Before we started recording this episode, Karen Awad played one of her ancient Tibetan singing bowls in my office. And I have to tell you: the energy in the room changed. I was not expecting that. I did not have language for it yet. But I felt it, and I knew I had to get her on the microphone immediately.
Karen has more than 24 years of experience in energy and vibrational medicine, sound healing, guided imagery, plant and flower medicine, crystals, shamanism, and biofield tuning. She was introduced to me by our mutual friend Tracy Hazard, and from the moment we sat down for lunch and she started talking about what she does, I was hooked. This is a conversation I have been looking forward to sharing ever since.
What Sound Healing Actually Is
Karen's definition is the one I keep coming back to: coherent sound restores wholeness and returns us to who we are.
We are affected by sound all day long. We seek out birdsong. We flinch at jackhammers. We feel the energy shift when someone's tone of voice changes. We have all experienced the difference between someone saying "good morning" warmly versus flatly, using the exact same words. The content is identical. The sound is everything.
Sound healing takes that inherent human sensitivity to sound and applies it with intention and precision. The goal is not relaxation for its own sake, though deep relaxation is often what happens. The goal is to bring the body's own energetic structure back into coherence, into integrity, back to its original resonance.
Karen's primary tools are ancient Tibetan singing bowls, some dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, crafted by peace-keeping monks who poured their love and intention into the metal. The alloys used do not exist anymore. She also works with tuning forks, rattles, and her voice. Each serves a slightly different purpose in the work of restoring the body's natural frequency.
The Orchestra and the Spine
Here is the moment in our conversation that I want every patient and listener to sit with, because Karen gave me one of the most beautiful descriptions of what subluxation actually does that I have ever heard.
She referenced a concept from Dr. Manners, an osteopath who described sound healing this way: imagine a full orchestra playing a symphony. The wind blows the sheet music off the stands of some of the violins. Those violins begin playing something different. The pitch that was holding the whole orchestra together is gone. The entire ensemble falls out of sync.
That is what happens when the spine is misaligned.
The pitch that the body needs to hear itself is interfered with. The neural impulses cannot travel freely. The communication between brain and body is disrupted. And just like that orchestra, every part downstream begins to compensate, losing its place because the coherent signal that was organizing everything is no longer coming through clearly.
When the spine is back in alignment, the body can hear itself again. It can play in sync. The whole orchestra finds its pitch and the music can continue.
Karen has been under chiropractic care for over 30 years. She tells her clients: you must address the physical. Sound healing and chiropractic are not alternatives to each other. They are partners. Structure dictates function, and the energetic body needs the physical body to be in alignment before it can fully receive and hold the work.
I could not have said it better myself.
Ancient Wisdom, Same Principle
One of the things I find most grounding about sound healing is how old it is. This is not a new age invention. This is a practice that ancient civilizations across the globe understood and used for thousands of years.
The Australian Aborigines used sound healing 40,000 years ago. The Egyptians built temples specifically designed for healing the whole person through sound, including chambers where running water through the pyramid allowed the shaman to locate the source of a patient's illness by listening. Every major religious tradition references the power of sound.
I brought up the walls of Jericho, because it has always fascinated me. The Israelites were instructed to walk around those walls seven times, and on the seventh day to shout and blow the shofar as loud as they could. And the walls fell. Not through military force. Through sound. That energy crumbled a physical stronghold.
If that does not make you take sound seriously as a force in the physical world, I am not sure what will.
Karen said it perfectly: if you look at all religious doctrine from every tradition, without exception, all of them reference sound and the power of it. It is a universal principle. It exists outside of time and outside of human understanding. We are only now developing the scientific vocabulary to describe what the ancient world already knew.
Ask Better Questions Out Loud
One of the more unexpected insights from this conversation was about the practice of speaking our questions out loud rather than only in our heads.
Karen works with her clients not just through sound but through questions. She says: it is not the answers that are tricky. It is the questions. Ask different questions and you will find yourself on a different path.
The key is saying them aloud. When we hear ourselves speak something out loud, a biofeedback loop activates. The sound of our own voice returning to our ears brings us into the present moment in a way that internal thought alone does not. It elevates consciousness. It creates the conditions for genuine insight.
She also made the point that the inner critic voices we carry, the ones that say you are never going to get this right or this is just how your life is, would never pass our own lips if someone else were in the room. We would never say those things to a friend. The act of saying them out loud, hearing how they actually sound coming out of our mouths, creates a kind of natural recalibration. They lose their power the moment they are exposed to air.
I have been a singer since I was a child. I grew up in Davenport, Iowa, and I remember standing in caverns and hearing my voice reverberate and fill the space in a way that felt genuinely healing. I never had language for why that was. Karen gave it to me.
What a Session Looks Like
Karen works with clients individually and in groups, in person and remotely. An individual session involves lying on a table in what she calls a personalized sound chamber, surrounded by the frequencies of the ancient Tibetan bowls as she plays them around and sometimes on the body. She offers specific protocols for adrenal resets, hormonal support, and pineal gland activation, which connects directly to the intuition and inner knowing that Maria Aparis and I had discussed in a previous episode.
Group sessions carry their own power. The collective energy amplifies the effect in ways that are exponential rather than simply additive. Karen described the experience of a group gathering where everyone is in the same resonant field as one of the most potent forms of the work.
She also works with couples and families, addressing the energetic field of the relationship itself, not just the individuals within it. I found that particularly beautiful. Our relationships have their own vibration. When that vibration is off, both people feel it even when neither can name it.
We Are a Four-Part Being
Karen said something I want to write on the wall of every wellness office in the country: we are a four-part being. Physical, mental, emotional, and energetic. You must address all four.
Eat. Sleep. Drink water. Move your body. Get adjusted. And then attend to the energetic body as well, because structure alone is not the whole picture. The physical and the energetic are two sides of the same coin, and neglecting either one leaves the other working harder than it needs to.
I am so grateful Tracy introduced us. I am so grateful for the work Karen does and the clarity with which she explains it. And I am even more grateful that before we ended the recording, she played those bowls one more time.
If you are in Orange County or can access her remotely, I hope you will find her. Your whole orchestra will thank you.
Listen to the full conversation with Karen Awad on the Well Connected Podcast: Live Your Life in Alignment. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Find Karen at karenssoundsessions.blogspot.com for upcoming events, session information, and more about her work with Tibetan bowls, tuning forks, and biofield healing.
