Last August (2023) Austin Shook came to High Point Yoga School to offer our community a Sound Healing session.  For obvious reasons and out of obligation, I attended.  I had been to sound healing events at other studios in the past so I knew what to expect - waves of tingles, chakral (I made that word up) sensations, etc.  I was excited to do it again and even more excited to be able to offer it to the community.

 

I should have expected the unexpected.

 

What was different this time around was my life and its circumstances.  I have made no secret about who I am.  For the people in the back, I’ll say it again, louder.  I am Jenn Newton, mother of four, yogi, studio owner, and most importantly, a drug addict.  The man that I was married to for 17 years and the father of my children was a drug addict too.  The details of his story are not mine to tell but bits of his story intertwined with mine.  I’ll stick to me and if you know the missing pieces, well then, you know the missing pieces.

 

In mid 2022, after 20 years together, I made the difficult decision to leave that marriage.  His demons took center stage.  As it had always been, his demons became my demons.  By the fall of that same year I found myself in a familiar place.  Instead of sliding back into what was comfortable (comfort was killing me), I slid into something better.  My true self.

 

I healed.  He did not.  

 

Here’s the thing about healing; it’s bumpy.  Healing is not “one size fits all”.  It’s not even “one size fits most”.  Healing is messy and scary and sometimes lonely.  I craved what was familiar.  Instead of doing the comfortable thing, I did the terrifying thing.  The terrifying thing was trying to figure out how to survive and support myself and my children alone.  I had no financial support and very little family support.  I maxed out every credit card I had, most going into a state of default to put food on the table, keep the lights on, and gas in the car.  I will not use this platform to insult those who shoulder this responsibility (god knows I want to) but that is not what healing looks like.  That is what suffering looks like.  If you know, you know.  The point is I fought for my girls and myself.  I refused to give up, know matter how hard it got.  It got really hard.

 

So, I find myself lying on a yoga mat at the studio in August of 2023.  Unsure of how to make it another day under the conditions I had found myself in.  Financially spent.  Emotionally tormented via divorce attorneys.  Mentally exhausted.   Austin Shook begins doing what he does so well.  Healing through the power of sound.  So many feelings and emotions washed through me.  Too many to remember in detail.  There is one moment however that I will never forget.  Austin uses many different instruments to create sound and vibration.  He stood over me with some kind of horn (please forgive me for not knowing what exactly it is) and as he blew through it I felt a shift.  I didn’t just feel it, I saw it.  The image in my head was of me, walking across a river, leaving on the otherside that person who I had once loved so deeply but had to leave behind  in order to save myself.  It had been over a year since I called my divorce attorney and began the process of separation.  It was not until that moment though that I clearly saw and felt a cutting of ties.  All ties.  The water washed between us.  He on one side, I on the other.  This water would come back later in a “full circle” moment.  Austin had long since moved on to another but the energy remained.  Lying on the floor I wept.  Water washing over me.  This was the beginning of true liberation.  I wasn’t yet free or out of the words but I was solidly on the path.  I left there that night knowing, really knowing that everything was going to be okay.  

 

And eventually it was.

 

It would be some months before life settled and some kind of normalcy took shape.  I enrolled in college.  As I write this today I am nearing the end of my first year as an academic student.  If all goes well (and I know it will), in the spring of 2026 I will be a Substance Abuse Counselor.  If there’s one thing I know better than yoga, it’s drugs.  Seriously.

 

The man that I had to leave behind did not survive.  In February of this year his suffering ended.  We were both liberated.  It’s an odd way to put it but it’s true.  I sat with his body before cremation.  I said a lot of personal things.  The most important thing that I said was, “it’s all water under the bridge.”  That was that.  Full circle.

 

Had I not been at that sound healing, had I not had the initial experience of letting go, I do not know that I would have had the strength, courage, or wisdom to let go and keep going.  I may not have been brave enough to go back to school.  I may not have mustered up the willingness to fight like hell for my freedom.  I may not have had the compassion that it took to sit with him let it all be water under the bridge.  I will always be grateful for that night of healing.  It changed my life.  

 

That life changing moment is why I wrote all of this for you.  I want you to experience the same.  You may not have the kind of deep emotional wounds I did.  You don’t have to.  We all need some kind of healing. 

 

Austin will be back at High Point Yoga School on September 13 at 6:30pm.  I encourage you to embrace healing and practices that can lead toward light and renewal. I hope the upcoming sound healing session brings even more insight and growth to my life, and that you find your own path to healing.

 

With love, immense gratitude, and best wishes on your journey, Jenn

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-If you are interested in signing up for or learning more about Sound Healing, click the box below.

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