Sound healing

In the modern world, it’s so easy to get out of touch with oneself and with nature. We get lost in all the hustle and bustle happening around us. How often do you pay attention to the sounds of your own heart and breath in the midst of a busy schedule? How often do you get a chance to be on your own, contemplate silence, meditate, or immerse yourself in the healing power of sound?

A self-led retreat is a perfect place and time to explore the variety of healing sounds. Through sound therapy, you can connect with your inner self and tune into the frequency of love, joy, and harmony.

What Is sound healing?

Sound healing includes practices that use vocal or instrumental vibrations to improve health and well-being. Over the last two centuries, a great variety of sound and vibrational methods and therapies have been developed. Alone or in combination with other treatments, they focus on balancing energy to treat a condition. As an example, guided meditation can include special relaxation music, voiced guide, chanting, or repeating mantras.

Sound healing:

• reduces stress, pain, and blood pressure
• improves sleep
• helps in pain management and reduction
• increases awareness of triggers in addictive behaviors
• improves focus, concentration, and memory
• decreases anxiety and depression symptoms
• improves emotional health

Be your own sound healer

For thousands of years, healers have applied certain healing frequencies or tones of sounds on different parts of the body. Think of ancient shamans using various instruments, songs, or spoken voices. Imagine how the penetrating sound vibrations go through your body and move you to a place of balance and deep peace.

If you don’t know where to start or how to even think of yourself as a sound healer, think of the well-known Zen masters – our pets! Cats use their purring for numerous purposes, one of which is improving the healing of their bones and muscles. Cat’s purring falls into the range between 25 and 140 Hz. These frequencies are beneficial for wound healing, broken bones, joint, and tendon repair. Cats are natural self-healers, and they can heal others too.

Some studies show that cats’ purring might help people lower stress hormones, get rid of headaches, ease their breathing, decrease blood pressure, reduce risks of osteoporosis, and provide other healing benefits.

Being your own shaman or self-healer starts with the decision to heal and transform your life. Sound healing helps you tap into your inner power, and get in alignment with your soul and with nature.

Your solo retreat gives you plenty of space and time to connect with your own unique innate healing wisdom. When you start to scan your body, ask questions, and bring your voice to each part of your body, then magic reveals itself, right away. You can sing, use mantras, recital, vowels, groan, or roar. Let your voice guide you. Let it carry your pure intention. Feel the life force flowing through you while you play with your vocal expression. If you feel the tension in a certain area of your body, ask the question of what its root is. Tune into the entire process and explore the power of your voice.

Gandharva Veda music: align yourself with the sounds of nature

Pause for a moment and think of the following.

• What sound represents the color of the sunset?
• How do you feel when you are watching a stream flowing in a beautiful forest?
• How do you feel standing at the top of a mountain and observing the space around you?

Gandharva Veda music is in line with the frequencies of the mentioned natural phenomena. It is a part of Vedic teaching that focuses on the influence of sound and music. It consists of specific melodies called ragas that mimic the vibrations and patterns of a particular period of the day. As an example, when you listen to morning ragas you get energized. On the other hand, when you listen to evening ragas you become relaxed. Your body and mind are in accord with the cycles of nature.

Chanting mantras

Mantras are sacred utterances that have been present in many spiritual and non-spiritual traditions for centuries. In some practices, they can be in a form of a repeated syllable, word, or phrase. Practitioners can speak, chant, whisper, or repeat mantras in their minds. Here are some benefits of mantras:

• reducing mental chatter
• restoring inner health and balance
• gaining clarity and focusing more on the present moment
• radiating love and compassion towards oneself and other beings 
• connecting with the divine knowledge or different deities

One of the oldest mantras is Om. Its sound vibrates at the frequency of 432 Hz that is found throughout everything in nature. It consists of four syllables, A, U, M, and the silent syllable. Chanting Om connects you with the infinity within you. When you pronounce A as a prolonged /aah/, it connects you with the waking state, the consciousness of the outer world. A prolonged U /ooh/ is the dreaming state. In other words, it represents the consciousness of the inner world of thoughts, dreams, memories, etc. M /mmm/ is the deep sleep state. Between two successive Oms, there’s the period of silence. This is the fourth state of bliss and unity with everything.

Singing bowls

The vibrations of singing bowls harmonize body and mind by aligning the body's natural energy system Their healing sounds help calm the mind, provide pain relief, boost the immune system, relax the muscles, and do much more. When you run a mallet in a circular motion against the bowl’s outer edge, you hear a bright and pure healing tone. The vibrational resonance of the singing bowl spreads energetically through all areas of your body. You experience a reset, so to say. Its resonance restores any cellular energetic imbalance to its natural and balanced frequency.

Singing bowl sounds can accompany your meditation, yoga, chanting, or other wellness practices. When you listen to their healing sounds before your meditation, you set a path for better focus and relaxation during your practice.

Hand pan

At first sight, its convex shape makes it look like a small flying saucer. Filling your self-guided retreat with the gentle vibrations of a hand pan will make you fall in love with this sound therapy instrument. Also known as a hand drum, it helps listeners experience entrainment. As an example, if your body is under stress, you will vibrate at a lower frequency. In this case, the powerful rhythmic vibrations of the hand pan will cause the less powerful vibrations of your body to synchronize with the former ones and oscillate at the hand pan’s rate. Hand drum music naturally creates a warm, meditative, and relaxing atmosphere. 

Solfeggio frequencies

Solfeggio frequencies represent the best music for a retreat. Their scale dates back to ancient times and is used in Gregorian Chants. The numbers 3, 6, and 9 are the basic root vibrations of these frequencies. In ancient times, the tuning technique known as Just Intonation was used, and it created a much purer sound by using pure intervals between notes. Each frequency of this scale has a specific healing property:

• 396 Hz: Cleansing guilt and fear; grounding and stabilizing energies.
• 417 Hz: Facilitating changes; removing negative past patterns.
• 528 Hz: Transformation, miracles, and creativity.
• 639 Hz: Connecting and improving relationships.
• 741 Hz: Awakening intuition; enhancing authentic expression.
• 852 Hz: Returning to spiritual order.

Three more tones were later added by Harvard-trained Science Scholar, Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz:

• 174 Hz: Reducing pain.
• 285 Hz: Enhances the immune system; heals tissues; influences the energy fields.
• 963 Hz: Enlightenment and transformation.

Binaural beats

As you listen to binaural beats music on your headphones, you experience two slightly different tones presented to each ear. In this case, the brain recognizes the newly formed pulse or beat as the difference between the two tones and syncs to it. This process is called brainwave entrainment. It can also stimulate the brain to enter a specific state with light or electromagnetic fields. Another brainwave entrainment technique is isochronic tones which emit sound rapidly and at regular intervals.

On your self-led retreat schedule you can add brainwave music for beta (normal waking consciousness), alpha (relaxed consciousness; a wakeful rest), theta (meditative state), delta (being deep in a state of dreamless sleep; where internal healing can occur), and gamma (actively solving problems and learning) states.

 

There are many other sound therapy instruments such as gongs, tuning forks, etc. that you can also include in your self-directed retreat program. Be the creator of your sound healing journey and enjoy the process.