Healing with Sound
By Rob Burlinson
Sound therapy is a form of subtle energy medicine that uses the human voice and/or musical instruments to help put the human energy field and body back into balance and heal itself. Using sound for healing is ancient and reveals the sacred origins of what many of us now presume is purely for entertainment and call ‘music’. Shamans could use chanting, rattles and drums to heal people. The Aboriginal people of Australia used their didgeridoo as a healing tool to mend broken bones and illnesses of every kind. In Ancient Greece the Pythagorean mystery school had the flute and lyre as the primary healing instruments.
Sound is a vibration, the same as light, but just much slower and denser. In the Upanishads (the sacred Hindu text) it is said that the ‘Aum’ is the primordial sound from which the whole of the universe was created. Sound manifests, which is why it can be such a potent and transformational healing tool. If you stand in front of a speaker at a club you can immediately feel the sound vibrations moving through your body. Similarly a candle flame in front of a speaker will dance in time with the vibrations whilst an opera singer can shatter a glass with a particular pitch, by matching the frequency of her voice to that of the glass. In recent centuries in the West we have been re-discovering some of the power of sound.
In 1680, Robert Hooke, an English philosopher, found that when he spread flour on a glass plate and ran a violin bow along the edge of the plate, the flour would pattern itself into an oval shape. When he changed how he bowed, the flour would re-orient itself into different shapes. His work was developed by Ernst Chladni one-hundred years later who replaced the glass plate with a piece of metal covered in sand, using a bow along the side to create many different patterns due to the vibration and resonance of the sound created, demonstrating how sound creates form.
In the 1960’s Dr Hans Jenny came up with the term ‘cymatics’ to describe his own method of working with frequency generators and amplifiers with steel plates, upon which he used fine powder, as well as glycerine, gel and iron filings. He repeated experiments with different tones to create geometric shapes in the different mediums, such as the tones ‘ah’ and ‘ooh’. ‘Oh’ would create a perfect circle. Interestingly, when exposed to certain frequencies, the forms created would often be incredibly life like, resembling organs of the body, and living organisms. He also found lower frequency sounds produced simpler geometric shapes, whereas when using higher sound frequencies more complex patterns began to emerge, perhaps mirroring our own journey as we seek to awaken and return back to higher vibrations.
In 1973 Dorothy Retallack published her book ‘The Sound of Music and Plants’. This detailed her experiments working at the Colorado Women’s College in Denver. She played various kinds of music to plants over a period of time to see if there would be an effect on their growth. The outcome was startling. Plants that were exposed for a fortnight to rock music had distorted growth or died, whereas plants that were exposed to soothing classical music thrived and actually bent their stems towards the speakers. Interestingly, the plants did not like constant music or tones of any kind, and preferred time where there was also long breaks of silence between the music.
Also in the 1970s Fabien Maman, a jazz musician, noticed that certain musical keys seemed to have a much more positive and energising effect on his audiences. He began working with Helene Grimal, a senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris to try and uncover the effect of sound upon the cells of the human body, both healthy as well as malignant ones. They used a variety of instruments such as drums, guitar, gong, flutes, and a xylophone as well as the human voice. They played the notes of the musical scale to cancer cells within test tubes and yielded astounding results. They found that at a certain point in the scale the cancerous cells would ‘explode’, whereas the healthy cells would remain intact. Out of all the instruments used they found that the most powerful was that of the human voice itself. They began working with actual cancer patients to see what would happen. After teaching female volunteers with breast cancer how to tone the whole scale for a period of time over a month, one woman’s tumour completely disappeared, while another woman’s tumour shrunk significantly. Maman also did work to show how the organs and cells of the body seemed to respond to particular notes and sounds and potentially were in harmonics with each other. Perhaps our body plays a symphony; each part giving off a different vibration or tone, so that we only become ill when our personal music goes out of balance, when the organs and cells of our body become dis-harmonious with one another.
Masaru Emoto, in the late 1990‘s began some profound work taking samples of water crystals from tap water, natural springs, and rivers around the world, and examining them to compare any differences. He discovered that such things as pollution in rivers impacted the quality of the water crystals photographed. Part of his work included using sound, both played music, spoken word and prayer, to see what would happen to the water crystals. He found pieces of music, such as those by Mozart and Bach, as well as Korean and Celtic folk songs, had a positive effect on the water, producing distinctive numerous beautiful crystals. Heavy metal music however seemed to shatter the waters natural hexagonal structure. Popular Japanese chart music also seemed to produce unattractive looking crystals. He personally considered the most beautiful crystal he was able to photograph was that which had been produced after water had been blessed by a zen buddhist monk. With the larger proportion of the human body being made up of water (just like the Earth), it does lead to the question, given the sort of vibrations we are exposed to daily, what sort of crystals we ourselves would produce? And do we change these for the better through the use of healing sounds, thoughts, and feelings and with the use of such things as crystals and channelled energy?
There is much that we have forgotten of how to use sound for healing, and there is much knowledge waiting to be rediscovered. In the Bible sound was used to bring down the Walls of Jericho. Healing vowel sounds were used in rituals in Ancient Egypt. Esoteric sources say that sound was used to levitate the huge stones to create the pyramids of Egypt and to create stone circles around the world. If this seems hard to believe, it’s good to remember that what may be called ‘magic’ today is the science of tomorrow. In Switzerland ETH Zurich have used sound waves to levitate aqueous solutions and in China, using sound they have also levitated small insects. Modern medicine already uses ultra sound (high frequency sound waves) to pinpoint and then shatter kidney stones within the human body. There is probably much we are totally unaware of yet in terms of how to use sound in ways that may seem like science fiction.
Sound can have an immediate and powerful effect on the human body. After attending some training with the sound pioneer Jonathan Goldman, my own hearing (sadly temporarily!) expanded, so that I was able to hear frequencies of sound and harmonics in my environment that I had never heard before. In the same training I also participated in the creation of a healing temple of sound. Within a large group, we would take turns toning continuously, whilst others could be silent and just listen to the sounds. I found this created a very sacred and powerful healing space, and I had the feeling that in the past, in other civilistations we have had sacred temples of sound and light, where people would go to receive profound healings. Using sound is one of the ways in which we can access higher and altered states of consciousness safely.
What is particularly exciting for me is rediscovering how to combine crystals with sound for the purposes of healing. This feels a powerful and profound area of transformation which we are only beginning to rediscover. Recently, whilst working with some crystals to help deepen my knowledge of how to use sound for healing, I had a strong impression of how in the future we will look back and think how primitive our methods of travel and space travel were at our time in history, as we will by then be harnessing the power of sound as sonic propulsion that will transport us to the edges of our solar system and far beyond with the greatest of ease. Next time you sing along to Abba just be careful you don’t end up on Mars!
Sound is a vibration, the same as light, but just much slower and denser. In the Upanishads (the sacred Hindu text) it is said that the ‘Aum’ is the primordial sound from which the whole of the universe was created. Sound manifests, which is why it can be such a potent and transformational healing tool. If you stand in front of a speaker at a club you can immediately feel the sound vibrations moving through your body. Similarly a candle flame in front of a speaker will dance in time with the vibrations whilst an opera singer can shatter a glass with a particular pitch, by matching the frequency of her voice to that of the glass. In recent centuries in the West we have been re-discovering some of the power of sound.
In 1680, Robert Hooke, an English philosopher, found that when he spread flour on a glass plate and ran a violin bow along the edge of the plate, the flour would pattern itself into an oval shape. When he changed how he bowed, the flour would re-orient itself into different shapes. His work was developed by Ernst Chladni one-hundred years later who replaced the glass plate with a piece of metal covered in sand, using a bow along the side to create many different patterns due to the vibration and resonance of the sound created, demonstrating how sound creates form.
In the 1960’s Dr Hans Jenny came up with the term ‘cymatics’ to describe his own method of working with frequency generators and amplifiers with steel plates, upon which he used fine powder, as well as glycerine, gel and iron filings. He repeated experiments with different tones to create geometric shapes in the different mediums, such as the tones ‘ah’ and ‘ooh’. ‘Oh’ would create a perfect circle. Interestingly, when exposed to certain frequencies, the forms created would often be incredibly life like, resembling organs of the body, and living organisms. He also found lower frequency sounds produced simpler geometric shapes, whereas when using higher sound frequencies more complex patterns began to emerge, perhaps mirroring our own journey as we seek to awaken and return back to higher vibrations.
In 1973 Dorothy Retallack published her book ‘The Sound of Music and Plants’. This detailed her experiments working at the Colorado Women’s College in Denver. She played various kinds of music to plants over a period of time to see if there would be an effect on their growth. The outcome was startling. Plants that were exposed for a fortnight to rock music had distorted growth or died, whereas plants that were exposed to soothing classical music thrived and actually bent their stems towards the speakers. Interestingly, the plants did not like constant music or tones of any kind, and preferred time where there was also long breaks of silence between the music.
Also in the 1970s Fabien Maman, a jazz musician, noticed that certain musical keys seemed to have a much more positive and energising effect on his audiences. He began working with Helene Grimal, a senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris to try and uncover the effect of sound upon the cells of the human body, both healthy as well as malignant ones. They used a variety of instruments such as drums, guitar, gong, flutes, and a xylophone as well as the human voice. They played the notes of the musical scale to cancer cells within test tubes and yielded astounding results. They found that at a certain point in the scale the cancerous cells would ‘explode’, whereas the healthy cells would remain intact. Out of all the instruments used they found that the most powerful was that of the human voice itself. They began working with actual cancer patients to see what would happen. After teaching female volunteers with breast cancer how to tone the whole scale for a period of time over a month, one woman’s tumour completely disappeared, while another woman’s tumour shrunk significantly. Maman also did work to show how the organs and cells of the body seemed to respond to particular notes and sounds and potentially were in harmonics with each other. Perhaps our body plays a symphony; each part giving off a different vibration or tone, so that we only become ill when our personal music goes out of balance, when the organs and cells of our body become dis-harmonious with one another.
Masaru Emoto, in the late 1990‘s began some profound work taking samples of water crystals from tap water, natural springs, and rivers around the world, and examining them to compare any differences. He discovered that such things as pollution in rivers impacted the quality of the water crystals photographed. Part of his work included using sound, both played music, spoken word and prayer, to see what would happen to the water crystals. He found pieces of music, such as those by Mozart and Bach, as well as Korean and Celtic folk songs, had a positive effect on the water, producing distinctive numerous beautiful crystals. Heavy metal music however seemed to shatter the waters natural hexagonal structure. Popular Japanese chart music also seemed to produce unattractive looking crystals. He personally considered the most beautiful crystal he was able to photograph was that which had been produced after water had been blessed by a zen buddhist monk. With the larger proportion of the human body being made up of water (just like the Earth), it does lead to the question, given the sort of vibrations we are exposed to daily, what sort of crystals we ourselves would produce? And do we change these for the better through the use of healing sounds, thoughts, and feelings and with the use of such things as crystals and channelled energy?
There is much that we have forgotten of how to use sound for healing, and there is much knowledge waiting to be rediscovered. In the Bible sound was used to bring down the Walls of Jericho. Healing vowel sounds were used in rituals in Ancient Egypt. Esoteric sources say that sound was used to levitate the huge stones to create the pyramids of Egypt and to create stone circles around the world. If this seems hard to believe, it’s good to remember that what may be called ‘magic’ today is the science of tomorrow. In Switzerland ETH Zurich have used sound waves to levitate aqueous solutions and in China, using sound they have also levitated small insects. Modern medicine already uses ultra sound (high frequency sound waves) to pinpoint and then shatter kidney stones within the human body. There is probably much we are totally unaware of yet in terms of how to use sound in ways that may seem like science fiction.
Sound can have an immediate and powerful effect on the human body. After attending some training with the sound pioneer Jonathan Goldman, my own hearing (sadly temporarily!) expanded, so that I was able to hear frequencies of sound and harmonics in my environment that I had never heard before. In the same training I also participated in the creation of a healing temple of sound. Within a large group, we would take turns toning continuously, whilst others could be silent and just listen to the sounds. I found this created a very sacred and powerful healing space, and I had the feeling that in the past, in other civilistations we have had sacred temples of sound and light, where people would go to receive profound healings. Using sound is one of the ways in which we can access higher and altered states of consciousness safely.
What is particularly exciting for me is rediscovering how to combine crystals with sound for the purposes of healing. This feels a powerful and profound area of transformation which we are only beginning to rediscover. Recently, whilst working with some crystals to help deepen my knowledge of how to use sound for healing, I had a strong impression of how in the future we will look back and think how primitive our methods of travel and space travel were at our time in history, as we will by then be harnessing the power of sound as sonic propulsion that will transport us to the edges of our solar system and far beyond with the greatest of ease. Next time you sing along to Abba just be careful you don’t end up on Mars!