Sound healing and my sound journey getting here
Sound healing, sound therapy or sound medicine is considered a complementary therapy which uses voice, acoustics and the sound and vibration of different instruments to treat the imbalances of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy bodies. By applying sound in a healing session, the body’s natural healing system is initiated for deep restorative healing at cellular and emotional levels. The best-known benefits of sound healing are reduced stress, decreased anxiety and depression, less mood swings, calm and deep relaxation, improved sleep, memory concentration, boost the energy levels, as well as Chakra balancing and Aura cleansing, low cholesterol levels, low blood pressure and better immune system.
In my practice, I use healing intentions accompanied by sound through my voice (overtone singing, chanting mantras, or simply melody) and the sound & vibration of different instruments such as Tibetan Singing Bowls, Crystal bowls, Tuning Forks, Therapy monochord, frame and ocean drums, chimes, shakers and others (I will talk more about each of these in a blog series), employing the principle of ‘sympathetic resonance’, making the energy fields or the physical body of the client resonate with the sound created, to reach the healthy vibration to heal the disbalance.
Short history and useful concepts explained
‘Since the dawn of time, human beings have used sound to receive information from their environment, to communicate with each other, and to heal and transform. Almost all ancient cultures and indigenous people believed, and still believe that sound is creative, generative force which brought the Universe into being’ (Source: Nestor Kornblum, Introduction to Sound Therapy, The Healing power of Sound and Overtones).
Healing with sound is believed to be as old as dating back from ancient Greece, when music was used to cure mental disorders. Nevertheless, aboriginal civilization used sacred instruments dating thousands of years back, all over the world – e.g. the Australians aboriginal tribes their use of the Didgeridoo, the Tibetan monks in the monasteries using the Tibetan or Himalayan Singing bowls during meditation and prayers, the Indian tribes using the Shamanic drums for rituals and ceremonies and so forth.
There are a lot scientific studies and reviews who assess and discuss about the seen benefits of using sound to heal, but most importantly to understand is that sound is energy too and that everything is made of pure vibration. Our bodies have different energy fields as explained in my previous article and both our physical bodies and our auras (energy fields) can resonate with the same frequency as the sound employed on or close to the body (the study of cymatics demonstrates this best). ‘Sound is audible energy – is the result of mater vibrating to make waves that are ‘big’ enough and of the right pitch to be audible to the human ear. For us to hear sound, the brain must be able to make sense of the energy vibrations and ‘convert’ them into sound we can understand’. (Source: #what is Sound Healing?, by Liz Cooper, page 20)
Therefore, the sound therapy is based on the principle of ‘sympathetic resonance’, which states that if one object vibrates, it will make another object in proximity to vibrate in harmony with it. Thus, our bodies, our energy fields have their own healthy or optimum frequency to which they vibrate. In case of an illness or disharmony, adding the healing intention and the voice or any other harmonious sound & vibration to the ill or disharmonious area, on or around the body, that area can be restored to its healthy frequency.
In future articles I will talk about each sound healing technique and instrument separately, such as overtone singing, deep voice and the healing instruments.
My relationship with sound
Ever since I was little, I remember singing. I have always loved using my voice, creating short melodies and just babbling invented lyrics, from the bottom of my heart. I grew up in a musical family, my grandfather being a talented saxophone player, my mom having a beautiful voice using it so wonderfully most of the time, and my cousin and his acoustic sounds, completing the ‘family band’. All our family gatherings were gravitating around singing and playing different instruments together, which made me associate sound with the joy and peace of the family.
I have always been attracted and touched by sound and when I ‘entered’ into this spiritual journey, for self-healing and for raising my vibration and my consciousness, sound was omnipresent – in all its shapes: voice, acoustics, sacred instruments and recordings (guided mediation, mantras and so forth).
Over the last 4-5 years, based in Amsterdam, a city offering a breadth of opportunities, I have taken part of many sound mediations, sound journeys, sound baths. However, by far, the most powerful ever sound experience was in 2020 at the Pyramids of Chi, in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; I will write a full article about this amazing experience. My real sound immersion started then in 2020 – after this key moment in my life I knew it with all my body, mind and spirit that this journey will not only be my sound journey, but my life journey.
There is a small, personal and full of energy store in Amsterdam, called Fabula Rosa, which offers a large pallet of healing crystals, yoga props, awakening books in spirituality, healing techniques and tarot, and also Tibetan Singing Bowls. The owner knows a lot about this world, it is always a pleasure visiting his store and getting bits and pieces of his knowledge. He helped me pick ‘my little singing bowl’ from so many options, the one that sang for me, the one that called on me. It was my previous little singing bowl that accompanied me through joy and pain, always lifting my spirits, always making me be creative and a better version of myself. To this very day, ‘my little singing bowl’ remains my favorite and most loved healing instrument in my musical family.
After attending a healing circle session led by Jose Antonio Manchado, I found out about his Tibetan Bowl & Sound Therapy training, which helped me find my path and inspired me to include sound into my energy healing practice. This was only the beginning, as from then on, a lot of other instruments made their way into my life and into my healing practice – from crystal singing bowls, to the African Djembe drum, then to Koshi chimes, tuning forks, frame and ocean drums, monochord and all sorts of shakers and rattles.
Then in 2021 I attended the International Sound Healing training held by Michele Averard and Nestor Kornblum, internationally recognized Sound Therapists and co-founders of the Association of Sound Therapy and Harmonic Studies and the International Association of Sound Therapy. Attending Michele’s and Nestor’s training took my vision of sound healing to another level. I have been inside The Dome for two weeks, a very acoustic and sound empowering location in Spain. In The Dome one can hear every bit of every sound, from the voice of our teachers and all the instruments we were presented with and worked with. This experience made me not only more receptive to each sound, but also capable to choose intuitively the exact instrument (voice or actual sound instrument) a person needs healing from, the position in the person’s energy fields the instrument needs to be activated and the duration, so that the healing is most beneficial. I am forever grateful for Michele’s and Nestor’s guidance and teachings.
Why join me for sound healing?
I often reflect on my journey with sound and I feel blessed, humble and incredibly grateful to have found such a powerful and effective healing technique – sound healing, which worked its magic on me and on my close-ones. I am happy to share sound healing with the rest of the world, in my combination of energy, sound and color healing. My curiosity pushed me to try my limits and discover the effects of sound in different circumstances, my determination took me to gather the necessary knowledge and my results demonstrated I am able to heal – so I am looking forward to seeing you in my practice to see how sound can heal you.
In a future article series, I will take each instrument and hopefully inspire you with their beautiful sounds and incredible healing benefits.
See you back soon!
Love, light and warmth,
Teo
For more scientific evidence, I recommend to read the review of over 400 articles that talk about the use of sound as medicine – The neurochemistry of music, by Mona Lisa Chanda 1, Daniel J Levitin and a study that examined the effects of using Tibetan Singing Bowls to reduce pain and anxiety, while raising the spiritual well-being, Effects of Singing Bowl Sound Meditation on Mood, Tension, and Well-being: An Observational Study, by Tamara L. Goldsby, Michael E. Goldsby, PhD and others.
