Amanda has a love of the outdoors and the elements, which is not surprising as she grew up on a farm in Dorset and spent a great deal of time outside. However, it was on a whirlwind trip, seemingly around the world, in September of 2016, that she first came to visit with us and to fulfill clinic hours by working in the outdoor gardens and the growing dome. Amanda has a high sense of responsibility and she took great care of the plants and soil, on that initial visit she worked with Max to prepare the upper garden for the fall garlic crop and directed sound at every level of preparation. She also worked in the growing dome learning how to use sound to work with the soil, seeds and new plants.
Born February 9th, 1976, true to her Aquarian nature, Amanda’s interests are broad and deep. As a child she loved to make and invent things and to be outside communing with the elements and taking part in many interests. “I participated in many physical activities, in multiple manifestations- swimming, dancing, gymnastics, cycling and many more. I also enjoyed baking things, growing things, looking after things and read voraciously. I questioned everything, gathered ideas from many cultures through history, delighting where they took myimagination, as was also the case with maps, esoteric teachings and all things considered ‘alternative’.”
Her never ending quest for knowledge led her to Oxford University where she studied Anthropology and Archaeology and she did an MA in English literature. Later in life she attended Goldsmiths University and studied Fine Art. More recently she has studied and gained certificates in Astrology from the Astrology University and the Nightlight Astrology school.
Today, Amanda is a one-to-one tutor and mentor across many subjects. She devises new pedagogies for each student keen to access what enables them to flourish intellectually and creatively. Additionally, she is a sculptor working across many different mediums and a practicing Astrologer. She is also at the early stages of building her Acutonics practice, although unsure of the shape it will take, there is no doubt it will become an increasing established modality and form of work with others and the land. She describes herself as a practitioner, engaged in multiple practices with a common thread.
- “There is a thread that runs through everything that I do. It is all relational — mainly one to one — working with people, places, materials, the planets, vibrations and the world at large - with the intention of opening up to ever greater ways of being with all that is to be felt, sensed and incorporated. To hold ever greater complexity and become ever more resourced, free from oppressive power structures —psychological baggage, social conditioning, political systems at large — to emancipate the mind, body and imagination.”
Amanda was drawn to Acutonics over a number of years, as a result of receiving several treatments that integrated the use of tuning forks. She found that she would get lost in the vibration of these integrated tuning forks treatments. “...and feeling that I became part of a larger throb of time/space/sound”. After experiencing this powerful effect several times, true to her nature, she began to investigate the possibility to expand her knowledge to incorporate the use of tuning forks.
- “I was charmed, driven to find out more about vibration and where I could possibly begin to work with them, after much research and many disappointing avenues for study I finally landed on the Acutonics website. I took my first classes in the UK with Joanie Solaini and then I made contact with Donna and Ellen and visited them in 2016 to work in a volunteer capacity, mainly on the land. The rest is history.”
Deeply drawn into the depth of our curriculum and the weaving together of the many streams of knowledge Amanda describes this feeling as a coming home.
- “It feels like coming home, this practice and the theory feels like old knowledge, a re-membering to that which I have always already known but has been clouded and overlooked through severing systems of mainstream social, political, cultural modalities. Indigenous to all yet buried through various acts of colonization. The poetic integration of the history of vibration in culture and healing, the interweave of planetary vibration — tonal/harmonic healing and its relation to consciousness, as well as myth and archetypes and how this is then communicated to the body/soma through the forks and other vibrational technologies is a thrilling combination of integrative medicine.”
In her work, Amanda weaves the use of the tuning forks into her astrological readings, and she also uses the tools on the land. Additionally, she uses the Acutonics Planetary Hand Chimes in group settings and rituals, and she takes the tuning forks everywhere. She even uses them with her tutoring students. Personally, Amanda describes that when she experiences the planetary tuning forks and the gongs it evokes a deep sense of undoing or unwinding.
- “There is a taut holding that is so very much a part of day-to-day life as I navigate the three dimensional realms. The tools open up the perspective and touch me back in, hook me up with that which I know/feel I am – a pulse that is in direct correlation and empathy with the throb of the cosmos. These vibrational technologies are that plug that reconnects me to an interwoven web of relationality with all of the living universe. The forks and all the other sound tools smooth out mynervous system, enabling it to hold and be with this knowing more viscerally and ontologically throughout daily life and not just on the therapeutic couch.”
Prior to her study of Acutonics Amanda studied a range of integrative health modalities including Shiatsu, Western and Eastern herbalism, Acupuncture theory, Yoga, Nutritional Medicine, Plant Medicine and Astrology. Many of these have become aspects of her day-to-day life and practice and one way or another they all inform her work with others and the world. She uses the tuning forks daily.
- “I integrate them with my Vedic meditation practice – which is vibrational, although a silent sound vibration. I use them in growing things, attending to plants and environments more generally. I am developing my approach to working with the sound tools. But I have experienced an ever deeper opening and release, a sense of touching into parts of oneself that are rarely accessed yet deeply known along with the grief and sadness around this severing. Overall there is a rich expansiveness somatically, imaginatively, and spiritually.”
Amanda’s broad interests have her examining the theoretical field of relationality within the Humanities and Philosophy for her Acutonics thesis.
- “Looking at the extensive thought around Decolonizing – the discourse, practice and demand for this at the level of our mind, body, energy, desire, Eros and relationality at large. Considering how Acutonics is one significant technology amongst others to rectify this severed somatic relationship, to reclaim our inheritance and sovereignty which is and always has been intra - relational, meshed and entangled with the ecological matrix of the cosmos.”
Amanda leads a rich and full life outside of the world of Acutonics. She is an avid reader and explorer, she engages in the front line of ideas in philosophy, the humanities and across many other fields. She loves to write, dance, listen to music, create art and dream. She also enjoys being with people to share ideas, food and music and yet equally loves to find time for quiet contemplation alone in wide open spirited places.
When asked what is next for her, Amanda provides a rich response offering a true sense of who she is and how fully she lives life. “I intend to deepen my knowledge of all of the things I have been studying, through intuition, research and personal investigation. My vision is to integrate and weave these multiple rich strands into my work at large and what I wish to bring into the world for others, for art and as the song and legacy of my life.”