What exactly is Sound Healing?
Sound Healing is an effective way of improving our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being by being immersed in different combinations of continuous sound frequencies and intervals using very particular instruments and voices.
Did you know that it has been proven by a growing body of scientific research, that different sound healing frequencies can treat many ailments, ranging from anxiety and depression, all the way through to chronic pain and beyond?
Sound Therapy has been found to help:
● Lower blood pressure
● Reduce the stress response and the many symptoms of chronic stress, including heart, endocrine, and digestive disorders.
● Sleep
● Reduce pain
● Promote cell renewal in recovery from physical injury or illness
● Support the immune systems
● Support times of change and upheaval
● Promote creativity, inspiration, focus and clarity
● Bereavement
● Headaches
● Mood regulation
5 Ways Sound Healing Can Help You
So how does sound healing actually work?
Sound vibrations affect us on a physical, emotional, mental and, often, spiritual level. In fact, we are neurologically wired up to respond to sound in order to survive and so instinctively react to it. For example, we are moved emotionally by music, we jump to alertness with sudden sounds and fall asleep to the gentle, repetitive rhythms and the sound of a car or a train’s engine. This is something very interesting known as ‘entrainment’ and discovered as long ago as 1665 by a Dutch scientist, Christian Huygens. More recently, Itzhak Bentov illustrates this phenomenon in his book ‘Stalking the Wild Pendulum’ about consciousness, showing that if a number of grandfather clocks are hung on a wall with pendulums all swinging at different rates, they will all be swinging at the same speed within a few hours!
In a similar way, during sound baths the speed of our heartbeat and brain waves often change near certain drum rhythms and frequencies. This means that specific sounds can help us drop into a meditative, Theta state of consciousness just before sleep, in which our natural self-healing systems are activated.
Acoustic physic researchers are now able to show what alternative and eastern medicine has believed, since ancient times; that sound waves have great powers to nourish and heal. For example, John Stuart Reid (2019, Can music influence the longevity of human blood cells?” ) observed that blood cells stay healthy and live longer when exposed to certain sound frequencies. After being exposed to live sounds, blood samples contained a greater number of healthy, live cells than the control samples. The rhythmic pulses of sound vibrations pump and press oxygen through the blood cell membranes and stimulate the release of nitric oxide which helps our muscles relax and is part of our natural cell renewal and healing process.
We are sound sensitive beings with every organ, every bone, every cell in the body vibrating with its own particular resonant frequency. Each frequency is thought to have a different effect on the body. For example, low frequencies can be beneficial for pain relief, while high frequencies can be helpful for anxiety and depression. The human body is made up of about 70% water and is therefore, a very good conductor of sound. In addition, our bones and skeleton are crystalline structures that resonate particularly well with crystal singing bowls and tuning forks.
When bowls and tuning forks are placed on the bones they can not only nourish them and increase bone density, but also give a feeling of being massaged from the inside out. Tuning forks at specific frequencies, when placed either side of the ears or on the body itself along meridian lines, on some acupuncture points or the Vagus nerve, can significantly help settle the nervous system, reduce pain, improve circulation, and promote overall well being. When one organ in the body is struggling, it is like being out of tune which can affect the whole body. So sound healing is about returning the body to harmony and balance like tuning an orchestra.
The Science Of Sound Healing: The Autonomic Nervous System
What actually happens in a sound therapy session?
