Music can heal the mind, relieve stress, and lift the spirit. Powerful harmonics are created by singing bowls and chimes, as well as human voices... and the words we use
The great composers have known for centuries that music has the power to heal wounds of the mind and heart, to relieve stress, lift the spirit, and ease emotional burdens. As the oft-misquoted line by William Congreve has it, “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” Music allows the spirit to soar. When a piece of music touches you, some indefinable part of your consciousness transcends to new heights. Our hearing affects us on many levels precisely because it detects more than “just noise” – every sound we hear is one of a range of vibrations and frequencies that are audible to the human ear, creating vibrations, internal and external, which affect us in many ways.
We easily forget (when we’re immersed in traffic noises, the clatter of construction, or the quiet blaring of ipods on public transportation) the extent to which the sounds around us can alter our mood or change the experience that we’re having of the day. Have you ever returned home from a harsh day at work, turned on a favourite CD, and found as you listen to the music that tense muscles begin to unclench, your shoulders relax and lower, your heart stops racing and returns to normal?
Words We Sing
In self-help jargon, affirmations are empowering or uplifting phrases that are repeated daily, often several times throughout each day, to instill self-confidence and manifest the results we desire in our lives. How much more powerful are affirmations that are not only thought, written or spoken, but sung?
Saint Augustine said, on the power of prayer to amplify the words of our heartfelt wishes, “Those who sing pray twice.” Music is celebrated as one of the oldest and richest forms of praise for the divine in virtually every religious or spiritual tradition, from Christian hymns to Hindu mantra japa to Wiccan chanting. It's been discovered that the caves with the greatest density of ancient cave paintings are those with the accoustics that enhance music and sound (Joan Oliver Goldsmith, How Can We Keep From Singing: Music and the Passionate Life, 2001).
Pay attention to the music you listen to: What lyrics are you singing along with and affirming into your life?
Song in Healing
The human voice is one of the most interesting instruments when it comes to uplifting and healing. Singing can also be extraordinarily powerful in healing because of the sheer visceral experience of making music with one’s own body. The ability to make beautiful sounds with the voice is something that most professional singers train at for years – and continue to perfect over the course of a lifetime.
Many healers prefer to use their voices instead of other instruments when channeling healing sound energy. The voice acts as a powerful vehicle for healing energy, in part because sound spoken or sung is made up of several overtones or harmonics – more so than a single note on most instruments. These layers of harmonics amplify the capacity of sound to heal. Women’s voices, in general, contain more harmonics than do men’s.
The Power of Instrumental Sounds and Music to Heal
It has long been accepted that listening to Classical music improves reading and learning ability and helps to build logical thought processes, particularly in children.
More recently to Western culture, we have come to accept the power of instruments such as gongs, singing bowls (often called Tibetan singing bowls, Himalayan singing bowls, cup gongs or bon), and the new age “chakra chimes” to create harmony in the body’s energy field and to open and balance the chakras.
Singing bowls originate in Japan, Korea, Nepal, India, China and elsewhere in Asia. The oldest may have existed for 4000 years in Nepal, where learning the use of sound in healing and spiritual practice was the highest level of initiation. The bowls were traditionally cast in metal alloys, and are struck or spun with a padded wooden mallet to produce the amazing harmonics for which they are famous. (Click here for the author's recent experience with some amazing antique singing bowls.) The newer singing bowls, mainly made from copper and often misleadingly authentic-looking, do not create the same harmonics as the metal mixtures in the antique bon. Neither do the new crystal singing bowls.
Several forms of “music therapy” and “sound therapy” have been developed to capitalize on the ability of sound frequencies to heal.
Who Benefits from Music?
We are all sensitive to the sounds in our environment, to a greater or lesser degree. Some people are more affected by music, and be anything perceived through the sense of hearing, than others. These people are considered “auditory” types (other sensory types include visual/visionary, mental/logical, and kinesthetic). Auditory types are those people who "just hear things" or are especially able to "read between the lines," and they can be extraordinarily sensitive to the volume and the aesthetics of the sounds around them.
Music and sounds intended for healing will have an even greater impact on a person with auditory strengths than on the rest of us, though sound can be used with calming, meditative, or healing effect on almost anyone.
