What is Sound Healing

It has been known from ancient times that sound is a powerful healing tool. Native healers used the drum as a foundation for moving and transmuting energy that caused distress. Many instruments have been discovered in archeological sites that show us the understanding that ancient peoples had of the way to use sound to help themselves heal on all levels of their being.

Many native cultures believe that physical illness is only a symptom of imbalance on the spiritual, emotional, and mental levels. So the tools to treat such imbalances don’t look like the tools used by modern medical practitioners. Modern medicine has moved away from treating these imbalances, looking only at the physical symptoms. So it isn’t unusual to see someone undergo surgery for a particular disease, only to find that it surfaces somewhere else as the same disease, or something different. The native belief understands that the disease must also be treated on the spiritual level for relief and healing to occur.

Science finally accepts, through the accumulation of knowledge in the realm of Quantum Physics, that human beings are vibrational beings. As such, it is important to use modalities that change the vibrational frequency of the energy body to heal the whole self. Many tools are employed to this end, including sound (drums, rattles, crystal singing bowls, tuning forks, toning, chanting, singing), plant medicine (essential oils, herbs, smudging), energy medicine (Reiki, Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch, energy psychology, polarity therapy), crystal medicine (application by massage, internal elixirs, strategic placement in the environment, wearing as jewelry), to name a few.

Sound wave vibrations travel the energy pathways of the body and stimulate the subtle and physical energy fields of the human body. This stimulation balances places deep within the body that modern medicine is not able to reach. In this way, inner harmony and healing of the emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical being occurs.

Energy modalities access the body’s energy pathways also. It still isn’t clearly known just how harmony and healing are achieved by these methods, but some of them are currently being studied by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the National Centers for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) department. What we know for sure is that these methods do bring about a sense of well-being and a state of inner peace, thereby promoting health.

Plant medicine directly accesses the brain through the sense of smell. The olfactory nerve is the one place in the body where the brain has direct contact with the outside world. Aromatic molecules travel along the olfactory bulb and are picked up by the brain as signals. When the signals are calming they trigger the release of the neurotransmitters that bring the body back into balance from a state of anxiety or fear.