This blog was written by our beautiful friend and shamanic healer Kate Ryan @Jakku_house
Shamanic Sound Bath & Ritual Practice
The idea that sound affects the health of the mind and body is not new. Chanting and mantra recitation has been part of Hindu spirituality and the healing power of yoga for thousands of years. Given the recent interest in mind-body medicine, it’s not surprising that this ancient tradition is experiencing a modern-day renaissance.
So what, exactly, is it?
Using the human voice and objects that resonate to stimulate healing (think tuning forks and singing bowls), sound therapy is one of a number of subtle-energy therapies that make up the field of vibrational medicine. According to the law of physics, everything vibrates: the chair you’re sitting in, the food you eat, the rocks and trees.
“Whether or not we hear it, everything has a sound, a vibration all its own,” writes Joshua Leeds in The Power of Sound (Healing Arts Press, 2001).
That sound is called resonance, the frequency at which an object naturally vibrates. Each part of our bodies has its own natural resonance, and vibrational medicine is based on the idea that disease is a result of those natural resonances getting out of tune – whether due to stress, illness or environmental factors.
Read the NY Times article, “What’s the Buzz? Sound Therapy”
“Using forks and bowls for anything other than dinner may seem to some people like New Age nonsense. But healers, sometimes called sounders, argue that sound can have physiological effects because its vibrations are not merely heard but also felt. And vibrations, they say, can lower heart rate variability, relax brain wave patterns and reduce respiratory rates.”