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HEALING THROUGH SOUND I

Dr. Sharon Davis-Troth

Sound Therapy is a vital part of the field of medicine called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), and its uses are expanding rapidly and profoundly.  I will present a series of articles showing the healing effects of different types of sound therapy and will begin by giving a brief overview of energy therapy.

Beginning around the 1970’s, health and healing took a turn in concept and practice.  A holistic approach re-emerged that embraced the idea that humans are a system – body, mind and spirit – and each of these parts work from and with each other in health and disease.  Dr. C. Norman Shealy, an early pioneer and advocate of CAM and holistic medicine, teaches that holistic medicine is based on the principles that emotional, spiritual, and psychological stress affects the body¹.

Alternative approaches to healing bring a fresh perspective to the field of medicine and can improve the “one size fits all” attitude that conventional practitioners often hold.  E. Ernst defines CAM as “diagnosis, treatment, and/or prevention which complements mainstream medicine by contributing to a common whole, by satisfying a demand not met by orthodoxy or by diversifying the conceptual frameworks of medicine.”²   To integrate is to become whole, and by using the best of both conventional and alternative approaches to illness, options for healing greatly increase.

CAM medicine also integrates the idea of Mind-Body Medicine.  Surveys show that minimally one in five adults use at least one mind-body therapy.  Mind-body medicine focuses on the collaboration among the brain, mind, and body of a person as well as the emotional, mental, spiritual and behavioral aspects.  Some typical mind-body practices are hypnosis, visual imagery, yoga, biofeedback, qi-gong or tai chi, sound therapy and one’s spiritual practice. 

There are some basic principles of Mind-Body Medicine which include:

Mind, body and spirit are interwoven, not just within an individual but also with the external environment.  The mind strongly affects the body and the body affects the mind.  Mental attitudes affect physical health.  Health is improved through an optimistic attitude and is hindered with anger and too much stress.³

The concept of mind as an important aspect of healing is quite old.  It has been an integral part of traditional Chinese acupuncture and Ayurvedic medicine, which began over 2,000 years ago.  Hippocrates believed that proper treatment would occur only with a balanced focus on attitude, natural remedies and environmental influences.  The moral and spiritual aspect of healing was also an important part of the Hippocratic healing system.  Another Greek philosopher, Socrates, taught that the body would not heal without the soul/spiritual essence also being healed.

Mind-body medicine works on the principle that humans are energetic beings with many parts all working as a whole – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.  Allopathic medicine addresses the symptom of the person and can often bring about a cure of that symptom.  However, the person will often have a re-occurrence of the problem, especially if the cause of the problem has not been addressed--be it mental, physical, emotional or a mixture of these.  Mind-Body medicine stresses that complementary therapies can help chronic degenerative diseases such as arthritis, heart disease, autoimmune disorders and cancer, as well as other difficult health problems, like asthma, headaches, sinusitis, chronic fatigue-- areas of illness that conventional medicine frequently offers little to no help.  Complementary and alternative medicine addresses the entire energetic system of a person, thereby moving past a cure of a symptom to a complete healing for that individual.  This same principle is applied to many other alternative therapies.

Energy Therapies:

Everything in the universe, everything we observe – sun, planets, stars, earth, trees, people, animals, rocks, water – is a form of energy.  Physicist David Bohm (1980) wrote that energy permeates every inch throughout the entire universe and this energy connects every person and everything else in the world.⁴  Since energy saturates every atom and molecule, energy medicine can span many topics of illness.  Energy therapy can be effectively used with psychological problems, physical challenges, emotional issues, chronic illnesses, and even to maintain a strong healthy state.

Traditional medicine views the body as a set of different parts and, by in large, considers the mind and body as separate.  Energy Medicine is based on the idea that there is a sophisticated energy system operating within the body of each person.  By manipulating this energy in positive ways, the body can maintain, or regain health.  Energy and matter are the same really, which means that the body and spirit are also interconnected.  Additionally, if one aspect of this system of body, mind, and spirit is affected, all parts will be affected.

While this is a new idea to western medical thinkers, it is not new.  Electromagnetic activity and life-energy centers are observed in cultures all over the world.  The Huna tradition of Hawaii calls these centers auw, yogis call them chakras, Taoism names them dantien. These older cultures recognize the fact that when all body energies are brought into harmony, the body thrives and holds health.   Dr. Gabriel Cousens wrote that he believes materials that compose our physical form are nourished not only by oxygen, glucose and chemical nutrients, but also by high vibrational energies that give the self a specific creative life expression.  These electromagnetic and subtle energies give the body its foundational health and well-being.⁵

For thousands of years the energy field has been intuited and described qualitatively, but now it can at last be described quantitatively.  In 1996, Dr. Konstantin Korotkov invented a machine called the Gas Discharge Visualization Technique (GDV), which gives accurate, exact and reproducible analysis of energy-informational states of a person and allows the accurate study of the influence of various factors on this state.⁶   This means that there is a machine now that can measure a person’s energy field to help determine where the body is not in a healthy balanced state.

 One very well known expert in the field of energy therapy is Dr. Carolyn Myss.  In the introduction of her book, Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, Dr. Myss says that people can tap into and experience their innate sacredness by learning about energy medicine.  Energy medicine teaches that the human spirit is a manifestation of energy. Dr. Myss refers to the seven energy centers (chakras) in the body to describe the energy medicine process.  She says one’s spirit grows into self-understanding and awareness by tapping into the specific language and process of each chakra, unfolding and moving toward self-realization as they activate and live through each higher chakra.  The idea behind using energy medicine is to treat the body and spirit equally.  Like others in the field of alternative medicine, Dr. Myss reminds us that energy medicine is a very old field of knowledge.  The ancient Hindu, Chinese, and shamanic healers all understood its principles and techniques.⁷ Today we are simply re-addressing this knowledge and learning how to bring it into the field of science and medicine.

Energy medicine reveals the connection between physical matter, pure intelligence, vibration, resonance, and faith, and shows that each of these exist as part of a living system for healing.  By discovering the constant universal flow of healing energy available to us, we can change our state of existence.

The next article will address effective Vibrational Therapies available today.  From there we will move into the marvelous healing field of sound therapy which will include music as well as other forms of healing sound like tuning forks and Cymatherapy, one of the best sound techniques being used by practitioners today for assisting people to regain health.

Continue to Part 2.

References:

1. Norman Shealy, Sacred Healing, (Boston, MA: Element Books, 1979), 172.
2. E. Ernst, The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Presentation: Millennium Festival of Medicine.  BMJ, Nov. 2000; 321:1133-1135
3. Kenneth R. Pelletier, The Best Alternative Medicine, (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 61.
4. Fred P. Gallo and Harry Vincenzi,  Energy Tapping, (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publication, Inc., 2000) 16.
5. Cynthia Kaye Morin, East Meets West: Energy Medicine in America, 2006, suchnessspa.com
6. Ibid., 3.
7. Carolyn Myss. Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can, (New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 1997), ix-xi.