Eight Healing Techniques With Sound

The term ‘healing’ promotes numerous virtues for one’s self: deep knowledge, self-comprehension and reconciliation. These are some of the methods to achieve it using a natural medicine: sound.

Pythagoras said that the music of the spheres (or of the cosmos) was a harmony perceived by our ears from the moment we are born. His opinion was that we are so accustomed to it in life that we confuse it with silence.

A philosopher, mathematician and doctor, he was one of the first people to study music according to arithmetic. Under the domination of his monochord, an instrument with one string, he established that the sound of the cosmos is capable of stimulating, curing and reconfiguring the mind. In his school in Crotona, it is said, he composed some pieces to cure certain physical and spiritual maladies, and he even used them to induce mental states linked to sleeping.

Playing a little with the hermeneutics of Pythagorean philosophy, we could imagine that the music of the spheres is a metaphor for balance: a mental and spiritual harmony that should be extracted from the saturation of stimuli that reality causes.

From watching that dance between external stimuli and an internal balance – the latter factor that dictates the full health of a person – Pythagoras concluded that music could also be medicine. Sound is a vibration that an organism can feel independently of whether the ear perceives it or not.

Both in the primary philosophy as well as in the present day, sound frequencies are translated as a restructuring order of the gears of the universe (and that of its living beings). There exist numerous techniques for curing us through it, and its benefits have been scientifically proven. The methods of sound therapy and music therapy, founded on the principle of resonance, show that a weak, dissonant or unhealthy vibration can be modified or re-equilibrated to produce one that is more intense and harmonious. And with this procedure one can also learn to choose the sounds that need to resonate in our bodies.

1. Healing with singing bowls

   Singing bowls emit the sound of a vacuum. (or of the universe). They have the capacity to re-equilibrate an energetic field. In meditation they are used to exercise a kind of sonic massage on the body. There are two types of bowl for healing: those that are made with around seven different metals by Tibetan lamas (it is believed that some of the more genuine ones are made with minerals from meteorites found in the Himalayas), and those that are made of pure quartz. Both types, upon being struck, produce a strong sound that rings out like a sharp reverberation in the air and water in our bodies. As well as producing a feeling of relaxation and revitalizing us, the bells’ vibration also help to synchronize the frequencies within an organism, and are therefore of great use in the treatment of illnesses relating to mental imbalance (anxiety, stress, depression, insomnia), for alleviating physical inflammation and reinforcing the immune system.
    

2. Sonic Acupuncture

   Sonic acupuncture is a therapy that is more than 3,000 years old. It obeys the traditional method, except that, instead of inserting needles in specific energy meridians in the body, tuning forks are used. The resonance of these metallic instruments is very powerful, similar to that of the Tibetan bowls, and their sound therefore travels very easily through the water that is contained in the human body. Once the tuning fork has been struck, its vibrations touch muscles, bones, tissue and even cells, and in this way it is possible to heal organs and treat emotional illnesses.
    

3. Binaural Sounds

   We owe our knowledge of binaural sounds to the physicist who was the precursor of climatology, Heinrich Wilhelm Dove. In his studies on the influence of electromagnetic fields on vegetation he discovered that certain sounds had a notable influence on brain waves. Binaural tones have also been used to produce different states of perception, generating effects similar to those of a psychedelic drug, but to a lesser extent. These vary according to the frequency and can induce relaxation, sleepiness, concentration, creativity, the suppression of pain and also lucid dreams:

   *Beta: 12 – 40 Hz / concentration, anxious thoughts
   *Alpha: 8 – 12 Hz / relaxation, hypnosis, stimulation of the immune system
   *Theta: 4 – 8 Hz / creativity, light sleep, meditation
   *Delta: 0 – 4 Hz / healing, deep sleep, memory retention

   This link contains some binaural sounds.
    

4. Multidimensional Music

   A method based on the powers of healing induced by the body itself, using infrasound, sounds and ultrasound as detonators. The former are of low frequency, inferior to the sound that the human ear is capable of perceiving. In nature they are generated by storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and meteors, and they can also be provoked artificially. Ultrasound frequencies lie above the aural spectrum. Animals such as dolphins and bats are capable of producing them for orientation.

   Multidimensional music is part of a system of healing called holosonic therapy, in which a mixture of the three spectrums of frequencies are used, and which was discovered by Jacotte Chollet in his eleven years of studies with synthesizers and their psychokinetic effects on the human brain. Synthesizers and some digital recording devices are able to emit three types of sound. According to intercellular electromagnetic biocommunication studies, multidimensional sounds create a peculiar interaction among cells, as if they were a kind of neurotransmitter. Their function is that of re-equilibrating the “electric powers,” an effect similar to that produced by acupuncture in certain meridians.
    

5. Psychogeometric Music

   Given that humans are influenced by a sacred psychogeometry emerges to analyze the mind using mathematical principles. Music composed under this premise can oscillate between using electronic or ethnic instruments and the mixture of mantras and voices in different languages as long as they contain the elements of proportionality, meaning, and fractality, among other sacred mathematical virtues that, through sonic vibration, work to develop interaction between a person and their inner self.

   Perhaps an example of psychogeometric music are classical compositions by authors such as Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner, who at some point in their careers used the section aurea to compose their works.
    

6. Shamanism

   It is known that the high levels of awareness that a shaman can achieve during a ceremony are often induced by competitive sounds created by drums, maracas, wind instruments and some prayers. The magical rites of witch doctors and shamans that use sound frequencies reveal the “secret sound,” a vibration with which the body and spirit of the patient respond to in a self-healing way. On the other hand, the shamanic chant, hand in hand with the playing of instruments, is indispensable for communication with the non-living spirits that help the patient with a physical illness, and in the search for and obtaining of their real desires, or for facing mundane maladies.
    

7. Healing with the Voice

   Plato himself tells us in The Republic that each character in life represents a rhythm and each accent a tone, and which produce effects, either good or bad, according to our virtues. The human voice is perhaps the best example of this allegory, as through the sonic language is transmitted, perhaps, the essence of our virtues.

   There are numerous methods for healing with the voice but without a doubt the most important is song. An ancestral healing technique is so-called harmonics, in which a singer produces two or more frequencies simultaneously with their voice. Pythagoras placed special emphasis on those songs and with the help of his monochord he was able to confabulate that a sound is made up of multiple frequencies, imperceptible to the human ear but charged with hundreds of effects. One of the most well known is the Buddhist Vedic.

   In meditation, mantras are often used, which are another kind of song. A series of ‘seed syllables’ that use repetition of their resonance to heal. The most well known is the Buddhist six syllables:

   Om Mani Padme Hum
    

8. Taoist technique of six healing sounds (Liu Zi Jue)

   Created by Dr. Sun Si Miao, a Chinese doctor and alchemist, and author of the 30-volume Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold for Every Emergency, in which he compiles treatments with acupuncture, herbs, amulets, physical exercise and his indescribable technique of Six Healing Sounds. In this book, six frequencies can be discerned in pinyin that are pronounced at the same time as the depth of breathing is controlled:

   Xu, He, Hu, Si, Chui, Xi.

   Each one of these sounds can reset and reinforce the Qi of different organs of the body and replace negative emotions through its resonance.