In an energetic based reality, sound vibration becomes an important source of manipulating our personal energy levels. Music lovers of all ages instinctually know its healing properties and use it indirectly for that purpose on a regular basis. But this is just the tip of ice-berg when it comes to what sound can do for our health.
In their book, Decoding the Human Biofield, Peter Fraser and Harry Massey, founders of NES Health, explain that their research shows that the heart is much more than a simple pump and that what it provides is a control mechanism for distributing energy and information to the body. And, a key way that it accomplishes this is through sound energy:
How might the heart work as an imprinter of information? Every time your heart beats, it creates strong pressure waves and phonons (a quantum of vibrational energy in the acoustic vibrations of a crystal lattice) within its chambers. Your heart produces dozens, if not hundred, of different frequencies, each of which is capable of carrying a different type of information, although research into this area is still in its infancy, so not much is known about this encoding process. The phonons may imprint information onto the lipids in your blood, which then are carried throughout the body. Information imprinted into fats in the bloodstream may act as a kind of body-wide memory storage and retrieval system. In addition phonons stream through your blood plasma, carrying additional information from the central nervous system to the hemoglobin, which also carries oxygen throughout the body.
The heart can then be considered a musical instrument of sorts whose notes are providing critical information to the rest of the body. In fact, the more notes it can play the better:
We know from recent conventional research that the pattern of your heartbeats can be a predictor of the overall state of your health. Whereas once it was thought that a healthy heart kept a regular, consistent beat pattern, medical professionals now understand that just the opposite is true: the more variable your heartbeat frequencies, the healthier you tend to be…each type of beat encodes particular types of information into the blood (or tissue such as connective tissue) for transmission to the trillions of cells throughout the body…The patterns of phonons generated by the body’s organs and physiological processes can be considered the quantum music of the body.
This sound based information transmission is critical to the health of the body through regulation of cellular activity. So if the heart is performing this function internally, could external sounds that we absorb from our ears and in fact from all over our bodies (we are energetic beings and so can be affected by any type of energy vibration) affect our health as well? Psychopharmacologist Candace Pert found the answer to be yes and has discovered that any structured sound can activate receptors on cells just as a biochemical marker does:
Music, which is patterned vibration, can bypass the ligand and directly resonate those cell receptors, interacting like a peptide or drug, or an emotion. The vibrational frequency of the notes turns on the receptors, setting in motion all kinds of cellular activities. That’s how music can heal, interacting directly with your molecules of emotion to charge you with energy, get your juices flowing, and make you feel good. These molecules are not only vibrating to cause bodywide changes, but they are ‘hearing’ each other through the psychosomatic (mind-body) network of cellular communication. You can see that we don’t just hear with our ears, but we ‘hear’ with every receptor on every cell in our body mind. We’re literally alive with the sound of music!
The implication is that sound energy is critical to every aspect of your cellular function. And in a world full of sound (and noise), the type, quality, and quantity of sounds you are consuming has a strong impact on your overall health and well being. The type of music we listen to (and the associated sound quality level – no low-res mp3 files please), the ambient noise we are exposed to in our environment, the sound content of other media (violent video games, negative movies, and abrasive television programs), and the negative communication of people in our lives (as well as the sound quality and content of our own vocal communication) can all deliver sound frequencies into our body that lower our physical and mental health.
Conversely, feeding ourselves harmonious, soothing, and up-lifting sound frequencies can boost our cellular functioning, improve our health and heal core physical and mental functioning. There is a reason people feel much better after taking quiet walks in the woods with only the natural sounds of the forrest to keep them company or spending time listening to beautiful and soothing music.
The Healing Power of Sound
But NES Health has also noted that you can also use sound vibration even more powerfully as ancient cultures have known for thousands of years. The body’s various organs and cavities act as resonant structures that can produce, tune, and amplify sound (phonon) waves:
Almost all the major, and even the minor, organs of the body form cavities. That is they are roughly oval or tubular, hollowed or spongy structures. We know that cavities can attract energy and store it and that they can act as tuned resonators for that energy, setting up electrostatic fields and facilitating the information exchange that takes place in the Quantum Electrodynamic Field. Whereas the physical body and its metabolism are fueled via various processes such as the carbohydrate and sugar cycle, the citric acid cycle (Krebs), and so on, the bioenergetic body is fueled by various processes involving energy and information exchange within and around the cavities. For example, organs acting as resonant cavities can produce, tune, and amplify sound (phonon) waves. The yogis of Eastern traditions, from wandering Hindu ascetics to formally trained Tibetan monks, use sound and vibration to effect real physical changes. The yogic breathing practice pranayama and the Tibetan chanting and breathing practice of tummo both can produce heat (and energy) in the body.
By using mantras, chanting, and breath vibrations, these ancient traditions knew that creating energy flowing properly through the body is critical for proper health.
There is a powerful mystery within the repetition of sacred words and sounds, for as the repetition occurs, the intention behind the sound intensifies, thus increasing its potency. Sound crystallizes intention. This belief has been practiced for centuries by Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Catholic Mystics, and Zoroastrian Parsee, who have repeated within sacred sanctuaries chants, mantras, prayers, or single words about God’s powerful nature, often thousands of times a day. This intensity of action re-creates the purity of the thought at the center of the world; as the intention sounds, a powerful possibility is brought into creation. When the resonance of the intention occurs again and again it literally relives its original purpose, and thus the word or chant becomes alive with the voice of spirit. “In the beginning was the Word” has always been a phrase that awakens this promise; it is a Christian mantra for the power of sound. Just as light creates vision, which reveals what we perceive, sound moves that vision; it vibrates form or matter and changes its relationship with the seen and unseen energies of mind and body, so that sound allows us to see spirit. – from The Alchemy of Voice by Stewart Pearce
Brain Researcher, Psychotherapist, Shaman, and Sound Healer Tom Kenyon has based his decades long work on understanding the impact of sound on the functionality of the brain. Specifically, how it affects the right brain’s more creative, intuitive, and spiritual functioning just as mystics have believed for thousands of year:
Research studies conducted on the neurological effects of sound have shown that the human brain responds to pure tone in highly specific ways. PET Scans, which measure glucose consumption at the cellular level, show that pure sound or music (without words) stimulate an increase in cellular activity in the right hemisphere. Although both cerebral hemispheres of the brain process many different kinds of information, a simple division of tasking can be made. While there are unique differences between the brains of individual humans, generally speaking, the left hemisphere processes language and logic. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, does not “comprehend” language as such. However the right hemisphere processes spatial information, paradox, novelty and non-verbal information in ways the left hemisphere is incapable of. While our ability to understand and create language are vital components of our human experience, there are other valuable aspects of our intelligence that are not generally recognized by our culture as having intrinsic value. The irony here, is that history is full of instances where scientific breakthroughs occurred when scientists engaged right hemispheric abilities to “see” situations and opportunities in novel ways. – from his Tom Kenyon’s article, “The Effects of Sound on Your Innate Genius”
Tom’s work clearly points to the right brain / creativity boosting effects of (instrumental, non-verbal) music. Be sure to check out his website which includes many free downloads of sound healing meditation tracks he has recorded with his unique three octave range voice. His music is a powerful tool to reach higher states of consciousness. He also has extensive information on his investigations into the workings of the brain in response to sound and music.
Sound Science
Another sound healing researcher has attempted to quantify sound healing and systematically use it in a clinical setting. Sharry Edwards is pioneering a field known as BioAcoustic Biology. Through profiling someone’s voice, Ms. Edwards can assess their state of health:
Voice profiling proposes the idea that the body requires the presence of a full range of harmonious frequencies working cooperatively. Consider the body as a musical instrument. When even one note is out of tune, the result is often discordant. Tune the instrument and the sound again becomes harmonious. Thought the entrainment (synchronization) of the vagus nerve with the vocal chords, a direct message pathway from the vocal cords and the brain seems apparent. The sounds of the voice therefore, can be seen as representations of the parasympathetic nervous system. Together the sympathetic and parasympathetic service branches monitor and manage body functions.
Once Ms. Edwards measures a person’s voice frequency characteristics and analyzes the signature with proprietary algorithms that she has developed, she is then able to identify the deficient frequencies in the body and possible associated health issues. A sound treatment plan to provide the missing frequencies to the individual is then created:
From the preliminary research it appears that sound presentation (to the body) can synchronize brain-wave frequencies. In turn, these frequencies act as a support to the body until the body can maintain the required frequencies independently. The sensory input of sound (via voice, music, noise, rhythms) has a demonstrated influence on the form and function of the body. Science dictates that the lowest common denominator of all structure, the atom, is energy – measured as frequency. Therefore, from our beliefs to our physical reality, frequency is the basis of our universe. When we learn the governing patterns of each person’s individual frequency signatures, we will be able to interpret and have dominion over all aspects of our mechanical and biochemical conditions and likely, our emotional issues.
Ms. Edward’s claims her work has shown that treating people with specific sound frequencies, which she determines the individual is lacking, allows her to achieve efficacy for the following specific illnesses: bone and muscle concerns such as stress, strain, strength, and trauma; ADD, Macular Degeneration, infertility and pregnancy issues; PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, Parkinson’s, toxin exposure; autism, gout; metabolic disorders; arrhythmia and pre-vaccination risk factors; Epstein-Barr and Chlamydia Pneumonia exposure and identification.
Read her excellent white paper – Breaking the Sound Barriers of Disease: BioAcoustic Biology as Viable Component of Integrative Medical Diagnostics and Treatment and learn more about her work at www.soundhealthoptions.com
In general, sound is a powerful energetic force that we can use to shape and heal our physical reality. At a minimum, pay attention to how different sounds and music affect your moods, emotions, and health. Eliminate the negative ones and consume the positive ones more often. Happy Phonons make for a Happy Body…
~Jay Kshatri
www.ThinkSmarterWorld.com
Resources for Further Exploration:
- Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational Sound Therapy by Eileen Day McKusick
- The (re)-Discovery of the Human Energy Field
- How Yogic Breathing Changes Mind and Body
