Sound therapy using the Crystal or Tibetan singing bowls stimulates the brain to make changes that help us in the following ways:
The science of Sonocytology proves to us that everything has a unique vibration or frequency. From the single celled organism, to groups of cells we know as our bodily organs, to the human organism as a whole; all of these have a frequency unique to them and are generating sound whether we can hear it or not. Therefore, sound vibration is the most basic form of existence.
Research reported by Smithsonian Magazine* discusses the therapeutic response of exposing cells to elevated sound vibration. The cells begins to resonate and vibrate at a higher frequency as the external vibration increases. Diseased cells/tissue vibrate at low frequencies. Repeatedly exposing diseased cells to higher vibrations retrains them to remain at that vibration which then reverses or resolves disease.
On the physical level, the simplest way of communicating with cells is through sound vibration. External vibrations cause a sympathetic resonance in the cells. All types of sound have an effect on the nervous system which in turn affects every cell in the body; either creating relaxation or stress. This is why well-being and physical health are so inextricably linked to sound. In response to the stressful sounds, cells recoil and hold onto their toxicity and become diseased. In response to being given soothing tones they let go of their toxicity and naturally begin to function normally again. By Mark Wheeler Smithsonian Magazine March 2004
Singing bowls speak the language of the brain: Frequency. Busy Beta brain waves have low amplitude but travel quickly at a rate of 15-40 (Hertz) cycles per second. Our brain produces them when we are awake and alert, but they can also get out of control when we are highly stressed. Alpha brain waves travel more slowly at 8-12 (Hertz) cycles per second. They are widely known to be associated with meditation and altered states of consciousness. Still slower are the Theta at 3-8 Hertz and are produced during light sleep, dreams and daydreams. They can also occur with any repetitive activity such as knitting, painting a fence or any task that has become so automatic you can mentally disengage from it.
The Alpha-Theta border of the brain waves is of greatest importance to healing the body, mind and spirit and is also the goal of a singing bowl session. This narrow band of waves, known as the Schuman Resonance, produces waves that travel at 7-8 (Hertz) cycles per second. This is the precise frequency of the earth's electromagnetic field. When our brain's produce alpha-theta waves, not only are we in sync with the heartbeat of planet earth, but intelligence, creativity, higher achievement in any area and self-healing mechanisms of the body are activated. This is what is commonly referred to as "being in the zone." When our brains are in this state, the body is in a state of harmony and the central nervous system reduces input from the peripheral nervous system which allows it to expand it's range of functioning.
This expansion of functioning, yet unstudied by scientists, is where the body's self-healing mechanisms are activated. Though science has yet to delineate and define the actual mechanisms by which the body heals itself it is commonly understood and known from ancient medicine that the body can and does heal dis-ease when naturally supported to do so. Singing Bowl Therapy can effortlessly put you into this special brain wave state that supports your unique goal toward better health. Producing the Alpha-Theta brain wave state is the goal of Singing Bowl Therapy.
When the brain is exposed to the big circles of sound produced from the singing bowls, it will entrain or slow down to copy those waves, coming to a more relaxed state, effortlessly. People who hate to meditate will love how easily they can reach a meditative “no-mind” state by listening to singing bowls. This therapy is "just in time" to help us rebalance and begin to find our self-healing abilities again despite the pace of life today. Singing Bowl Therapy can help the individual to rebalance the brain wave patterns. This "re-education" of balanced brain wave function could be the most important step taken on a path of true balance back to health.
Massage Magazine , in November 2005 published an article called "Samvahan, Vibrational Healing from India." The article describes how Tibetan Bowl Sound Therapy works to heal the body. The sound waves from the bowls spread easily through the physical form because the body consists of 70% - 80% water.
Many times this phenomenon is conceptualized as the concentric waves from a stone dropped into a still pond. As the rings of sound grow larger, they permeate through blood, muscles, organs and even bones; relaxing them and at the same time harmonizing and energizing them. In this way, the more than 100 trillion cells that are the building blocks of the human body are receiving a gentle "cell massage." A visual example of the cleansing power invoked here is what happens when we put jewelry or dentures into a supersonic bath and see how in a short while all the dirt and grime is shaken loose. The sound and vibrations therefore is releasing energy blockages through out the body.
The bowl vibrations are soothing enough to calm the nervous system yet powerful enough to travel deep into the body to penetrate the bones. "Vibrations can travel into places you could never touch with your hands, to effect a healing that would be very difficult to recreate otherwise .
Chakras are energy vortices originating in the ancient Indian system of healing. Most literature discusses seven main chakras but there are literally hundreds of vortices of energy all over the body. Chakras are the connection between the spiritual aspect of our being and the physical. There is a musical note and vowel sound for toning that is associated with each of the 7 major chakras. Singing Bowls naturally cause chakras to self-correct. The sound waves, in the form of sine waves, run interference to the unbalanced chakras and naturally correct and balance them.
The overall balancing effect of the singing bowls on the brain waves and cellular function combine to enhance and support the corrective rebalance of the sound wave's effect on each chakra. The result is balanced chakras, which can then support the cellular level physical changes also created by the sound waves. Repeat sessions at a given interval over time can assist the body/mind to throw off toxicity and the diseased state while simultaneously retraining the chakras and physical body to remain in a state of balance. Increasingly over time the body will return to a state of 'ease' or good health.
Though Chakras are far from a scientific fact, ancient literature suggests that their balancing was part of the whole process employed when healing any level of dysfunction. Balancing the body in the way ancient cultures have may be the missing link in health care today.
Dr. Hans Selye, known as "the father of stress" was an endocrinologist in 1950's who did research on the response of organisms to stress. He determined that stress is the underlying cause of all illness and dis-ease. His research was taken a step further by Dr. Herbert Benson.
Dr. Benson of Harvard's Mind Body Institute, has studied stress reduction for 35 years. He found that stress causes physical and emotional blockages and concluded that stress reduction was essential to the creation of health. He coined the phrase "relaxation response" and defines this as "a physical state of deep rest characterized by decreased heart rate, blood pressure and muscle tension, that changes the physical and emotional responses to stress." He also found that regular prompting of the relaxation response is an effective treatment for a wide range of stress-related disorders. In fact, to the extent that any disease is caused or made worse by stress, the relaxation response is essential to healing it.
Stress-related disorders are problems, both emotional and physical, that have been studied and determined to be either caused by or exacerbated by stress. Though not yet scientifically documented but rapidly becoming understood by many professionals in the natural health care industry, stress is the root cause of all illness. One's perception of a situation or event as being stressful can be altered by singing bowl therapy. Because the singing bowls evoke the relaxation response, this form of therapy can have a profound healing influence on highly stressed people.
The sound travels first to the ear and into the brain to quickly change brainwave patterns from beta (waking state) to alpha/theta where brain hemisphere synchronization can be obtained. In his book, "Thresholds of the Mind," author Bill Harris discusses how human brains generally live in an unbalanced state that creates stress. He relates that in virtually all people the two halves of the brain are "lateralized." Brain lateralization means that the two hemispheres are not working in a synchronized, balanced state. The greater the lateralization, the greater the feelings of separation, fear, stress, anxiety and isolation which are the deeply rooted causes of physical and emotional disease. In its extreme form a lateralized, unbalanced brain results in behavior commonly described as "dysfunctional" or addictive. The more the two halves of the brain are retrained to be synchronized, (increase in communication and therefore work in a balanced state) the more good health returns, and creativity, productivity, learning, and memory abilities increase.
It is a combination between the sound of the bowl through the ear, over the eardrum and into the brain and the vibration of the bowl through the flesh of the body that causes the harmonizing, de-stressing effect of the bowls. The bowl practitioner taps the bowls in specific intervals and makes them sing with a tool rubbed along the edge of the bowl creating an entrancing energy. Each bowl will vibrate and sing a different predominate note from the music scale A, B, C, D, E, F, or G. Each note is coordinated with a specific chakra and each chakra is directly associated with a certain endocrine gland. Further benefit from the bowls is received via the chakra system and then directly into the endocrine system. This causes balancing of the endocrine glands which affect every function of the body.
In April 2009, Massage Magazine published another article on the healing benefits of sound as a new-old method of healing. Author, Zacciah Blackburn relates how sound healing is a rapidly rising field that straddles both ancient and modern technologies. He discusses how sound is being used to address ADD and ADHD, autism, depression and other extensive health issues . Mitchell Gaynor, M.D. also mentioned in the article for his work with sound in cancer treatment, continues to document remarkable improvement rates using sound with his patients.
Mitchell Gaynor, M.D. is a New York Oncologist who has written a book called "The Healing Power of Sound". Dr. Gaynor does not take on a new patient unless they are willing to engage in sound therapy including therapy done with bowls. In all his years of experience he has seen more improvement with patients when he utilizes conventional medical cancer treatment in conjunction with sound therapy consisting of chanting, music therapy and bowl therapy. His book is a must read for anyone who wants to recover from cancer while using conventional methods. In one chapter Dr. Gaynor relates the various ways in which music and sound therapy change physiology. He reports that sound therapy: reduces anxiety, heart and respiratory rates, reduces cardiac complications, lowers blood pressure and heart rate, increase of immune cell messengers, lowers stress hormones, and boost the body's natural opiates. For more on this, view the video above.
An article in entitled, "A Peaceful Return to Health" published in Alternative Medicine magazine in April 2002 provides further information about the benefits of sound in healing. "Fear blocks healing. You can't heal if you're terrified. The first thing you've got to do is get to a place of peace." Sound therapy assists in releasing stress and then fear. The author relates information from a sound healing researcher who reports that there is evidence that the relaxation response and brain wave entrainment into alpha/theta created by sound therapy, strengthens the immune system.
Because singing bowls initiate the relaxation response, they have a profound healing influence on these and other conditions:
Generalized anxiety disorders
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Rheumatoid arthritis
ADD, ADHD, Autism
Fibromyalgia
Hypertension
Stroke
Cancer
MS
Online ArticleBy Arjun Walia, 12/4/19
The Facts: Multiple studies and examples have shown how sound, frequency and vibration can literally alter physical material matter. Research has also shown that sound, frequencies and vibration can be used as a significant healing method for various ailments. How plausible would it be for these interventions to become a regular part of therapy, just as much as pharmaceutical drugs are now?
Cymatics is a very interesting topic. It illustrates how sound frequencies move through a particular medium such as water, air, or sand and as a result directly alter physical matter. There are a number of pictures all over the internet as well as youtube videos that demonstrate how matter (particles) adjust to different sounds and different frequencies of sound. When it comes to ancient knowledge, sound, frequency and vibration have always been perceived as powerful forces that can influence and alter life all the way down to the cellular level. Sound healing methods are often used by Shamans, who employ drums and singing to access trance states. Research has even demonstrated that drumming and singing can can be used to slow fatal brain disease, and it can generate a sense of oneness with the universe . Sound therapy is getting more popular, and it can have many medical applications, especially within the psychological and mental health realms.
Sound, frequency and vibration are used all throughout the animal kingdom, and there are many examples. If we look at the wasp, they use antennal drumming to alter the caste development or phenotype of their larvae. Conventional thinking has held for quite some time that differential nutrition alone can explain why one larvae develops into a non-reproductive worker and one into a reproductive female (gyne). However, this is not the case, according to a 2011 study:
“But nutrition level alone cannot explain how the first few females to be produced in a colony develop rapidly yet have small body sizes and worker phenotypes. Here, we provide evidence that a mechanical signal biases caste toward a worker phenotype. In Polistes fuscatus, the signal takes the form of antennal drumming (AD), wherein a female trills her antennae synchronously on the rims of nest cells while feeding prey-liquid to larvae. The frequency of AD occurrence is high early in the colony cycle, when larvae destined to become workers are being reared, and low late in the cycle, when gynes are being reared. Subjecting gyne-destined brood to simulated AD-frequency vibrations caused them to emerge as adults with reduced fat stores, a worker trait. This suggests that AD influences the larval developmental trajectory by inhibiting a physiological element that is necessary to trigger diapause, a gyne trait.”
This finding indicates that the acoustic signals produced through drumming within certain species carry biologically meaningful information (literally: ‘to put form into’) that operate epigenetically (i.e. working outside or above the genome to affect gene expression). Pretty fascinating, isn’t it? Like many other ancient lines of thought, this has been backed by modern day scientific research.
Cancer: Another example comes from cancer research. In his Tedx talk, “Shattering Cancer with Resonant Frequencies,” Associate Professor and Director of Music at Skidmore College, Anthony Holland, tells the audience that he has a dream. That dream is to see a future where children no longer have to suffer from the effects of toxic cancer drugs or radiation treatment, and today he and his team believe they have found the answer, and that answer is sound. Holland and his team wondered if they could affect a cell by sending a specific electric signal, much like we do with LCD technology. After searching the patent database for a device that could accomplish this, they came across a therapeutic device invented by New Mexico physician Dr. James Bare. The device uses a plasma antenna that pulses on and off, which, as Holland explains, is important because a constant pulse of electricity would produce too much heat and therefore destroy the cell. For the next 15 months, Holland and his team searched for the exact frequency that would directly shatter a living microorganism. The magic number finally came in the form of two inputs, one high frequency and one low. The high frequency had to be exactly eleven times higher than the low, which in music is known as the 11th harmonic. At the 11th harmonic, micro organisms begin to shatter like crystal glass.
After consistently practicing until they became efficient at the procedure, Holland began working with a team of cancer researchers in an attempt to destroy targeted cancer cells. First they looked at pancreatic cancer cells, eventually discovering these cells were specifically vulnerable between 100,000 – 300,000 Hz. Next they moved onto leukemia cells, and they were able to shatter the leukemia cells before they could divide. But, as Holland explains in his talk, he needed bigger stats in order to make the treatment a viable option for cancer patients. In repeated and controlled experiments, the frequencies, known as oscillating pulsed electric field (OPEF) technology, killed an average of 25% to 40% of leukemia cells, going as high as 60% in some cases. Furthermore, the intervention even slowed cancer cell growth rates up to 65%.
Another example occurred in 1981, when biologist Helene Grimal partnered with composer Fabien Maman to study the relationship of sound waves to living cells. For 18 months, the pair worked with the effects of 30-40 decibel sounds on human cells. With a camera mounted on a microscope, the researchers observed uterine cancer cells exposed to different acoustic instruments (guitar, gong, xylophone) as well as the human voice for 20-minute sessions. They discovered that, when exposed to sound, cancer cells lost structural integrity until they exploded at the 14-minute mark. Far more dramatic was the sound of a human voice — the cells were destroyed at the nine-minute mark. After this, they decided to work with two women with breast cancer. For one month, both of the women gave three-and-a-half-hours a day to “toning” or singing the scale. Apparently, the woman’s tumor became undetectable, and the other woman underwent surgery. Her surgeon reported that her tumor had shrunk dramatically and “dried up.” It was removed and the woman had a complete recovery and remission.
Let’s not forget about when Royal Rife first identified the human cancer virus using the world’s most powerful microscope. After identifying and isolating the virus, he decided to culture it on salted pork. At the time this was a very good method for culturing a virus. He then took the culture and injected it into 400 rats, which, as you might expect, created cancer in all 400 rats very quickly. The next step for Rife was where things took an interesting turn. He later found a frequency of electromagnetic energy that would cause the cancer virus to diminish completely when entered into the energy field.
More Research: A 2014 study published in the Journal of Huntington’s Disease found that two months of drumming intervention in Huntington’s patients (considered an irreversible, lethal neurodegenerative disease) resulted in “improvements in executive function and changes in white matter microstructure, notably in the genu of the corpus callosum that connects prefrontal cortices of both hemispheres.” The study authors concluded that the pilot study provided novel preliminary evidence that drumming (or related targeted behavioral stimulation) may result in “cognitive enhancement and improvements in callosal white matter microstructure.” A 2011 Finnish study observed that stroke patients who were given access to music as cognitive therapy had improved recovery. Other research has shown that patients suffering from loss of speech due to brain injury or stroke regain it more quickly by learning to sing before trying to speak. The phenomenon of music facilitating healing in the brain after a stroke is called the “Kenny Rogers Effect.”
A 2012 study published in Evolutionary Psychology found that active performance of music (singing, dancing and drumming) triggered endorphin release (measured by post-activity increases in pain tolerance), whereas merely listening to music did not. The researchers hypothesized that this may contribute to community bonding in activities involving dance and music-making. According to a study published by the National Institute of Health, “Music effectively reduces anxiety for medical and surgical patients and often reduces surgical and chronic pain. [Also,] Providing music to caregivers may be a strategy to improve empathy, compassion, and care.” In other words, music is not only good for patients, it’s good for caregivers.
What About The Mind? A few years ago, these scientists held an International Summit on Post-Materialist Science, and created a manifesto to explain its significance. The scientists involved were Mario Beauregard, PhD (University of Arizona), Gary E. Schwartz, PhD (University of Arizona), and Lisa Miller, PhD (Columbia University), in collaboration with Larry Dossey, MD, Alexander Moreira-Almeida, MD, PhD, Marilyn Schlitz, PhD, Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, and Charles Tart, PhD. There are hundreds of published peer-reviewed publications showing statistically significant results for this type of science, yet unfortunately, it is still shunned by mainstream academia, even though so many mainstream academic scientists support it. The idea that the mind affects physical material reality is not trivial, and it’s been demonstrated repeatedly with statistically significant results through fascinating research undertaken by government programs, places like the Institute of Noetic Sciences (founded by Dr. Edgar Mitchell), and, in more recent developments, the group of internationally recognized scientists mentioned above.
Water. Experiments over the past four decades have investigated whether human intention alone can affect the properties of water. This question has been of interest to alternative medicine research, because the human body is made up of approximately 70% water. Interest in this topic has been rekindled recently by multiple researchers suggesting that intentionally influenced water can be detected by examining ice crystals formed from samples of that water. Scientists have hypothesized and shown that water influenced by intention can indeed influence the physical formation of the ice crystals that water produces. Consistent results commonly point to the idea that positive intentions tend to produce symmetric, well-formed, aesthetically pleasing crystals, and negative intentions tend to produce asymmetric, poorly formed, and unattractive crystals.
Dean Radin, the Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, along with Masaru Emoto, Takashige Kizu, and Nancy Lund, designed an experiment that tested this hypothesis. As the study’s description reads:
Over three days, 1,900 people in Austria and Germany focused their intentions towards water samples located inside an electromagnetically shielded room in California. Water samples located near the target water, but unknown to the people providing intentions, acted as ‘‘proximal’’ controls. Other samples located outside the shielded room acted as distant controls. Ice drops formed from samples of water in the different treatment conditions were photographed by a technician, each image was assessed for aesthetic beauty by over 2,500 independent judges, and the resulting data were analyzed, all by individuals blind with respect to the underlying treatment conditions. Results suggested that crystal images in the intentionally treated condition were rated as aesthetically more beautiful than proximal control crystals (p < 0.03, one-tailed). This outcome replicates the results of an earlier pilot test.
If thought alone does indeed have an effect on physical material reality, just imagine what it could do to our body? Something to think about
The Takeaway
The information presented in this article isn’t even the tip of the iceberg when it comes the the medical applications of sound, frequency and vibration, which are all obviously correlated. One thing is clear, however, which is that there are many more methods out there, like the ones discussed in this article, that should be taken more seriously and given more attention from the medical establishment. It seems all mainstream medicine is concerned about is making money and developing medications that don’t seem to be representative of our fullest potential to heal. “Alternative” therapies shouldn’t be labelled as alternative, they should be incorporated into the norm.