Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jennifer Buljan . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jennifer , appreciate you joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

One defining moment for me occurred just about a year ago. I had established a large community group where I offered sound baths on a weekly basis. I was also offering Sound Meditation classes at the JW Marriott in Scottsdale 4 days a week, i had really felt I was getting established and known within my community for Sound Healing work however I was going through a really emotionally difficult time in my life. I had just gone through a very difficult break up and it had brought up some deep abandonment wounds from early childhood that I had realized I never really addressed before. I had so much going on for me professionally but I was in such a low place emotionally. One evening I went to bed feeling really distraught , the next morning I woke up around 4 am with an intense feeling in my chest , very heavy , it took awhile to realize that this was anxiety the only difference was that there was no emotion attached to the anxiety it was just a feeling of the energy of it. (Hard to explain) . I had to get ready for my 7am class at Marriott, so I took some time to be with myself and I stood in front of the mirror and placed my hand over my heart and spoke loving affirmations to myself through tears, I looked in the mirror and told that little girl inside of me everything she needed to hear, how loved she is , how it’s ok to feel safe in my body , how proud I am of her, how beautiful she was, and that no matter what I was going to love myself back to wholeness.

I proceeded to get ready for work and what followed is hard to fully understand, I felt a slow release of pain and an overwhelming sense of love and joy, it felt like pure bliss had taken over me, I never experienced a feeling of pure joy and that realization alone was so shocking to me. I had also realized that heaviness I felt in my chest earlier was the energy of that emotion, (emotions are simply energy in motion in the body) and it was replaced with unconditional love. I understood this to be a massive heart opening for me.

On the way to work I had a huge revelation of what my purpose was and it came out clear as day and I cried even more because I knew it was my purpose in life, which was to help children process and alchemize their difficult emotions through sound and voice. After work I went home and wrote an entire outline of programming for kids . The words just flew from my pen, part of me felt as though something else was writing, it was all so clear and it terrified me at the same time because I knew this was it. That was my defining moment, and for the past year (through bumps and hurdles and setbacks ) I have been working on bringing this vision to life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born in Croatia and shortly after my birth, I was given up for adoption. I spent a couple of years in an orphanage and at three and a half years old, I was adopted and brought to live in the United States.

Growing up, I tried endlessly to search for my birth mother and family. But after many failed attempts, I made the decision to stop searching in my early 20s.

As far back as I can remember, I always felt like I was carrying something heavy. Something was always weighing on me. I was easily agitated and highly sensitive, and both needy and detached.

In my teen and college years, this developed into chronic depression and anxiety, which manifested into alcohol abuse and toxic relationships, both in my friendships and in my intimate partnerships.

I studied social work in college and went on to work with the elderly and disabled for the next seven years. Although very rewarding at times, the majority of my time spent in social work had me buried in paperwork and red tape, and just further and further away from the people that I actually really wanted to help, so I left.

I had a couple of really mundane office jobs until I found a job in a spa in New York City. This led to a chance meeting with someone who had a very similar adoption story as me. She had turned her story into a documentary, and I was inspired by her passion and her vulnerability and the way she turned her pain into purpose.

So inspired, in fact, that I decided to start my search again for my birth family and by some divine timing, two weeks later, I had made contact with both my birth brother and sister. A few months later, I landed in Split, Croatia to be reunited with my entire birth family, all but my birth mother.

This trip was a major turning point in my life. Seeing myself in my brother’s smile and my sister’s eyes are two moments that remain etched in my heart.

I remember the exact moment that I became so aware of my abandonment wound. It was the first time I saw a photo of my birth mother. I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of grief in my chest. When I saw that photo, I immediately recognized her pain and sadness before I even recognized her face.

That’s when I knew that not only was I… wounds, but I was also carrying hers. She was the heaviness I had always felt. I never recognized the layers of trauma we carry until that very moment.

When I returned to New York after that trip, I was hit with a serious bout of depression. While I was attempting to process all the emotions surrounding my trip to Croatia, I developed a serious abscessed tooth that caused severe swelling in my face and jaw. This led me to the very first person to introduce me to sound healing, Dr. Brand of The Brand Wellness Center in Manhattan.

Dr. Brand practices what she refers to as enlightened dentistry, which is a complete holistic approach to dental care. Dr. Brand shared with me her own personal healing journey through her chronic Lyme disease. She told me how she exhausted every avenue of conventional medicine until a friend introduced her to sound therapy. She taught me about tuning forks and also gave me weekly tuneups after each dental appointment. She treated me with detoxifying foot baths and introduced me to Tibetan bowls and crystal bowls.

The tuning forks left me feeling elated and also calmer. I started listening to binaural beats at night at her recommendation and also listening to sound baths online. My mind became quieter, my meditations became easier, and I think this is because I had more clarity. But most of all, through her guidance and experience, I learned to empower myself in my own healing.

She also introduced me to Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, who was the director of oncology at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and quite groundbreaking in his holistic approach to cancer patients. Dr. Gaynor was a huge advocate for sound therapy, as a means for healing trauma. Even as a medical doctor, he understood that most, if not all, physical symptoms and disease were a manifestation of some repressed emotional trauma.

Part of his protocol was to have his patients vocalize their trauma by creating a sound to represent that pain. He then had them use sound bowls as a way to help them turn that painful sound into something beautiful. This was a profound concept to me, the idea of alchemizing emotions through sound.

Shortly after meeting Dr. Brand, I enrolled in a sound therapy course through the Vibrational Sound Association. As we would practice on each other in class, I started to feel a shift in the heaviness in my body. The more I used the bowls, the lighter I felt. I simultaneously started using the bowls in my morning meditation and began vocalizing my abandonment pain and slowly turning it into a mantra.

I knew from my own experience that children that are born into an environment with abandonment and neglect and abuse will ultimately carry these traumas with them throughout adulthood. We know that we can’t take away trauma, but if we teach children how to process and alchemize their emotions, we are empowering them to heal themselves.

The reason I think sound is a great healer is because it allows our brain to focus on one thing. Working with Tibetan bowls and crystal bowls can help to create a stillness within us. When the mind is quiet and the body is at rest, this is where true healing begins.

My ultimate goal is to work with children and adults suffering from abandonment and neglect using aspects of Dr. Gaynor’s methods. I really do believe that we can empower people in their own healing by processing their pain into purpose using a combination of sound and voice. This, of course, takes time, consistency and, of course, the will to want to heal.

Once Covid hit I wasn’t able to work on people individually so I started to offer sound baths as a way to send healing to groups of people are reach a larger audience which worked out well considering so many people were in need of deep healing especially after Covid.

I got a contracted job with the JW Marriott to offer Sound Meditation classes 4 times a week. Although this was a wonderful experience i knew I needed to still move forward with my dream to create programs for children and teach them to be empowered through sound. Right now I work independently and offer one on one vibrational therapy sessions to clients, I also offer Community sound baths every other Friday at a community center called Soul Center in downtown mesa. This work is tremendously fulfilling because it allows me to not only sit with community but to offer healing to people that may not have the means to have to this kind of healing on a regular basis.

I think what is important to me in the work I do is to be able to offer a safe space for people to release and heal, we are all suffering from something being a vessel for people to heal gives me real purpose.

My focus has always been on inner child healing and releasing repressed trauma in the body. From my own experiences I could see how my own wounds had shaped my entire life and I wanted to help others who were struggling with the same pain.

Most people don’t know they are actually stuck in certain areas of their lives . I spent most of my life being “stuck”.

For me, It meant I walked around with creative and foundational blocks for many years . I was “stuck” in past traumas because I was hanging on to all the old emotions attached to them.

A lot of people walk around stuck in feeling or a state of being and can’t figure out why. When you release emotional blocks you open up space in areas of the body that once held anger, sadness , anxiety etc.. once these emotions are cleared you are no longer focused on the feeling of that emotion because it’s no longer trapped inside you.

The human body is a wonderful conduit for vibration and sound because we are made up of so much water ,the vibrations can travel far and wide. Which means it can also break through really deep blockages within us to open us up to greater potential physically and emotionally.

Sound is one of the oldest healing modalities in the world, and it continues to help people heal and process difficult emotions and trauma, I am grateful it found me and I am constantly working to learn more and more about the incredible power of sound.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

Training and knowledge are important in honing your craft for sure, however I think what makes you successful is being able to hold space for someone going through something difficult in life. Holding space for me means, listening, being attentive, non judgement and also not taking the role of “healer” . Instead I feel the true power of helping someone heal comes by empowering them in their journey. Yes I can teach you about sound and vibration, and I can physically work on you to help clear blockages and relieve stress, but supporting and encouraging my clients to stay on the path and showing them hey I’ve been here too and you can get free from these wounds , that’s the real work!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Honestly, kindness , an open heart, a need to help others, true compassion and meeting people at their level. When you have a passion for something you don’t need to convince anyone of anything, it shines through and people respond to that.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: J_b_vibes
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100023990178269

Image Credits
Photo by Lynn Dao (the picture that has me with my bowls and says JB vibes) First four photos are from Tempe center for the arts all pics by Neil Schwartz Group photo with carpet was taken by me at Soul Center mesa