‘It’s not too late’: Aspenite works to restore people’s natural connection through sound baths

When Megan DiSabatino moved to Manhattan, there was one tree down the street that she would go to and place her hands on.

“This one tree became a bit of a lifeline for me,” DiSabatino said of living in the city. “I could feel what was happening to my nervous system … the chaos and the pace of it all.”

But this type of disconnect wasn’t just happening to her, and it wasn’t just happening in New York City.

“A lot of us have been led down this path of disconnecting ourselves from our hearts and from the natural world,” she said. “Our world does seem only to be moving faster and faster.”

She even saw this in Aspen — a place that she had been raised, where she graduated from Aspen High School and eventually returned to from Manhattan when her daughter was 3 years old.

“Especially in Aspen, people are being separated and divided more and more, and there is less and less community,” DiSabatino observed. “I see where everything in our modern world has been systematically designed to keep us in our heads.”

But the symptoms of exhaustion, burnout and disconnect are something that she has found a way to begin to reverse, using the ancient techniques of forest bathing and sound healing to reconnect people with the landscape and themselves. After moving to Australia and being introduced to the practice — prior to New York — she has finally brought it home to share with those in the valley.

“It’s been incredible to combine my passions and my personal practices to now share them with people,” she said. “It brings me so much joy, and the timing feels really important.”

For her, sound healing allows individuals to get out of their analytical minds and back to the breath and heart of their bodies, what she calls “our raw essence.” From there, people are able to more deeply express themselves, be creative, heal and manifest.

“These things are very simple and available to all of us, especially here, but we have been distracted,” she said. “I’ve experienced it in myself and in so many different individuals — people come in, and they’re frazzled, they’re tired, they’re disconnected from themselves, they’re lonely. But just putting technology away, laying on the earth, maybe doing a little bit of movement, a little bit of breath and then dropping in, answers come. Resolutions come. Closure, healing, all of these really profound things happen when we give ourselves time and space, and some grace and kindness.”

She added, “It’s really turned into a mission of mine. I want to share this with as many people as I possibly can.”

DiSabatino offers the opportunity to explore this practice with Aspen Center for Environmental Studies at Hallam Lake and Toklat — where fully immersing the senses in the “magical settings,” as she called them, make the Aspen Idea of mind, body and spirit available for all.

“What Indigenous cultures know intuitively, as well as children and animals, they know the power of the natural world,” she added. “It’s incredible to me that we can go to either one of these sites, or countless parks or trails all around us, and reconnect.”

For Lillian Bell, Community Programs coordinator at ACES, sound healing and forest bathing are all about slowing down, giving individuals the space to notice their own feelings and their surroundings in a way that roots people back into the human-nature connection.

“At Toklat, surrounded by the sounds and smells of the aspen grove, you can’t help but feel that you’re entering a sacred space,” she shared. “The serenity of the Castle Creek Valley offers a break from our bustling world. Hallam Lake is equally as relaxing, with summer sound baths taking place at the edge of the lake itself. Ospreys and kingfishers add to the soundscape of singing bowls and chimes. While the settings are different, the outcome is similar — grounding participants in place and connecting them with the broader natural landscapes.”

Sessions begin with about half an hour of forest bathing practice before dropping into the full sound experience that lasts just under an hour. DiSabatino said she incorporates sounds into the journey that are inspired by what’s in nature: rattles and drums that can ground and center, chimes reminiscent of the breeze and the leaves, as well as Tibetan and crystal bowls.

“It’s this beautiful collaboration between the individual, the breath, the natural world and these incredible, powerful frequencies, vibrations and sounds that really culminate,” she said. “It’s truly transformational.”

So much of that transformation comes from the empowerment of feeling connected to the land — experiencing the value of clean water, plants, trees, animals and their intelligence, DiSabatino added.

“I strongly feel once that connection has been made and once that peace has been felt, we want more,” she said. “And the little ways we take that back into our lives and share it with family and friends, it feels really good. Once we feel that, I think then we want to protect the world and nature.”

This is a sentiment echoed by Bell, who stressed that the search for quietude and connection in nature is something intuitive to the self and to the community.

“We are part of the natural world — not just observers, recreationists or consumers,” she said. “Humans feel good when they connect with nature! We also feel good when we slow down, take some deep breaths and talk to one another. These programs offer opportunity for all of these things to happen.”

DiSabatino has been able to witness the way that reconnection through forest bathing and sound healing changes people firsthand, and noted it gives her hope for the future.

“I feel like there is so much hope and there is so much healing,” she said. “When we strip all these labels and all these ways that we’re being separated … humans are so beautiful and I still think so good-natured. I see it every day, every practice there is this desire to connect with each other and with nature, and sometimes we just don’t know how, but it’s so simple and so powerful. I still have so much hope for humanity, for Mother Earth. I strongly believe that it’s not too late.”

A sound bath and forest bathing session will take place at Toklat Wednesday, Sept. 16, from 5:15 to 6:45 p.m. Registration is required and available at aspennature.org/activity/sound-bath-forest-bathing-at-toklat.

For more information on DiSabatino and the public sound baths she offers, visit megandisabatino.com.