Emile Janse: Healing with Voice!

Cover Photo By Camille Elizabeth. Emile Janse pictured here with a Double Chamber (AKA ‘Drone’) Flute.

By Courtney Alex Aldor

When I first met Emile Janse, there was an aura about him. I met him at Lightning In A Bottle. He’d asked a question, to which none of us busy talkers responded, then stood there, listening, silent. I looked at him as we all chatted about a talk we’d just seen, noticing he kind of looked like an antenna. His hands were held in an antenna-like shape actually, but it was more that there was no air of expectation about him - his was a good example of just being. Eventually we answered him of course. But later, when I asked about his sound-healing practice, I wasn’t surprised when he shared that his favorite bit about it was how it teaches the art of listening. Especially that of listening in.

Talking to Emile, you can tell he is deeply in love with all sorts of healing with sound - from his work with one-on-one clients to group ‘performances’ all over the Bay, including at Grace Cathedral. He also does his work at hospitals, is planning to bring it into prisons, and he’s even busy working on a campaign to bring more of his sound healing to hospitals with some the best instruments around. You can check out his indiegogo here. And of course, he has some upcoming performances alongside Yin Yoga brought to you by the HeartBeat Collective at the super up-and-coming Oakland venue Church of Agape on June 7th. He is also doing another one in SF in partnership with the health and wellness brand Zenergy on June 23rd.

It was his love of Mongolian throat singing that took me. As a Tibetan practice, yes, I’d heard recorded sounds of monks murmuring those gorgeous bass-heavy tones, but when he split it into 3, to produce something that sounded like a gong coming from a human body, well I was almost stunned. It was like the sound of what really cool geometry looks like. And it hit my body and instantly re-arranged my energy too. I went from scattered to present, almost in an instant. As if someone had pitched a tuning fork right in my middle. 

And while I have experienced profound sound-healing before, I’ve never met anyone that could perform something like a 5 second reiki session with their voice like Emile can.  He showed me how to pitch my own voice and I burst into tears…of laughter, that is. He’s something like a human flute. But cooler. In fact, my words are escaping me as I write and I feel called to just make sound. And why? Because the sounds we make are our expression, each one of our signatures totally unique. Really, everyone can develop their vocal chords - it’s just like toning a muscle. To pitch them clearly, we find out more about ourselves. Just the same way no two people would write this post in the same way, no two people have the same sets of tones in their voice. By listening to ourselves, we get to know ourselves. By listening to others, we open to what’s possible.

And while there was so much cool information I was going to write about here, including that about his studies at the Globe Institute of Sound & Consciousness, really, you’ve just got to experience Emile and his art and his passion for sound for yourself.

To learn more about Emile Janse and find out how you can see him live, visit www.opentothesource.com.