The Scientific Basis for Sound Healing

Written by: David Gibson

What is Sound Healing?

Sound healing, through various techniques and technologies, is the educated and conscious use of sound, music, and intention to reach identified goals and promote wellness in the human body, including the expansion of consciousness.

​Sound Healing includes five main areas:

1. Frequency. Specific frequencies are used with tone generators, tuning forks, and embedded in music for the resolution of specific health issues.
2. Timbres (Tonality of Sound). Different instrument sounds are used for a variety of purposes (i.e., crystal bowls, Tibetan bowls, tuning forks, gongs, and other traditional instruments used in cultures throughout the world for healing and ceremony). Different voice tonalities and the full range of syllables that the voice can make are often used for multiple intentions.
3. Music Intervals. Musical intervals are the relationship of one vibration to another. This not only refers to music, but also describes the relationship of any two things in the universe, whether it be two plants, two planets, or two people. Intervals in music are the basis of all the feelings and emotions that are invoked when a person listens to music irrespective of culture or historic period.
4. Music. Music includes rhythm that entrains the heart and brain. Rhythm and melody together can create a full range of emotions.
5. Energy and Intention. Intention is incredibly powerful and even more effective when added to sound or music.
   

Sound Healing works at each of these five levels. To put it in perspective, music therapy normally deals only with timbres, musical intervals, and music. The field of Sound Healing includes timbres, intervals and music, yet also focuses on specific frequencies and commonly uses energy and intention.

How It Works​

Science has proven and we know intuitively that everything is vibration. When we understand the simple laws of resonance we are given a tool to help change our world – both internally and externally.

The most basic concept of Sound Healing is that when you play consistent or coherent vibration it resonates that stability and peace into a person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It is not about a “higher vibration,” it is more about stability and peace. This is the natural state of every part of the body from the cell to heart and brain – consistency of vibration. Stress, fear, anxiety, and anger (to name a few) create chaotic vibrations that are not in alignment with natural consistent state of the body.

The second concept is that everything also has a resonant frequency that it prefers to vibrate at. Every part of the body is the healthiest when it is vibrating at its own natural resonant frequency. When you find that natural frequency of a part of the body, you can play that frequency into the body and entrain it back into its natural healthy state.

This next concept is that harmony also creates peace and stability. Harmonious musical intervals and chords also resonate their energy into the body at every level.

The most important concept is a smooth flow in music also creates peace and flow in a human being physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Smooth flow is defined as change that is not too abrupt – exactly like the flow commonly found in nature. Certain music resonates this consistent flow into the body – also create peace and stability, the state in which the body’s immune system flourishes.​

The Science

It is well documented, both scientifically, clinically, and anecdotally that sound and music have positive physical, mental, emotional and spiritual impact on human beings, animals and plants.

There is very credible research and science that definitively demonstrate the positive physical effects of sound on humans. Traditional science have long described exactly how sound physically affects matter. There are many well-defined laws of physics around resonance, which is commonly defined as how one vibration affects another.

There is also credible research and science on how sound, music and rhythms affect humans mentally. EEG monitoring has been used to identify brain rhythms during which, scientists and researchers can see precisely how different sounds, rhythms, and music positively influence and transform these rhythms, helping improve specific human physiological functioning. It has been clearly established in the medical and scientific community and different rhythms are helpful for sleep, creativity, learning, focus, and thinking and many more important cognitive functions.

There is much research regarding how sound and music affect humans emotionally. We all know intuitively the power of music on our emotions. Music can get us excited, calm us down or even bring us to tears. Music is particularly useful for transforming depression, anxiety, anger, and fear irrespective of age, gender, culture, religious orientation or belief.

The science of emotions is now becoming more definitive as the California organization, HeartMath (https://www.heartmath.org), is well along in clinical research that shows how emotions manifest in human physiology. We can now see precisely which components of sound and music are affecting which emotions.

There is some science around how sound and music affects humans spiritually based on quantum physics. There is definitive research that proves that a consistent intention creates a change in any person – not just emotionally, but also physically. Even though attributes like the soul or spirit have not yet been proven by science, there are many anecdotal stories about people throughout the ages having what are referred to as “spiritual transformations” from both sound and music

David Gibson is leading educator and researcher in the field of Sound Healing and Therapy. He is the Founder and Director of the Globe Sound and Consciousness Institute in San Francisco, offering in-residence and online individual classes as a State of California approved Certificate and Associates Degree programs in Sound Healing and Therapy. (http://SoundHealingCenter.com).