Sound healer with tuning fork
Sound or vibration can be a factor in several types of meditation, and singing bowls, gongs, drumming, or soft music certainly help to facilitate the experience. But perhaps the most important sound is that of your own voice chanting a personal mantra.
Sound healer with tuning fork
Sound therapy is based on the premise that all types of matter, including the cells in our bodies, vibrate at different frequencies. These vibrations can be optimized to combat stress, emotional woes, and disease.
Many students learn to practice meditation with a mantra. This consists of a sound, vibration, word, or group of words that is repeated as a point of focus to help the student enter a state of profound relaxation. In Sanskrit, mantra translates as “vehicle of the mind,” which it certainly can be. People may speak their mantra aloud, whisper it, or intone it silently. Some students do not speak their mantra in the presence of others; they believe it is theirs alone. Many practitioners simply stick with the universal “om” or “aum,” which is considered the first sound of creation. Or they find a phrase in Sanskrit that appeals to them, such as om mani podme hum, which translates loosely to “the jewel in the lotus flower.”
LISTEN AND LEARN
There are several types of meditation that use sound or vibration as their focus rather than breathing.
Music Meditation: This is probably the most mainstream form of sound therapy, and many music therapists have board certification. It is used to relieve pain, loneliness, and depression, and is often provided in clinics, hospitals, and hospices.
Sound Meditation: This popular practice incorporates traditional Tibetan instruments, such as singing bowls, to help clear the mind and allow the student to enter a deep state of quiet awareness.
Gong Therapy: This is like sound meditation in the extreme—the participants lie on a mat with a blanket and pillow and are “bathed” in healing gong sound waves. The instructor guides the meditation, playing the gong softly at first, but increasing the volume as the session progresses. To avoid a monotonous rhythm, the sound of the gong changes frequently. This auditory stimulus leads to what is known as entrainment, a form of beneficially modified brain-wave frequencies. The first state to be reached is alpha, which lies between eight and twelve Hz. This is a relaxed creative state associated with daydreams and imaginative thinking. Next comes an influx of theta waves, which fall between four and seven Hz and are associated with deep meditation, REM sleep, and hypnosis.
Gong therapy dates back thousands of years and is an important part of healing kundalini meditation. It is employed to reduce stress, open emotional blockages, promote vitality, and increase happiness; there are even scientific indications that certain types of sound therapy encourage damaged DNA strands to repair themselves.
Wind chimes
Primordial Sound Meditation: This powerful form of medication is rooted in the Vedic traditions of India and is about “restful awareness,” making your inner silence part of your life. This discipline utilizes a personal mantra that is calculated mathematically based on the vibrations created by the universe at your time and place of birth; this mantra is repeated silently, never aloud.