How New Forms Of Ancient Sound Healing Can Help You Find Peace
Sound healing – once considered a woo-woo type of ancient healing practice – has in recent years come largely into the mainstream as an accessible wellbeing technique.
Ironically, you have probably experienced the effects of sound healing every day without realising it, from switching off to your favourite music, listening to a soothing podcast or simply enjoying the thrum of rain.
The ancient practice of sound healing first began with science: Sound is what ancestors called ‘the beginning.’ It is the background vibration of galaxies forming the symphony of creation. The practice of sound healing has been handed down for around 40,000 years through millenia by the ancient cultures of the Tibetan, Mongolian, Mayan peoples, North American Indians, shamans and medicine people all over the world.
Jonathan Goldman, expert on sound healing and author of Healing Sounds, writes, ‘As every organ, bone, tissue in our body has its own separate resonant frequency, together they make up a composite frequency, a harmonic that is your own personal vibratory rate…through sound it is possible to change the rhythm of our brain waves as well as our heartbeat and respiration.’
Today this ancient practice includes ‘sound baths’ or ‘gong baths’ under the sound healing umbrella in most mainstream wellbeing venues.
‘Sound Healing is a holistic practice that allows you to sink into a deep state of meditation using therapeutic grade instruments to create calming soundscapes,’ explains expert sound therapist, Farzana Ali (to Harpers Bazaar).
However, with the benefits of sound healing derived from the frequencies slowing down the brainwaves to a restorative state, which activates the body’s self-healing system, new forms of sound healing techniques are emerging as popular alternatives to traditional sound baths.
Electronic Music:
New techniques pair electronic music through various stages of meditation in order to block out the noises of the world and make that moment of peace yours – this new take on traditional sound healing focuses particularly on mind and body connection with music as a portal to bring you into the present moment.
Movement is also key – think ‘cathartic shaking’ as you try sexy moves to free yourself of anxiety, pain, stress – all to a carefully curated series of electronic beats.
After the electro sounds and movement part, experts include a guided meditation to isochronic tones: regular beats of a single tone said to enhance the theta brainwaves, which occur in that delicious moment as you drift off to sleep.
Meditation to Binaural beats:
Binaural beats playing through headphones that encourage the brain to create a third beat in a frequency to either calm or stimulate.
Visit expert Belinda Matwali, electronic music meditation at Hotel Café Royal
Visit Somadome at Replace, Notting Hill
Poetry Readings:
Poetry Readings and poetry affirmations are becoming an ever more recognised way to add some creativity to your sound healing practice. As part of a sound healing and guided meditation practice, repeating poetry aloud can help align chakras, re-centre, elevate and ground any energies moved throughout the meditation.
You will need to search around for venues or sound healing practitioners who include poetry but sometimes The Poetry Society includes healing workshops.
