Vibrational Frequency Bathing
He who knows the secret of the sound knows the mystery of the whole universe. -Hazrat Inayat Khan
People have practiced frequency healing since ancient times, but only recently, new technology has empirically validated that sound and colors produce positive effects on us. Studies on monks who chant, stare at cosmograms and meditate reveal a heightened brain wave state called Zen Gamma. This elevated state of consciousness fosters creativity and compassion. One need not be a meditating monk to attain Zen Gamma. On this page, discover how humans have harnessed the power of sound.
Power of sound
For thousands of years, humans have harnessed the power of sound for life and death. Myth has it that the Israelite priests blew ram’s horns to shake the walls to the ground at the Battle of Jericho. The Serer people of West Africa used the royal war junjung drum to warn enemy tribes and psych up their warriors for battle.[1] But just recently, in the 20th century, technology in sound frequencies shifted objectives to use sound as a weapon.[2] London shopkeepers played a high-pitched sound recording called the Mosquito to chase loitering teens away.[3] Recordings of tigers and tanks were played in the jungle during the Vietnam war. US diplomats and CIA agents stationed in Cuba experienced brain damage after hearing high-pitched sounds in their hotels. With inconclusive evidence to its cause, neurologists called it the mysterious Havana Syndrome.[4] Sound weaponry at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp came in the form of simultaneously blasting two or three songs to create intense dissonance.[5] Nobody would ever imagine that Barney the Dinosaur’s theme song with tunes from the legendary Johnny Cash would be used for torture.
Guantánamo was not the first time popular music was played to break down an enemy. During WWII, the Russians played Argentine tango music to prevent the German troops from sleeping. Sound researcher Juliette Volcler explains that high frequency and discordant sounds can induce psychosis in a person in just a couple of days. Specific low frequencies disturb human organs and make people feel queasy. Tissue fibroids can form as a result of the body trying to fend off noise pollution.[6]
Scientists may have developed sonic and ultrasonic weapons of destruction in the past century, but for thousands of years, sound has been used predominantly to heal, not harm. Media theorist Paul Roquet claims that BGM or ‘background music’ of the 1960s served as subtle crowd control paired with the decrease in social services in Japan. Muzak as street lullabies! This calming BGM music imposed atmospheric mood control over individuals in place of direct social and governmental regulation.[7]The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, and indigenous populations used sound frequency for love, peace, spirituality, healing, and the arts. [8] It was no coincidence that the god Apollo was the ancient Greek god of both music and medicine.[9] In the Iliad, Homer recounted how the singing of the sacred song and lyrical poems saved the Greeks from Apollo’s arrows contaminated with the plague.[10] Pythagoreans and the Orphists sang day-long purifying choral songs, hymns of praise, and lyrical poems to purge their souls of sins that manifested in the body and mind as illness. According to Aristotle, in performance, the sacred melodies and flute sounds awakened empathy and enthusiasm.[11] At the Temples of Delphi, Phrygian flute playing had healing powers over mental imbalances and ‘sick’ souls. [12] The flute’s sonic range was considered ‘orgiastic’ and therefore could excite the senses in a positive manner.[13/14] According to Plato, musical vibrations have the power to civilize humanity and heal the soul.
Music and harmony, which has motions akin to the revolutions of the Soul within us… is… meant to correct discord which may have arisen in the courses of the soul, and to be our ally in bringing her [the soul] into harmony and agreement with herself; and rhythm too was given by them for the same reason, on account of the irregular and graceless ways which prevail among humankind generally, and to help us against them. -Plato [15]
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Frequency bathing: Sound healing in Kosmorganica
In Kosmorganica, sound is used in cultural expression and rituals, well-being, and secular spirituality. Emotional moods are intertwined with mind and body. For example, Kosmorganic artist La Monte Young is interested in sound healing whereby each planet’s frequency corresponds to a specific neurological aspect. Medical engineer Anthony Fiorenza calls it Astrophysical-Bio-Harmonic Resonances.[16] Each planet in orbit emits vibrational sounds (albeit too slowly to be audible to humans), which in turn correspond to our brains, body organs, and emotions. When mathematically converting these astral frequencies into color, they can be combined with sound compositions as audiovisual healing tools. [17]
Pauline Oliveros established the Deep Listening Institute to encourage people to listen to their environment and natural sounds with close attention. The institute also recognized the power of sound and music, and their positive effects on our well-being. Meditation combined with sound, performance, the body, play, community, and active listening is a holistic approach to music.[18] Although Oliveros is no longer with us physically, her contribution to contemplative sound experiences continues to influence sound artists and designers worldwide.
Sound healing in Kosmorganica is not like a visit to the doctor’s office. It may be in the form of a concert, performance, sound walk, or immersive environment. Sound that may have healing effects is under the labels Minimal, drone, or ambient music. Ambient music pioneer Hosono Horuomi claimed that the most interesting aspect of this type of music is its power to heal the body.[19] Some of this ambient and drone music resemble traditional healing sounds practiced in spiritual rituals. See Yoshi Wada video below.
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Visualizing sounds
The ancient Greeks observed that everything, from the seasons and days to the heartbeat, runs on cyclical pulsations. They reasoned that if they reproduced those harmonic rhythms in a sick body that is considered out of alignment with the universe, the body could be resynchronized. With modern technology, scientists can now measure and empirically prove the ancient belief in music’s power to heal. When you hear different audio pitches or even when inaudible sounds are played nearby, your cells alter. Some studies reveal that the cells’ shapes transform into mandala patterns according to changes in sound frequency.[20] Many are skeptical when they hear this for the first time unless they have already witnessed cymatics and its beautiful sound vibration-generated patterns.
At the end of the 17th century, scientist, architect, and polymath Robert Hooke conducted experiments with a violin bow and a glass plate covered with flour.[21]As he bowed the side of the plate, he observed geometrical patterns forming in the flour. Intricate patterns are formed according to changes in frequency fields. [22] 100 years later, Ernst Chladni, a physicist and musician known as ‘Father of Acoustics,’ did further research into Hooke’s sound pattern experiment which in turn resulted in these nodal frequency patterns being named chladni figures.
If sound vibrations cause sand, flour, and water to organize into geometrical patterns, then the body, which is 60% water, would logically be greatly impacted by sound frequency combinations. With recent technology, we can reproduce the frequencies that correspond to each part of the body. In the 1960s, sound healing pioneer Peter Guy Manners conducted extensive research playing varying frequencies to harmonize physical and emotional imbalances in the body.[24] He discovered that different parts of the body produce different sound vibrations or signals.[25] According to Manners, if a person’s signals are in line with the general harmonic of the whole body, the person is considered to be in good health. If those frequencies fall out of alignment, then they are diagnosed as imbalanced or sick. [26] Using liquid plastic, Manner reproduced three-dimensional forms resembling body organs paired with different changes in frequencies. He compared images produced with a sound healing instrument with a microscopic image of a newborn child’s finger. With the correct frequency changes, the forms closely mirrored the cell formation on the surface of the baby’s skin.[27]Natural scientist Hans Jenny termed this visualized sound process Cymatics. In 1967, in place of a violin bow, he used an oscillator to play frequencies to generate these symmetrical patterns. He used a tonoscope, by which amplified vocalizations of vowel sounds were projected onto an apparatus of sand, liquid, or powder. A person using the tonoscope could hear and see a melody being sung.[28] When a person vocalized the ancient mantra Om, the sound of creation in Buddhism, the powder formed a circle with a center point, the ancient diagram used for Supreme consciousness.[29] Jenny did not attribute the appearance of these mandala-like patterns to just physics, but a play of invisible vibrational energy or subtle forces.
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Subtle energy vibrations
One interpretation of the physical world is that it reflects the energy vibrations of a subtle world that, in turn, is a reflection of an even more subtle energy field.[30] This energy field consists of subtle bodies, or energies that lie beyond the accepted four fundamental forces: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak nuclear forces. Ancient people in India, Tibet, Egypt, Greece, and China have believed in variations of these subtle forces for over 4,000 years.[31] Hippocrates separated the pneuma, or the creative force or vital spirit, from the soul and wrote that these subtle forces were essential in healing. Aristotle called it the protean steamy mediator.[32]
According to Goldman subtle bodies begin with the physical body and emanate outwards.[33] The first subtle body the one we can easily sense because it is the physical body. The next five are energetic. They are the etheric body, emotional body, mental body, astral body, and causal(memory) body. Most people are familiar with the emotional, mental, and memory bodies. However, the etheric and astral bodies are less understood by most people because modern science has not yet found the tools to measure them. The etheric is the universal life force body similar to what the Chinese call qi. Other variations of subtle bodies include prana (Hindu) and orgone(Reichian).[34] The astral body is a combination of the emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies and is used in astral projection and remote viewing, or out-of-body experiences.[35] Illness and healing on these non-physical bodies affect the physical body and vice versa.
The physical body and the five non-physical bodies are addressed in Ayurvedic, Tibetan, and Chinese medicine. The last body is the spiritual one and is the most subtle with the finest vibratory frequency. It carries the higher self and our essence. The energetic field of the spiritual body is often depicted as the rays of sun around the body of the Virgin Mary in iconographic images of Latin America. The subtle bodies extend a few inches to a few feet from us. Therefore, we constantly interact and change frequencies with one another through harmonic affinity, or what Goldman calls sonic entrainment. Most of us have felt or intuited it when we meet somebody new. We often say that we are getting good vibes or bad vibes from someone. Some healers can change people’s disharmonic frequencies, or bad vibes, on the spot. Goldman believes that any layperson can train themselves to alter another’s frequency using their hands around the aura, or subtle energy field. He offers a 4-step exercise you can try at home.[36] Modern scientists have yet to invent a tool like cymatics to measure subtle bodies. Yet the absence of empirical measurement does not stop psychologists, engineers, artists, and architects from applying the concepts behind subtle bodies to modern healing spaces called multisensory rooms.
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[1] Sound researcher, Juliette Volcler, mentions how sound has been used as a weapon since Biblical times with records attesting to rams horns used during the Battle of Jericho. Florian Delorme, and Juliette Volcler, “De la torture au maintien de l’ordre: la répression acoustique,” Corps Sonores, February 14, 2017, audio, https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/culturesmonde/corps-sonores-24-de-la-torture-au-maintien-de-lordre-la-repression
[2] Juliette Volcler, Le son comme arme: Les usages policiers et militaires du son, (Paris: La Découverte, 2011).
[3] Volcler, Le son comme arme: Les usages policiers et militaires du son.
[4] Adam Entous, and Jon Lee Anderson, “The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome,” The New Yorker, November 18, 2018.
Verma Ragini, and Randal L. Swanson, Drew Parker, Abdol Aziz Ould Ismail, Russell T. Shinohara, Jacob A. Alappatt, Jimit Doshi, et al., “Neuroimaging Findings in US Government Personnel With Possible Exposure to Directional Phenomena in Havana, Cuba,” JAMA 322, no. 4 (July 23, 2019): 336-347.
[5] Delorme, and Volcler, “De la torture au maintien de l’ordre: la répression acoustique,” 2017.
[6] Mark Reybrouck, Piotr Podlipniak, and David Welch, “Music and Noise: Same or Different? What Our Body Tells Us,” Frontiers in Psychology, (2019): 10.
[7] Paul Roquet, Ambient media: Japanese atmospheres of self, (Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota press, 2016), 4-15.
[8] Jonathan Goldman, Chakra Frequencies: Tantra Of Sound, (Rochester: Destiny Books, 2011), 24.
[9] Jonathan Goldman, Healing sounds: The power of harmonics, (Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press, 2002), 29-30.
[10] Homer, Iliad in Book I: The quarrel by the ships. ‘And all day long they appeased the god with song, raising a ringing hymn to the distant archer god who drives away the plague, those young Achaean warriors singing out his power, and Apollo listened, his great heart warm with joy.’ In Homerus, Augustus Taber Murray, and William F. Wyatt, Iliad, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
[11] ‘Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation [catharsis] of these emotions. By ‘language embellished,’ I mean language into which rhythm, ‘harmony’ and song enter.’ In Aristotle, S. H. Butcher, Francis Fergusson, and Aristotle, Poetics, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).
[12] Dritsas Athanasios, “Music Therapy in Ancient Greece: Shedding light on the roots of sound as a healing agent for body and soul,” Greece Is, January 9, 2017, https://www.greece-is.com/music-therapy-in-ancient-greece/
[13] Dritsas, “Music Therapy in Ancient Greece.”
[14] MACROmedia Publishing, “Cymatics: The Healing Nature of Sound,” March 27, 2018, video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57JpuMnWS1I
[15] Plato. Timaeus. Benjamin Jowett, Trans. Collected Dialogues of Plato, E. Hamilton, and H. Cairns, Ed., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 1151-1211.
[16] Gretchen Snell, The Power of Vibrational Medicine: Healing with the Bioacoustics of Nature, (Coppell, TX, 2019), 31.
[17] Anthony Fiorenza, “Planetary Harmonics & Neurobiological Resonances in Light,” Sound, & Brain Wave Frequencies,” 2019.
[18] Pauline Oliveros, “Quantum Listening: From Practice to Theory to Practice,” MusicWorks 75, 2000.
[19] Hosono, H. Yoshinari, Gijutsu no higi, 66-67. In Paul Roquet, Ambient media: Japanese atmospheres of self, (Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 58.
[20] Sound healer, Fabian Maman (Tao of Sound) proved changes in cellular formation occur when different frequencies are played. Snell, The Power of Vibrational Medicine: Healing with the Bioacoustics of Nature, 25.
[21] Jeff Volk, “Cymatics: Insights into the invisible world of sound,” Caduceus 71, (2012): 12-16.
[22] Howard Gest, “Homage to Robert Hooke (1635-1703): new insights from the recently discovered Hooke Folio,” Perspect Biol Med 52, no. 3 (Summer 2009): 392-399.
[23] Volk, “Cymatics,” 12-16.
[24] MACROmedia Publishing, “Cymatics: The Healing Nature of Sound.” March 27, 2018, video, 28:02. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57JpuMnWS1I
[25] MACROmedia Publishing, “Cymatics.”
[26] MACROmedia Publishing, “Cymatics.”
[27] Hans Jenny, Cymatics: A study of wave phenomena and vibration. Epping, (New Hampshire: MACROmedia, 2007), 63.
[28] Dritsas, “Music Therapy in Ancient Greece.”
[29] Ervin Laszlo, The Akashic experience: science and the cosmic memory field, (Rochester, Vt: Inner Traditions, 2009), 30.
[30] Goldman, Chakra Frequencies, 24.
[31] Eugenio Frixione, “Pneuma–Fire Interactions in Hippocratic Physiology,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 68, no. 4 (2013): 505-528.
[32] Goldman, Chakra Frequencies: Tantra Of Sound, 24-28.
[33] Goldman, Chakra Frequencies: Tantra Of Sound, 24-28.
[34] Remote viewing is a technique developed at Stanford in the 1960s and implemented by the CIA for psychic espionage during the Cold war in the 1970s in a program called Project Star Gate. In David Marks,The psychology of the psychic, (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2000).
[35] Goldman, Chakra Frequencies, 30-31.