
Benefits of Vibrational
Sound Therapy
Benefits of Vibrational
Sound Therapy
Vibrational sound therapy can retune your body, mind and spirit, encouraging relaxation, healing and wellness. This therapy uses singing bowls and chimes to create a combination of tones and vibrations that produce a state of tranquility and act as a massage for the nervous system. Vibrational Sound Therapy affects the body on a cellular level, opening energy flow to move you back toward healthy alignment.
Stress creates an unhealthy flow of energy, first appearing as low energy in your aura, and, later, as ill health, mentally and physically. Sound healing helps you relax through soothing sound and vibration, combating stress. Although sound healing has grown in popularity in recent years, it is a healing modality that dates way back. From vocal chanting to instruments such as Tibetan singing bowls, shamanic drums, and more, you will find some form of sound healing in every culture on Earth. The practitioner generates a vibration on the singing bowls, which creates a physical vibration throughout your body. As the bowls focus on the physical connection, the practitioner focuses on spiritual and energetic connections.
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As you probably recall from your basic science classes, human bodies are 75% water, which is a great conductor for vibrations. Sound healers use instruments, such as Tibetan bowls, crystal bowls, glasses, gongs and even tuning forks, that vibrate at specific frequencies when struck. These vibrations correspond to specific emotions.Each energy center in our body vibrates at a different level as well.Many people don’t want to feel sadness or grief, so they close their heart chakras rather than allowing themselves to feel these uncomfortable emotions. When the sound practitioner strikes this bowl, they release the healing vibration of the heart chakra into the body of the person being healed. This opens the heart chakra, allowing it to release the trapped negative emotions. Brainwave entrainment refers to the capacity of the brain to naturally synchronize its brainwave frequencies with the rhythm of external stimuli. In practical terms, this means that your brainwave frequencies synchronize with the frequencies produced by sound healing instruments. The positive frequencies allow your cells to operate in harmony with each other, healing organs, bones and uncomfortable emotional states.
There are many benefits of vibrational sound therapy. Vibrational sound therapy can:
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Reduce stress
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Reduce pain
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Ease blockages and tension
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Reduce depression
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Improve sleep
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Boost creativity
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Improve concentration
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Balance energy fields (aura) and chakras
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Lower blood pressure
Vibration is measured in units of hertz (Hz), the same unit in which sound is measured. Humans hear frequencies from 20 Hz up to 20,000 Hz, but that doesn't mean those outside the limits don't affect us. And "when you have two vibrating entities next to each other, the stronger vibration will affect the weaker one; eventually, they'll synchronize. That's basic physics," explains David Perez-Martinez, M.D., an integrative psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and sound healing practitioner. Then there's basic anatomy: "In your ear, there's the vestibulocochlear nerve, which connects to the vagus nerve, the major parasympathetic nerve in the body," says Dr. Perez-Martinez. (Reminder: Your parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for "rest and digest" activities such as reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, and relaxing muscles.) The vagus nerve helps control hormone release, digestion, blood glucose levels, inflammation, heart rate, and blood pressure. "And there's a little branch of the vagus nerve that goes right to the tympanic membrane (also known as the eardrum), which vibrates in response to sound waves. So that means that every sound that you process through your ears sends that information to the vagus nerve," explains Dr. Perez-Martinez. This is significant, because an inactive or blocked vagus can mean bad news for your health, and stimulating it via the right frequencies can help. A recent study on vibroacoustic therapy - when sounds and vibrations are applied directly to the body to penetrate you on a cellular level - found that the practice could be an effective treatment for chronic pain and injury recovery. We all learned in our elementary science classes that everything is made of atoms. Quantum physicists discovered that atoms are made of subatomic particles, which continually vibrate at certain frequencies. In fact, at the quantum level, what we think of as a quantum particle is really that particle’s vibration. Physics carried this to its logical conclusion and found that the entire universe is just a consequence of many infinitely large fields vibrating. Objects aren’t the only things that vibrate. It has been proven that our thoughts and feelings produce energy, which trigger vibrations. Everything vibrates at a different level, including feelings. Emotions that we consider uncomfortable, or unpleasant, vibrate at relatively low levels. Emotions that most people find pleasant and joyful vibrate at higher levels. For most people, it is easy to express positive emotions like happiness and joy. However, many people don’t want to feel negative emotions, so they stuff them inside. If this is done over years, the lowly vibrating trapped emotions stagnate in the body and cause disease. Brainwaves are directly linked to mental states of consciousness. There are different types of brainwaves: delta, theta, alpha and beta waves. Relatively slow delta waves are emitted during sleep, faster theta waves are emitted during meditation and beta waves (the fastest) are emitted when we are problem solving or focusing on particular tasks.
Sound waves that correspond to these four types of brain waves are generated when the sound healing practitioner strikes specific bowls. For example, the sound healer uses instruments that produce vibrations corresponding to the brain’s theta waves (4-8 hertz) to induce the positive feelings and healing experienced during meditation.