The Power of Intention: How Focused Awareness Shapes Healing

When I first started going to retreats and began my sound therapy training, people would talk about the importance of setting an intention.

It sounded simple enough.

Choose a focus. Hold it in your awareness.

Let it guide your healing journey.

But for me?

It felt like trying to catch smoke.

The Struggle with Intention

My mind never sits still.

Never has.

I would sit there, trying to pick a word or a theme to focus on…

only for my back to start aching, or my mind to drift to a conversation I’d had earlier with a partner, a friend, a family member.

Replaying it.

Re-examining it.

Re-feeling it.

(If overthinking were an Olympic sport, I’d have had a medal years ago.)

It wasn't just distraction—it was how my mind worked.

And for a long time, I thought intention was just another word designed to torment me.

Because my “superpower” wasn’t single-pointed focus.

It was seeing every possibility, every emotion, all at once.

Understanding Myself Changed Everything

When I later discovered I was autistic and had ADHD, so much clicked into place.

No wonder my mind hopped tracks faster than I could anchor it.

No wonder staying with one thought felt impossible.

The truth is—my mind isn’t broken.

It’s wired for multiple realities at once.

And that doesn’t make intention impossible.

It just means I have to approach it differently.

Now, I’m not so hard on myself when my focus wavers.

I know that intention isn’t about perfect stillness.

It’s about bringing something into your awareness—even if just for a moment—and choosing to return to it, again and again.

So What Is Intention, Really?

At its heart, intention is focused awareness with purpose.

It’s not about locking your mind into a single thought and never letting it go.

It’s about lighting a tiny flame inside you—an invitation, a direction, a living vibration.

When you set an intention, you’re not forcing an outcome.

You’re tuning your whole being toward a possibility.

Your attention is the dial.Your intention is the frequency you broadcast.

And your body, your mind, and your energy field all listen.

The Science of Intention

• In the brain: Focused thought reshapes neural pathways and alters brainwaves.

• In the body: Intention can trigger hormonal shifts, physical relaxation, and even healing responses.

• In energy fields: Experiments in quantum physics hint that consciousness affects matter itself.

• In water and sound: Masaru Emoto’s experiments showed how focused emotion (intention) shaped beautiful water crystals.

Since we are mostly water, and deeply vibrational beings,it makes sense that intention—when combined with sound—becomes a powerful tool for healing.

Intention in Sound Healing: Where Everything Changes

For a long time, I struggled to focus my intention during meditation or stillness.

But during my sound therapy training, something unexpected happened.

When I began to play—the gong, the handpan, the Himalayan bowls—something shifted.

The noise in my mind didn’t vanish…

It transformed.

As the vibrations moved through my body, the part of me that always felt fractured, scattered, overwhelmed—came into focus.

It was as if the sound itself built a bridge over the chaos, giving my intention a clear path to travel.

When I play now, something takes over.

A stillness inside me, that’s always been hard to reach, steps forward.In that moment, I can focus on healing.

I can channel energy.

I can hold space for others without battling my own mind.

Sound gives my broken, noisy brain a rhythm to follow.

And in doing so, it allows my intention—pure, powerful, and whole—to shine through.

It doesn’t feel like forcing.It feels like flowing.

Let’s Leave You With This

If you struggle to focus during meditation…

If your mind jumps from memory to memory…

If you think you’re failing at intention—

You’re not.

You’re human.

You might even be wired to experience life more widely.

Intention isn’t about perfect concentration.

It’s about gentle return.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Each time you remember your intention,you strengthen the signal.

And slowly, you shape your reality—

Not by force.

But by resonance.