Life, as John Lennon and others have noted, is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Sound healer and performer Christine Morrison can certainly relate. Her own intention was to become a primary school music teacher. As a gifted pianist with a love of children, Christine completed a Bachelor of Education and A.Mus.A (Piano). Her plans had to be set aside, however, when she was unexpectedly diagnosed with chronic fatigue.

Stuck in bed, this formerly bright and busy woman felt bereft at her new circumstances. Little did she know that her recovery would lead her down a brand new path—sound healing.

“I had been so busy before chronic fatigue, and suddenly I had to rest all the time,” Christine explains. “It was like enforced stillness. And within the stillness, I began to hear music. I think it had always been there, but it was only when my busy life stopped that I was able to really notice it.”

There was one particular melody that kept returning, and it eventually became quite annoying. Christine gathered her strength, made it to her piano and played the piece, unprepared for what would follow. “Playing that music that first time made me feel so incredibly moved. An enormous rush of emotion moved through me and I cried enough tears to end the droughts of the world. It was such a release of pent up emotions that I had held onto for all those years. The process of hearing the music, and playing it, became my healing journey.”

Christine started feeling better, and after a year her energy renewed. But just as she was about to return to teaching, she had a car accident resulting in whiplash and soft tissue injuries. Although in extreme pain, her body could not tolerate strong pain medication. With stillness forced upon her again due to her injuries, Christine began hearing sounds, different to the music she had heard before. “I began making the sounds I heard with my voice and it immediately amplified the pain in my body, then as I continued with my voice, the pain quickly dissipated.” Christine found that this technique was called toning. This process of releasing, letting go and surrendering with music and sound became her everyday experience. She realized that she already knew how to work with sound and music and that this was just a process of remembering. Christine researched to see if other people operated this way, and she found other Sound Healers in the world using similar techniques, and learned that this was also an ancient form of healing.

This process of “remembering” for healing was so familiar to Christine. With time, she recovered completely. And along the way, she discovered something even more surprising.

She had begun recording her music on a 4-track cassette recorder, so that she could listen back to it later. It was a great source of comfort and healing for her—but it also turned out to help other people too. As the word spread about her experience, her friends asked to listen to the music too. Christine was delighted to discover that other people also responded deeply to her music, enjoying similar benefits of healing, relaxation, and discovery of their own untapped potential that she herself had enjoyed.

Christine began publishing her music on tapes, and later CDs. She has now released eight albums, including her latest A World Of Peace which has been very well-received. In a review in Nova Magazine this year, Phil Bennett wrote: “the sound she creates on this marvellous album is a softly relaxing, effortlessly flowing series of ethereal pieces. […]As music to close your eyes to, it’s absolutely perfect – gentle, subtle and exquisitely executed.”

And so today, although she would never possibly have imagined planning her life this way, Christine finds herself happily employed in sharing her beautiful music with the world. She travels frequently in Australia and Japan giving her popular one-on-one “Soul Impression Sessions” where she intuitively composes music specifically for the individual person, recording the music on CD. “I play the messages from your soul, everything it wants you to hear, in the language of music,” she explains. The music she creates aligns the individual with their soul essence, putting their body in tune to allow the body to heal itself.

Over the years, Christine’s music has given people incredible results in a variety of areas including pregnancy, birthing, passing over, pain relief, and stress relief. It has helped children sleep, helped people manifest their soul purpose, helped with personal healing and transformation, and has provided a balm of solace to many people in deeply trying circumstances.

“I love to create an atmosphere, and change a negative environment or feeling to a positive one through my music,” Christine says. “As well as people, I can also tune into the music of the plants and flowers, the land, the sea, whatever is required.”

In addition to her work with individuals, Christine runs sound healing circles, retreats, and the Soul Musicality course—for people wanting to learn more about sound healing. She also gives concerts—with a difference.

“My concerts are interactive,” Christine explains. “For some of the performance, I tune into the audience and play what I feel, with an intent to raise the vibration of everyone present. But at other times the audience is invited to join in with toning, and singing some of my songs with me. It makes people feel joyful to sing, but it also creates a real sense of community. People seem to form long-lasting connections at these concerts. I feel that rather than a performer, I am a gatherer of hearts. I bring people together to help them connect deeper within their own heart and soul, and create a deeper connection with others at the concert.”

Though singing can be a sensitive issue for some people, Christine thinks it is important for everyone to embrace using their voice. “Singing is such a great source of enjoyment and healing. So many people are becoming passive receptors of music, listening to professional entertainers instead of also making music and sound themselves. We will lose touch with a great natural source of healing if we leave singing to entertainers who are not necessarily models for creating good vibrations.”

Music as a natural part of life is explored by one of Christine’s favourite writers on the subject, Andy Barnett. “Music can be a guide to a more resonant and expressive life,” Barnett writes in the book Compose Yourself: Awakening to the Rhythms of Life. He states elsewhere: “Developing and practicing personal resonance brings the essential musicality of nature into our lives and helps project harmony into the world. With musical intent you can change a walk to the newsstand into a jaunt. Your presentation at work becomes a theme and variations. Personal interactions become duets. […] Like speech, music is part of our human nature.”

It has sometimes been tempting for Christine to turn back from her journey in favour of more “normal” occupations. But the music keeps calling, and the emails she receives from people who have been helped by her work always encourage her to continue.

“I believe that we have agreed to come and be here at this particular time on this planet and it is time to do our work,” she says. “It’s not always easy, but I believe it is time for all of us to walk our truth. It is so much like Gandhi’s idea about being the change you want to see in the world. It takes courage, and it all begins with you—self-respect, love and belief in yourself. And as that is emanated by you, the light is shared and helps raise the vibration of everyone around you.”

At the heart of Christine’s work is a deep respect for, and connection with, the earth. “Being grounded is so important. I feel that if you have a strong connection with the earth, with your heart and deep within your soul, you feel the oneness and live your life a completely different way—with honour, respect, love and harmony.”

And harmony, for a musician like Christine, is what it’s all about.

KATE ROWE