We recently connected with Aria Thome and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Aria thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?

For years, right out of college, I directed choirs. Working with voices gave me the unique opportunity to see directly how much the voice intimately relates to the person. What we carry within us is given expression through our voice, and at the same time, can be its greatest force for healing. Seeing the way people took ownership to the text and poetry of the music, how they internalized it, formed a relationship with it made manifest in sound a whole process of healing the Self. Further support of healing existed in the ensemble, the entirety of choir, who all had undertook the same process of internalization. The end product was not the performance, but the natural process or working with the voice to give expression to something so beautiful that mere recitation of words could not. This process, and occasion of performance, were in a word: healing. They helped the listener and the singer. The amalgamation of processes that define choral singing is necessarily a process of healing. The voice heals. Further, it became clear to me that when the voice carries intentionality, space opened for miracles. The incredible notion that all people have a healing voice set me on a path that would ultimately lead me to not only use the voice for healing, but to become a sound healer completely.

Aria, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I founded AriaSound108, my sound healing practice, after my studies with the Sound Healing Academy, based in England. We are, in our essence, vibrational beings. Vibration and sound define us, form us, and shape our very existence. At your optimal self, your energy centers vibrate at their resonant frequencies. You are said to be in tune and in sound health. When imbalances of energy occur, we experience what we call dis-ease or ailment. Your body, mind, or spirit could have stuck frequency patterns or dissonant patterns that could cause a host of bodily or mental issues. Enter sound. Sound, be it Tibetan Bowls, Crystal Singing Bowls, the Gong, tuning forks, or the voice aids in tuning the body back into resonance with itself. I believe this because I have bore witness to this time and time again. Sound heals. Not only that, because of quantum physical realities, the therapy does NOT have to be two people in the same room. I could work on someone on the other side of the world, and the effects of sound and the intention of healing are not mitigated. Because I also teach for the academy, I’ve taught classes online, and could see first hand how distance did not obstruct healing. If something set me apart from other sound healers, it would be that I enjoy working with the voice and helping others to come to love their voices. I lot of trauma and shame can be held in that area. We don’t need to be doing this to ourselves.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson I had to learn very early on was detaching with compassion myself from the outcomes of a healing session. In the earlier days, my ego would be tied to a result of some sort, when really true healing relies on the healee just as much as the healer. It’s a cooperative endeavor. This was just simply my ego wanting validation that I was indeed a ‘good healer’ and that became more of the concern than the actual healing itself. Unlearning now, I shield myself protectively with light, sound, and energy, but still am able to be compassionately disconnected from the client. In other words, not bodily take on their issues. As soon as I was able to let go of outcome, the very outcomes my ego sought began to be made manifests. So now, I just let the Divine, or universal Source guide me and I just allow myself to be a vessel for the client’s highest good.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start?

The story of funding my business. Well, it’s a bit laughable in that there were never any loans or gifts to help bolster the company. Everything – the space, the instruments, the time…all out of pocket. When I moved from Arizona to St. Louis, MO, I had sold my house and actually made enough of that sale to help jump start. Now it is to the point where I am outgrowing my wellness space because of too many instruments, and the instruments that I’m acquiring, though necessary are still expensive. I’m flexing my faith muscles and trusting that the universe will provide the necessary means by which I can continue in this business. To be sure, I still have a part time choir gig to supplement, but the direction the dream is to total autonomy in sound healing work. Teaching, workshops, individual clients, kirtan, recording, and sound baths. Oh, and I have to books currently being written which will likely be cut to one simply on the healing voice.

Contact Info:

• Website: Ariasound108.com
• Instagram: Aria_sound_108
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ariasound108

Image Credits
Photo credits: Jamie Rhodes, Elle Fitzgibbons, and Susan Sanders