What do
you hear when you really take the time to listen to your everyday environment?
Birds, water, wind? Or printers, ringing phones and traffic? In our
increasingly technological world, researchers are finding that our mental and physical
health suffers from the lack of regular exposure to the sounds of nature.
Although we are intrinsically wired to attune to the sounds of living things,
we have forgotten (or become unaware of) how nature’s noises can ease pain and
stress and increase the rate of healing.
Sound is among the most trans-formative and healing energies on the planet. It can relax us and make us calm, or move us to great heights of emotion. Sound can restore balance and harmony to our lives and make us healthy and well. Conversely, sound also has the ability to adversely affect us and bring our already stressed-out vibratory rates to new levels of imbalance and disharmony.
What
is the difference in the sounds that make us healthy and those that distress
us? Let us find out.
Sound can affect us on all levels - physical, emotional, mental, and
spiritual. Beneficial sounds for us are often sounds that we consider
"sacred." These sounds seem to have the ability to charge and
harmonize us. There are reasons for this.
Knowledge of sound as a therapeutic and transformative
force is very old. The Ancient Mystery Schools of Greece, Rome, Egypt, Tibet,
and India had great knowledge of sound as being the primary creative force in
the universe.
The ancients knew what the modern physicists now understand, that all is in a state of vibration, and so confidently the ancient mystics proclaimed that "The World is Sound!"
A concept of disease,
observed by the ancients, and now speculated by certain scientists, is that
illness is an out of tune behaviour of the body. When something becomes
diseased, its frequency changes and it begins to vibrate differently than it
once did. Through sound then, it may be possible to apply harmonizing
vibrations which will cause the body to become in tune again.
In a healthy body, every organ, bone, tissue, and other part is
producing balanced frequencies that create a healthy harmonic of the entire
body.
Sacred
sounds from different traditions can vary extremely in their use of
frequencies. These traditions will often use very different tonal scales and
rhythms than we are accustomed to here in the West and we may find these sounds
extremely bizarre, out of tune, and quite disharmonious. But that is, until we
truly open our ears and our hearts to what is really going on.
When
Westerners first visited Africa, they reported that the Africans loved to sing
and dance, but unfortunately the Africans were totally unmusical with no sense
of rhythm.
Nowadays, we may hear Indian Ragas or say Tibetan Chanting for the
first time and feel very similar reactions perceiving these sounds as totally
unmusical.
However, once we get past this initial response, we may find that
these sacred sounds have extremely transforming effects.
Dr.
Alfred Tomatis, a French doctor, has spent many years researching the sacred
sounds of the world.
In particular, he has examined much sacred chanting, including Gregorian and Tibetan.
Dr.
Tomatis has found that many of the sacred sounds on the planet are rich in high
frequency sounds, called harmonics or overtones. He believes that these sounds
charge the cortex of the brain and stimulate health and wellness.
When we listen to a recording
of this type of sound, if we are open enough to by-pass any strangeness of
language, tone, or frequency, we are often in the frequency of the person
making these sounds.
And if they are done with the correct intention, we may be
able to experience very transformative results.