Sound Healing

This information is a combination of tribal wisdom, western factual science and my own conclusions from working with sounds for myself and with clients since 1988

“Sound Healing ultimately restores harmony, which is the natural, unharmed and happy state of being.”

Sound

• Sound is vibration, vibration is movement, movement is life
• Sound penetrates and vibrates most materials, especially fluids. Examples: You can hear music from inside of a concrete building with all doors and windows closed outside on the street. If you hit a singing bowl filled with water with a soft mallet the water is vibrated so much that it sprays high into the air. The human body is made up of over 80% of fluids. A singing bowl placed on a body and with a soft mallet will vibrate each cell. The sound acts on a cellular level, removing blocks and stale and stagnant energy and this revitalising parts of the body that had been paralysed by trauma or shock.
• Humans are 18 times more alert to audio signals than to visual signals.
• Humans use mainly sound for communication and to pass on information.
• Sound is vibration, vibrations are waves, waves have different frequencies(Hertz). By these characteristics sound itself is information.
• Sound waves work in similar structures to ripples in water, caused by a pebble thrown into calm water.
• Sound works on all levels: you hear it, you feel it physically and emotionally and it can also be a spiritual experience. This is a traditional knowledge in many different cultures in West Africa, Indonesia, the Aboriginals in Australia and the American Native Indians amongst others.
• Sound can stir up all sorts of states and feelings, it can relax or excite. Sound can be used systematically using specific frequencies and qualities on an individual and or communal basis.

Sound Healing

• Sound has been used for healing purposes since thousands of years by tribal societies with animistic or shamanic belief systems. It has been used for the whole community or tribe as well as for individuals. It has also been used as a preventative medicine. (West Africa, Bali, etc.)
• Sound can be used for general relaxation as well as to treat a specific problem.
• Sound can get a person into contact with an earlier event through resonance, which is hitting the same frequencies. This makes it an ideal tool to access trauma and bottled down events. By revisiting these places at a later stage in a gentle way, grief and pain can often be dealt with in a constructive and healing way in the now.
• Sound can be specifically directed to a particular part of the body by oneself or another person.
• Sound can be produced with the voice or a musical instrument by oneself or another person. Ideal are singing bowls, drums, rain sticks, calimbas, etc.
• Sound is information in the form of vibrations: Sound is vibration information. Anything that happens is a combination of vibrations and this information is stored in the body on a cellular level as well as on a soul level.
• Vision brings our awareness out of our body, into a distance away from us. Sound however is a send and receive mechanism, a 2-way communication system to share and exchange vibration information.

The Big Bang

First, there was the big bang. Everything started then, and the beat goes on and on and on, the beat always goes on.

The beat is the rhythm of life, its vibrations reverberating from everywhere to everywhere. All vibrations all over the place. Inside myself and in outer space. Everything moves to an invisible and inaudible groove. In conclusion, everything is vibration. It is that simple, yet incomprehensibly complex. Picture yourself throwing a pebble into a pond and you will see concentric circles. This is the nature of waves spreading. Now you throw a second pebble into the pond, into the ripples of the first pebble, and the two different waves meet each other. You are looking at originally two different concentric ripples but when they meet, you get very complex patterns forming, which is called intermodulation. In terms of sound, both of the sounds have their natural overtone spectrum, which makes things much more complex and the two-sound chord will create a lot of more quiet sounds that you hear, especially if the sounds are quite sustained, like those of a piano or singing bowl. If I fill a metal bowl with water and I strike it with a soft beater to create a pleasant sound, but with some force, the water starts moving and it is even spraying upwards and in all directions. Water is very susceptible to sound. Sound is very much behaving like water. Like the waves, always moving and in motion and creating new complex patterns all the time.

A human being is made up of around 80% water, any sound will affect and move the water inside of the human body. Sound is very powerful, and very mysterious. If you think of a house built with concrete and with all the windows and doors being closed, you still can hear the music from the inside if it’s loud enough, though there is no direct connection

If people are exposed to sound, music or any noise, it will have an effect which is not on the audible but affects all the water in your body as well. This is for better or worse, if you listen to any music that you like it will be positive. It could be very soothing music, which will calm you down, but it could also be very loud and energetic music that would help you to release frustrations or aggressions in a non-harmful way. However, constant traffic of city noise will eventually have it’s toll on you and wear you down.

A sound healing session by a experienced or sensitive person who is able to feel and sense vibration can bring you into a peaceful, relaxed state by getting stale energy moving and by removing blockages inside, even if they might be there for many years.

As sound is powerful, it needs to be used with care and awareness.

Healing Drum Spirit – Drum Spirit Healing

The drum spirit inside the spirit drum.

Drumming is an ideal way to treat a lot of conditions where other methods might not have been very successful as drumming works with the life force itself in a profound way on all levels, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

The drum has been used for healing purposes world-wide for thousands of years in tribal societies with their shamanic traditions to communicate with the spirit world as well as a tool for social integration and to restore harmony.

According to West-African wisdom teachings, emotional disturbance manifest as an irregular rhythm and is a bad vibration that blocks the vital physical processes. As regular even rhythms are regarded as a sign of health, these rhythms can heal the patient by touching him/her in an immediate and powerful way, removing blockages and releasing tension.

Drumming and moving to the beat is also a preventive remedy as it helps to become more conscious and balanced.

These tools are useful for general health and healing:

• Conscious breathing
• Spiritual awareness
• Ritual drumming and sacred rhythms
• Chanting of mantras and one’s own words
• Shamanic journey
• Trance techniques
• Cosmic structure and deeper meaning of pulses and rhythmic patterns
• Playing on drums and percussion instruments from all over the world
• Use of the own voice for expression and release

Tibetan Singing Bowl and Sound Healing

The Tibetan singing bowls are made of special kind of brass that produces soft sounds with a spectrum of overtones, thus emanating powerful vibrations. These sounds can be used for meditation, healing and sound massage to restore our inner harmony and to improve our general well-being.

Sound Healing is an ancient way, used by many different traditions worldwide, to let healing sounds enter our body to bring about positive change.

This experience features:

• a healing ritual using vibration and sound massage
• the resonance within ourselves
• our awareness of sound, space and silence
• the Shamanic use of sound

Singing bowls are bowl shaped instruments with a soft sound similar like a gong or a bell. They are forged from different metals and have been used in Tibet since centuries as food bowls and also for healing and meditation because of their broad spectrum of overtones.

During a Sound Healing session Tibetan Singing Bowls are placed on different parts of the body so that the healing vibrations can enter the body. This sound massage can be used for a general relaxation or to work on specific problems.

The gentle and sustained sounds of Tibetan singing bowls have a calming effect on our busy minds and lead us to a place of stillness and inner peace so we can restore our health and improve our general well being. Sound takes us ultimately into silence, very much needed in today’s fast and noisy world. During a sound meditation time slows down and finally brings us into a timeless space. Being in a safe space we can enjoy this blissful and healing moment.

We also might feel moved by the vibrations of the sound to move our body freely and dance without inhibitions and the restrictions from our upbringing and conditioning. Our body would like to move in its own authentic way without the interference and judgement of our mind. Sound moves us in an immediate and powerful way, removing blockages and releasing tension. After a sound meditation most of us feel light, peaceful and relaxed.

KonKeLo – Sacred Trance Rhythm Star

KonKeLo is a sacred trance rhythm from Benin ( Dahomey ), still being used in Haiti and associated with Voodoo . Its a rhythmic pattern over 12 beats , with beats 1-3-4-6-8-10-11 forming a syncopated pattern (Thus alternating between on and off beat) . It’s usually being played on a bell or a double bell , sometimes in the fashion of “rounds” with several bells coming in at various entry points in relation to the lead KonKeLo pattern (reference pattern on a drum is the “Afro-Waltz” , BtT bTt BtT bTt ) There are a good few variations of the KonKeLo , where the first and second part are played several times or being exchanged. Often these variations come about naturally by playing in a state of trance. It takes practice and feeling to keep the KonKeLo pattern going as well as the ability to give up mind control ( even though that seems to be a contradiction! ) as you enter inevitably different states of trance ( which you have to get used to even more so if you have not been brought up in a culture that does not use trance states as a spiritual renewal within their rituals – but as always some people get into all that quite naturally ). The intension of leaving behind the every day consciousness is mostly an enjoyable experience as the deeper meaning which lies beyond the illusion of our the thoughts in our mind can be directly experienced, if you choose to enter the omni-verbal trance.

Singing and Chanting of Vowels and Overtones

The vowels are, according Latin or German pronunciation : I-E-A-O-U (English ee-ehh-ahh-o-oo ). They can be used individually or as a “sliding scale” in both directions, it sounds a bit like overtones. The vowels correspond with parts of the human body and can be depicted as an energy circuit.

Postures and gestures to go along with the vowel sounds:

• The “I” is sounded with the lips stretched as two long parallel lines. The “U” is sounded with the lips round in a small circle. The other vowels are transitions between these polarities.
• The “I”: Unity, head, vertical flow, cosmic connection – arms raised over the head, pointing to the sky.
• The “E”: Vibration, throat/neck, expression, sending out (calling) – arms horizontal, pointing forward.
• The “A”: Resonance, heart/chest, openness, receiving – arms horizontal to the sides, opening the chest.
• The “O”: Centre, feeling, belly, connecting and being connected – holding the belly with both hands with the naval as centre.
• The “U”: Duality, the 2 legs, roots, earth connection – arms hanging down, feet firmly rooted in the ground.

This exercise is very beneficial, it expands the voice and cleanses the body.

Geometrical representation in the shape of the human body (from top to bottom: head: “I”, throat / neck: “E” – 3 lines pointing down, heart / chest: “A”, belly: “O”, 2 legs: “U” upside down.

Vowels

TO BE CONTINUED …