meditation

The Healing Power of Sound

Elba Mueller December 30, 2014
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The Healing Power of Sound
Every morning after my meditation I balance my energy centers with sound vibrations. I like to meditate on a mantra—a sound that helps me slow down the excessive traffic of my thoughts. When I do this I feel certain that my entire being is balanced. It’s more than just a hope or an idea—it’s a very strong, clearly identifiable wave of subtle calmness that moves throughout my body. It offers me a feeling of well-being that stays with me for the rest of the day.

Sound is a powerful force that, along with being able to bring that sense of peace and well-being, can make human beings love, cry, and in some cases even kill. Some years ago while I was living in Germany, I heard the well-known country song “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. As I listened to this profound, depressing piece of music, I closed my eyes to feel the song. In just a matter of seconds, an earthquake of anxiety shook my body and awakened a terrible fight or flight response in me. I had experienced for the first time what music could trigger in my brain without even being aware that it was happening to me.

What Is Sound?

In their simplest form, sounds are waves or vibrations that ripple through the air and provide human beings with one of the most effective and vital ways we have of communicating with the nervous systems of other creatures, including other people. The nervous system controls the body as it receives information from the brain, essentially telling separate parts of the body how to react in a given situation. For example, when you hear the sound of an alarm, your whole body reacts in seconds to a perceived threat. A variation of this same sound can send a signal to the brain that makes you feel excited.

Everything in existence vibrates, and so we are surrounded by sound all the time. But what can understanding vibrational sound do for you?

Understanding Sound

One of the most amazing experiments on the power of sound was conducted by Doctor Masaru Emoto. Dr. Emoto, a graduate of the Yokohama Municipal University's Department of Humanities and Sciences and the author of the bestselling book Messages from Water, gained worldwide acclaim for his groundbreaking research and his discovery that water is affected by vibrational sound in some very surprising ways.

In his experiments, Dr. Emoto analyzed the formation of differently shaped crystals in water as it was exposed to different sounds in different forms. Part of his research included verbal affirmations, thoughts, music, and even prayers from a priest. He focused on verbal affirmations of love and gratitude as they were being directed toward water that was sitting in a Petri dish. He then analyzed the water under a microscope and took before and after pictures to document the change.

Dr. Emoto and his team observed that after the experiment very beautiful crystals had formed in some of the frozen water samples where the positive vibrational waves were directed. Dr. Emoto then exposed water samples to music from Mozart, Beethoven, and other classical composers and found that beautiful crystal shapes formed in these samples as well.

He also experimented with people saying things like “you fool,” “I will kill you,” and other unpleasant phrases using a harsh tone. Dr. Emoto found that ugly, incomplete, and malformed crystals were formed in the water samples exposed to these negative expressions and tones.

Dr. Emoto concluded that any sound is vibration, and vibrations such as music and other positive sounds including the human voice can be a form of healing energy. His research also showed that thoughts emit vibrations at frequencies we can’t yet precisely determine, and that they too have the power to heal.

The Power of Sound

In nature, vibrations travel via water and air. This is significant when you consider the human body is approximately 65 percent water. What vibrations or sounds are we communicating to one another, and what sort of energy are we producing for ourselves and for the rest of humanity?

Sound is a potent, powerful energy that can express love and concern, or cause great pain and destruction. Human consciousness has begun to accept the possibility that we live in a magical world where the powerful energy vibrations made by music, positive thoughts, and words of love and harmony produce peace and beauty while vibrations lacking this positive energy produce distortion. Even the American Cancer Society has acknowledged that certain types of meditation such as the ones using a repetition of mantras—either silently in the form of thoughts or out loud—can bring a response of relaxation in the body.

Primordial Sound Meditation

As my interest in meditation increased, I attended a retreat called Seduction of Spirit at the Chopra Center, where I was introduced to the practice of Primordial Sound Meditation. I found this to be the most powerful way I had ever encountered of finding peace in my mind and body. I decided to specialize and pursued a certification in this form of meditation. It changed my life. As a result, I shifted my focus away from a professional law and administrative career and dedicated myself to teaching meditation to others through employee workshops at corporations and individual one-on-one sessions.

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