The Spirit Level
The Spirit Level
The Spirit Level Podcast episode #12
Join Mel for another episode. After last week's special episode, things are back to normal this week....well almost. Mel invites listeners to check the video on The Spirit Level Facebook page to see evidence of spirit on camera. This took place shortly after Mel's interview with Nicole De Haas. (Time stamp 3:32, right hand side of the screen a white object floats from bottom to top).
(02:20 - 04:46) In CRYSTAL CORNER, the featured crystal this week is the imperial JADE.
(04:58 - 07:08) Our listener question this week comes from Char Ellen Rose from Lincolnshire, who describes feeling the presence of somebody whilst she was sleeping. Mel offers up a possible explanation.
(08:08 - 18:34) Mel's guest this week is Maria Atherley, Sound Therapist. In this the first part of a 2 part interview , Maria explains how her life changed completely after attending a retreat on the island of Ibiza, and how her practice of Kundalini Yoga was the springboard to her spiritual awakening.
Maria explains how she then got into sound therapy and explains what a 'sound bath' is and how this therapy affects people both in a physiological way, but also has effect on the brain's wave patterns.
Maria's contact details -:
Website -: https://mariaatherley.com/
Facebook -: https://www.facebook.com/mariaatherleysoundtherapy/
(18:45 - 22:04) In this week's HOUSEHOLD HOCUS POCUS, Mel takes at look at ROSEMARY, and some surprising uses and benefits of this versatile herb.
(22:14 - 24:04) In TIME FOR TAROT this week, the featured card is The WHEEL OF FORTUNE.
As ever, a big thank you to all of you out there for your continuing support and messages.
Please rate and review us if you can, and don't forget to visit the website for details of how to book a reading with Mel, enroll on one of the courses on offer, to browse the online shop, for crystals, specialist crystal packs, power bracelet and scented candles, or just to get in touch, which you can do via a number of ways, including via the link below, which is free to use, no download required, and you may well feature on the show if you do.
https://www.speakpipe.com/thespiritlevel
In a heads up to next week's show -:
CRYSTAL CORNER features KUNZITE
TIME FOR TAROT features THE JUSTICE CARD
HOUSEHOLD HOCUS POCUS features BAY LEAF
There will be some more listener questions, and there is also the second part of Mel's interview with Sound Therapist Maria Atherley.
Thanks for listening and love and light to you all.
TRANSCRIPT – THE SPIRIT LEVEL EPISODE #12
INTRODUCTION
00:00 - Hello everyone, join me a small medium at large as we explore the world of spirits, energy, tarot, mediumship, psychic abilities, Angels, Oracles, paranormal activity and basically anything downright spooky.
If any, some, or all of those things interest you, then you've come to the right place, my friends.
I'm Melanie Mahmood and welcome to The Spirit Level Podcast.
00:29 - Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Spirit Level podcast. I hope you're all well and we're back to our usual formats this week after our special episode last week with Nicole De Haas, which I hope you enjoyed.
Did you manage to catch the ORB that we managed to record on the little segment that I did?
On The Spirit Level, after I had spoken to Nicole, because I was so excited about having spoken to her there, I did a little bit of a recording and put it up on the spirit level and it wasn't until afterwards that we saw that there is quite a clear ORB that goes flying up past my head and up towards the ceiling. So, a nice validation from Spirit for me that I was doing the right kind of work and that they were pleased with me. So, if you want to have a look at that, it's still up on the Spirit Level Facebook Group. If you look at the time stamp, which is 3 minutes 32 to 3 minutes 33, you'll see it on the right hand side, so that was really exciting. It's been a really good week.
COMING UP
01:32 - This week we have part one of a very interesting interview with a lady called Maria Atherley all about the healing energy and capability of sound. So it's really, really fascinating about vibration and sound, so that's part one. In Crystal Corner, we're having a look at the Imperial Jade. In Time for Tarot, it's the Wheel of Fortune and this week in household hocus pocus will look at the benefits medicinal and magical of Rosemary.
Right, and as I said, we've got a guest interview this week with Maria Atherley. So let's get on with it.
CRYSTAL CORNER
02:23 - So welcome to today's episode of Crystal Corner and today we're going to talk about Jade, which is Aluminum silicate. And as you probably aware, Jade has been recognized and cherished as a precious stone for millennia and not just by the Chinese, but also Central America. It's stronger than steel. Jade's been used ornamentally and as a tool and is widely regarded as a stone which confers luck, health, and spiritual well-being to the wearer. It ranges in color from white through all the shades of green onto lavender, and there's even a source of red Jade in Burma. But it depends on what other elements are present when the Jade is being produced in the depths of the Earth. Jade’s always been a very strong protective vibrational stone and it's been used in religious ceremonies worldwide. Again, like I said for millennia. But spiritually wise, it's thought to promote physical longevity, give protection and strength both physically and spiritually, and gives vitality to the general wearer.
Physically, It's a bit of an all rounder. It's thought to promote and support fertility and childbirth, help the spleen, cellular and skeletal systems but a little bit of a warning about purchasing Jade.
Sometimes some of the Jade that is produced is actually Nephrite that's been dyed or it's plastic, but you can usually spot this, in several ways. First and foremost, if it's a fully uniform color all round, then that should be ringing the bells that it's not probably proper Jade. Also there's a physical difference to the feel, so Nephrite feels quite oily and it's warm to the touch, where as Jade is really cool and cold to the touch when you first get hold of it, and it's also got a soapy kind of feeling to it rather than oily. So, if you are looking at purchasing some, I really would advise you to physically go and see some specimens. Don't buy stuff over the Internet, coz what you might be getting is not necessarily what it's saying it is, so that's Jade for you.
Join me next time when we talk about Kunzite.
LISTENER’S QUESTION
04:50 – We’ve got a really interesting listeners question this week, so I'm going to hand you straight over to the beloved
Mr M, who's going to tell me what it is?
Thank you Mel. Hello everybody, the question this week is from Char Ellen Rose from Lincolnshire. It's quite a lengthy question so I'll try and do my best with this Char.
But in essence what she's saying is that one afternoon, she was having a little nap as we do in these Covid times.
I think it's quite nice to have a little bijou kipette and just as she was dropping off, she suddenly became aware of a man kissing her forehead. It was so surreal and I know I've seen spiritual things in my life. I have never had physical touch.
The sensation as he kissed me was amazing. It was pure love, quite a romantic love. I felt desire, I guess you'd say when he kissed me and then he disappeared as quickly as he came. T he feeling I was left with was lovely and I had a great nap. I have no idea what this means or what it was. I've never lost a partner and I'm very much single at the moment.
Thank you for your help and I hope you can tell me what this means.
06:10 – Wow, wow, well my first thoughts, my darling are that you've had just a lovely, lovely, spiritual contact with some of your guides or one of your guides. And I know that you say you haven't lost a partner, but you haven't lost a partner in this lifetime, so it could be that this is just somebody popping in from a previous lifetime as well, but that's how I feel when I've been visited by a loved one or by somebody who's connected to me in spirit.
Whether it's a guide or whether it's, you know, a relative it’s that absolute sense of peace, that overwhelming sense of love, which is absolutely divine and lucky you, lucky you. You're obviously being looked after and loved and I would take that and run with it. It's a really, really nice little question, so I hope that's has answered that for you and I hope you have many of those encounters to come.
Thank you Mel, thank you Char for your question.
If you'd like to get in touch with us to ask us a question or indeed just to get in touch to rate and review our show, here are the ways you can do so.
07:20 - Thank you to everyone who's submitted a question. There are a number of ways you can get in touch with us. You can get in touch with us via email. Our address is thespiritlevel22@gmail.com. On Facebook on Group search for The Spirit Level. On Twitter, search for thespiritlevel.co.uk. Our Twitter handle is @ the spirit levelu, which is a capitalU. On Instagram search for Melanie Mahmoud and in addition there are a number of resources for you to download and access on our website. Totally free of charge, at www.thespiritlevel.co.uk, we look forward to hearing from you.
GUEST INTERVIEW – MARIA ATHERLEY
08:08 - Well today I'm very excited to introduce you to a new friend of mine. We made a connection through a mutual friend and I just love how the universe does that sometimes and puts interesting and positive people in your path to learn from, and Maria has got such an interesting story and it starts with human resources and ends up well, well , I'll let you tell your amazing story Maria so welcome Maria Atherley of Maria Atherley Sound Therapy.
It's good to be here.
(Mel) 08:42 - Maria, your story is really interesting and it's really inspirational because of the amount of change that happens within it and the things that you've had to overcome, would you, would you mind and please share with us how you took off on your spiritual journey.
(Maria) Whoa, well it's interesting because you sent me the questions in advance, and I did spend some time thinking about them. It wasn't just a quick, I'll just wing it completely, even though I spend most of my life winging it, that's what it feels like anyway. But on reflection, and I, I do believe that my whole life has been a spiritual journey because I think the spiritual journey is a journey of service or being in service, and I think it starts for most of us of being in service to others.
And then once we realize what it really means, and we start to prioritize our self and our own spiritual wellbeing and daily practice and ritual, then it becomes that one to one connection with source energy and that becomes a need to do that. It's a requirement, once you make that step so I've always been in service I believe. I actually started in hospitality did a hotel management degree, back in the 90s and then I went to Leeds Polytechnic yeah, but by the time I finished it was a University knew?
(Mel) Leeds Polly bless it.
(Maria) So then I graduated and I went to work in a small hotel group, actually. And then I got into, fell into HR. There was no HR Department in the hotel that I worked in and the general manager said, do you fancy setting it up and going back to University so they sponsored my postgraduate qualifications. Went to Sheffield Hallam, studied for two years part time and then set that up and then I stayed in HR, moving out of hospitality until really, until last year, to be fair, but I quit working for other people in 2015. I went self-employed and I set up my own HR consultancy. And I spent the best part of a year and a half building up a new client base from scratch. And then in late 2016, I went to Ibiza on a retreat and that was the real, real beginning of my spiritual awakening, shall we say.
(Mel) Was it like a yoga retreat or a spiritual retreat? What kind of thing was it?
(Maria) Actually, It was with the gym that I was a member of and it was their first abroad retreat. And here's serendipity. It was the last 1000 pounds of my divorce money that I had left.
(Mel) Well used.
(Maria) But I spent it on me, so there's so there's a lesson an with obviously support of my now husband John and looking after the children, I went off toddle off to Ibiza for a week to find myself.
(Mel ) And you did.
(Maria) I certainly did. It was more about exercise nutrition and then on the program was morning yoga. Now I've been practicing yoga for yeah way too many years. I probably missed 10 years. If I told you how many years I've been practicing, but then I had what can only be described in what I now know to be is a Kundalini awakening.
(Mel) OK.
(Maria) While I was in Ibiza. So I had that sematic, physical cellular release of stuck energy that was in my body and that just happened to be grief that came out. Because I'd lost my sister-in-law four years prior. She died very suddenly and then what ensued after that was the breakup of the 21 year relationship. Mutually agreeable and then separation and divorce from my son’s dad and then all of the ramifications of life that go with that and…
(Mel) So it sounds like it was a release of the floodgates then.
(Maria) Most definitely opening the floodgates for all sorts of magical things with me being open to, I think that's what it was. It felt like opening myself up to all the possibilities that I never really knew where there were available.
(Mel) 13:42 - So how did you get into what you're doing now with the sound therapy coz people will not know it's not, it's not a common thing. People know about yoga. They will not know about this, the sound therapy treatments and stuff and work that's being done on the energetic level. So if you could explain what you're doing and how you got into that and what the benefits are.
(Maria) 14:02- Yeah. Of course, so there are threads connected to Kundalini yoga, which is the yoga that I did. My initial teacher training in because it's a very spiritual practice and a lot of the work that we do is with the voice because we chant a lot of mantra in Kundalini yoga and I knew that that connection with chanting was a very, very deep one. So, I felt the power of the voice and sound energy in Kundalini. They call it NAAD energy NAAD.
The power of the NAAD and uhm I went on to open a wellbeing space in 2018 with a good friend of mine and we started hosting lots of different events and building a timetable of classes, yoga, meditation, Pilates. And I stumbled across a wonderful guy called Craig Edington of Soul Shine life, who then went on to open up the sound therapy company and he's based in the York area and I went to a sound bath at a mind body Spirit event in Leeds and experienced it, and it just blew my head off and it was a real small sample as well. It was only like a 20 minute taster session. We stayed in touch. I invited him to come and be like a guest teacher and do some workshops and start holding sound baths for our clients. And it wasn't long before I'd signed up for his first foundation certificate in Sound Therapy.
(Mel) 15:45 - OK, so. OK. So what did you feel when you had that first experience ? What did it feel like and what was the response like physically and spiritually what would somebody expect if they came to have a sound bath?
(Maria) 16:01 - OK, so sound works in two main ways. It works on physiological level and it works on a brain wave level. So physiologically, so in the body you might feel tingles. You might feel pressure points or even pain, sometimes around places in the body where you might have had previous trauma, such as bone breaks, or if you've had an operation and you have a scar. Sound works in a very intuitive way on a cellular level, so it will do something different for each person in the room. So when I hold space sound bath now there are no two, the same experiences had in that same room, even though they're all experiencing the same instruments in the same order and the whole variety of sound that I play with all the different instruments that I have, and then the next time they come, it will be a different experience again.
(Mel) 17:05 - That's really interesting, so it's very particular then, it's very individual to the person experiencing it.
(Maria) Absolutely.
(Mel) So you mentioned instruments, what instruments would you use?
(Maria) 17:18 - Oh, so this is where I get my geek on. I've got two at the moment. I've got to say at the moment because it's always changing. I've got two gongs. I’ve got a big CHAU gong and I have a Sun gong which is beautiful. It's got lots of different circles in it. And I have seven Tibetan hand beaten singing bowls. I've got 3 crystal bowls, quartz crystal singing bowls. I have a selection of shakers and rattles. I work with a shamanic drum. I use my voice. I also have a tongue drum which is beautiful. It's like a hand pan, If you heard hand pan music yeah and I also have chimes as well. KOSHI wind chimes I use in my rattles and bells, so I'll use TINGSHA bells as well. Which is the I think you use it actually in some of your music, yeah?
(Mel) 18:26 -
I do yes. That's where we leave the interview with Maria for this week. Join us next week for Part 2.
HOUSEHOLD HOCUS POCUS
18:45 - Welcome to household hocus pocus. So today we're going to talk about Rosemary, which is not just for you roast lamb. It's a really, really powerful herb. Not just magically, but medicinally as well. So generally Rosemary is very cleansing. It's got natural antibacterial properties, it's rich in antioxidants and anti inflammatory. It's highly rich in vitamin E, so it's kind of like our version, the UK version of Tea Tree. Tea Tree is Australian but this is kind of like our version in our country and where it comes from it in our history.
It's all about energy and empowerment and just growing Rosemary in little pots in the house will give that vibe to the whole house. Medicinally it's known as a cognitive stimulant so it boosts brain function and memory and it also because of the richness of the vitamin E, boosts your immune system. So it's about alertness. It improves your mood and it's been shown in studies to lower the blood sugar. So especially for my fellow energy Lightworkers, here's a little recipe for a psychic energy tea.
20:07 - So it's a replenishment tea when you've been doing a lot of psychic and energy work. Look, Rosemary is absolutely brilliant for this, so if you're particularly physically exhausted from doing this kind of work, infuse some boiling water on some branches, or you know, some leaves of Rosemary, so leave it to steep like a tea. Add some lemon and some peppermint because it doesn't taste particularly nice and put some honey in to sweeten it. And if you drink that tea it will replenish you psychically, it will replenish your brain and your aura and it will give you that boost. So, also if you want to add to that, you can make a bath with it, so the same kind of thing. So put the Rosemary leaves in the bath and some fresh if possible, but if you haven't bought fresh then you can use dried but fresh is better. Put some lemon balm and some spearmint in there.
And you can do this with essential oils as well, if that's all you've got and have a nice soaking bath and it will restore your energy for whatever you're going to be doing next.
21:14 - So the other and the last thing about Rosemary that you need to know is that it's very, very protective. So, if I'm looking or I'm walking about, say for example I'm out in our village. if I look at some of the gardens where the older houses are, if I see Rosemary growing near the front door or near to the front gate, I know somebody who knows what they were doing about herbs used to live there. It's really old. It's really traditional. It’s used to protect the home. We've got it at our house. There is Rosemary at both sides of our door, so it's very, very protective. So, there we are. That's Rosemary. I hope you enjoyed that, and that's it for household hocus pocus this week.
TIME FOR TAROT
22:14 - So it's time to continue our foray into the mysteries of the Tarot, so here's time for tarot and on this episode, we're going to talk about the Wheel of Fortune, which is card number 10 in the Major Arcana, and it is literally what you see on the card, so it's a revolving wheel which represents the wheel of life. Each corner of the card we see 4 winged creatures sitting upon clouds and these represent the four elements of the Minor Arcana.
So, the common aspect to most interpretations of this card within a reading is to introduce an element of change in whatever the querent's life or situation, they've come to the table with, so it could be a change in station position or fortune. So rich become poor, poor become rich. But there's an element of chance, there is an element of the universe being in control of this.
So, in an upright position it means changes. It means chance, destiny, luck, opportunity, success and winning, and in the reverse, it means the exact opposite, so disappointment, misfortune, unforeseen setbacks, a bit of bad luck. But again, it's, it's in both hands of destiny, it's the universe, it's not something that the querent, or who you're reading for can have direct control of.
So the element is fire again. So Aries Leo, Sagittarius, they're particularly involved in this card or in this reading and have particular relevance to the energy of it. So that is the Wheel of Fortune next episode we will be meeting Justice.
CLOSING
24:13 - Well, that's it for this episode folks. Join us next week when CRYSTAL CORNER we will be looking at KUNZITE.
In TIME FOR TAROT we're looking at the JUSTICE card.
In HOUSEHOLD HOCUS POCUS we will be looking at the magical and medicinal uses for BAY LEAVES and we have the second part of the interview with sound therapist Maria Atherley.
There will be another listener’s question as well and a competition for you to enter.
So a big thank you to BUZZSPROUT for hosting us as per usual. Thanks to the folks at AUPHONICS & AUDCITY for their technical help.
A big thank you to Maria Atherley for part one of the interview, Part 2 next week. To my producer and beloved husband, Mr M for his help and support.
A massive thank you to you listeners, wherever you may be for your continuing support and messages. Big shout out to you.
Please subscribe and review our podcast. Your feedback will help us improve massively. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Castbox or via your usual broadcast provider.
Please visit the website www.spiritlevel.co.uk you can book a personal reading with me and enrol on one of the courses or browse the online CRYSTAL CORNER STORE. Or you can just get in touch with us, which would be lovely. So, until next time look after each other love and light to you all.