The Healing Cocoon Podcast

In this week’s episode of the podcast, we interview the founder of Sonic Being, Michelle Berc. Michelle shares with us the evolution of her journey from brush-and-canvas artist to vibration-sound artist and how she uses her gifts to offer healing experiences to others on their own journey. 

Through her company, she offers sound baths and breathwork classes to individuals and groups, and also participates in corporate wellness programs. Michelle launched the Sonic Being Sound Healing Training Program in late 2018 and has been sharing sound healing across southern California for close to 15 years. She is certified in sound healing, vibrational sound therapy, breathwork, and is a HeartMath practitioner.

An Emerging Sound Artist

Formally in the art world, Michelle has always been intrigued with expressing energy and making it tangible through colors, textures and objects (such is the embodiment of art). After accepting a neighborly invite to a Buddhist chanting experience, she was so intrigued that she began to research vocal toning and chanting, which led her to discover sound healing. She then dove into an artistic voyage to the actual atoms of what art really is—vibrations. 

She began to take course after course, soaking in her own healing along the way. But when her dad passed away, she became more serious about her training and signed up for some intense schooling. Still in the art world, she began to use her practices in her closest circles, blessing art galleries with sound baths and performing them at friend’s houses, just figuring out her place in this new world. 

As she grew in her new art, she gradually began producing her own events, and with that, growing her collection of instruments. Her first instrument was a simple tuning fork, followed by a collection of crystal bowls, with more discoveries and gems along the way. She laughs about (what seems to have become a core memory for her) a time she took her tuning fork to Burning Man and went around sharing it… “You wanna hit of the OM vibration?” Her little gift to the experience—connecting people with the good vibrations. 

The amalgamation of these events blossomed organically into her full-time business, Sonic Being. Art used to be how she brought people together, she just shifted modalities over to the felt vibrations from where it all originates. 

Interacting with Sound and Energy

Michelle describes energy as color and objects, pulling from her love and understanding of art and its meditative side. As a spectator at a gallery, gazing upon art is a form of meditation, she has learned. Appreciating art requires that we become completely present with what is in front of us. And at the core of art is vibration—color, sound, and sense are all forms of vibrations and they interact with our brain energetically. 

From childhood, Michelle was very sensitive to sound. With vulnerability she reveals that she was born with an eyesight issue and, as a result, doesn’t see the world like everyone else. This could be a truth with a powerful undercurrent, because it likely played into her deeply cultivated connection to sound. Difficulty…or superpower?  

Michelle has learned the intrinsic value of self-awareness and understanding how our bodies interact with the world. Honing in on how energy influences and impacts us and then learning how we can self-regulate using the power of sound is a worthy intention. 

We are musical instruments and fall in and out of tune. Our voice, our sound, is the most powerful tool we have to balance our instrument. 

The Power of Voice and Breath

Voice and breath. She has seen how they go hand-in-hand, maybe like a happily married 80-year-old couple. Everyone breathes, but most people have blocked energy and don’t breathe, meaning exhaling properly, not fully breathing into their bellies, filling up their hearts, opening up their lungs. In her healing sessions, she has become keen to scanning how energy is moving in and out of someone’s body through their breath and discerning how to help them release their blocked energy. 

The power of voice and breath cannot be understated. Before she starts a session, she always encourages her clients to use their voice, giving whatever emotion they are feeling a sound, no matter what it sounds like. “There’s speaking your truth and there’s sounding your truth,” she says sagely. “It may be difficult to find the words, but we can find the sounds. It is a release. Our cup will overflow if we don’t release it and if we are too full, we can’t experience life in the best way possible.” 

Learn more about Michelle at sonicbeing.com and find her on social media at @sonicbeing.

For the full interview with Michelle, listen via the link on this page, thehealingcocoon.co, or find us on Instagram @thehealingcocoonpodcast.