Sound healing restores balance and harmony to the body in a gentle and natural way using intention for healing, voice, music and sound. Healing vibrations repair flow, in the energy field, and restores our natural frequency. The gentle combination of sound, silence and holding allows remembering, deeply held in cellular consciousness, to rise in us. The rhythms of reflection bring us back to who we truly are.
Everything is energy- atoms vibrating at different frequencies. We appear to be solid but we are mostly space filled with energy. If you were condensed down to just the matter in you, you would be a speck of dust – but very heavy. All the 9 billion people on the planet would condense into a sugar cube. Nikola Tesla said, “ If you wish to understand the Universe think of energy, frequency and vibration. “
Ancient and modern knowledge agrees that there are energy gateways where energy comes into and flows out of the body, commonly called chakras. Just like the body needs food the body needs a flow of energy. There is an energy field around us, made up of our subtle bodies which can be observed. For one hundred years people have been photographing the etheric energy field using Kirlian photography. Today technology allows us to video and photograph the energy field. The easiest to see are the less fine bodies, closest to the physical, the etheric and the emotional body. Most people have a sense of their energy field and can sense other peoples. This sense is underdeveloped in most modern peoples but as evidence encourages people to have confidence in this sense, it grows stronger.
As those who astral travel in their dreams will know, intention moves matter in the astral realms. It is less clear in the murky physical plane but is still the force that gives direction to action. Where energy is finer there is no delay between cause and effect. Intention creates a shape, of the energy, we will share in a sound healing session. We intend that the session will be for the highest good and this creates a safe holding space energetically and psychologically. The client hears the intention, and along with a warm, welcoming demeanour of the practitioner, this lets them know that this is a safe space. Safety is a key feature of a healing space. When people feel safe, their flight, fight or freeze response relaxes into play mode. Psychological safety zones are scarce in many people’s lives – a place where people truly listen and allow someone to be themselves. Empathetic listening goes so much deeper than hearing the words that someone is saying, it is tuning into them with one’s whole being, completely present in the moment. There is a great hunger, in the rushing world, for these moments of non-judgemental acceptance. Letting the client know that they can be whoever they are, witnessing their truth in that moment, validating their journey, starts the process of healing. The heart opens just a little, and receptivity to the process begins to grow. This is a delicate plant at times and needs some key qualities to thrive. A physical space that is aesthetically pleasing helps, but it essential that it is calm, gentle and free of distractions. It is important to let the client know what to expect. They may hold back on relaxing if they are unsure of what will happen next. The client needs to be physically comfortable. The instructions say ask people three times if they are comfortable. I interpret this to mean, be really sure, that the client is comfortable and every aspect of their comfort has been considered. The process of relaxing begins with the heart, offering deep listening, loving kindness and warmth. Next the mind is given what it needs, information on the structure of the session, what is going to happen. I like to remind clients that they don’t have believe in sound healing, but invite them to be open to let the experience unfold for them. Finally getting them truly comfortable, making adjustments for their unique physical needs relaxes the body and the client is now receptive and ready for the session.
Human bodies are full of rhythms, from heartbeat, to breath, to brain waves. Entrainment refers to the process where two different wave patterns synchronize. We humans have a natural sense of tuning in to music and each other. Music begins to play and we tap our feet and sway our bodies. Girls at boarding school soon align their body clocks, so that many, are all having their periods at the same time. In sound healing the body entrains with the specially designed sounds which draw the body to come into harmony with its own rhythms.
There is a famous experiment where groups of volunteers pray for bean sprouts. The sprouts were divided into four groups. One group was not prayed for. For the second the prayer was that they do not thrive. The third prayer group visualized the sprouts growing strong and healthy. The fourth group were prayed for in a nonspecific way, with no particular outcome in mind. It was the fourth group that did the best. Sound healing uses this powerful nonspecific kind of prayer that holds a space for something greater than we could imagine to arise. The small “i”, the everyday part of us, cannot imagine the magnificent being that we truly are and if asked to pray may ask for a new car, boyfriend, girlfriend, fame - things of the world. The greater “I “ sometimes known as “the higher” self, has a different perspective and has access to the divine essences that run through us, the divine map of who we truly are. The more spaces we leave in our prayers, the more possibility we have, to allow our divine truth to rise in us. These spacious prayers create a powerful healing environment. Space for the universal energy that flows through and around us to go where it needs to go for the personal healing that is just what we need at this moment. Space for parts of us that we have stored away, that couldn’t survive in the hostile environment of our lives at the time, to come home. Space for the lost parts to find their way home and space for the dormant to wake up and begin weaving the life we were meant to live.
Mathematics is the secret language of the universe. The importance of the ratios that shape life, currently known as the Fibonacci sequence, has been understood for at least 2500 years where it first appears in writings. Ratios run through music. The frequency of middle A is 440. Double that and you have A (880) an octave up. Double again and you have A (1760) a further octave up. Notes that are mathematically related sound good together . A (440) multiplied by 3 equals E(660) multiplied by 2. This is a mathematical relationship. A and E sound good together. Intervals refer to the space between two notes played together or separately. C and G (the fifth interval) have a healing effect, sounding pure and pleasing, bringing harmony to the body as well as the ears. Sound waves can be split up mathematically, into their component frequencies, giving harmonics. Finding the harmonics in your own voice, a resonance that seems to reach deep inside you, feels like a place of personal power, centred and grounded deeply in ones being.
On the website for Hridaya Yoga, mantra is defined as words with spiritual potency. Words have power of many different kinds. A harsh word can wound, as surely as cutting with a sharp object. Children put down, can carry a lifetime of hurt, as the words fester deep inside their hearts. In the same way a kind word, a loving word can build a centre of light in the soul that radiates out a force field of protection. Mantra’s have been used for thousands of years, holding and building a reservoir of great power. In the same way that a prism refracts white light, to reveal all the colours that light the world, the great well of divine power refracts into qualities of essence with different vibrations. There are mantra’s which will align a person with the quality of abundance or the quality of peace. The chakra’s have their own vibrational frequency. The Bija mantra’s that we work with in sound healing resonate with these frequencies bringing them back into right harmony. The first five chakras correspond to the five great elements, earth, water, fire, air and ether. These are the building blocks of the world. This can be seen in the physical plane, but energy of the elements reaches up through the many layers of reality. It is said that elements are a doorway to allow something else to rise in consciousness - they hold truths for us until we are ready to accept them for ourselves.
Silence is one of the most undervalued and rare human experiences. The back ground noise of life fills us in a way that we are mostly not aware of until something happens that stops it. A sudden power cut, finding one’s self unexpectedly in a quiet spot, in a forest, underwater and the contrast makes us aware of how lacking in silence the world is. Sound healing offers this contrast, with periods of sound and periods of absorbing and integration in silence. The silence is all the sweeter, when savoured in between periods of sound. Sound draws up ancient truths from our deep inner well and we remember our selves. Silence allows those truths to settle into our being and weave into the moving tapestry of our now. We need to integrate what moves in us, in the healing, so that we can have access to it in our lives. It’s like we have a great ware house with in us where we have stored our greatest treasures. Silence is the key to open this resource and once we are inside and when we wait quietly with great reverence, like a shy animal in the forest, something will come to us.
Sound healing is a vibrational system of healing - not a mechanical one. However, when the blockage is cleared in the energetic field, profound changes can take place in the physical body. The physical body emanates from the subtle bodies so changing the energy field affects the physical.
In sound healing we are working with the interconnectedness of all life not just the interconnection of body, mind, heart and spirit. There is a theory that the reality we see is a projection like a hologram. Things appear separate but we have access to the underlying layer where all things are connected.
Modern physics is quite clear that photons are sharing information and bound together. We are working at this deep level of reality where information is shared across distance and transformation can be spontaneous. We work in a Unified field of energy, at one with the Universe, and with each other. So at truly holistic level, we are constantly deepening our connection with the Universe.
In the flow of universal energy, in harmony with ourselves we are recreated anew in every moment. When we reconnect with this place, something stuck can release, a hole can be filled and healing can occur. This is based on right timing, where whatever is ready to shift in a person will shift. We do not direct this but create a space where this can happen. We do not do the healing. We facilitate. When you are present, loving, caring and desiring to facilitate healing, healing happens.
Why sound healing is effective, is a cocktail of all these things. Like a recipe, when you put the ingredients together and something is created. Healing intention, safe space, sound and vibration woven with silence all combine to allow deep healing to take place.
Sound healing allows us to take a step towards being the real being we have trapped underneath the beliefs and insecurities, programs and habits. These weave together to create a cage that we keep ourselves trapped in. It takes a lot of energy to hold this structure in place especially when life is straining towards freedom. When we a very young we feel everything – all the emotions. Then we begin to be programmed by the world around us and our response to it. Known as the holding environment, our own set of unique needs interact with the world we find our selves in. A huggy, physically affectionate family may seem a hostile environment to a quiet, internally resonant, child but be nurturing for another. We begin to repress parts of ourselves, mama says girls don’t get angry and we oblige by pushing our anger down, out of our conscious into our unconscious, to be held in our bodies.
This is a natural process, we need to fit into our family to survive our childhood. There are many traumas that happen that we just can’t deal with as children and we lock these away for later. When we grow up, if all has gone well, we are now able to start unpacking this. Taking things out one by one and looking the issue in the face, hopefully with compassion and understanding. Life keeps offering us opportunities, linking up what is happening now that resonates with a past event and bringing it into focus for us. Life is busy and we often push it all down again and even add more, not dealing with current stuff.
There are times when it feels like life is throwing these growth opportunities at us. It can feel over whelming and out of control. Sound healing is giving ourselves the opportunity to clear our internal in-basket. There is a lot of cultural emphasis on self care. Often magazines will tell you this is equivalent to pampering. Bath’s with bubbles and rose petals. This can be a healing space but it can also be an anaesthetic. This is our speciality in modern society. We have a portfolio of anaesthetic behaviours that numb us to feeling the discomfort of our inner knots and blockages. Binge watching Netflix is very popular, as well as using sport to feel emotions and focusing on other people, the news and external events. My personal favourite is keeping unreasonably busy. True self care is allowing the time and space and intension to clear what needs to be cleared. Sound healing creates a self care space where this work can take place.
There are, generally, two ways that we can regain our inner space and freedom. The first is an issue that rises into consciousness, often causing discomfort. A client may come with this intention in mind and discuss this at the beginning of the balance. They may be working on this issue in many different ways. They may be using useful tools like journaling or body work or they may be using more destructive and less helpful methods such as projecting the issue onto a partner and trying to solve it out there. This of course never works well. The energy that shifts in the balance will be focussed by this conscious intention.
The second way is to create the form and allow the content to arise. A client may say they are open to outcome. Given the space, the issue that is ripe and ready to clear will shift in the session. The client may find some information, about what has shifted in them, comes to them in the balance. They may receive a word or a picture or a feeling. A memory may come up. Information is delicious to the mind but the energetic shift does not actually need information to take place. A powerful alchemy takes place as the sound and vibration interacts the clients energy field, held in the rich field of silence and the warm embrace of healing intention. The part of our self that has a wider perspective, a deeper vision of what we need uses the space to clear and heal in our best interests. It may not come to consciousness in any way but something has shifted. Something always moves even if it can’t be named. The most important evidence for the effectiveness of sound healing is the experience of the client. Clients have reported feeling peace, open, expansive and have found something has truly changed in a situation. One client was in hospital and feeling isolated and cut off from her family who were unable to get hold of her for days or see her due to covid restrictions. After the balance she felt energy shift and felt more spiritually connected but also suddenly communication channels opened up and her son was able to talk to the chef and get her favourite meal prepared, talk to the doctor and find out how she was and talk to her offering reassurance. It was like a blockage had cleared and flow had been restored.
Sound healing works on so many levels and while part of it falls into the realm of explainable physics, there is an element of reconnecting to deep and ancient truths, working together across distance, opening ourselves up to the wonder and magnificence of who we truly are. Words touch the edges of these places without finding its true name. The real power of sound healing can be found in the experience of those who have tried it, offering their countless stories of how it changed their lives.