More than 100 students from Europe, as well as hundreds from across the U.S., have traveled to Quakertown, PA to learn about frequency domains, psycho-acoustical states, singing bowls, gongs, and the Bonpo Shang, an upturned flat bell that is one of the world's oldest shamanic sound tools. While the terminology may appear other-worldly to most readers, it is common among serious scholars who, for the purpose of healing, study sacred sound techniques and applications with Mitch Nur, Ph.D.
A masterful storyteller with intriguing narratives that sound more legendary than real life, Nur, owner of Studio 116, has spent more than 30 years immersed in two worlds: one includes the ancient traditional arts and spirituality of Eastern cultures, while the other encompasses a sphere in which contemporary quantum science attempts to explain the mysteries of the Universe. Regarded as a master of Himalayan singing bowls, Nur is a student of the Eastern Tibetan Nyingma Master Lama Adzom Rinpoche and Lama Khemsar Rinpoche of the Yungdrung Bon tradition, and many other teachers in the Bon and Nyingma traditions as well. He has lived and studied in many Himalayan monasteries.
During the 1960s, Nur's fascination with indigenous ceremonial music led him to study various cultures in which it was either a way of life or an integral part of a connection with the entire Universe. As a college student in the early 1970s, though, he found no courses through which to pursue his interests. "Nothing combined anthropology, religion and psychology, so I elected to study paranormal psychology" he recalls.
In the mid-1970s, while researching his doctoral thesis on the music used by Himalayan shamans, Nur received an invitation from the Nepalese government to study indigenous science. " I spent the next two years studying the frequency domain of a shaman” the use of the voice, drum and bells, which invoke the psycho-acoustical states;" says Nur, " and that opened doors for me throughout the Himalayas."
In Nepal, Nur lived in a monastery in the Kumbhu region near Mount Everest and studied the Nyingma tradition, the oldest of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Upon his return to the U.S., author and National Geographic photographer Deborah Denker introduced Nur to a Bon lama who was a member of one of the five original families of Tibet. Fifteen years later, after I completed my studies on preliminary practices with him and other Bon lamas, I suddenly went from " outsider to insider," Nur relates, " and had easier access to heavily guarded instructions on various techniques, empowerments and certain instruments used to facilitate a psycho-acoustical state, which I consider a version of hypnosis."
The accumulation of rich life experiences has left Nur with a unique endowment: a perception and proficiency that enables him to blend history, science and culture with a hands-on approach to learning that encourages a student to fully grasp a subject and the ability to go beyond the academic to a genuinely experience the disciplines he teaches. Nur explains: " My Harmonic Therapy work is about providing students with the means by which they can use sacred sound instruments like the Bonpo Shang and singing bowls to heal and strengthen their own physical and mental state. This helps them to be better sound therapist, whose delivery of electromagnetic frequencies emitted by the bowls depends upon how well they have been taught, as well as the quality and type of sound instrument they are using. Another important factor in the healing equation is the person who is receiving. If they aren't actively involved and don't want to be healed, then there isn't going to be a healing."
Today, when Nur isn't teaching, he's hanging out at his learning center with visiting Tibetan lamas who teach foundational practices and traditional protocols-highly revered information that once required long-distance travel to acquire. Acting as a teaching adviser who helps the lamas with the translation of their teaching materials, Nur advises, " Students are always surprised and delighted when they come to this unique Quakertown studio. They get an intimate front row seat to learn from a leader of an entire tradition. It puts a smile on their face every time."
