Healing sound and music therapy – What makes sound healing?
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Healing sound and music therapy – What makes sound healing?
What if there was a fundamental consideration that we do not generally apply to the way we currently view sound healing and music therapy?
Music is known to have a powerful effect on human beings, emotionally and physically. Widely used in the treatment of many conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorders, autism, chronic pain, palliative care, music is also heard in hospitals, clinic waiting rooms, schools and many other places. Meditation music, therapeutic music and ambient sound is a rapidly growing industry as we constantly seek to ‘calm the mind’ and create the most supportive environment possible. But the burning question is — what actually makes sound ‘healing’ and music ‘therapeutic’: is it simply a certain style, rhythm or note?
In our search for a sweeter sound to reach that certain sweet spot we can overlook the singularly most vital piece of the equation. And that is — it is the quality of the sound (or vibration) that has the potential to offer space for harmonising and healing: the ‘quality’ being the nature or vibrational essence of the music, as music is not only made up of a compilation of notes and tones, but a vibration. The true quality of music can only be measured by the quality of the originating source that produced the vibration or particular sound. Every single process that gets the music to your sound system speakers, from the pen of the composer to the sound engineer’s mixing desk, is a movement, an action that has an effect on the produced piece — everyone plays their part.
If we look further and use the human body as an example it reveals with beautiful simplicity how cells respond and react to the quality of sound. Biologist Dianne Trussell says, 'Sound patterns affect your emotions and feelings, and vibrate the cells and organs of your body. The cells’ ‘songs’ go out to their neighbouring cells, announcing either health and harmony, or discord and illness of the tissue and organ they are part of.'
This also reveals that sound has a vibrational quality that affects the physiology of the body. Cells don’t hear a pretty tune or attractive note progression, they hear energy or vibration and respond accordingly. Cells ‘hear’ either harmonious or discordant energy.
So it’s true, quality matters. We can easily feel how vibration affects us – the pneumatic drill on the construction site jolts our nervous system, every fibre of our being. And there are the super-subtle emotional vibrations that scream at us even though they may be carried on the whisper of a voice. All can be felt, and all affects our body on a vibrational level. We are, as science puts it, simply made up of energy vibrating at different frequencies – fact. Our emotions and feelings can be affected by the sound patterns or vibrations that enter our body.
So, if healing sound is not confined to ‘musical genres’ or ‘styles’, where does the healing quality in music come from?
In order to offer a healing quality, the sound patterns in music need to offer a vibrational frequency that supports the body to restore itself to its natural order – which is a harmonious vibration. This is not a new revelation. The vibrational interplay between the human body and psyche in relation to music was known by Pythagoras and Plato, and currently the work of Serge Benhayon elucidates with great depth on this subject.
It is clear that vibrational quality is not related to technique, expertise or academic prowess. It is a quality that is known and registered in the cells of our body. It is our energetic state of being that determines whether the sound or expression we make – spoken, sung, or played – offers healing . . . or not. And in turn, the make-up of our vibrational or energetic state of being is determined by what we live by, what we allow in our life – harmony or disharmony, order or disorder, truth or untruth.
Clarity in life depends on quality of life. We are all made up of our everyday expression. What we accept, connect and align to in our life is the same quality that then lives in and through our body, in everything we do. The same principle applies with music.
The quality of the vibration in the music we make depends on, and is because of, the vibrational quality of its maker. It makes sense that to be able to offer sound that has the potential to heal, our cells need to be ‘sounding’ or vibrating harmoniously too. And so if we are going to produce a healing quality in music then we have the responsibility to practise what we preach.
We may try to hide certain behaviours and emotions, but our body knows everything about us and communicates that ‘everything’ on a vibrational level to others. We can feel it. The cells of our body are constantly imparting information to each other and changing in response to what is going on around them. If we are frustrated or angry our body takes this on, and our cells communicate that on a vibrational level, which is also very tangible in a physical sense. And this science is not restricted to one human body on its own – the cells in different bodies also ‘talk‘ to or affect each other. That's what cells do – they vibrate and communicate. Basically, we live in a sea of energy.
Whether we produce sound that is healing comes down to us. It’s the realisation that what we live is ‘One Life’, that what we do in our personal life affects our professional life and so on. What is in our tone of voice and in the way we speak, or sing, and what is in the way we play our musical instrument?
Energetic quality is not genre specific. All music has the capability to be healing or harming, non-imposing or imposing on the human body – and the listener can respond to the offer or imposition of either quality.
Natural healing is the non-imposing way of meeting another so they can heal themselves.
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 86
So very simple, but also profoundly challenging, we are asked to consider responsibility in life. Are we living in such a way that reflects the healing sound that we intend to impart to others? Are we nurturing and caring for ourselves deeply, so that the harmony of our daily activity is reflected in our presence, in what we give out to others? Because everything that we are and choose for ourselves is without a doubt reflected in all we do. What we do and what choices we make in our lives do matter. What behaviour we allow in the so-called privacy of our own home and life absolutely affects the quality of what we give out to others. The health and vitality of our singing cells comes from the daily choices we make. The movements and sounds we make sing the harmony or disharmony we choose to live in.
Sound healing and music therapy can never be tied to a musical genre, style or ethnicity, quiet, slow or soft… this is only what music is dressed up to be. It all comes down to the irrefutable fact that healing sound comes from the quality of the source from which the sound is produced, the human being, and can only be measured by our Livingness, the true vitality in the way we live that is naturally accessed when we live from our divine, innately harmonious nature.
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Energy in music, Harmony, Healing, Music, Musicians
