The Amazing Power Of Sound Healing

Sound or music can have a healing effect on the body. In this blog post, you will learn more about sound healing and how it can improve your health. Discover the history of this treatment and how you use sound healing.

The Long History of Sound Healing

Music has moved people for thousands of years. In India, religions have used music since the earliest times. Pythagoras was the intellectual and spiritual godfather of sound medicine. He was a Greek philosopher and mathematician from about 580 to 500 B.C.E.

Pythagoras was the first person to use music as a healing technique. He began his discovery while listening to several blacksmiths at work.

Pythagoras noticed that some hammer blows sounded better to the ear than others. It inspired him over time to create the musical scales. 

He also noticed that some hammer blows sounded well together. Others sounded worse, which led him to develop new theories of harmony. Pythagoras was the first person to use music for physical and emotional healing. 

He believed music led to better health if used in the right way. Pythagoras called his method musical medicine. In the spring, he would sit in the middle of his disciples, who sang melodies and played his lyre. 

His followers sang specific chants in unison. At other times, his disciples also used music as medicine. There were melodies for anger, aggression, and all psychic disturbances. 

Pythagoras also discussed how sound functions with the universe. Each atom produces a particular sound due to its movement, rhythm, or vibration.

These sounds and vibrations form a universal harmony. Each element has its function and character and contributes to the whole.

Music has been part of religions for thousands of years.

Religions Have Always Used Music And Sound To Connect To The Divine

Religions have always used sound and music to connect to the divine. Our ancestors embraced sound as the essence of the life force. In every culture, the ancients told stories of sound and song. 

According to Hindu tradition, creation begins with the spoken word. The Vedic texts depict Prajapati as the creator of all beings, as he hatched from the cosmic egg. His words created the sky, the heavens, and the Earth.

North American native tribes believed sound and song were the wellspring of creation. The Athabascan tribes of western Canada believed in the god Asintmah. He wove songs into the Great Blanket of Earth, creating the world. 

According to the Hopis, Spider-Woman created all life forms on Earth, even humans. She breathed life into them by singing a Creation Song. For Native Americans, music is the breath of life. It is an intrinsic part of their spiritual practice. Music is a direct link with the mystical forces in nature. 

The Indigenous people of Australia's creation stories date back almost 150,000 years. Song lies at the heart of the Aboriginal creation myth.

Sages of all the great faiths used sound and song to connect to the infinite creative force.

Holy Men And Philosophers Used Mantras To Achieve A Deeper Spiritual Awareness

The Hindu tradition traces its origins to the Rig Veda. It's a collection of over one thousand hymns written in Sanskrit during the third-millennium B.C.E. 

A song is a sacred prescription. It calms the mind and senses to achieve a deeper spiritual awareness. Vedic philosophers and Hindu holy men used chants and simple, one-syllable sounds.

We now know them as mantras. They help us to reach a state of consciousness with the divine essence of the universe. 

Many of the Vedic mantras are still invoked today by millions of Hindus. Non-Hindu practitioners of yoga also use them. 

The ancient Indian holy men understood that the cosmos is an ocean of vibration. Practitioners of Mantra-Yoga use sonic vibrations to be one with the undivided self. 

The most basic and easily remembered mantras are the bija, or seed mantras. They can move us into our higher consciousness or essence. The sound of OM, the most sacred of the seed mantras, is still used today.

You can meditate by chanting OM, which contains all life's pulsations. A mantra is a stream of infinite vibrations of the universe.

Other traditions and disciplines have used sound to meditate.

Kabbalah And Sufis Examined The Body And Mind Effect Of Music

Kabbalah is a Jewish mystical tradition. Jewish mystics have long believed that every sound affects our bodies. Like the Vedic seers and shamans, they use hymns and chanting in their meditation. 

They also use visualization practices to achieve a state of calmness. It is a gateway to an altered state of consciousness. 

Like the Kabbalists, the Sufis also examined how sound and music affect the body and mind. One of their early meditative techniques was a period of sustained single-toned chanting. 

They then monitored their physiological responses. The Sufis were among the first to explore the mind-body connection between sound and music. 

They perceive the cosmos as a vast, vibrating medium. Sound is food for the soul. Music and chants can have a healing effect.

Modern research on music also shows how it improves our health.

Modern Research On Sound Healing

French physician Alfred Tomatis did revolutionary research in sound. In the late 1960s, many of the monks at the Benedictine monastery had a rare illness. They were unable to perform their routine tasks due to exhaustion. Doctors didn't know the cause of this mysterious fatigue. 

Tomatis went to the monastery to fix the problem. Seventy of the 90 monks were slumping in their cells. After talking to the monks, he discovered what he believed to be the source of the problem. 

The monastery quit its traditional Gregorian chants, which it performed for six to eight hours daily. Instead, it used its time for more meaningful pursuits. Tomatis said the chanting energized the monks and suggested they resume it. 

Within five months, the monks recovered and resumed their routine. The chanting provided spiritual and emotional nourishment to the monks. 

Everything in the universe is energy vibrating, including sound.

Sound Vibration Can Create Harmony Within Us

Everything in the universe consists of vibrations at different frequencies, including sound. If you take two sounds, the most dominant one will influence the other.

Two metronomes beating at different rhythms will synchronize. Pir Vilayat Khan, a renowned Sufi master, defined this phenomenon as entrainment. He wrote about how the voice can bring us into harmony with the universe. 

The seventeen-century Dutch scientist Christian Huygens observed that the pendulums of two clocks swung to the same rhythm. 

The more powerful vibrations of one object will make the other one vibrate in resonance. Humans also react in resonance with the vibrations and fluctuations in our surroundings. 

Illness manifests as disharmony within the body. Chanting can synchronize brain waves to achieve profound states of relaxation. Healing occurs when the body restores its regular vibrational frequency. 

Sound is vibration. We know that vibration touches every part of our physical being. Sound in its purest form can promote healing at the deepest levels of being.

How Music Can Heal Us

Vibration is a keyword when it comes to sound healing. All sounds consist of waves produced by the vibrations of material objects. For example, clapping your hands together creates a vibration. 

We hear them as soundwaves and frequencies. When you strum a guitar, the strings' vibration sends waves heard as frequencies, which travel through the air. 

When they reach our ears, they convert into electrical impulses in the brain. The brain then interprets them as sound. It's these specific frequencies that sound healers use in healing sessions. 

Specific frequencies help optimize the body's organs. They can also produce particular brainwaves and emotional states. Humans have an optimal frequency. It occurs when each of the cells in our body vibrates at the right frequency.

A healthy body resonates at a frequency of 62-72 MHz. MHz takes 1 'hz' and multiplies it by a million. When your frequency drops to 58 MHz, the disease starts. 

When our bodies and minds vibrate at a healthy level, we feel well inside and out. If we spend time with people who drain or bring us down, we lower our vibrational frequency. It leaves us more susceptible to illness or mood issues. 

Sound healing can help reharmonize and rebalance our bodies and emotions. Today, it's used in medicine to help reduce arthritis, menstrual, and postoperative pain. Even medical ultrasound uses vibrations, waves, and echoes to produce images.

Sound can reduce stress, which is one central point in diseases.

Sound Can Reduce Stress And Diseases 

Sound waves impact our physiological functioning. It happens with our voices, objects, or instruments in our environment. 

Sound is a form of energy. They influence neuropeptides and their cellular receptors. Sound and vibration are critical new tools for healing. 

The fight-or-flight response activates when there is a real threat. Under normal circumstances, our systems return to normal once the danger has passed.

Our heart rate slows, our blood pressure normalizes, and the musculoskeletal system relaxes. But the body can't tell the difference between actual and imagined situations. 

Our systems are thrown out of whack when we get stuck in the fight-or-flight response. Homeostasis is when the body returns to balance after an actual or perceived danger. Our bodies can only handle stress for a short burst of time. 

Physical stress passes when the stressful situation ends. But psychological stress can continue forever. When we experience stress for a long time, we become sick.

Sound waves entrain the human organism, causing it to vibrate and resonate. On one level, sonic entrainment may alter our energetic states. It can affect us emotionally and influence us on a cellular level. 

Entrainment can transform negative, repressed emotions that affect our physiology. There are interesting studies that show that music can improve our mental state.

The Heart Improves When You Listen To Calm Music

Modern medicine has only one serious use for sound: ultrasound. Every primary medical specialty uses it for detailed organ explorations.

But music can improve our health in more ways than we may believe. One significant way it can do that is by improving the heart.

Forty patients who had suffered recent heart attacks listened to relaxing music. The researchers assessed heart rate, respiratory rate, and anxiety.

There were significant reductions in all three measures. Music may be an effective way to reduce high levels of anxiety among heart patients. 

Other studies also show how music can improve our health.

Music Releases Natural Pain Killers

Cathy Guzzetta looked at people with heart attacks. Those exposed to music for two days had fewer complications than those who were not.

Another study looked at whether music could reduce stress hormones. Three groups of patients underwent a gastroscopy. The patients who listened to music had lower levels of stress-related hormones. 

A 2011 study showed that listening to music produces dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a “feel-good” brain chemical that plays a vital role in movement, memory, and reward behavior. This study revealed that listening to music can turn on healing hormones. 

There are various ways you can use music therapy to improve your health.

How To Use Sound Healing

Sound healing uses the mood-lifting properties of music to improve mental health. It's a goal-oriented intervention that may involve:

This form of treatment may be helpful for people with depression and anxiety. It may help improve the quality of life for people with physical health problems. 

Anyone can engage in sound healing. You don't need a background in music to experience its beneficial effects. Music therapy can be an active process where clients play a role in creating music.

Or it can be a passive one that involves listening or responding to music. Some therapists may use both approaches. 

There are various types of music therapy, including: 

Traditional Chinese medicine has used healing sounds and a method known as toning. Toning uses the voice and includes healing sounds such as:

Sound healing also works directly with the Chakras.

The Power Of Mantras To Balance Your Chakras

Chakras are energy wheels. They start from the tailbone and end above the crown of the head. Each wheel must be spinning to help the body vibrate at a healthy frequency. 

If one wheel is stuck or blocked, the body's frequency lowers, causing disharmony and disease. The seven chakra points correspond to specific organs and hormones within the body. 

Having at least one or two chakra points blocked or not functioning is common. Sound is one of the most potent ways to help balance the chakras. 

Each chakra has a corresponding mantra, known as a bija mantra or seed mantra. It helps bring the organ back to balance. 

Let's examine how you can use music and sound to improve your health.