The sound of water trickling over rocks from a waterfall, birds chirping happily or uplifting music playing on the radio. Sounds have a therapeutic influence on your health and wellbeing. They calm and move you physically, emotionally and spiritually.
These are what we know to be calming sounds and they have the ability to alter your mood and set the atmosphere around you. So too do other not so musical sounds; such as sirens blasting, voices in argument or discussion or even the banging of machinery which can heighten your levels of stress and anxiety.
By using the power of sound to help balance your stress response you can synchronise your natural rhythm to the external rhythm.
The power of sound is not new, in fact it is as old as time itself. For example, in Ancient Greece, the God Apollo used music and sound in his healing practices of medicine.
Even sounds that are out of sync to start with, will come together into the same rhythm over time. For example; in the 17th century Dutch physicist Christian Huygens who also invented the grandfather clock, ran an experiment. He had a room fall of clocks and set the pendulums swinging at different paces before leaving the room. Upon his return later that day, he discovered that all the pendulums had fallen into a natural rhythm. They had synchronised themselves in time to one another.
Through the use of music, sound and voice you can draw on the power of sound to provide a healing vibration in your body and achieve physical, mental and spiritual balance.
Is it little surprise that the use of vibrational sounds in your voice are used in meditation? Your voice is a natural sound therapy instrument which has been used to practice mantra meditation (e.g. OM). The reverberating sound vibrates through the body promoting a feeling of energy, serenity and calmness.
As you use your voice, the vibrations are exercise for your lungs and provide valuable oxygen to the brain. When you practise mantra meditation for a minimum 20 minutes, cortisol levels during a stress response reduce and return you to a calm, relaxed state.
The use of sounds in your meditation practise can be used to improve sleep, concentration and even aid in digestion. You can use sound in many ways such as singing, meditating, talking, crying laughing – all these vibrational sounds work to improve your wellbeing.
Sound is a natural medicine that makes you feel good.