Join me in congratulating Kristen Wade who recently completed all requirements to obtain the designation Certified Acutonics® Practitioner. She began her Acutonics journey in Port Townsend, WA in 2009 with Lynn Wedekind and completed Level II that year with Paul and Jude Ponton. In 2010, she completed Level III with Lynn. It was not until the pandemic in 2021, that Kirsten came back to Acutonics to complete certification. She completed all her course work with Mary Burke Kelly who wrote this about Kristen.
Sometimes time and space intersect, and a person comes into my classes that is meant to touch others via sound healing and Acutonics in a profound way. For me, that student was Kristen Wade. Kristen is able to take the Acutonics information and apply it in a practical way, but also has a musical genius and inspiration to think outside the box and use sound to heal not only one-on-one, but groups and masses with her talents. I am so honored to have played a small role in directing her on her path.
For her thesis, mentored by Joanie Solaini, Kristen created a beautiful original composition. Ode to Sedna, which is shared here:
Ode To Sedna
Please enjoy on a quality headset or speakers for the best listening experience.
Joanie Solaini wrote: There are so many things about Kristen’s thesis project that are inspiring—how she felt called to the subject, shifted from initial expectations to what actually worked for her, things revealed by the wave forms she was observing in putting it all together (because of the aforementioned shift in methodology), and not least is how Kristen’s composition using these frequencies makes us feel. So, the outcome of her project is very interesting in a feeling way, and intellectually and musically, but also the whole journey of how she got there in the end is interesting and inspiring.
After reading her thesis and listening to the original composition Mary wrote to share how moved she was with the composition.
I had tears in my eyes and sadness at the start of the composition, then as it progresses, there was a healing and a sense of hope. This is a huge contribution to Acutonics.
Donna and I were delighted to get to meet Kristen over Zoom and inspired by the incredible richness of her composition, and the documentation of her thesis process. Big congratulations to Kristen on her huge accomplishments. – Ellen Franklin, August 2022.
Kristen shares her journey with you below.
My original family roots in the United States go back 8 generations in the area of Chico, California, where I was born in 1965. Chico boasts a very large city park that spans roughly 11 miles through the center of the town, with a creek running right through the middle of it. The park is central to the town, and was also central to my childhood and youth, with long summer days spent swimming, riding bikes and spending time beneath the oak trees.
Living in Puerto Rico for 2 years was a great experience in my early adulthood, followed by a move to Washington State where I have lived ever since. Beautiful Port Townsend, WA has been home for this past 22 years, a place that is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, evergreen trees, and mountains. I have a tight knit family unit that lives here as well, which incudes my grandson who was born in December 2019, just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Creativity and the urge to “make things” have carved a path straight through the center of my life since very early childhood. At age 5, I discovered my grandma’s sewing drawer, and that turned into a lifelong love of textiles and sewing. I’m a jeweler and create original designs that are inspired by the natural world, texturing silver with the leaves of plants that I grow in my ever-expanding flower garden.
Music made itself known to me very early as well, and I have played the violin since age 9. I was classically trained, played in the orchestra through school and beyond, all the while enjoying a parallel world of bluegrass and eventually Irish traditional music upon reaching my teenage years. That genre took hold and has never let go. I’ve studied with many Irish fiddlers who are masters in their field, over a period of 20+ years, and will continue to study the nuances of Irish music my entire life. For 18 years I hosted a Traditional Irish session in one of Port Townsend’s local pubs, and from what I understand it was the longest running session in WA State. That session moved out of the pub due to Covid-19, but we’ve carried on playing music, meeting weekly outdoors, under the warmth of large patio heaters during the winter!
A strong love of books and learning, along with the ability to be organized have also been very important components of my life. This combination of traits isn’t always present in creative types, and I feel fortunate to have both the creativity and “organizational gene” paired together. Professionally it manifested in studying Library Sciences in college and working in libraries for many years. In addition to working in federal, city and county libraries, I created an elementary school library from scratch for a new multi-age classroom program that was being implemented in our area. Summer library programs, outreach reading programs in the local schools, and teaching some of the very first internet classes to library patrons were all interesting facets of the job.
Eventually, all my library skills were applied to managing two alternative medical clinics and have ultimately led to self-employment as a jeweler and violin teacher, with private students these past 18 years.
My journey with Acutonics began in 2008 with a healing journey, which is so often the case for those of us who discover and are drawn to this modality. During the time that I was managing one of our local alternative medical clinics, one of the benefits was to have a session with each of the practitioners every month. We had a naturopathic doctor, 3 acupuncturists, numerous massage therapists, and a pharmacy that included high quality supplements and Chinese herbs. Acupuncture was always at the top of the list of things that helped me the most, and I seriously considered attending Acupuncture school at Bastyr in Seattle. However, logistically the distance was too great, and I w100ould be away from my family five days a week for at least two years. So, that dream was put on hold, but it turned out that the Universe had a different plan for me.
As chance would have it, there was an Acutonics practitioner and faculty member here in Port Townsend at that time, Lynn Wedekind. She started talking to me about a healing modality that combined acupuncture points with sound waves. I signed up for a Level 1 class with her, and from the first second of being introduced to Acutonics tuning forks I intuitively knew their importance. Being a musician for the whole of my life, I resonated with them immediately, literally, and also with their foundation being based in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It was a perfect fit for me!
Between the years of 2008 – 2010 I took the levels 1 – 3 classes, studying in person with Lynn Wedekind, and Jude and Paul Ponton in Seattle. At that time, I purchased all the Acutonics tuning forks available, making an investment in the forks with some inheritance that I had received. I also bought a good number of really nice singing bowls from Lynn that were handpicked for their tone and pitch. This past year I’ve added the Fibonacci forks, the asteroid goddesses, Hygeia, and I recently purchased a Venus gong. My clients have responded really well to Acutonics, and I have found this methodology to be incredibly effective for people and animals on numerous levels, physical and otherwise. I look forward to many years of using these special tools to help others.
My studies were waylaid for a while when an elderly woman ran a stop sign. Recovery from the ensuing car accident took some time, years went by, and life continued to move along on its path while I taught violin lessons and created jewelry for a local downtown gallery. When Covid-19 hit, my town went into full lockdown along with the rest of the world. The gallery closed its doors, and I began teaching violin lessons on Zoom. After a few months and an improvement in the weather, I moved the violin lessons onto my covered backyard patio, in person, where they’ve remained this past 2½ years. But the interesting thing is that the pandemic created a pause in an otherwise very busy life, and it was during this pause that I was able to deeply reflect and make a solid decision about where I was headed, and what I really wanted to pursue. This is what led me back to my Acutonics training. It was time to either dive in fully, or let it go, and I chose to dive in fully. With that aim, I took a year long sabbatical from the gallery, and found an excellent teacher in Mary Burke-Kelly. She was organized, thorough, and very generous with her knowledge of Acutonics and the ins and outs of running a thriving practice. During my clinical hours, I also had the pleasure of working with Judy Bernard, Carmen Cicotti, and Joanie Solaini who was a wonderful thesis advisor. Friends were made along the way, and it’s been a rich, fulfilling journey so far.
As of July 2022, I’ve finished all my required Acutonics courses, clinic hours, thesis and have reached my goal of becoming a Certified Acutonics® Practitioner. Currently, I’m in the process of setting up my clinical practice and provide both in person and distance Acutonics sessions.
My thesis project ended up being very “outside the box”, but typical of my creative nature, and after discussing the idea with Ellen Franklin and Donna Carey, I got the green light to move forward with the project. In a nutshell, the Level IX Sedna Superconductor class was basically life altering for me, and an idea that I jotted down in my notebook part way through the class ended up becoming an original musical composition of my own making called “Ode to Sedna”. I wrote the piece in Sedna’s frequency of C natural, and once it was composed, I then played and recorded each note of the music with the Acutonics tuning forks on one track, and my violin on a separate track, creating a duet between the two. It was a very time consuming but extremely rewarding process, I learned so much along the way, and I’m happy with the end result.
My hope is that bringing Sedna forward in a musical way will be useful to the Acutonics community, and that this composition will find its way into the hands of teachers, practitioners and interns who can play it during their Sedna classes, Acutonics sessions and more. Perhaps this music will give us one more way in which to receive Sedna’s messages.
Please find a link below to listen to “Ode to Sedna”. As you listen, the lower tones you hear are the Acutonics® tuning forks, and the higher notes are the accompanying violin track. If you have an interest in reading the accompanying thesis paper that chronicles the process of creating “Ode to Sedna”, I’d be happy to share it with you. I can be reached at: kristensweetpea@gmail.com