whole interview is that when you were talking about your healing journey, you were like, well, when I went to Bonnaroo, I was rewired. changed. You use the word rewired. And then you've talked about the neuroplasticity of our brains and how people can change and your frequency can change. And so I'm wondering if you've experienced that there is an actual rewiring going on when the external source of the sound sort of touches the body.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Yeah, I really believe that. So I have had chronic pain as well since I was in high school. And when I was on my healing journey, I did find Reiki to be a very helpful thing for my chronic pain, which I know you're a Reiki practitioner as well, and I am too.

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Which really is an energy being transmitted through the body. And if we think of that energy and hertz as well, it's really the same concept.

So as I was saying, like, here's you and here's me, and we're vibrating this out. The way that Reiki works, even though we don't usually speak in Reiki and frequency, it is frequency because it is energy and it's coming out as, as a wave. So they have measured the electromagnetic activity of Reiki practitioners and healers that do touch healing or, you know, with Reiki we hover just above. And there is a wide range of frequencies coming off of the hand.

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So even in that, so when I was, you know, doing Reiki on myself and then going a few times to other people, you're feeling that vibrational difference and feeling it on the peripheral nervous system. I had extreme pain relief from that.

And so when talking about my personal healing journey and the touch therapy or Reiki therapy or sound therapy coming into my body. Yeah. I mean, I think that for my brain, it offered a huge amount of neuroplasticity and rewiring.

And if you want to talk about it on a gross basis, well, not really gross biological scale, on a microbiological scale, what is happening is imagine that your brain cells, the axons, look like tree roots. And they're all coming out on all these branches. And you've got one taproot that is a bigger axon than everything else. And let's talk about self-love your taproot axon was formed in your sense of self between the ages of around five to seven in developmental psych and you were understanding and then really through to age 12 you're starting to understand I have a self myself is different from my parents that signal was sent down that taproot axon enough times to where then you started okay this is me here's the idea of me concurrently during that time you're learning about love and care you've been.

Looking At Conditioning and Rewiring from the Chakra System Perspective

And if we want to get woo-woo with it, we're going up the chakras from birth to adulthood.

Root Chakra

And so your root chakra is age really zero to one that's food shelter clothing you're just taking care of, your diaper has changed, you're being fed.

Sacral Chakra

Your sacral chakra is creation, sexual identity, sexual expression, power, and that is ages one to five-ish. That's where you're learning, this is my mother. This is my father. I am safe in this home. I am continuing to be fed. This is my family unit.

Solar Plexus Chakra

You go up to the solar plexus, really the root of like, I mean, I think of it as like the sunshine, the power, the power root. And you're starting to learn that sense of self. So that's like in the up to 12 and you're learning like, how do I want to show up in the world? What do I want to create in the world? What is my superpower? What am I good at? What do I suck at?

Heart Chakra

And then your heart chakra. And when you're a little bit older, you're learning how to open that up to people. That's your love, showing that, okay, I've been safe. I have been fed. I have been clothed. I have a parental unit. I know my sexual identity. I know who I am and my superpowers. Now I'm like ready to show that to people and let other people in.

Throat Chakra

And then you go to the throat chakra, which is like in the teenage years, how do I express myself? Oh my God, I'm gonna wear this emo outfit. today. And then I will be expressing myself. That was me. I will play this music. That's a huge part of our throat chakra identity in high school years developmentally.

Third Eye Chakra

Then early adulthood, you go into the third eye, which is a deeper intuitive knowing. A lot of people, aren't going to really hit that until their Saturn return in their late 20s or early 30s. You might think you're tapped into your third eye or spirit, but really that's still tied to your parental unit. And however, it was programmed in you to love. Remember, we're talking about self-love. I know I'm going like up and so we can get up, but remember we're going to come back to self-love. So really that's still your parental unit. So then you hit this place in your, after your Saturn return, your late 20s and early 30s, where you're like, hold up.

I don't know myself. Do I have a sense of self? Or is it just what I was taught? So then you can start to really freak out. And if you were raised in an environment where that, that the way you were shown love, shelter, safety, if you were not physically safe, if you were not sexually safe, if you are not emotionally safe, you've learned this pattern of not only loving others where you entered into that in your early teen years, but your self-love and your self-worth and even knowing or trusting yourself all gets blown up at the window as it should because now it's time to know who you are. What is your internal knowing?

How are you actually gonna function in this world? And it comes back to how you love yourself first.

Crown Chakra:

And so the last chakra is a crown chakra where you get connected to spirit, to the oneness of everyone else. But you can't get there until you know who you are first. And you have to know who you are separate from anyone else, separate from your parents, separate from your grandparents, separate from your children, separate from your significant other, your partners or your friends.

When you hit that age and you start to question, what happens is that taproot that you sent these signals down your whole life—it's like maybe not working so great anymore.

And you can be scared of that and you can go into maladaptive patterns. So a substance abuse, overeating is one of the main ones in our country. That's just socially acceptable and alcohol are socially acceptable. So those are two big ones and why we have a huge obesity and alcoholism epidemic. Things to bypass are numb because that's much easier than actually loving yourself.

That taproot, a lot of people just continue on in that. They maybe aren't as interested in rewiring and they're like, I'm just going to stick with that taproot. And they may just continue to live their lives bypassing or numbing the feelings and the emotions of actually knowing themselves and loving themselves.

Bridging Science and Spirituality

For me personally, that was not working. And I was going to die. I had plans to commit suicide.

And luckily, I was able to find help through coaching. And I always give a shout out to, it's called Empowering Women's Physicians. Sunny Smith is the CEO and founder of that. And she coached me along with a few other coaches. And it was really cognitive behavioral therapy based. where you learn that the self you thought you were often was just all this programming from how you were raised.

Which can include some good and some bad and some trauma. But you have the power to control which thoughts you say. Thank you, brain, for offering me that thought. It's not serving me anymore. Thank you for protecting me. Up until this point, you did an excellent job. I'm not judging you. I just released that thought and I don't need it anymore. I would like to think this thought instead.

And then changing your thought processes, therefore changing your emotions, therefore changing literally your vibration.

You are going up, you're becoming high vibe. And you do that. I also want to put a caveat there that there's nothing wrong with low vibe. I'm so tired of everyone saying the high vibes only that should not exist. We have to have balance. Everything is balanced. We will have high vibe and we will have low vibe. And that is how it is. We have to have yin and yang. You cannot see the light without the dark. So caveat in there.

But if you can, start aligning with where you want to be going with that purposeful vibration. What do you purposefully want to put out? What do you want your body to vibrate at? How do you want it to be perceived by others? You can manifest from that space, which is a place of openness, receiving, and channeling, and allowing energy to flow through rather than being a stop gap.

So I'm like interchanging these words because this is how my brain thinks about it. It's really all the same to me if we're talking about the science or the pseudoscience.

And so when we're doing that, we change those thought processes. What we're doing, like this is really on a biological scale, you're growing little roots out from that tap root. So every time you say, thank you, brain, I don't want to think that old thought anymore. I would like to think this thought. You are literally growing a new axon now, which we did not used to think was possible. We used to thought that you weren't neuroplastic after your early 20s. Now it's moved into the 40s. I'm sure it's beyond that.

We always underestimate human potential.

So people can change because brains can change.

We used to not think that 50 years ago. So why not? You know, why not think it? What harm could it do? So you're growing a new axon out and you're growing that root system. And then those are little baby roots going around to connect with little baby roots. But the more you send those new thought processes, the more you change that vibration, the more you change that frequency, then those become the predominant roots. And then you really don't send a lot of messages through that old taproot that you made when you are age three to five anymore.

That's trauma healing. That's intergenerational healing. That is what is happening on a biological scale through cognitive behavioral therapy. And I believe very strongly through sound therapy.

And so it's from a neuron rewiring standpoint, for me personally, having a combination of—and this is why I do all of my stuff together now—through a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy, I was also on an anxiolytic, on a beta blocker. I'm off of it now, but this was during the max phases, right?

Through chemical change, through a beta blocker, literally slowed my heart down so that it couldn't go so crazy, so that the cortisol release couldn't be building to a panic attack anymore. We've got a chemical change.

We've got a thought processes change through cognitive behavioral therapy.

And we've got a metaphysical change if you want to call it metaphysics or an electromagnetic change through vibrational frequencies happening through Reiki healing or sound healing and all that.

So when I say like mind, body, spirit, you could also say chemical, physical, and electromagnetic if you want to word it that way.

To me when I'm feeling in alignment and I'm good I am feeling changes from all of those spaces.

So now I've learned that moving my body to high intensity music hits my resonant. If you had to ask me like what my resonant frequency is, I think it's pretty high. I think it's like pretty high because it's where I feel whole and complete. Now some other people's might be lower. You can see everybody should be different.

We don't want to all be the same.

But I will feel pain relief for many days. If I go dancing pretty regularly, or if I dance at home for an hour or two, and when I go dancing, I'll dance for four to six hours. But if I even dance for an hour at home, I will have pain relief for a good week after from chronic peripheral nervous system pain. So kind of for me, on my journey, that's how it has helped me.

And we see that during sound baths, too. When I'm giving a sound bath or when I'm creating music and writing where I'm hitting my frequencies, I want to hit a range so that I can hit different people at the different resonant frequencies they might be on. Now I might condense it down I might start with a wider range say at the beginning of a song or at the beginning of sound bath and then condense it down.

I also really do this intuitively this is not something that I like I want to get more into learning what different frequencies are. There are different frequencies that are thought to be different healing I am very new to all of that. I'm reading this new book called Tuning the Human Biofield. This is about using tuning forks to do this.

But intuitively, I think especially with just, I just think that is what I was blessed with, with embodiment of vibration. So I might start with a wider range. And then as we pull people in and everybody is starting to align, then we might be able to hit certain frequencies that are bringing everybody into line. And that's what happens if you go to a really good set. If you go to a really good DJ set, 45 minutes in, and you realize everyone's feeling it the same, that's because that person has curated that journey well to bring everybody into that unison feeling that frequency of the room I can then also start feeling the frequency of the people that are in the room and I can start to feel it come into alignment then I'll know where to focus as I move through the sound bath so it's the same as you know and if I write a set of songs and I'm going to play on my guitar kind of just intuitively knowing I'm going to go here next. I'm going to go here next and take them on this journey.

It's, I mean, I don't know. You have to stop me at some point because I'll like just go and go and go and go. Talk about this for like 20 hours, legit.

What is a Sound Bath? A Beginner's Guide to Vibrational Healing

Brandi Fleck:

I'm eating it up. I really love learning about this kind of thing. So I think I was going to ask you about like how it ties into sound baths, but I think you hit on that a little bit. Yeah. So I think we never defined a sound bath. Do you feel like it's safe to assume that people know what that is or should we talk about that just a little bit?

Dr. Megan Galaske:

We can talk about it a little bit. So yeah, sound baths are a newer westernized term. But if we're talking about what they are, the practitioner is using usually a combination of crystal singing bowls, Tibetan singing bowls, which are usually made of metal alloys, brass, copper, and then gongs, cymbals, drums, rattles, different natural instruments, chimes.

And people are usually laying in a comfortable position. The sound practitioner is somewhere in the middle. And the sound practitioner might lead you through some body work, some embodiment, some breath work, something to get us into the parasympathetic nervous system.

We think with our prefrontal cortex all the time. That's how we're processing complex information and talking. We really want to turn this off so that you're not just laying there with racing thoughts. And so the way we do that to turn off the frontal cortex is to bypass it and get into the body. And so to get into the body breath work is the easiest—it's like a cheat code, and so I will usually lead people through some some breath work. There's a million ways to do that but basically getting getting breath into the body and getting the the muscles start relaxing the more you oxygenate. Your mindfulness is coming into the body.

We really skip the body a lot in life. We just are thinking about brains and how we think all the time. We're all up here. So we got to get into the body, and that's where we feel feelings. I tell people before a sound bath, you could experience a myriad of emotions. What is going to come forward is what is supposed to come forward. I can't predict what that's going to be for you. But we feel our body, we feel our emotions with our body because we are tied to the hormones that are released from many other glands through the body that interact with the brain. So it's not just all thoughts that are causing our emotions.

We've all had anxiety come out of nowhere. We're like, I wasn't even thinking anything. Why am I, why am I breathing fast and feel like I'm going to barf? Well, that came from your cortisol releasing from your adrenal glands. It has nothing to do with your brain at that point. So getting past the frontal cortex through breath work, relaxing in a comfortable environment. I also tell everybody to cover up and get warm because when we enter through the sound bath 20 to 30 minutes in, I'm going to talk about theta brainwaves again, is when you're going to get into that deep relaxation phase. And usually where you are with your cortisol levels in sleep is after, say you go to bed at 10, after 1 to 2 a.m. is when you're going to go into REM sleep and you're going to get cold. That's why you wake up in the middle of the night and breathe and you pull your blanket back up.

We go on fast forward on that with a sound path and so you're going to drop down into those brain waves and your body's going to respond and you're going to get cold about 20 minutes in. So you're wrapped in your blanket. You're ready for that to happen.

We lead you through the breath work. Sometimes there'll be a guided meditation with it to have some envisionment to go with it. And then gently leading in with chimes. And everybody does their sound bath practice differently. they could lead in with chimes gongs whatever to start work on the peripheral and the central nervous system.

During a sound bath, the most likely thing you'll experience is a deep state of relaxation because you're going into those brain wounds. You might cry. You might laugh. You might get angry. You might get hot. You might…there's a million ways. Your pain might amplify for a little bit and then it might go subside or it might just subside or you might fall asleep. It doesn't matter.

The vibration of the bowls, as I said, they're in the physical space in the room. It's not just what you're hearing. It is what you're feeling.

Benefits of Putting Singing Bowls on the Body

Oh, and we were going to talk about putting the bowls on the body. So I like to put the bowl on the body and play it as well because you are feeling a direct vibration of that bowl on the peripheral nervous system. And there's some like cool research coming out where they're putting cancer cells in petri dishes and playing vibrations to see if it changes the cancer cells. And like, duh, it's going to be, yes, I have, duh, I can't wait. They just want, you know, science requires a study to show it, which is awesome. Let's do it. And wouldn't it be great if we knew at what hertz we could play to blast a specific kind of cancer cell? Anyway, people are talking about that and doing really good work.

So like that's why I play it on the body.

Brandi Fleck:

And not every sound bath practitioner does that. I just want to throw that out there.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

No, yeah and we'll also make sure to say I do it with consent so you don't have to have have it on the body.

I was taught that by um nepalese friend of mine uh who I met.

I had a a whole and a middle life where I had a startup up company in regenerative and natural period care and in the hemp space. And I met him on the road at hemp conferences because he would be selling his bowls there. And he, he picked me up. That's one of the people where you're just like, this is my people, right? We were just resonating and like, then we wouldn't man our booths very well. Cause we would just be talking about spirituality and sound healing, but he's the first person who put a bowl—I mean, we're in the middle of a convention and put it on me.

And I mean, I started crying immediately.

So he's who I buy my bowls from. I also, because ethically, like he brings them himself and he knows who makes them and I want to make sure that there's no child labor, et cetera. So, so yeah, he's the one who, who really led me into that. You can teach so much just with having a sound bowl on you.

I would rather, if I could go to all of the podcast listeners and literally not say a word and put a Tibetan bowl on your chest and hit it one time, you would understand more than me trying to talk for two hours about it.

Brandi Fleck:

Yes, absolutely. It's wild. It's just, it's life-changing.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Yeah. It is life-changing. It's that big.

To me, that was one, a big moment like Bonnaroo where I'm like, this is rewiring me. I can feel it changing me in my body.

In fact, now that we're talking, I'm like, my back's hurting. I'm probably going to go, I'm probably going to go turn on some hard style and like dance for a little bit and then play my bowl on my chest. And I bet you, and I don't, I don't take—I used to be on ibuprofen all the time, every day. I had horrible stomach issues.

I never have to take pain medicine anymore.

Brandi Fleck:

That's good.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

If I breathe and dance and listen to some music or, or play the samples or do some Reiki, I'm good. The way we can end with this too. It's beautiful the way that the human body is wired for healing.

How Words Carry a Powerful Vibration that Can Heal or Hurt

So the thoughts that we say in our family now, instead of saying I'm sick or they're sick, we say I'm healing.

Because words have power.

And the words that you speak is the spell you cast as a thing you manifest.

And words are literally vibration coming through the vocal cords.

These matter.

The way that we think, the thoughts that we think, saying them out loud has huge power in the way that we say them and the way that we sit or the way that we stand when we speak. The way that we receive and voice energy matters.

That's why I love singing. I love singing. I love doing Aum. I'm wearing my Aum necklace.

When we change our thoughts, if I had to like say any order of things, when we allow the possibility that we could heal, the bridging thought, maybe there's a chance I could change, then open ourselves up to change through feeling feelings.

Conflict Resolution in Relationship Example

[For example], my partner said this and I'm so pissed at them and they'll never change and I'll never change and I just can't and this is… take a breath number one. I should have said that's number one.

Breathing is number one. Get out of the prefrontal cortex. Get into the body.

Number two, maybe there could be change.

Number three, separate thoughts from feeling. There is anger. Not I am angry. That's a spell. Don't say I'm angry. There is anger. Be the observer. There's anger. Breathe.

Could there be a different thought? Bridging thought. Breathe.

Feel a different vibration start coming through the body just by the three breaths.

I could be wrong. Wow. I thought that would have not been possible to me before. I could be wrong. Which part of this am I responsible for? Thank you, brain, for that thought of protecting me. I don't need to be protected right now.

Here's where I could be wrong. To my partner, I'm very sorry I can tell that you don't feel safe around me right now. I feel anger in my body. It is getting better as I breathe through my trigger. Can we work to find a solution where we can raise each other's frequency together?

You are literally rewiring your brain every time you do that. And you are changing the frequency of your body. And you are speaking a new manifestation through your throat chakra, which many people's is closed. Because it's scary. And this would have gotten you in trouble when you were a kid, so you shut up.

Trust yourself that you can speak a better spell now than the spells that were spoken to you when you were a child. You can speak a new spell. You can align in a different frequency. And then what will happen

Tuning Fork Example

Let's end it with a sound example. You have two tuning forks next to each other and they are tuned to the same frequency.

You strike one of the tuning forks, it starts vibrating. Okay, so we've been in an argument, me and my partner, and I'm vibrating like this and they're vibrating like this. And this pattern looks horrible because we are not vibrating at the same frequency. Even though we're tuned, maybe we have the same resonant frequency when we're in our good spaces, but right now we're just like, and it looks horrible. And we feel horrible in our body. So now we've identified that trigger.

We've identified that there is anger and we breathe through the body and maybe we're starting to vibrate closer to our resonant frequency. And then if this person is aligned and their resonant frequency is the same as ours, we can physically change the way that they're vibrating just by hitting our resonant frequency.

They're attuned to that and they especially if they do the same, then we will literally start vibrating at the same resonant frequency. It's called sympathetic resonance. We don't even have to be touching.

So this tuning fork being struck, starts vibrating. If this one's totally still, it'll start vibrating at the same frequency. If this one is tuned the same as this one and it's vibrating all haphazardly or you strike it at a different time, eventually over time they will align. It's called sympathetic resonance.

And we literally can do that with our bodies and with others so that's how we can—like that's like a super fast like boom boom boom here's how our mind, bodies, and spirits are connected and how they're connected to other people, and that's the beauty of it all is that we can change.

I am living testament. I'll show you a picture from before—you know people are like you aged in reverse. I sure did. I sure did.

And it's not because I did anything great. I am very grateful to have had an excellent support system of teachers and helpers and healers who got me to this point. And I hope that I keep aligning better and better as I grow and still work with other practitioners like yourself.

And thank you so much for the messages that you're putting out into the world because they really matter. And that's why we're here, to help ourselves and help others. And why else do it, man?

Brandi Fleck:

Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. I just, I love everything about this conversation. I love how you've bridged the science and the spirituality. And because we are in, you know, in science, we're talking about the exact same thing as we're talking about in metaphysics. But you're like bridging the terms for us talking about the importance of words and sound and how it's all related so thank you.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

You're welcome! I haven't gotten to really talk about all of that in such a concise setting before. So I was a little nervous to like, I was like, how is this going to come out? I'm going to sound like a crazy person. And that's fine. I am a crazy person and that's fine. And I like it that way, but I appreciate the opportunity.

I think that saying these things all together is really important. And I think that it's important that the scientific and medical community know that I'm not going off the deep end or abandoning anything that they think.

You know, let's just expand. Let's just expand out a little bit more. Let's have both and instead of either or.

Brandi Fleck:

Exactly. Both and.

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How to Work with Dr. Galaske and Experience Sound Healing

Brandi Fleck:

And on that note, how can our audience find you and the work you're doing in the world.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

Oh, thanks. So I will be right now, everyone's caught me like at the beginning of a new journey. I'm always cycling through things.

I will be practicing again, like I said, in the Nashville area. I'll be doing holistic medical and psych practice here coming up. So literally, if you Google my name, fully that will be within the next couple of months and you will see how and where to find me that way. My website is megangalaske.com, M-E-G-A-N-G-A-L-A-S-K-E.com. And I am in the middle of updating that as well too, because like I've changed.

Since I made that website, since I started on this journey a few years ago, I've, I've changed physically and I've changed mentally. So I'm updating that, but you'll see more of what I'm doing. Um, as I said, I'm doing, um, sound baths right now at intuitive body works at Tennessee. So you can follow them on social media and they're, they'll always post those events. Um on Instagram I'm meg.g.md and I have a lot of my music and rating and crazy outfits that's also hello who doesn't want to like wear costumes when I was like you get to wear costumes and go out and have glitter and like trade trinkets like what is this you know yeah you want to see that silly stuff that's on my socials. So yeah, that's how people can find me. But I am very Google-able and no one else really has my name. So you'll find me in Nashville if you look.

Brandi Fleck:

Awesome. Awesome. Well, guys, you know the drill. All of that will be in the show notes. So be sure to go check out Dr. Megan Golaske and all of those links. And just thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Dr. Megan Galaske:

You're welcome. Thank you for having me. I really, really appreciate it. I really do. And I love what you're doing.