I have been studying the benefits of Sound Healing for the past 15 years. I have found it to be an amazing modality to promote stress reduction and relaxation. It helps to put the body and mind into balance, and often elevates moods by releasing trapped energy or emotions that keep us from our peace and joy. Julie Russell, Certified Sound Healer.
Could you benefit from sound healing?
Stress plays a HUGE role in health issues and dis-ease. With countless distractions, stimulation, and noise in our modern world, it’s challenging to reduce stress and recharge. Many people are turning to sound healing for relief. This form of acoustic therapy uses sound vibrations to relax the body and mind, leading to many benefits that support healing. And sound healing is enjoyable; it speaks to you. Let’s explore the benefits of sound healing and how it can help you achieve a greater state of relaxation and wellness.
What is Sound Healing?
Sound Healing uses sound waves to relax the body and bring it into a parasympathetic state that restores health. Sound healers use tuning forks, singing bowls, drums, gongs, chimes, and other instruments (including their own voice), to create a soothing soundscape. The harmonious frequencies produced by these instruments help clear energetic blocks and promote flow and harmony within your mind, body, and soul.
How Does Sound Healing Work?
Frequency + Intention
During a sound healing session, you typically sit or lay in a relaxed and receptive position. What makes sound therapy healing is (1) the frequency, or wavelength, of the sound and (2) your intention. Specific frequencies create different responses. For example, hearing binaural beats (two different tones played in each ear) balances brainwaves and calms the nervous system.
Receiving the full benefits also depends on your intention. Sound Expert Jonathan Goldman says, “Frequency plus intent equals healing, which means the sound we make, coupled with the intention or the consciousness we put on the sound, creates the outcome of the sound.” The more attentively you listen and allow the sound to wash over you (like a sound bath), the deeper your body relaxes.
Benefits of Sound Healing
Sound healing encourages a state of DEEP relaxation so the body can heal. Using specific frequencies, sound allows you to shift into harmony, balance, and coherence. Sound healing can be beneficial for reducing stress, clearing emotional blocks, improving mood, increasing awareness, reducing pain, boosting your health, and more.
Sound healing can help YOU…
1. Relieve Stress
Over 90 percent of doctor’s visits are due to stress, and stress relief is one of the greatest benefits of sound healing. Simply put, stress and dis-ease reflect disharmony, while relaxation and health reflect harmony. Sound healing relaxes your body and quiets your mind to reduce stress-related issues and improve your health. As calming sounds surround and flow through your system, you restore harmony, balance, and flow within your mind, body, and soul. This can lead to a renewed sense of happiness, purpose, and wellness.
“You can look at disease as a form of disharmony. And there’s no organ system in the body that’s not affected by sound, music and vibration.” — Mitchell Gaynor, M.D., Sounds of Healing
2. Improve Health
Sound healing creates “sound health.” As a result of reducing stress, sound healing also supports health by activating a relaxed rest-and-digest healing response. This parasympathetic state produces nitric oxide (NO), which improves circulation, blood flow, and cell efficiency — All of which promote health. Sound Healing Expert, Dr. John Beaulieu has researched how therapeutic sound promotes nitric oxide, a powerful antibacterial and antiviral molecule that benefits relaxation, pain-relief, inflammation, circulation, and immunity.
3. Release Buried Emotions
Since everything has a vibrational frequency, including you, it’s only natural that sound impacts how you feel. That’s why music can elicit specific emotions. Sound healing allows you to unearth and release buried emotions, traumas, and memories. As this energetic weight releases, you feel lighter and more at ease. Due to these emotional shifts, therapeutic sound can be helpful for anxiety and depression.
“Sound has a direct effect on the chemistry of our emotions. It is not just that certain types of music make us feel happy or sad, but that specific frequencies can alter our brainwave patterns, which directly shift our emotional states.” — Don Gorman, The Sound Healer’s Handbook
4. Enhance Mood
Though you may not realize it, the sounds you hear throughout the day profoundly impact your mood. For example, noise from a construction site can leave you feeling irritated and on edge, whereas the tranquil sounds of nature elicit feelings of calm and peace. That’s why it’s essential to be intentional about the sounds you allow into your space. Luckily, sound healing provides an opportunity to enhance your mood with high-vibe frequencies that encourage feelings of well-being. According to a study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, listening to 30 minutes of live music increases dopamine levels. This “feel-good” neurotransmitter makes you feel happy and motivated. Recorded music provides similar benefits.
5. Boost Brainwaves
You’re designed to be in harmony, and your brain supports that. By providing a consistent frequency, sound healing allows your brainwaves to entrain or synchronize with the frequency of the sound. When your brainwaves are in sync, you feel more relaxed and focused. You can balance and harmonize your brain and body through entrainment. You can also shift your brainwaves from a normal beta state to a relaxed alpha state, a deep meditative theta state, and even a restorative delta state. Brainwave entrainment has many benefits, including better focus, concentration, relaxation, and sleep.
6. Expand Consciousness
- Not only does sound have the ability to boost brainwaves, it can also help you access expanded states of consciousness. Ancient cultures often used drumming to create a heartbeat rhythm of about 5 hertz, a theta brainwave state. Theta brainwaves allow you to enter a deeply meditative state.
- Science shows that brainwave entrainment is also effective at bridging both brain hemispheres to stimulate a Whole-Brain State. Listening to or playing music is one of the few things that lights up the entire brain on an EEG scan. When you’re in a Whole-Brain State, you’re able to think more clearly and creatively, coming up with solutions much easier.
“In a Whole-Brain State, both sides of the brain work together efficiently. The logical left side and the creative right side are integrated so you can think more clearly, creatively, and holistically. You become more intelligent, insightful, and effective when both sides of your brain work together in harmony.” — Dr. Dan Gable
7. Increase Heart-Brain Coherence
Sound healing increases heart-brain coherence, which promotes better communication between these two organs. When your heart and brain resonate and work together, you think more clearly, make better decisions, and feel more centered, calm, and happy.
To learn more, we invite you to call Reiki Orange County at (949) 370-7592 or fill out our contact form to schedule a consultation today.
