Sound is a powerful energetic force that has been used for healing throughout history. Ideally, our energy centers would exist in harmony, but daily build-up of stress and anxiety throw the body out of alignment. Sound therapy aims to restore internal rhythms by using tonal frequencies in order to recalibrate the body’s energy and emotions back into a balanced state.
Kayla Weber, a certified sound healer based in Vail, explains that every organ and bone in the human body generates its own unique resonant frequency. When the body’s frequencies interact with the frequencies in the world around it, it can have a strengthening or dampening effect. Intentional sound vibrations can realign our internal systems on a cellular level to promote health and well-being in the mind and body.
For centuries, cultures around the world have tapped into the healing power of sound. The Aboriginal people in Australia are the first known culture to use sound to heal, with the didgeridoo dating back at least 1,500 years. Tibetans are known for their singing bowls and gongs, while Chinese traditions used chanting mantras as healing prayers. Ancient Egyptian and Greek cultures used musical instruments and chants to heal various ailments. But, it wasn’t until the late 20th century that sound healing made its way into Western mainstream culture.
WHAT IS A SOUND BATH?
A sound bath immerses the body with vibrations of sound from crystal bowls, gongs, tuning forks, chimes and other musical instruments to create a relaxing meditative experience. Participants are invited to get comfortable with pillows, bolsters and/or blankets.
Sound therapy uses seven crystal bowls that play into the seven chakra energy sources in our body. Each bowl and instrument have a different note and resonate at a particular frequency, which is used to stimulate and open the energy centers. These frequencies, often known as the Solfeggio Frequencies, date back centuries.
BENEFITS OF SOUND THERAPY
Just as certain music brings on an emotional response or crashing waves will have a calming effect, sound plays a huge role in our body’s physiological response. Sound therapy allows the body to relax into a more restful state by lowering anxiety, slowing the heart rate, reducing blood pressure and relieving muscle tension.
The vibrations of sound can move the nervous system from the sympathetic state, which controls fight or flight response, into the parasympathetic state, known as the rest and digest response. When the body is constantly anxious and stressed, the brain reacts from an emotionally triggered state. By breaking that response, individuals can access their logical brain, which allows for a higher level of thinking and deeper wisdom.
“Our mental chatter can have a profound impact on our day-to-day functioning without us being aware of it. We can get stuck in negative thought patterns that are toxic for our mental well-being. Sound can help break those thought patterns and allow people to move on into something more productive,” says Weber. Participants often claim they had a deep, restful sleep after a sound bath, because they stopped their mental rumination that was keeping them awake.
SURROUNDED BY SOUND
“The body is exquisitely sensitive to sound,” writes Kulreet Chaudhary MD, a neurologist, neuroscientist and practitioner of Ayurvedic
medicine. In her book, Sound Medicine, How to Use the Ancient Science of Sound to Heal the Mind and Body, she explains how sound is one of the first senses humans develop, from 18 weeks in utero, to one of the last senses we lose before we take our final breath.
“Vibrations can travel through our skin and the fluid and bones within us — just as they do through air — making our entire bodies strikingly receptive to sound vibrations,” Chaudhary explains. Pressure waves, a component of sound, impact the body beyond what the ears hear, as it passes through the skin and is conducted through the water that makes up 70% of the human body.
So, while we may not feel the physical effects of sound, the intentional melody and vibrations from a sound bath bring the body into a
state of harmony from an internal level.
THE EXPERIENCE
“The human experience is a spectrum of feelings, emotions and vibrations. My invitation for anyone who goes into a sound bath is to have an open mind and feel the whole spectrum of what comes up,” Weber states.
Intense vibrations envelop the body as a sound healing session begins. Using the gong to clear energetic blockages and the crystal bowls to realign the chakra energies, the frequencies can have a different emotional effect on each person. It can sometimes be an uncomfortable, but necessary, process to let go of what no longer serves you to make room for positive thoughts and feelings.
Relax into the meditative experience and allow the sound waves to heal your mind, body and soul. As author Panache Densai writes, “What you vibrate into your world, the universe echoes back.
Jennifer Weintraub is a wanderlust and communications professional based in Vail, Colorado. She started writing about her travels after college when she lived abroad and explored the world (mostly solo, with a backpack). To fund her travels, she has written for businesses in tourism and construction + design. She loves to chase powder days, pedal miles on her mountain bike and hit the road in her van with her husband, young son and two husky mixes.Originally published in Winter + Spring 2022-23 issue.
