Healing Lifestyles & Spas

A Soundtrack for Healing

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By on Healing Blog

By Kyle Roderick

All the noise and music you hear is resonating in patterns that are in tune – or clashing – with your vibrational frequency

Do you love slow Bach, kirtan music, ocean surf, or alt rock? Whatever your preference, you know how sound has the power to relax your body and spread sunshine through your soul. Reducing stress and supporting the body’s natural healing abilities, the healing power of sound is animating spa treatments to induce scientifically proven beneficial states such as the relaxation response. But spas aren’t the only places digging the vibe; hospitals such as Exempla Good Samaritan in Lafayette, Colorado, are wiring public and private rooms with custom-designed audio environments containing therapeutic music and nature sounds. Tuned-in corporations such as HBO and Cisco Systems are also spreading profound sounds by offering their employees free vibrational and music therapy sessions that help manage stress, promote creativity, and enhance productivity.

“Sound and music have the power to serve as music therapy, mood elevators, learning tools, and psychologically enriching software,” says Suzannah Long of SoSound Solutions, a Colorado company that designs site-specific sound environments, vibrationally resonant furniture and beds for spas, corporations, and individuals. SoSound’s products are used for stress management, remedying chronic back and other pains, as well as for treating autism.

The medical science of music therapy is based on the work of French physician Alfred Tomatis, M.D., who died in 2001. Theorizing that certain melodies carried by specific frequencies stimulate the brain with electrical energy and thus positively “charge” it with stimuli, Tomatis discovered that patients with various medical conditions who listened to certain types of music experienced improved mental clarity and more organized thought processes that led to enhanced emotional well-being and improved performance.

“Music and sound affect us so strongly because everything in the universe emits a measurable vibration, including your body,” says Dr. Jeffrey D. Thompson, director of the Center for Neuroacoustic Research in Encinitas, California. Thompson, who designed a neuroacoustic recliner that resonates with customized soundtracks, adds, “Every organ in the body vibrates at its own specific frequency, which means that all the noise and music you hear is resonating in patterns that are in tune – or clashing – with your vibrational frequency.”

What’s more, mind/body vibrations are ruled by heart rhythms. While a normal adult’s resting heart rate pulses 60 to 100 beats per minute, the scientific law of rhythm entrainment dictates that fast-paced sounds hotwire the heart to match faster tempos in the environment. A coffee bean grinder, for instance, forces the heart to beat faster to entrain, or synch up with its speedy pace. Rising heart rates elevate blood pressure while stress hormones run riot, breathing becomes shallow and irregular, and other organs and body systems lose their normal synergistic beat.

Tomatis’s work spawned famous studies such as the one showing that children’s scores on spatial IQ tests soared after listening to just ten minutes of Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major. The Mozart Effect, as it has since been termed, convinced many researchers that complex music that pulses at sixty beats per minute or less empowers cognitive processes involved in higher brain activities such as mathematics and chess. In 2004, geneticists at Stanford University discovered a molecular blueprint for improved learning and memory through music. They found that rats that listened to Mozart sonatas utilized higher levels of genes involved in stimulating and charging the connections between brain cells.

Researchers across many disciplines are beginning to recognize music’s exciting potential to transform our lives – in everything from how we learn and develop to how we can preserve health and wellness throughout our lives,” says Dr. Concetta Tomaino, director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function and vice president for music therapy at Beth Abraham Family of Health Services in the Bronx, New York. “Based on years of clinical evidence, we know that familiar music has the capacity to stimulate seemingly lost memories in individuals with memory deficits due to head trauma, dementia, or stroke,” Tomaino explains. “Clinical evidence and some research suggests that music memory may utilize a different memory system in the brain – and a pathway that may still be available within the “silent” brain of the Alzheimer patient.”

While individuals are becoming more aware of the healing effects of music therapy, other emerging sound therapies include the Acutonics Healing System, a trademarked, energy-based non-invasive treatment that is similar to acupuncture. Acutonics is used to treat everything from PMS to depression to arthritis, cancer, and more.

In Acutonics, precision-calibrated tuning forks are applied to acupuncture and acupressure points on the body to access meridian and chakra energy systems. “These tuning forks comprise a natural harmonic series based on the orbital properties of the earth, moon, sun, and planets,” says vibrational therapy practitioner Alex Rentz of El Monte Sagrado Living Resort and Spa in Taos, New Mexico. During an Acutonics treatment, the tuning fork is struck on an Acutonics Acuvator, then placed on the body or held near the ears. The sound waves of the forks vibrate and travel deeply into the body along energy pathways. According to Rentz, the resonance and vibration of the tuning forks harmonize with and support the body’s natural frequencies. “Applying the forks stimulates and balances the body’s physical and subtle energy field to promote healing, inner harmony, and rest,” says Rentz.

Regarding sounds or music that you may want to avoid, recent research indicates it’s wise to steer clear of music that cycles at sixty beats per minute or more while driving or operating machinery. Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University found that drivers who listen to music that cycled at sixty beats per minute or more had twice as many accidents as those listening to tunes that ran sixty beats per minute or less (ouch).

Whatever road you take in life, remember that “Music has so much power to change the atmosphere – to modulate our physical, mental, and emotional landscape,” says composer and guitarist David Nichtern, founder of Dharma Moon Records. “While sound and music are gifts for lifting people’s spirits,” Nichtern adds, “you, the listener, have the power to resonate with vibrations that can turn your body into a spa for the soul.”

Healing Lifestyles & Spas Team
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