What is Sound Therapy?

CHAPTER 6
from Take Two CDs and Call Me in the Morning
Suzanne Jonas, Ed.D.


SOUND AS THERAPY

Imagine yourselves out there in the universe. From all the heavenly bodies it is singing, speaking as it sings, singing as it speaks, and all your perception is a listening to this speech which is song, and the singing speech of the Cosmos...And whenever a planet in its course passes a constellation of the fixed stars, there bursts forth, not one single note, but a whole world of music.
Thus we have in the heavens of the fixes stars a wondrous Cosmic instrument of MUSIC. Rudolf Steiner

THE SOUND OF CREATION
The book of Genesis tells us that creation began when God spoke the words,"Let there be light," and the Gospel of John also says that sound is the author of all things: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....All things were made by him." Hundreds of years before Christianity the immortal words of the Hindu Vedas said: "In the beginning was Brahman with whom was Vak, or the Word, and the Word is Brahman."In Egypt, the ancients believed that Thoth spoke the world into life: he would name an object and bring it into life. And on the North American continent,the Hopi Indian legend says spider woman sang the song of creation over inanimate forms on earth and brought them to life.

The mystical traditions of Egypt, Rome, Greece, Tibet and India tell us that sound is the very fountfrom which our universe arose. It is responsible for creation, as well as sustaining and transforming all life and all matter. These traditions knew of the effects of sound, which was a highly refined science. All of the mused vocal sounds to activate energy in the body for healing. The Pythagorean School and Philosophy, which lasted over 800 years, taught that music was equal in importance to mathematics and, again, was the foundation of all things.

Likewise, the Jewish mystics known as Kabbalists taught that the Divine Word, the speech of God, creates and sustains both the heavens and the earth. They, too, believed that the various objects in our universe are different because a specific and unique combination of letters of sacred speech sustains each one.

THE POWER OF THE VOICE
In Africa, the Sangomas (Shamans in the Congo) heal the sick, bring on rain storms, ease the pain of childbirth, and calm the fury of raging animals with the utterance of a single word or phrase. There are also many stories of some of our native American medicine men, Rolling Thunder for one, who have used words and chant to bring about changes in weather and health, and to manifest objects. There are several Sound Healers today who are reviving ancient chants for the purposes of creating health and prosperity. Three of the most well known are: JonathanGoldman (www.healingsounds.com), Jeffery Thompson, Ph.D. (www.neuroacoustic.com),and Mitchell Gibson, M.D. (www.tybro.com). They use the power of the voice as a potent instrument for the restoration and maintenance of optimal health.Goldman, as well as some other sound healers, are able to direct their voice to different parts of a person's body to bring it back in tune. Also, like Dr. Gibson, he has recorded several ancient chants onto CDs. His Holy Harmony uses the ancient Hebrew words for God combined with tuning forks for a very beautiful and inspiring album. Dr. Gibson's CDs use ancient Hebrew chants to align a person to such things as prosperity, miracles, and healing. Dr.Thompson records a person's own voice and mixes it with specific tones that increase relaxation. Listening to this combination creates a mix of emotions such as love, caring, and safety and feelings of comfort and relaxation to assist in healing.

For centuries the early Christian church prohibited the use of musical instruments in the church. It was the belief that the human voice was the most perfect instrument for creating music. In Jonathan Goldman's book: Healing Sounds, he explores all of the vocal traditions on our planet from Tibetan overtone chanting where the voice is trained to produce more than one note at a time, to current toning and chanting used to rebalance the body. He relates many research findings that demonstrate the effect of using one's voice or having a sound healer's voice directed at you. These include beneficial changes in respiration, cranial bones, the brain, rate of flow of cerebral spinal fluid, and the pineal gland. Here is further demonstration of how sound can affect our body symphony. Over the years there has been some refinement of the types of sounds that are effective to use when toning. It appears that lower sounds influence lower parts of the body, as higher sounds influence the upper body. There also appears to be a direct relationship between specific vowels and different parts of the body. For instance, to decrease fatigue and increase energy, sit up straight, take a deep breath,and slowly sing a high note on the vowel 'aye' or 'eeee' and imagine sending it to your brain. Remember to sing with some energy! Do this for no more than 5 minutes. For relaxation: sit up straight, take a deep breath, and slowly sing a low note on the vowel sound “uh” or 'ah' and send it to your lower abdomen. Again, put some energy into your sound.

It is interesting to note that Tibetan and Christian monks who participate in lengthy daily chanting are very healthy. An interesting situation occurred at a Benedictine monastery in France shortly after the second Vatican Council. The monks had discontinued their daily practice of Gregorian chant and had become fatigued and depressed. Several recommendations of adding vitamins, meat and potatoes had no effect, even making some of the monks feel worse. Dr. Alfred Tomatis (www.tomatis.com), a French physician and hearing specialist, was consulted.He advised they reinstitute their daily 6-8 hours of chanting, and soon most were back in good health.

In the Tibetan chanting tradition, many of the monks create more than one note at a time, called overtone chanting.It appears that both the listener and the producer of this type of singing benefit greatly. Mark Ryder, Ph.D.. found decreases in heart rate, respiration and brain wave activity as well as a charging of the cortex of the brain.What this translates to is being able to relax and often go into very deep meditative states. For those of you interested in hearing overtone chanting, David Hykes, founder of the Harmonic Choir, has a very effective and interesting cd, Solar Winds. (www.harmonicworld.com)


THE PHYSICS OF SOUND
In the 21st century, we are proving what these ancient groups had known.The field of Quantum Physics is demonstrating that all of creation is composed of vibration which when lowered in frequency to our hearing range, is sound.Every thing is waves of energy or vibration, or inaudible sound. As a protective measure, our physical hearing is such that we are unable to hear most things vibrate - can you imagine what it would be like if you could! Instead, we have very sensitive microscopes so our eyes can see everything vibrating.As we peer into the microscope at the first layer we can see the molecules moving, some not much like in wood. But as we look further we see the protons,neutrons, and electrons vibrating, and inside the proton we see quarks dancing.

We are a walking symphony of sound: heartbeat, rushing blood, digestion,and vibrating cells all playing together to form you. Every thing has a resonant frequency or number of cycles per second that it vibrates. For instance,the resonant frequency of water might be 100 cycles per second. If the molecules dance faster or slower, the water changes its tune and becomes something different, in this case, steam or ice. The human heart has a certain resonant frequency, as does each muscle and vertebra, hormone, and cell salt. When any of these vibrate too fast or too slow, we become out of tune and might feel sick or discomfort.

The field of Cymatics (www.cymaticsource.com),pioneered by Swiss scientist Dr. Hans Jenny in the 1950's, is the science of how sound waves translate into physical patterns . He conducted experiments that directed simple pure tones into powders, pastes, and liquids. The sounds transformed the materials into patterns that are found throughout nature:crystals, chromosomes, cells, molecules, bone, tissue. His research demonstrated that each cell generates its own frequency and the nature of the frequency determines what the resulting structure will be, i.e. heart, ruby, pine needle,etc. And, growth is the result of the vibrations. Here was the scientific demonstration of the ancients' belief that all is composed of sound and sound can influence matter.

One of the ways the basic frequency of an object can be altered is through entrainment.In this process, the powerful rhythmic vibrations of one object will cause the less powerful vibrations of another object of similar frequency to lock in step and oscillate with the more powerful object. If all are started at approximately the same time, all will entrain their motions to the loudest clock, and will soon be tick-tocking together. The use of entrainment is not a new technique. Physician Walter Jane (1962) states that the ancient Egyptian and Greek civilizations were using these principles and techniques for healing in their temples.

Another way of changing a frequency is to match the resonant frequency of an object and implode it, break it up. An opera singer who sings a note that has the same frequency as a crystal wine glass creates a resonance that will soon shatter the glass, just as the construction industry uses sound to break up concrete. Another example can be found in modern medicine where ultrasound is used to break up kidney stones.

The therapeutic application of frequencies appears to have several advantages over music and traditional medicine. First, frequencies may be applied to specific areas of the body that need attention thereby eliminating the possibility of effecting surrounding or related body parts/processes.Second, the frequencies bypass all the personal and cultural biases of the patient. There is no problem with “liking” or “not liking” the selection. Third, the application of frequencies is controllable and the outcome measurable as a direct correlation. When a frequency is applied, there are definite physiological reactions such as change in heart rate, blood pressure, oxygenation,and change in the targeted body part. And fourth, treatment appears to be painless, with no negative side-effects if applied in a prescribed manner.