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USING SOUND THERAPEUTICALLY

From Ultrasound to Music Therapy—How Sound Is Used in Alternative and Conventional Medicines

Every illness is a musical problem—the healing, a musical solution . . .

NOVALIS, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA (1772–1801)

While getting my undergraduate and graduate degrees, I was given the opportunity to write several research papers on therapeutic audible sound and was extremely surprised to find a complete dearth of information in the academic literature about its application and practice. Searches yielded information on the use of audible sound for tinnitus and autism, and little else. There was research on infrasonic sound, as used in the practice of lithotripsy (using 5- to 7-Hz pulses to break up kidney stones); and there was research on ultrasonic sound as used in physical therapy to stimulate blood flow to areas; but there was virtually nothing on the use of single tones of audible frequencies.

This made me aware of a curious fact: the use of inaudible sound was considered conventional, and the use of audible sound was considered alternative. Using tuning forks as I had since 1996, I had encountered quite a lot of skepticism. People seemed to have no problem accepting that a 7-Hz frequency directed at their kidneys could relieve their kidney stones, but could not accept that a 174-Hz frequency directed at their head could relieve their migraines.

There was no logic to this, but I found over and over again that most mainstream-oriented people had an immediate and predictable ideological rejection of the notion that audible sound frequencies could produce a beneficial therapeutic outcome. And it was easy to see why: there had been virtually no related American published research, and we are culturally programmed to reject anything that hasn’t been validated by the scientific method.

Needless to say, this made doing research challenging. I had to look to other areas of research and find uncontroversial, accepted parallels. The logical first step was to look at music research. Music therapy had been a relatively accepted mainstream practice since after World War II, when it was used to treat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Quite a lot of research has been conducted on music, especially in the last decade, when fMRIs (functioning magnetic resonance imaging, a system to image brain activity related to a specific task or sensory process) have made it possible to see what is happening in the brain in real time.

However, while I did find some interesting correlations, especially regarding the concepts of resonance and entrainment (discussed below), after some consideration I realized that the sound work was much more targeted and specific than music therapy. Additionally, the concept of an interface with the energy field surrounding the body was a significant part of the work I was doing, and this played no role at all in music therapy.

Thus, because there was so little to draw from in the academic realms as I was putting together my research, I was forced to look to studies and examples from outside of academia, which in the end seemed appropriate because sound is utilized in both alternative and conventional medicines.

CONVENTIONAL VS. ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO SOUND IN MEDICINE

My research revealed an interesting phenomenon that I had not previously considered with regard to the different perceptions and applications of sound in conventional and alternative medicines: conventional medicine employs sound frequencies in the ultrasonic and infrasonic ranges, while alternative medicine largely employs frequencies in the audible range. While the practice of using these ultrasonic and infrasonic frequencies is well documented and widely employed in conventional medicine, there has been very little attention given to the use of audible frequencies. The two perspectives break down along distinct lines, with just a little overlap. I will first discuss the uses of sound as found in conventional medicine.

Ultrasound

Perhaps the best-known and most widely employed use of sound in conventional medicine is in the use of ultrasound. Most people are familiar with its use as a diagnostic technology, as in the use of sonograms for the viewing of fetuses; the sound waves bounce off the bones and fluid and return the information to a transducer, which translates it into a visual image of an unborn infant. Medical sonography is also used diagnostically to discover pathologies within the body.

Ultrasound is also used therapeutically. Ultrasound therapy has been shown to cause increases in tissue relaxation, local blood flow, and scar-tissue breakdown. The effect of the increase in local blood flow can be used to help reduce local swelling and chronic inflammation, reduce pain, and, according to some studies, promote bone-fracture healing.¹ It is regularly employed by physical therapists and chiropractors. However, despite over sixty years of clinical use, there are few studies that definitively verify the efficacy of therapeutic ultrasound. One of the reasons for this is the challenge presented by trying to make this a double-blind process, whereby both the investigator and the participant are blind to (unaware of) the nature of the treatment the participant is receiving. This issue makes studies on the effectiveness of sound challenging due to the aforementioned numerous channels of conductivity. Some more recent studies have been more conclusive; one shows a 44 percent reduction in trigger-point sensitivity after just one five-minute application of high-intensity ultrasound.²

Ultrasound can also be used to evoke phonophoresis, a noninvasive way of enhancing the absorption of analgesics and anti-inflammatory agents to tissues below the skin by means of ultrasonic waves.³ Incidentally, we have found that tuning forks can also be used this way; when the handle of weighted forks is applied to different stones or crystals, essential oils, or flower essences, it seems to have the effect of driving the vibration of the medium deeper into the body.

Newer Applications of Ultrasound

Ultrasound is also being used as a noninvasive surgery technique. Magnetic resonance–guided focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS) is a process that uses highly focused ultrasonic frequencies to destroy unwanted growths such as fibroids and even tumors by rapidly heating them. The magnetic resonance provides a precise guidance system to focus the sound beam on the specific area and then raises the temperature there to the point where the structural integrity of the growth is destroyed. Although this treatment has been in use since 1994 and has been used on fibroids, breast tumors, prostate tumors, and more, showing highly successful results, it has been slow to catch on. An important difference between high-intensity focused ultrasound surgery and many other forms of focused energy, such as radiation therapy or radiosurgery, is that the passage of ultrasound energy through intervening tissue has no apparent cumulative negative effect on that tissue.⁴

Another sound application in conventional medicine is the practice of lithotripsy, a technology that breaks up stones in the kidneys, gallbladder, or liver with pulsed infrasonic sound waves in the range of 4 to 12 Hz; these smaller pieces of stone are in turn more easily passed by the body. This technology was developed in the early 1980s in Germany and has since become more widely used, but can bring on complications at the rate of 5 to 20 percent and can also result in a sensation akin to being punched in the kidney.

Lastly, a search of sound therapy in a medical database will bring up mostly articles about the use of tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT) to treat tinnitus, the phenomena of a constant ringing or roaring in the ears. While apparently no cure for this has been determined, TRT is an ongoing process that uses sound generators to help the sufferers retrain their relationship with the issue so that it no longer bothers them as much, a process that can take upward of two years to be truly effective.

SOUND MEDICINE USED IN BOTH ALTERNATIVE AND CONVENTIONAL SETTINGS

Music therapy, vibroacoustic therapy, and the Tomatis Method are three techniques that are used both conventionally and alternatively. All three fall into the category of sound therapy.

Music Therapy

As mentioned earlier, music has been used clinically in the United States since World War II, when it was used to treat veterans suffering from PTSD. Since then it has become more widely employed and is now used in hospitals, nursing homes, institutions, and other rehabilitative settings. Music therapists work to help clients improve their level of functioning and quality of life by using music experiences, such as singing, songwriting, listening to and discussing music, and moving to music, to achieve measurable treatment goals and objectives.

Music therapy has been shown to be particularly effective with some of the more challenged members of the population, especially those with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, autistic spectral disorders, stroke victims, and even prisoners. A study on a group of women in prison in Israel who all participated in a choir showed that group members “experienced a sense of community and togetherness as a result of the exercise.”⁵ Alzheimer’s patients demonstrate less agitation and confusion when engaged in group or individual music exercises, as opposed to being left alone in front of a TV.⁶ Autistic children are able to be more expressive and engaging when involved in musical activities.⁷

Music is also gaining more acceptance in the medical field, being used during surgery and postoperatively, and especially in the practice of music thanatology, which combines music (often harp music) with end-of-life care. According to Daniel Levitin, professor at McGill University and author of This Is Your Brain on Music, “Music initiates brainstem responses that, in turn, regulate heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, skin conductance, and muscle tension, partly via noradrenergic neurons that regulate cholinergic and dopaminergic neurotransmission.”⁸ It is also being used to help people manage pain, anxiety, stress, and a surprisingly wide range of other issues.

Studies have shown the method of music therapy that works most effectively utilizes the principles of resonance and entrainment. Entrainment music therapy is described as “any stimuli that matches or models the current mood state of the individual and then moves the person in the direction of a more positive or pleasant mood state.”⁹ For example, if a person is initially agitated, music selected will match that agitation initially (i.e., resonate with), and then move slowly into a melodic piece that can lead to anxiety reduction (i.e., entrain to). This technique has been used successfully in the reduction of both pain and anxiety.

It is my observation that tuning forks may work on the same premise and that this is potentially central to their therapeutic efficacy. Initially, they resonate with whatever dissonance may be present, gradually entraining, through the inherent coherence and order of the produced tone, the dissonance of the body into a more harmonious expression. For example, if someone is experiencing pain in a particular area, when the fork is initially held over that area it will sound either sharp or full of static. After a few moments, however, the noise can resolve, or settle down, and the fork will sound more harmonious. People often report a simultaneous reduction in discomfort. This principle is one of the reasons why acoustic sound therapies are different (and potentially more effective in some cases) than synthesized sound therapies; the “living” quality of the acoustic tone allows for this reflective resonance and entrainment to occur.

Vibroacoustic Sound Therapy and the Tomatis Method

Vibroacoustic Sound Therapy (VST) incorporates both music therapy and sound frequencies. VST is the transduction of both sound and music through specially designed beds, tables, or chairs, with speakers arranged in such a way that the sound currents travel directly through the body. Lower frequency waves, in the range of 30 to 100 Hz, are generally used, and sessions can last from ten to forty-five minutes. This technology originated in Sweden in the 1970s and is now used worldwide in settings ranging from hospitals to spas. Many studies have been conducted on this technology and have demonstrated that it is beneficial in addressing a wide range of ailments, from pain and anxiety reduction to reducing problem behavior in autistic adults and children. One study found that negative stereotypical behavior was reduced upward of 40 percent in autistic adults.¹⁰

VST can be utilized with just music, pulsed sound waves and music, and in some technologies, combined with visual light stimulation. Most studies have determined that VST is most beneficial when pulsed sound is combined with music, and nearly all studies have shown that it brings improvement in a wide range of disorders.¹¹

The Tomatis Method, and a somewhat similar technology called Auditory Integrative Training, are other sound therapy techniques that have undergone some rigorous studies. While these therapies are fundamentally different, both involve listening to specially created music through headphones for the purpose of retraining the auditory system and creating symptomatic improvement for issues such as autism, learning disorders, hearing disorders, ADHD, and more. The treatment of autism has been the most studied with these techniques, as they are generally effective at reducing the sound sensitivity so commonly found with this disorder, resulting in improved interaction with the person’s environment.¹²

SOUND IN ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

The use of sound in alternative medicine is much more broad and deep than what is found in conventional medicine. For the purpose of this part of the discussion it is important to distinguish between sound healing and sound therapy. Sound healing refers to the more general field of therapeutic sound use, including singing, drumming, rattling, toning, etc., whereas sound therapy refers to methods that are more clinical and structured. In alternative medicine, sound therapy is a subgroup of sound healing.

The Human Voice

Conscious and intentional use of the human voice in chanting, singing, and toning has been around for millennia, often within a religious or devotional context. Many studies have been done to determine what exactly happens when we chant or sing or tone, whether alone or in groups. When experienced meditators engage in chanting meditation, neurological imaging has shown changes in blood flow to the brain, in addition to other biological markers of increased well-being.¹³ One study demonstrated a positive emotional effect and immune competence confirmed by the increased presence of secretory immunoglobulin A in saliva swabs after a choir rehearsal and an even more marked increase after a performance.¹⁴

The process of toning, which has gained some popularity in recent years, is a sort of informal chanting wherein the person simply intones extended vowel sounds, which in turn supposedly helps release energy blockages from the body. Chanting is said to have a similar result of facilitating the flow of energy through the body.

Tuning Forks, Gongs, and Singing Bowls

Acoustic instruments such as tuning forks, gongs, and crystal or Tibetan bowls are widely used in sound healing. One of the best-known tuning fork practices, called Acutonics, is a system developed by an acupuncturist in which vibrating weighted tuning forks are used on acupuncture points. Its effectiveness is based on the same premise as acupuncture—that stimulation of these particular areas unblocks stuck or stagnant energy, improving energy flow throughout the body and supporting the body in healing itself. Acutonics is being employed in some hospitals and nursing homes.

Unweighted tuning forks are also used on and around the body. Because this is my particular area of expertise, I have attempted to find studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique to address pain, anxiety, and some of the other issues my clients report frequently, but I have been unable to turn up a single scientific paper supporting this use. John Beaulieu, one of the authors of an article titled “Sound Therapy Induced Relaxation: Down Regulating Stress Processes and Pathologies,” states on his website, www.biosonics.com, that he discovered that tuning forks spike the body’s production of nitric oxide (NO)—yet tuning forks are not referenced in the above-mentioned article he coauthored. Nevertheless, Beaulieu and his fellow authors speculate that the physiological reason why music and sound therapy induce relaxation is because of the relaxing properties of NO, which appears to be released in the presence of certain music and sounds. According to Beaulieu, NO is not only an immune-, vascular-, and neural-signaling molecule, it is also “antibacterial, antiviral and it down-regulates endothelial and immunocyte activation and adherence, thus performing vital physiological activities, including vasodilation.”¹⁵

Crystal and Tibetan bowls are another common feature of sound healing. These are struck or rubbed to produce pure, penetrating tones not very different from those produced by tuning forks. Metal bowls have been used in Tibet for centuries as an aid to meditation, while crystal bowls are a relatively recent development; both are used similarly. Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, an oncologist and author of The Healing Power of Sound, began integrating music, vocalization, breathing, sound, and meditation techniques in his work with patients in 1991, after first being exposed to a Tibetan bowl through one of his patients. He observed many beneficial outcomes as a result of this integration, such as reduced stress, greater tolerance of chemotherapy, as well as a sense of community within the groups that met regularly for sound meditation.

Other Sound Technologies

Binaural beats are created when two tones are de-tuned from each other by a small amount. The resulting third oscillation, which is the difference between the two frequencies, automatically entrains the brain into different brain-wave frequencies. For example, if 315 Hz is played into the right ear and 325 Hz played into the left ear, the brain becomes entrained toward the beat frequency of 10 Hz, which is in the Alpha brain-wave range, the range associated with relaxation. Binaural beats are embedded in music or simply as repeated tones and listened to through headphones.

Various studies suggest that the therapeutic application of binaural- beat technology can be beneficial for anxiety, mood improvement, behavior disorders in developmentally disabled children, and stress reduction in patients with addictions and focus and attention problems.¹⁶

BioAcoustic Biology, a technique developed by sound pioneer Sharry Edwards, is the use of human-voice analysis to provide a representation of a person’s state of health. This technology reads the frequencies present in a person’s voice and determines which important frequencies are missing. Once appropriate sound formulas are ascertained, they are programmed into something called a square 2 tone box, a portable analog frequency generator that allows a person to listen privately through headphones or a subwoofer. According to Edwards’s website, BioAcoustic therapy has had success with a broad range of issues, but several specific areas stand out for their success rates: sports injuries and structural problems, pain management, nutritional evaluation, and tissue regeneration.

I was unable to find any published studies on this technology. All of the studies that are available appear to have been done by Sound Health, Sharry Edwards’s own research organization. However, the second edition of Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide includes BioAcoustics as a recommended alternative therapy, one of only four sound therapies listed. Furthermore, in 2009 Edwards received the Scientist of the Year award from the International Association of New Science.

Another notable entry in the energetic medicine field is Cymatherapy (aka Cymatic Therapy), a frequency-generating technology developed in the 1960s by Dr. Peter Guy Manners, a British osteopath, who devised his method after many years of research into harmonic frequencies. The Cyma-1000 unit used in this technology emits over 500 different frequencies. Some fifty years of research behind this method have determined which frequencies and combinations of frequencies treat which ailments; it then uses an applicator to deliver precise combinations of frequencies associated with healthy tissue and organ systems. The theory is that these sound waves help to normalize imbalances and synchronize the cell’s frequency back to its natural healthy state of vibrational resonance.

This technology is used and accepted in the United Kingdom (where it is referred to as “advanced medicine,” rather than alternative medicine) but not so much in the United States, where it is registered with the FDA as an “acoustic massager.” I was unable to find any peer-reviewed studies on the Cyma-1000 (or on any of the other frequency generators currently available, such as the Rife machine, Medisonix, and others), although composer and sound healing pioneer Dr. Gary Robert Buchanan, author of SONA: Healing with Wave Front BIOresonance, has been involved in research with this technology for the last thirty-eight years, at the Cosolargy Institute in Reno, Nevada. He claims to have come up with sonic solutions for a variety of issues, including a recent advance in eliminating cataracts without the need for surgery.

I recently saw a YouTube video interview with Cymatherapy’s founder, Dr. Peter Guy Manners, which took place in the United States in the early 1980s. He was convinced back then that he was introducing a technology that was going to revolutionize medicine in this country; now, almost thirty years later, it seems Dr. Manners’s predictions are coming to pass, and this type of sound medicine is finally beginning to gain acceptance.

Dr. Manners was not the first person to work with audible frequencies therapeutically and to develop a large body of work related to it. Royal Raymond Rife was another researcher who developed a technology, beginning in the 1930s, that used both audible and inaudible frequencies, both diagnostically and therapeutically. His Rife Machine was based on the premise that each pathological organism has a threshold at which a particular frequency shatters it, like a wine glass shattered by an opera singer. By increasing the intensity of the naturally resonating frequencies of these microbes, Rife created structural stress that caused them to distort and then disintegrate, without harming any of the surrounding tissues. He called this frequency the “mortal oscillatory rate.” Rife spent many thousands of hours in exhaustive research developing a specific process that involved directing these frequencies through a plasma tube, which was filled with helium gas turned into a plasma with the introduction of an electric current, to the area of pathology of the patient. Rife reported many amazing cures, including cancer, through this process. Unfortunately, his work was destroyed, his lab burned, and his reputation ruined, allegedly by Morris Fishbein, the head of the American Medical Association at that time.¹⁷

The aforementioned technologies represent the sum total of my academic research into sound and frequency technologies and practices. It’s important to note that there are many more technologies and practices beyond what I have shared here, but I limited my research so as to find as much peer-reviewed information as I could. Sound and frequency healing is a field that is growing tremendously at the moment, but there is currently no journal of sound healing practices. And because, as I mentioned earlier, studies on sound healing cannot be double- or even single-blinded, approaching research from a traditional perspective is, for all intents and purposes, nearly impossible.

Aside from the information about receptor antennas, or primary cilium, on cell membranes and their tuning fork–like nature, along with the fact that successful music therapy intervention employs the principles of resonance and entrainment just like tuning forks appear to, very few of my questions had been answered up to this point in my research. The dearth of relevant information on this subject had led me to believe I was quite alone, on the fringe of a frontier where there were few peers and where there had been little scientific work undertaken that answers my questions. I was particularly concerned over understanding the physical composition of the energy and information that I encounter in the body’s energy field, as it was my sense that there was actual “stuff ” there that I was manipulating. While esoteric literature discusses the spiritual properties of the human energy field, it neglects to mention whether this field is composed of free electrons, biophotons, magnetic fields, or other such scientifically described phenomenon.

Nevertheless, the next two turns in my journey supplied me with unexpected and welcome answers to my persistent questions.