Using Sound and Holistic Healing to Rejuvenate Your Health | Falyn Morningstar and Ian Morris of Listening to Smile

Both of us try really hard to encourage people to really feel into not giving your power away. And what that looks like is like, there's doctors every year that come out and say, the egg is the greatest thing in nature and, you know, it's a multivitamin. And then there's other doctors that come out the next year and say, it's the most horrible thing, you shouldn't eat this. And so we start talking to people. What does it feel like to you? Don't worry about what they're saying. When you eat an egg and you feel good, does your body feel good? Do you resonate with higher energy, more brain functionality, less brain fog? You know, do you feel that way? And what's interesting is a lot of people will say, I don't know, because they're so used to giving their power away, they have no idea what it feels like in their body. So I think the work that we're doing, in a sense, we're really bringing people back to themselves and trying to encourage that intuitive new lens or perspective to start taking responsibility for their self care and their mental health, you know, through these different modalities.

Welcome to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. We are here to inspire creative ideas and connections for entrepreneurs and advocates working to address our mental health crisis. As you listen, I hope you will experience new ideas and motivation to innovate in your business, your community and in your life. Welcome. Welcome everyone, to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, and with me today is Fallon Morningstar and Ian Morris. Fallon is trained in functional diagnostic, nutrition, sound healing, meditation and somatic practices. Ian created Frequency Minded Music, which is a sound therapy method. And together they have a podcast called Listening to Smile. I have been privileged to be a guest on that podcast. I would encourage you to go listen and check that out. But welcome, Fallon and Ian.

Thanks so much for having us.

Yeah, thank you so much.

I can't wait to dive into the work that you both do. But I'm curious, how did you get to this place of doing really holistic and sound type therapy?

Basically, I have a business background and got into municipal work. So I worked for a municipality for a good five years and I was involved with, you know, more physical health. So I had become a personal trainer. I was involved with powerlifting competitions, bodybuilding as well, and even a supplement company. So it's kind of like that realm of wellness. And then I went to grad school for environmental engineering. Then I had kind of been forcefully been able to look at my health because it was declining at age 26. So a lot of physical health symptoms were coming up, such as bloating. Right. Wired and tired feeling couldn't really get enough rest. I was not recovering from working out. So it'd be four days after I've trained my back, let's say, and it'd still be sore. So it was just a very, like, my body was kind of slowly shutting down. Right. Emotional eating was happening more frequently. And you sort. Certainly that had been part of. Deeper part of the story as we touched on in your podcast of how that can transpire. But there was a lot of compounding things. And I was like, I don't really know where to turn except for my family physician. And so I had explained everything that I felt was going on. Just symptom, explanation, Right. And unfortunately, they weren't able to guide me in a, you know, a harmonious direction. I don't think he really know what to say because on the outside I looked perfectly fine. Right. So then I went to my gynecologist. She couldn't help me. I had just stopped taking the hormonal birth control pill. And certainly all the symptoms exacerbated. So it was a tough time because I just felt like I didn't know where to turn. And then the universe brought me this group called Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. And I had worked with a practitioner that was certified, and I had done some lab tests, so very comprehensive lab panels. So like food sensitivity, a stool as well as a hormone test. And that gave me such comfort and safety to say, this is a direction that we can go to be able to heal what's going on here. You know, it's not all in your head. There are definitely some imbalances. And so being the nerd that I am and just a really. I love learning. So I then became a practitioner with that same company. So I would say probably about five to six months after working with somebody, I fell in love. I was like, I have to go and take this certification. So over that next year, I went and became certified as a practitioner because I have always loved health. I just never really knew how to create a sustainable, financially okay practice. My grandmother was kind of an entrepreneur, but I don't really have much experience or support in that realm because family is always like, you should have health insurance and of retirement. And so, like, you know, it's a very hard perspective sometimes when you don't have that support because you are going out on a limb, going with your intuition. Like, you know, it's scary, right? So all that to say in the interim there of transitioning into creating my own functional health practice. I had work in the insurance industry. So it's, you know, very broad topics, but it, it almost makes me relate to people more because I can talk to people in all these different areas. So fast forward. So I have the ability to run lab tests on folks, I coach them in a holistic way. There was still that emotional mental piece that I felt like was missing. And so then I explored different therapies, talk therapy, some emdr, as well as somatic experiencing. So I had worked personally and I had also done my own research and worked for a different company in that realm. And I felt like it was really needed to add to the things that I'm doing to really balance the physical health and the mental, emotional and spiritual health. So expanded that into. Into what it is. And then sound therapy came in and frequency and how that can also be an enhancement to the work that I'm already doing. And so that kind of transitions nicely into what he's up to.

Ah, yeah, yeah. So my experience was similar where she had the different physical ailments, you know, in check, and then started seeing that there was a need for the mental. I was a baseball star when I was younger. I had college and pro scouts that were coming to my games, you know, 9th and 10th grade. And so I had gone through a lot of transitions where that was taken away. I ended up having this heart condition that was working. I had an arrhythmia and I had mitral valve prolapse. And so those two things in conjunction, I passed out in one of my games. And then all the scouts and everyone left. And so I went through this kind of. I had been playing baseball since T ball, so in high school. And I had my whole life people telling me, you're going to play professional baseball. I was a pitcher and the thing that made it really special is that I could hit. So most pitchers don't do, can't really bat well. So there was games where I would pitch a two hitter and have two home runs at the plate. And so there was a lot of interest in me. And yeah, so basically when that was taken away, I had to have this searching and the arts really came out tremendously. Poetry, music, art. And to this day they, I tell people I'm still alive because of the therapy that these tools, creative tools gave to me in my life. And fast forward, long story short, basically in 2011, 2012, I was diagnosed with Ms. And col cancer. I was severely overweight from Just years of the dark night of the soul drinking. I, you know, I remember telling my mom several times that when I was younger, it's not that I tried to kill myself, but I would drink to a point that I just hope I didn't wake up. You know, that's where how the depression was from. Losing everything that I had ever known that was near and dear to me. So the universe does this often, God, however you want to look at it, put these people in my life that put me in different trajectories to start working with art and music. And my dad was a musician, and so, you know, he got me started learning the guitar and then I just kind of took to it and, you know, so basically in that process of finding the arts, I started realizing that it was helping me to feel better. And when I was diagnosed with the colon cancer and MS, I was also £320. So I was definitely much more heavy from the emotional eating and all of the different depression vices that, you know, drinking and all those different things that came with it. So when that time came, the universe did its thing yet again. Right. My mom will always say, ian, there's always something watching over you, no matter what happens. And I think that that was always something I probably overlooked a lot because I was looking more at the bad stuff than I was at shifts of trajectory and the different bridges that the universe was providing. But long story short, I. I started getting into binaural beats and got into Louise, hey, you can heal your life. And there was another book called the Healing Power of sound by Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, who was a cancer doctor that was working with sound with his clients. So I was like, well, I'm a musician. I'm going to give this a try. I'm going to start doing this. And so I started seeing benefits within the first two weeks. I grew up dyslexic, had an extremely hard time in school. Third grade through sixth grade, I was in learning disability classes. They didn't know what to do with me, so they just dropped me in college prep classes in seventh grade. I was telling Fallon, when I was younger, the help for dyslexia was much, much more rudimentary than it is now. But yeah, it was something that I always struggled with. And when I found poetry, music and art, it was like I found a new language that I could communicate and oper in the world in a much, much more inclusive way where I didn't feel like an outsider. I felt like I was creating my own universe when I would Make a song or paint or write a poem. And so the healing was almost instantaneous. Took me a year. I did not do traditional treatment methods, but I did heal myself with the most, I would say almost all of the Ms. Symptoms as well as the cancer. So I am healed now. And then shortly after that, I was able to then apply what I learned through frequency to work on my mother who had developed breast cancer.

They were wanting to take both of her breasts and we had. I moved back home and lived with my mom for eight months, fed her, took care of her, took her to the doctor. But I started doing binaural beats and singing bowls and that type of work. And we healed her. It took us nine months, but have the surgery. She's healed of cancer, still doing well today. And so those two things gave me the confidence to say there is definitely validity in this modality and it's very powerful. And so it just gave me the confidence to dive in. And so ever since 2012, this has been my life's mission of just learning as much as I can and applying in my own unique way, like we were talking about earlier, that finding that unique voice and your method and mission and that modality. And so, so that's what I've done with the company. Listening to Smile.

Wow. So I think for everyone listening, I would love to hear a little bit More about how sound correlates with healing. Because I think for a lot of people, that's not a common idea. You know, when you go to the doctor, you don't think about sound healing. When you go to a therapist, you don't necessarily think about sound healing. So can you give us kind of a picture or a summary of how that actually works?

So I think on the most bare essential level, the easiest way for people to comprehend this is that let's say I have you sitting in a room and on the left side is one of your depressed friends, and on the right side is one of your very joyous, happy friends that nothing can affect. If I had you in the room with your friend who's very joyful, over a period of time, no matter what state you're in, you're going to be elevated to that joyful state because you're going to. It's going to be hard for you to fight that. But in the same way, if I put you in the room with a depressed person, no matter how positive you are, eventually it's going to chip away at you and you are going to be vibrating at the level of depression that your friend is at. Which is why a lot of people when someone's depressed are like, dude, I can't handle this. I'll see you later. You know, it's like, I gotta go into my own energy, right? And so this is kind of how the frequency follow response works with the brain. And it's a very, it's a great metaphor to show people how frequency and also just stimulants affect you as a person. So it's like for us to be very mindful of what we're surrounding ourselves with and what kind of intake we have with this. And the other important thing that I remind people is that everything in this perceived reality, and I say perceived reality because our spectrum is so narrow. Like when we look with our eyes, we're only seeing a very small spectrum of what is actually there. But when to remind people, everything that you see, feel, touch, taste, everything has a vibration of light or sound. So when you start working with this, you're working with the root of everything in existence. You're working with the foundations, the building blocks, if you will, of everything that you're. That is surrounding you. And so what's neat is we have really refined our process that we're working with chakras, which a lot of people find controversial. So our root work is done with body organ frequencies and brainwave state. But we hope to show People that at the root of everything, like your body organ is working on an energy system known as meridians. And meridians are working within the constructs of an energy center, which is what a chakra is. And so science hasn't studied this because it's so expensive to do clinical testing. And there's not a lot of people in the spiritual world that have the clinical, you know, clout to, to do those kind of studies. And the people who are doing those studies really have no interest in doing those studies because it's not benefiting them with a pharmaceutical pill, you know, where they can sell and make money. So this is something that we are, both of us, try really hard to encourage people to really feel into not giving your power away. And what that looks like is like when some, there's doctors every year that come out and say the egg is the greatest thing in nature and you know, it's a multivitamin. And then there's other doctors that come out the next year and say it's the most horrible thing, you shouldn't eat this. And so we start talking to people. What does it feel like to you? Don't worry about what they're saying. I would like you to really listen to yourself when you eat an egg. Do you feel good? Does your body feel good? Do you resonate with higher energy, more brain functionality, less brain fog? You know, do you feel that way? And what's interesting is a lot of people will say, I don't know, because they're so used to giving their power away, they have no idea what it feels like in their body. So I think the work that you're doing and the work that we're doing, in a sense we're really bringing people back to themselves and trying to encourage that intuitive new lens or perspective to start taking responsibility for their self care and their mental health, you know, through these different modalities. And it's not saying that you can do it all by yourself, but what I am saying is there is not a therapist or a doctor that knows you like you do. And there's a quote that I really love that says, you are the only you and that is your true superpower. And so it's like no one will have the experience that you do. No one has gone through or seen the same things as you have. So you know yourself more than any other person on this planet. And so I think we're trying to give them tools that helps them face those dark sides, face the trauma, the baggage, the turmoil and the uncomfortable, and to Step into this integration of full self, of, you know, light and shadow coming together, the depression and the happiness coming together and learning that it all coexists. And when that balance is formed, whether we're a masculine or feminine, black, white, old, young, this balance is going to create a radiance. As you know, Fallon has a practice that she calls the radiant balance system, which is basically integration of full spectrum healing.

Very, very interesting. So what does it look like for someone to come and work? I know you each do slightly different work, so maybe each of you answering this question, what does it look like when someone comes to work with you? What kind of things are happening? What does that picture look like?

So for myself, as we're getting deeper into this work, we're really integrating even more together. But, you know, if someone's coming in and they're maybe coming in with a myriad of symptoms, right. I'm looking to see, you know, a certain extent of their, their medical history and kind of trying to be that health detective and connect those dots. But we're talking about diet, we're talking about rest, exercise, stress reduction and supplementation, natural supplementation, and kind of the overarching umbrella of that is functional lab testing. So looking at full thyroid panel or mycotoxin or oats test or stool hair samples for mineral testing and metals. And so it's, it's all that to help us uncover any hidden stressors that are going on inside that we are not able to intuitively know. And it really helps to fast track somebody's process of trying to get well. So as far as the stress reduction piece, that's where the sound comes in. Whether that's consciously listening and meditating and setting an intention, or maybe it's falling asleep with it, or maybe it's listening to it while you're cooking. We're always picking up what's around us. So that's really how the sound and like the somatic exercises are incorporated in the meditation to really help that stress response and help to regulate the nervous system.

Awesome.

When I'm working with people, what I'm really doing is creating custom playlists for specific target focus, but then also creating customized tracks for specific issues. And, you know, that can look like autism, cancer, full spectrum. Like we. I've worked in a lot of different things and had success with all those. Even one of our clients did a dental procedure cavity without any anesthesia just listening to our pain relief album. And the dentist called us and he was like, so blown away. He was like, I've never seen this before. And he's like, how does this work? And I said, well, she trained, you know, she started using the music and started creating a mindset around the pain management for months before she came to see you. And so it's something that she was prepared for, she mentally prepared for it. And she trained using frequency. And I said, you know, what's interesting is in a movie soundtrack, if you take that soundtrack away during the height of a thriller or an action scene, it's almost non existent without the music. So what you're really looking at is how much music enhances experiences. And so if it can do that for entertainment, imagine the value and what it can do in the health spectrum, the mind, body connection, like anesthesia.

Obviously she's not taking in that toxin. Less burden on the system. Right. So it's a very more holistic approach to healing. But besides the coaching, the other aspect that I just want to touch on is that we do work with all types of corporate companies or even holistic practitioners with our affiliate member program. So the music is tailored to help enhance the gifts that those folks are already sharing with people. So that's another way that we work with others.

So what's sort of like the big dream here? Like if you could have all the impact of that you wanted to have, what would that look like for you?

Ong I think for me what I see is I would just really love people to actually be curious about sound as a modality and to realize the amount that sound influences them, from advertisements to films, to even the entertainment based music they listen to and how, how much of an impact that has on their mood as well as their mental health. And a lot of people don't realize like the mantras that are being spoken. The pop music that they're listening to on the radio is actually creating a hypnosis. You know, you're singing these lyrics over and over, especially young shapeable minds like teenagers. And you listen to some of the lyrics that are in these songs and you realize like, wow, this is not good. You know, so it's like I love all forms of music and there's a lot of different styles I like. But I think what I'm really getting as I'm maturing and getting older is just learning that as a creator there's a responsibility. You're putting out a vibe, you're putting out a mood, you're putting out a message with the, the art that you're creating. And I think that I just would like to see sound as a viable modality. For healing, that people can actually explore that. And then two, that as creators, we get more conscious in the content that we're creating.

I think in both of our work, we're really trying to elevate people's consciousness to have a better collective, one that is more stable, grounded, is creative, like tapping into those creative areas. I think I would also love to see more the Western and the Eastern coming together. Surgery sometimes is the direction to go, but it's not the end all, be all. I want people to see that there's very different ways, very unconventional ways that you can get your health back, that lessen any type of trauma that comes with surgery or that comes with these very intense procedures. Looking at different ways, maybe instead of doing a mammogram, doing a type of thermography, different things to help our vessel, to help our body stay in that harmonious state. So just the ability to. Exactly, as Ian said, to be curious about all of these different areas.

I love how your entrepreneur journey has been very intuitive, it seems like, for both of you. And then also collective, as you've come together in different ways. And I know you mentioned in the other podcast that we had, you have some intuitive journey offerings, which I just want to kind of highlight here. And I want to know if you could give one piece of advice to listeners, whether it's from the entrepreneur journey side or the innovative and healing side, what would that be for each of you?

I think that one of the things that Fallon, you know, it's not a big deal to me because I've been doing it for so many years, but as an observer from the outside, like, in that way, Fallon will say to me, like, how do you not get upset if someone doesn't like something that you create, like, as a creator? And I think that it's really simple. I know this is what I'm supposed to do. And so just because a person doesn't like, it doesn't mean that I'm going to stop. And so that drive or push, I would just. Just tell people it comes from a place of knowing. And it doesn't mean that you have to know that you're doing everything right. It just knows that, like, you know, you're on your path. And so how does that evolve? It evolves, like you said in the last podcast, like, you're filling the cup little by little, and eventually it gets to that pouring, you know, the tipping point, where you realize, like, okay, if I don't share this, it's just going to keep overflowing and overflowing and it's like, I want to share this with people, and the people who are meant to hear this message or find this message are going to find it. And so it's just like, I guess just my advice would be to be fearless in the pursuit of you. Like, you know what I'm saying? Not that there's not fear, but like, in the pursuit of you, there. There should be no fear. Like, experiment, try new things, fail, because that's where you're going to learn the most. Fallon and I, in our partnership, we have such a comprehensive knowledge that we've brought together from our failures that have. We both note, like, how much that means to us because we've learned to do things the wrong way. So it gave us the ability to show up in this relationship and do things the right way. And so it's just been really helpful and I would say probably the best gold that both of us can have. And I think with our entrepreneur side as well, we've both had failures or things that couldn't get off the ground, and we've learned how to do those differently. And then bringing that together has been so good. So I think just be fearless of if you know it's. You just go for it. And it doesn't matter what the outcome is, because it's always going to add to you, whether it's, you know, success or a failure.

Honestly, a lot of people that I work with are just very overwhelmed. And so something that's very simple to do is just deeply breathe into your diaphragm. Right? Doing that for a couple minutes twice a day. You get to come back into your body, right. Not be so mind driven. I find that even in my own journey, when I keep coming back to my body, it's kind of like we're so swept away by everything, right? There's so much coming in where we feel like this sponge that can't absorb anymore. And so the ability to kind of wring that out by tapping back into our breath is something that will really help bring clarity to your life and the direction that you want to go.

I love that. Well, thank you so much for sharing your work and it's been a wonderful, inspiring conversation. Thank you both.

Thank you so much.