Healing with Sound: Part 1

Healing with Sound is one of the oldest and most primal ways of tapping into the Innate Healing System in order to help facilitate and maximize the power of a person to self-heal.

Today and next time I’ll delve into healing with sound, with a two-part article about it.

Quantum physics tells us that the universe is primarily made up of consciousness and information, and that the language of consciousness is vibrations and frequencies.

Matter emanates from consciousness, as quantum physics tells us – the technical name for matter is wavefunction.

A wavefunction is what matter is – part wave/vibration and part material form.

If at the heart of matter lies vibrations and frequencies, then at a basic level, matter communicates with itself through the primal sounds of vibrations and frequencies.

Ultrasounds are based on this principle. The ultrasound sends sound waves into the body, with a different frequency used, depending on which organ is being imaged. The organ picks up the frequency and through the process of resonance, the image of that organ is seen.

Resonance is the principle on which sound healing is based, just as resonance is the principle in which activating the innate healing system is based.

Resonance can open the body up in very powerful ways. The body can become like a tuning fork, reverbating in synchronous harmony with different sounds.

Different sounds resonate with different parts of the body, and a range of sounds can resonate with the entire body and find its way into the depths of the soul.

Sound healing is one of the oldest forms of healing known to humans. Sound healing was used in the ancient civilizations of China, Egypt, Greece and India. In the Bible, David played his harp to lift King Saul’s depression. Handel wrote his “Water Music” to help King George’s problems of memory loss and depression.

The Greek mathematician Pythagoras postulated that there was a rhythm of sounds that emanated throughout the cosmos, and that these sounds were in harmony with one another and with all of creation. He called this “The Harmony of the Spheres,” and it was his belief that as long as people were in harmony with the rhythms of the cosmos, they could then live in harmony with nature.

In modern times, sound healing is now widely used in Germany and Eastern Europe. Patients report a reduction in headaches, better sleep patterns, improved memory and concentration.

Hospitals are now using harpists to calm patients on the operating table after research found that the instrument eased pain. The sound and vibrations have also been shown to lower the heart rate, decrease blood pressure and combat heart disease. Research in the United States found that the range of vibrations emitted by the plucked strings affect the body’s nervous system.

At the Department of Coronary Care at St. Agnes Hospital, Baltimore, music ranks high on the list of modern day management of critical care patients. Its relaxing properties enable patients to get well faster by allowing them to accept their condition and treatment without excess anxiety.

In a study of 59,000 patients, 97% of them stated that music was a real help to them to relax in the postoperative situation and during surgery with local anesthesia.

To be continued next time…

The Innate Healing System

Over the last few weeks, I’ve written articles on some of the oldest forms of healing, methods that really are at the root of all healing methods.

These articles were on spiritual healing and on shamanism.

These healing approaches were predicated on helping the person to heal themselves. They were used to facilitate and activate the innate healing system that all of us have within.

The progression of medicine over the eons is based on this concept: everyone has a healing system, and it just needs to be maximized. All natural approaches have started with this basic premise, and have worked from there. All the modalities and disciplines used by the various natural healing approaches have this in common – they work at stimulating the body’s own reservoir of healing.

Modern medicine has gotten far away from this essential truth. It is a technological bioscience, and doesn’t recognize that people have great capacities of healing. To recognize that fact, that people can heal, a doctor would have to take the time to listen to a person, to get to know them, and then to give thought as to the proper treatment approach – and this approach would not just be writing a prescription.

It could incorporate nutrition, exercise, rest and stress management – the whole of the person would be looked at, from diet, lifestyle, emotions, attitude, spiritual health, the energetic body, and so on.

Working at this level is how the innate healing system can then be mobilized.

Bernard Lown, M.D., is the author of the book, The Lost Art of Healing: Practicing Compassion in Medicine. Dr. Lown is also a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

In The Lost of Healing, he wrote:
“Our health care system is breaking down because the medical profession has been shifting its focus away from healing, which begins with listening to the patient. The reasons for this shift include a romance with mindless technology, which is embraced in large measure as a means for maximizing income.

“Since it is uneconomic to spend much time with patients, diagnosis is performed by exclusion, which opens floodgates for endless tests and procedures. Malpractice suits should be viewed as mere pustules on the physiognomy of a sick health care system. They are not what ails medicine in the United States, they are the consequence.

“The medical care system will not be cured until the patient once again becomes central to the doctor’s agenda.”

Another physician who was a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer, born in 1875 and who died in 1965, practiced medicine in his native Germany and in Africa. He was fully schooled in the virtues of helping the innate healing system. He said:

“Each patient carries his own doctor within him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.”

In case you were wondering, Dr. Lown won his Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for his work at trying to end nuclear war; Dr. Schweitzer was awarded his Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for his philosophy of “Reverence for Life,” and the different ways that he manifested and expressed that.

Over the days and weeks to come, this series on Healing will take a look at different modalities and disciplines whose aim is to activate and cultivate the innate healing system.

I invite you to read along as I delve into these.