D’Ann says the years of a Nada Yoga practice served her spiritual expansion, and also benefited her mental health immeasurably. She was also motivated to hear the Nada sounds so she could recreate them, and include them in her Playing Mantis, sound medicine journeys.

She plays Nada sounds not for entertainment, but for entrainment. Her intent is that you entrain (fall in synchronic rhythm with) these deep inner Nada Sounds to assist you in the exploration of your own inner landscapes. She plays them to assist your own resonance into higher states of spiritual connection.

Nada sounds can sound like outer nature sounds, but are more rarefied as they delicately resound within. They tinkle ethereally, and pulse with an impossibly deep and resonating binary beat. Many attempts were made to translate these sounds technically correctly.

But with the genius help of Heather Perkins at Water Dog studios, D’Ann nailed it. These Nada sounds are favorites in the compositions. These sounds really do help us explore our inner mythic landscapes, to find our own inner treasures.

“Have you ever noticed how little space we have in our brains?
It is cluttered up,
full with so many thousands of things
it has very little space
If you take a journey into yourself
empty all the contents you have collected
and go very, very deeply
the there is a vast space–
that so-called emptiness
that is full of energy
and in that state alone
there is that which is most sacred

–Krishnamurti

D’Ann also spent years in Native ceremony, questing for her sacred songs. A Song Quest ceremony has the same elements as a Vision Quest ceremony, except in a Song Quest ceremony a person quests for their sacred songs, instead of receiving their sacred vision–but both come in either ceremony.

In the deep wilderness, across several mountains of the West, D’Ann sat high “on the hill” in a circle she built over the preceding year–and from that circle she did not leave; inside it she did not eat or drink.

With nothing going in, nothing came out. So even the distraction of elimination was eliminated. This, so she could contend with herself directly. So she could clear, and receive her lessons from within, nature, and the divine.

D’Ann’s music came to express the seasons of the day, the seasons of life, and the seasons of the Earth. Like D’Ann’s medicine teacher, Misa, Playing Mantis music does not attempt to teach anything to anyone, but instead helps you connect to spirit for your own direct lessons, learning, and feelings.

A Playing Mantis sound journey can put you to sleep and wake you up—or both together. While residing in the deep epic stillness of the seventh direction, Within, one may meet their dearly departed on the other side, or experience the lucid awake dreaming of the dreamtime–an hour can feel like a handful of minutes.

Playing Mantis music bypasses no emotion–all parts, challenging and beautiful, are brought closer and closer with a tender affection and true appreciation. Emotional cues lead to clearing, and emotional clearing makes room for the divine. In a Playing Mantis sound journey, together we uncover the divine love that is always and already there.

With an unchained human voice, Playing Mantis makes the sounds of repressed, denied, or bulldozed emotions to assist the release of emotional resistance in listeners. A Playing Mantis sound journey connects, cleanses, clarifies and catalyzes creativity. The sounds allow listeners to move stuck energies, to receive true divine inspiration, nurturing, and insight from the farthest reaches of their most inner selves.

Pure sound allows what is already there—the transpersonal joy and peace of divinity residing in us all beings, and all life. From years of reckoning, and from her decades spent in Native ceremonies, D’Ann knows well the emotional and spiritual topography of her own inner landscape, and honors all life–her relatives– held in the sacred hoop of the medicine wheel.

The Playing Mantis sound medicine journey and the Playing Mantis novel are her Give-Aways.