Have you heard of sound healing?
Recent studies suggest that certain sounds, vibrations and rhythms can help you to recover from a number of ailments.
Sound as we know, is vibration. It is not only perceived with our ears but is also recognised by each cell of our body.
Many a time we have experienced that, the right music sets the mood; for example, the soundtrack in exercise class makes the workout easy or chants in yoga class improves concentration. To different sounds, our mind and body react differently, and the effect is so powerful that it can keep you energized and spirited throughout the day.
No doubt, some sounds make us feel better whether our conscious mind pays attention or not. Recent research suggests that specific music can also create a sense of well-being, reduce stress and promote healing. Today sound therapy is gaining lots of popularity and has given a good result in clearing sinus, lifting off the depression, and help the cancer patients to recover quickly.
What Is Sound Therapy and How It Works?
Sound therapy is not a magical solution to any medical problem but has a neurological and psychological basis. It is the process where a practitioner uses music to improve the patient’s health and benefit him/her psychologically, spiritually, socially, mentally and physically.
The concept that sound effecting mind and body is not new. From thousands of years, Hindu spirituality believes in chanting mantra and its healing power. Even science says that everything around us vibrates and produces a sound that we may or may not hear. The frequency at which an object vibrates naturally is called resonance. Every part of our body has its resonance. The idea of sound healing or vibrational medicine is based on the theory that when the natural resonance gets out due to environmental factors or stress, it results in disease.
Sound healing improves motor and cognitive functioning, psychiatric health and social development. The sound waves reaching our ear converts into electrical signals that travel into auditory cortex through the auditory nerve. The auditory cortex is the part of the brain that process this sound. On reaching the brain, the sound waves trigger a response in our body and alter emotion, triggers certain impulses and releases hormones.
Studies have proved that listening to sound or music makes a person more creative, productive and improves mood by stimulating the release of dopamine. In addition, it promotes the release of oxytocin that is a natural painkiller. Sound therapy elicit memory retrieval and can help the person who is depressed or traumatized.
Benefits of Sound Healing
- Help in language development.
- Improves anxiety disorder
- Cures or improves autism and learning disability
- Brings clarity
- Improves concentration, awareness and memory
- Strengthens the body immune system.
- Regulates hormonal functioning
- Stimulate endocrine glands
- Promote circulation
- Reduces stress
- promotes self-regeneration
- Improve sleep
- Helps us to overcome life challenges
- Purifiers and harmonizes feelings and emotions
- Removes toxins and blockages
- Promotes vital energy flow
- Increases intuition, motivation and creativity
- Help us to connect to our higher self
- Help us to recover after less invasive medical treatments.
- Bring changes in habit, behaviour and thoughts
- Balance emotions
*Sound healing is even beneficial for people with impaired hearing or deaf because although they cannot hear, they can feel the vibration.
Types of Sound Healing
A number of techniques uses different instruments for sound healing. Even listening to music, playing any instrument and chanting induces positive brain waves.
A few methods are discussed below. Have a look:
- Guided Meditation or Chanting Mantra – Our voice is an instrument and chanting certain prayer or mantra while meditating improves mood, sleep, breathing, and circulation. It reduces stress, lower blood pressure and calms the mind.
- Singing Bowl Therapy – Here, metallic bowls are used to produce a sound that is similar to a bell or a gong. It relaxes the mind and reduces the level of stress and anxiety. It lowers the blood pressure improve mood, strengthens the body immune system, elevates pain, promotes circulation and improves breathing.
- Bonny method – This therapy involves guided imagination along with sound healing. The patient is made to focus on the pictures used alongside. This method helps the patient struggling with psychological and physiological problems.
- Tuning Fork Therapy – It is believed that tuning fork sound healing brings back the body and soul dynamic in harmony. In this method, forks are used to apply certain vibration to specific areas of a body to release blocked energy and tension. It helps bring emotional balance and alleviate pain.
- Nordoff – Robbins Method – For children suffering from developmental disabilities such as learning difficulties, autism, emotional trauma and other psychological disorders the Nordoff-Robin technique is used to create music as therapy.
- Vibroacoustic therapy – In vibroacoustic therapy the patient lies down on a particular type of bed surrounded by speakers and the sound is applied directly to the patients body. The vibration produced penetrates the patient’s body on a more profound and cellular level and helps the patient to recover from cancer, stroke and injury.
There is no argument on the power of music still sound healing is a topic of research to be completely understood. It has many possibilities. You do not always need to spend dollars on it as all kinds of sound and music heals. Therefore, whenever you need to change your mood instantly put your favourite playlist and boost up your mood and energy.