What Is Sound Therapy
Sound Therapy is the use of music and specialist instruments played in therapeutic ways. It can be combined with deep self-reflection techniques to improve your health and wellbeing.
Sound is a powerful tool to reduce pain, anxiety, and more.
Sound has a long cultural line and kinship with meditative healing. Sound healing has its roots in the oldest original cultures from all over the planet and many old worlds, including Australian aboriginals, Indian tribes of the Americas and even China and Japan before it was invaded by alien peoples. Australians are famous for the didgeridoo as a sound healing instrument for over 40,000 years. American Indians are famous for drums and wind instruments. Many culture employ what we call Tibetan or Himalayan singing bowl for ritual and healing ceremonies. Sound meditation is a form of focused awareness type of meditation. One kind that has become more popular is called “sound baths,” which uses Tibetan singing bowls, quartz bowls, and bells to guide the listener into their intentions. These practices highlight themes of how the experience of sound manifests not only through hearing but through tactile physical vibrations and frequencies.
Sound therapy covers a range of treatments, from music therapy to sound baths. Sound therapy can deliver healing through vibrations and your emotions. It’s a form of sensory therapy, and it has been used by cultures of origin for thousands of years. The most prominent form practiced in the U.S. is music therapy, but the use of individual sounds and frequencies is growing. Essentially, sound and music are noninvasive, simple, and cost-effective therapeutic tools.
Science is still catching up to understanding how sound heals, but the current research is promising. A review of 400 published scientific articles on music as medicine found strong evidence that music has mental and physical health benefits in improving mood and reducing stress. In fact, rhythm in particular (over melody) can provide physical pain relief.
One study published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine found that an sound meditation for an hour helped people reduce tension, fatigue, anxiey and depression while increasing a sense of well-being. .
There are many different theories that attempt to explain why sound experiences can be linked with deep relaxation and physical pain relief.
For example, sound works through the vibrational tactile effects on the whole body. Sound could stimulate touch fibers that affect pain perception. One study of people with fibromyalgia found that ten treatments (twice per week for five weeks) of low-frequency sound stimulation improved sleep and decreased pain, allowing nearly three-fourths of participants to reduce pain pharmaceutical medication.
Sound-based vibration treatment has been shown to help people with pain from arthritis, menstrual pain, postoperative pain, knee replacement pain. Sound-based treatment has even been found to improve mobility, reduce muscle pain and stiffness, increase blood circulation, and lower blood pressure.
I personally recommend sound therapy for successful integrative therapy.
