How Sound Affects Us - the Power of Our Words
I think we can probably all agree that mindfulness meditation is mostly about keeping our mind in the present moment. Which is not always as easy as it sounds.
We live in a very fast world, with many distractions, and we are generally a nation of "fidgety" and restless people. We can't sit still for long. We can't keep our mind concentrated on our breath for longer than a few minutes (or less) before it jumps around.
When we sit on our mat, meditation bench or cushion, and focus on the breath, the only thing that's happening right there and then is us, watching our breath. But often quite quickly we find our mind moves into the past or into the future. And that's when our problems start. In fact, most of our human problems come from the fact that our mind gets very busy with things that aren't actually happening right now.
One or two of the easiest ways (for me, anyway) to keep the mind in focus and concentrating on the present moment is to focus either on the breath or on sound. The breath is very present moment. There is no past breath. Or future breath. When we keep our attention on the breath, we are always in the present moment.
Same with sound. There is no past sound or future sound. When we focus on sound, we are present. We are here. Our mind is here.
So for the past few weeks I've been reading up on and sitting with the yoga and meditation concept of sound and how it affects us and our mind / body. And when I started researching the idea of sound, I quickly realised that what I am actually looking into is energy.
So here's the thing: Everything is energy. There is nothing else!
You, me, plants, this building, ALL of it is energy. Sound is energy – in the form of sound waves. Light is energy. Even what we think of as a solid form or matter is a collection of atoms bonded together by energy.
Einstein said: matter is frozen light and light is matter on the move. Light, matter, sound ... it’s all energy. And all that energy vibrates. It has what is known in science as a "frequency resonance". Even solid things vibrate with the energy required to keep the atoms in the shape that creates "tree" or "table". So how does it affect us, our solid and physical body?
Well, we probably know more about light than about sound. Light is commonly used for healing as laser, and light is used as therapy - among others – to treat arthritis, sport injuries, neck and back pain. Seeing sound in the same way - as a more physical or tangible kind of energy - is not so difficult to imagine if we think of sonic weapons. Which is sound used for crowd control. We know how to use sound to incapacitate or kill. But science is still trying to understand how it is that sound heals.
There are over 400 published scientific articles (including a wide-scale study published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine) which found evidence that sound & rhythm in particular (even more so that melody) has enormous health benefits. If you think about it, our bodies are all about rhythm. We have our hormonal rhythm, our cycles. Hormonal, our sleep cycles, our circadian rhythm. If we think of our breath, we realise it as a rhythm. Our heart has a rhythm.
Studies have been able to show that sound and rhythmic vibrations can actually transform our cell structure! Isn't that incredible!? Certain sounds suppress or inhibit cell growth and change bone density. Incredibly, sound has even been used to repair DNA chains. Sound also shown to improve our mood, reduce stress and thereby enhance our immune system function. Sound can reduce pain by average of 27%! Which might sound a like a small percentage, but is actually huge! It is also used as an important part of the healing process for cancer patients.
Sound therapy has been shown to increase blood circulation, lower blood pressure, calm & balance brain wave activity, reduce muscle tension, increase endorphin levels, & evoke feelings of wellbeing.
Although sound therapy has been used for over 40 000 years (hard to imagine) An example of this is the Australian indigenous people, who have used the didgeridoo as sound therapy since the beginning of time.
One of the most powerful sound instruments for healing and transformation is our voice. Which is why we sing gregorian chants & mantras, for instance the OM or AUM. In yoga and meditation, mantras are energy based sounds that are used to create vibrations through the body and chanting mantras can bring about balance in our body and mind. Chanting or listening to chants shifts & calms, and it is this calming and balancing which promotes healing.
Sound has an ancient connection with meditation. Tibetan singing bowls & gongs have been used for thousands of years and sound meditation is still practiced as a form of focused awareness meditation today.
An experiment conducted with a group of people listening to a 1hr long sound singing bowl meditation showed reduced tension, reduced feelings of anger, less fatigue, lessened anxiety, and lifted moods and helped with depression.
But wait! There is more! :) So we know that sound and voice is sound energy, and can make a difference. But in yoga and meditation we know that our thoughts and intentions also carry energy. In fact, we can make the jump to knowing that sound, voice, thought and intention energy can change matter. Sound bizarre?
Dr. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist who worked with water & sound for 20yrs, was able to conduct experiments and show that our words, thoughts and intentions ALSO have a physical impact. He studied how the molecular structure in water transforms when it is exposed to human words, thoughts, sounds and intentions. Using special imaging equipment he could clearly show that words and thoughts changes the molecular shape of water. Using dirty water, he used words which resonate well, which have a soft sound, which we know as "kind words" such as love, like, beautiful, etc. And the molecular shape changed from an "ugly shape" to the shape of a snowflake. And he did the same in reverse, using harsh words, which have a different resonance, using words like "hate" "idiot" and "disgusting" and the water changed from clear to turgid, and had a completely different molecular structure. An extraordinary man and this was his life's work.
Another well-known experiment is salt or sugar crystals in combination with sound. You may have seen how sugar or salt and sound on drums creates shapes and designs like snowflakes.
So this is all about sound. About vibration. And if we can accept that that everything is made of energy, and therefore everything vibrates - the earth, a plant, a chair - we can more easily imagine that everything has its own way of vibrating. It's own frequency. Everything vibrates, but our ear can't hear it.
And if we can accept that vibration can travel through us and be felt by every organ in our body, every part of our physical being, then we understand that sound is heard not only through our ears but through every cell in our bodies.
The concept of sound healing comes from a natural phenomenon known as entrainment - entraining or synchronizing the body to a certain sound. Entrainment occurs when the powerful vibrations of one object actually change the less powerful vibrations of another object. Entrainment was first discovered in 1665 by Dutch scientist named Christian Huygens. He set up a room full of pendulum clocks with their pendulums swinging at slightly different times. When he returned to the room the next day, he found the sway of the pendulums had all synchronized.
So today we used a frequency of 432Hz, which is one of the most soothing frequencies for the human ear, body and mind. What is so great about using sound in meditation is that we often have an immediate and very strong association with sound. You may have experienced a moment where you heard a song from long ago, and instantly you were swept back to that time and place, able to imagine the people, the time, perhaps eve the smells. Sound is very evocative in that way. So if we sit in meditation using the same sound regularly, it may make it easier to quickly move into "meditation mode". This works especially well if we feel stressed or restless, which is a time when sitting is difficult and it sometimes takes half an hour just to get settled.
If you are feeling frazzled, tired, anxious, stressed or depressed, I invite you to consider taking another 5 minutes away from your busy life right now, and experience the sooting sounds of this very mellow chant. It's just over 3 hours long. Let me know if you make it to the end - haha!
Have a wonderful day!
Metta
Maja
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