‘Sound healing’ is not new, it has evolved over thousands of years. Mantras – ‘sacred syllables’ – have long been used for wellbeing in Hinduism, Buddhism and the Yoga traditions of ancient India. Healing rituals in ancient Egypt and Greece involved the use of vowel sounds and musical instruments in dedicated sacred spaces. Traditional Chinese medicine uses six healing sounds which are perceived to free up blocked life-energy in the body.
Some physical traces of ancient healing places remain. On the Greek island of Kos, is a temple which, in the 4th century BC was dedicated to Asclepius, God of Healing. process known as ‘dream incubation’ took place here, in which the sound of hissing snakes, in the otherwise silent space, was thought to cause listeners to hear ‘divine messages’ which aided their recovery from illness. Healing was considered by the ancient Greeks to be as much about the soul as the body.
In 11th century Italy, a Benedictine monk named Guido d’Arezzo introduced a 6-note musical scale, called the ‘Solfeggio’ scale. It was used to write the beautiful Gregorian chants. The tones in the chants are believed to impart spiritual blessings when sung in harmony. Guido d’Arezzo may have been the composer of the melody for the well-known Latin hymn Ut queant laxis. The first six lines start respectively with the six successive notes of the scale. This hymn when sung has a remarkably uplifting effect on the mind and emotions.
The 16th century saw the development of the’Twelve-Tone Equal Temperament’ scale, still used today. Some musicologists feel that the 12-tone scale suppresses emotions, stifles intuition, and limits our consciousness. This touches upon the subject of ‘musical affect‘. In music composition, the use of different scales, modes, keys, note combinations & intervals can evoke different emotional responses, from euphoric to deeply melancholic. Sound healing work involves similar considerations of the effects of musical intervals on the listener.
In the late 17th century, Dutch physicist Christian Huygens (inventor of the grandfather clock) , discovered what would become two important mechanisms in sound healing – ‘resonance’ and ‘entrainment’. Setting a room full of pendulum clocks in motion at different paces, Huygen observed that they all eventually synchronised. This led to the finding that ‘when two systems are oscillating at different frequencies, there is a force called ‘resonance’ that causes the two to transfer energy from one to another. When two similarly tuned systems vibrate at different frequencies, there is another aspect of this energy transfer called ‘entrainment’, which causes them to line up and vibrate at the same frequency.’ (Richard Gordon) . This mechanism is used in sound healing to alter mental states.
There is a diverse range of musical instruments used in sound healing today- including gongs, bowls, chimes, tuning forks, and the use of the human voice.
Today, sound healing is part of a group of therapies known as ‘energy medicine’. This a growing subject area. The ‘Consciousness & Healing Initiative’ (see Home – CHI ) is worth noting for its work bringing together scientists, medics and artists, recognising that ‘no absolute scientific theory or practice can lead us to a complete knowledge of consciousness and healing; rather, through integrating the wisdom that exists in diverse communities, we will come to a deeper understanding of consciousness.’