Sound Healing
Sound Healing Meditation
Sound meditation is an act of retaliation, a protest against the stimuli we intake through technology and other information. Everything has a vibration, that affects the vibration of the things around it. To intentionally generate healing vibrations (causing cells to move synergistically), is to promote a new energy that supports regrowth of cells and enables a new organization and understanding of oneself, enabling redirection of thought, patterns, habits and the potential to restructure brainwaves, immune system healing and blood flow.
“One study published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine found that an hourlong sound meditation helped people reduce tension, anger, fatigue, anxiety, and depression while increasing a sense of spiritual well-being. The sound meditation used a range of Tibetan singing bowls, crystal singing bowls, gongs, Ting-shas (tiny cymbals), dorges (bells), didgeridoos, and other small bells. The main instrument used was the singing bowls for 95% of the session. People who had never done sound meditation experienced significantly less tension and anxiety afterward, as well as those who had done it before.”(LINK)
Through simply humming, you are changing the molecular structure of your body and reinvigorating your cells, inviting your body to transfer from a sympathetic nervous system response, to parasympathetic, promoting healing and recovery. Sonic Rx. The simplicity of humming, sending sound waves through your body, enables cellular integration that also affects all life interacting and moving around us. As we carry calming energy, we affect all those surrounding us.
In a National Institute of Health study, sound healing is recognized as having potential with other integrative health practices to generate profound healing.
“Traditional Eastern medicine approaches perceive the individual in more wholistic terms, and thus, treatments are directed toward the whole self-system rather than merely a dysfunctional aspect of physiology. Similarly, the concepts of vibrational medicine and energy medicine have gained increased attention in recent decades and they also perceive the individual in this wholistic manner.12-16 Many of these approaches draw from ancient Eastern philosophies. The way in which the concepts have recently been applied may be characterized as novel and forward-thinking, including applying vibrational medicine to arenas such as regenerative medicine12 and psychosocial stress.17 These approaches are sorely needed in current society as more individuals display numerous symptoms of chronic stress.” (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7819493/ )
You are an ancient vehicle of sound. Gifting yourself your signature sound, created by only you, is a rebellious act of redirecting yourself from consuming chaotic noise/information, into towards a quantum level of healing in concert with your present state. This is a signature language your body needs to regulate healing IN THAT MOMENT. The tone will change, constantly, as your body and soul moves for different types of tones to regulate different healing patterns throughout your body. That vibration can only be created by your body/soul, not your mind. How different sound frequencies affect the body and mind vary. I tend to start with a middle tone, then move to a lower tone, when I find the frequency that feels attuned to my body’s needs. That lower tone sends a bigger wave through my body and resonates long after I finish making a sound. I feel it reverberating throughout by body, and after I sit in that vibration, I feel as though the dormant and blocked aspects of myself and body have been opened.
As you investigate tones, through humming, you familiarize yourself with the effects, and begin to fine tune yourself as your own instrument of healing. Your signature tones will change and require laying down new imprints where your body wants and needs to go with the tone, each time you evoke a vibration intentionally for healing, you send your body a message of trust, showing your body you are present, listening and available to work in synchronicity. Your body will continue to send receptive trusting messages as long as you’re aware and present. Building intrinsic trust is healing.
The Academy of Sound Healing offers an explanation of how sound works through the body to release healing mechanisms:“The oscillation, or resonance, of molecules, triggered by the sound vibrations cause alternating compression and relaxation of cells. It is, in effect, a form of massage at a cellular level deep within the tissue undergoing the treatment.”
Sound IS the world we live in, as molecules move constantly.
“The vibrational forces of sound are emitted from the movement or vibration of all matter. They manifest in a constant cacophony of sound waves, endlessly resonating in the universal sea of consciousness. These sounds are both audible and inaudible to the human senses. Regardless of our capacity to hear or feel sound waves, they manifest as cause and effect, not only to us as human beings but also to the wider world around us. Sound waves wash over us at every second of every minute, and hour of every day and continue to vibrate endlessly. The sound vibrations of the sound healing instruments penetrate deep into the tissue. This improves blood circulation and metabolism, regulates muscle tension and deeply stimulates the tissue. Moreover, regeneration and repair mechanisms are stimulated. Sound healing is both activating and relaxing – so it also has a refreshing effect.” (https://www.academyofsoundhealing.com/what-is-sound-healing.)
Ancient civilizations practiced sound healing and used sound in ceremonies, rituals and practices to affect how our brains function. Sound has been used to “influence people’s brainwave frequencies, enabling them to enter an altered state of consciousness, similar to very deep relaxation or meditation techniques.”
EEG studies showing brain activity when exposed to different sound waves show brain activity and response:
“EEG study examining singing bowls discovered a distinct change in delta brain waves–the brainwave state associated with deepest relaxation–utilizing singing bowls.59 The EEG is a promising device to study physiological changes in the brain due to singing bowl vibrations and its potential relaxation effect….It has been hypothesized that the human body has an energy field surrounding it.12,67 If this is the case, the vibrations of the instruments may be interacting with this biofield.” (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7819493/ )
As we continue to explore the effects of sound healing using a variety of tools, I’ve found one of the most effective and empowering is this integration of one’s personal sound vibration, using their own body as their tool for healing. In our own body, we can find the most intriguing possibilities for healing and converting harmful patterns and behavior immediately into healing mechanisms.
Here is a practice I developed that enables me to access more creativity and free tension from my body, using your own body as your healing tool. I practice this every morning:
Curate Space- 3 minutes
o Take whatever time you need to curate and modify your space to be a more receptive space that is dedicated to silence, stillness and healing.
o Sound
Create a cocoon like environment where the sounds are either regulated or modified through closing doors, playing water sounds or other soothing low volume noise cancelling sounds using your phone or sound devices.
o Light
Lower lighting my turning off room lights, lowering window coverings, closing doors, allows you to be more focused on your own energy.
o Smell
Lighting mild incense or palo santo to focus your smell, awaken olfactory senses and cancel other smells, brings your focus back to yourself.
o Touch
Create a comfortable soft seating space or lie down on soft comfortable places.
o Visual
If possible, eliminate any visual distractions, visual ‘noise’ at least in you immediate scope of view.
Silence- 3 minutes
o Take a few moments to sit in silence in your newly curated space. Focus your awareness on the information your senses and body, mind are absorbing and drawn to.
Make any adjustments to the components of information through sitting in awareness and new relationship in that space. Adjust your light, sound, texture and temperature accordingly.
Observe your breathing and position. With awareness in the subtlety of adjustments, shift into alignment with breath and position or shape that creates flow and less effort.
Be acutely aware of what shape and energy you found yourself in, without judgement or change. Notice where you sit how your bones, tissue, fascia receive you, hold you. Notice where your breath moves in your body as you inhale and release. How does your head rest on your shoulders. Is there a side that is working more than the other side?
o Offering
In this 3 minutes, receive your body with gratitude, trusting that your body welcomes your guidance, support, and possibly permission to release tension, narrative, or conflicts.
Ask yourself permission to let go of tension, of the narrative, of constrictions. Ask one more time for gentle release. You can come back to supporting any trauma later. For this moment, give yourself the option to release, allow your body a moment of reprieve, acknowledging the strength, resilience and endurance your body shares with you.
Give thanks to your body for showing up and being vulnerable, accessible and willing to explore healing.
Make this practice an offering to yourself, your signature healing that you and your body can return to and evolve in time.
Breathe- 3 minutes
o In stillness, breathe deep breaths 5 times, expanding your threshold each breath.
Explore the top of your breath and the base of the breath. At the base of each breath, I invite you to begin to explore your tone, through a long hum.
Expand your threshold at the top, expanding both diaphragm and chest, up to your throat. And hold for a second or two.
Release, and empty at the bottom of the breath. At the base of the breath, I invite you to make a vibrating sound, a hum, in a lower tone.
Each breath, explore a tone. At the base of each breath, find stillness.
o Push out any last iota of air, feeling your diaphragm contract, becoming very empty and still.
After 5 breaths with vibration, come back to stillness, calm, simple breath, no humming.
Vibration- 5 minutes
o Coming back to your humming, begin to explore a lower tone. Moving into the lower octaves, feel the different vibrations between tones.
Settling on one tone, breathe deeply, arriving at the top of your breath, start the vibration/hum, till your breath is out.
o Sit in stillness with a few breaths allowing that tone to permeate through the body.
Apply the same tone for five breaths and pauses.
As you begin to explore the vibration, allow the vibration to move through your body, opening up your body, each breath.
Witness- as long as necessary
o In this state of being, witness acutely what you sense, feel, and what has moved. Allow your exploration of your newly created vibration to open blocked passages within your body.
From your quiet state, observe and record. Stay with your stillness. Observe the places in your body where vibration travelled, opened blockages.
Observe the front of your body and visualize the vibration moving cells that are dormant. Now, observe the back of your body and your cells moving gently, and allow the vibration to travel to the back of your body, and the back of your neck and you integrate your whole body nicely vibration and breath.
o Now, write. What did you experience, sense, and feel, think.
First record what you senses, where your senses took you, what you observed through sensation and shifting your focus.
How is your body expressing this attention and opportunity to expand through vibrating tones.
Where has your vibration travelled?
What are the threads of messaging, sensation, patterns, that you’re sensing?
How do you want to return to this practice? What does it provide for you?
Is there a risk in retaining tension - is the tightness in your body necessary?
What if you could allow vibration to flow effortlessly through all fascia, tissue, and lymph in your body. What do you think might happen?
What is your body wanting to communicate to you?
o Offer this to yourself in gratitude. For your presence. For your willingness to be with your body.