Sound Awakenings
by Marline LeshAre you awake to the power of sound? The startling buzz of an alarm clock is familiar enough. Most of us use sound to wake ourselves up in the mornings, but are we actually awake to sound? It is ironic when you think about it. We may have used sound to soothe ourselves to sleep some too few hours before that alarm sounds us awake, but for most of our day, sound generally sinks into the background of our awareness.
I want to awaken interest in sound and sound healing. Sound is a powerful influence on our lives but, like many modern cultures, we have forgotten to pay attention. We have also largely forgotten how to deliberately use sound to integrate and heal ourselves, and many of us have forgotten how to use, listen to, and celebrate our own voices as sound makers.Sound Inside and Out
Sound passes through most substances. In an early career, I spent some time testing soundproof rooms. It is difficult to create a space that is impermeable to sound. It is also true that when two or more sounds occur in the same space, they merge. They may "fit" together nicely, amplifying each other, creating harmony, or they may clash with each other, creating dissonance. Sometimes they may actually cancel each other out. This last quality leads to some useful industrial applications for "silencing" loud motors and annoying, repetitive sounds.
Every molecule, cell, and organ in our body has its own pulse of life, like a hum or a buzz, and can be literally moved or changed by other sounds. For example, a steady pulse or repetitive sound entrains our body rhythms. Our heartbeat and pulse, for instance, will settle into a matching or harmonic pulse. We might also find ourselves tapping a foot.
A single loud sound may initiate a variety of autonomic responses and hormone releases, which completely change our physical state of being. We consciously choose to do this when we attend a loud concert or turn up the bass on our stereo. Yet even if the sounds around us are not loud, our body absorbs them, whether or not we notice.
We think of voice primarily as the throat and the larynx,
but it is the whole body that is our instrument.
When we tire of the stimulation, the "noise" of our city lives, and head for the relative quiet of the country, we do not really find silence; we simply start noticing other waves of sound that surround us, like the sound of the surf, the insects, the wind. People who have been to the depths of the Amazon jungle say that they are stunned by how loud it is under the dense forest canopy. In fact, we cannot escape the world of sound even in a deep cave, on a mountaintop, or in a sound-insulated room.
As it gets quieter on the outside, you begin to hear some of the many sounds inside your own body. Remember that enchanting "ocean" of sound you hear inside an empty conch shell? It is a small hint of what you can hear if you cup your hands over your ears for several minutes and listen "inside." We don’t often register any of the immense symphony of sound our body creates as it hums away, doing the work necessary to keep us alive. I remember climbing a mountain behind our home in Juneau, Alaska many years ago and being very unnerved by the loud throb of my own pulse and heartbeat in my ears. The sound of "silence" was much different than I had imagined!
Some believe that this soup of sound is essential for our well-being, is actually energetic "food" to keep our batteries charged. I read somewhere that when longevity statistics were grouped by type of work, the most long-lived professionals were music conductors. Could it be that they stay especially vital and healthy from being recharged daily by the abundance of harmonious sounds in their everyday work?
Can Sound Heal?
Sound has both healing potential and the ability to do harm. Consider some facts.
1) Sound is energy. A steady sound pulse can keep a ball suspended in the air. Sound can be used to heat something up or break it apart.
2) Sound creates form. The same sustained sound will produce a consistent pattern if applied to movable particles or semi-liquid substances on a metal plate or slide, demonstrating that sound can move matter, and also that it can hold matter in a particular form.
3) Sound can carry intention. For example, we often can correctly read emotions, like depression, or hear a threat in someone’s voice, even if we have no visual or other information. We also respond differently to music played well by a distracted or bored musician than we do to music played by a musician who is focused and loves what he or she is playing.
Definition of Sound Healing
Using sound to heal stems from the belief that when our natural resonance is disturbed, out of harmony, we can return to harmony, i.e. retune to health, by deliberately reintroducing appropriate energy as sound into our body, or the field around our body. Sound can break up patterns or introduce new ones. I personally use a very broad working definition of sound healing that does not tie the idea of sound healing to any particular method of application, type of sound, culture, or spiritual belief system: Using sound for increased consciousness and care of ourselves as living, vibratory beings.
Playing an Instrument
I recently spoke to two local musicians about their healing work with sound, using instruments from ancient and sacred traditions. I was particularly interested in how their sound-making felt from the inside.
Alana Cini, a didgeridoo player who plays with the Seattle band MerKaBa, uses her didgeridoo in healing work. While biking along the northeast coast of Australia, Alana spent time with the aboriginal Tjapuki people. Entranced by the sound and power of their didgeridoo music, she became obsessed with learning the continuous, or "circular," breathing necessary to play the instrument as she had heard it. She describes the feeling of focusing on her diaphragm and breath while playing the didgeridoo as grounding for the spirit, bringing her back into earth energy.
Another local performer and musician, Magali Cancino, uses a rich texture of high-pitched sounds from an array of Buddhist monastic instruments like those in the picture above (primarily Himalayan bells and Tibetan bowls), as well as dance and mantra-like vocalizations, to call in healing energies. Magali was spiritually called to her work as a healer after many years pursuing her own healing in a Buddhist monastic setting. In doing her work, she follows ancient, sacred practices to achieve a state of neutrality from which she can "listen to what is there."
Voice
My personal study is eclectic, but the focus of my healing work with sound is voice. The human voice is capable of an incredible range of sounds. Most of us barely sample the possibilities. We think of voice primarily as the throat and the larynx, but it is the whole body that is our instrument. The throat and larynx are more like a reed or mouthpiece. When we vocalize, in a sense, we are playing our own body.
I have been a "traditional" singer, but have become particularly interested in unusual vocal sounds like toning, improvisational sounding, and overtone singing.
• Toning is making breath audible, primarily with extended open vowel sounds.
• Sounding, i.e. unstructured improvisation without words, might sound like jazz scat singing, like an ancient language, like music, like gibberish, or perhaps even like storytelling or an odd kind of opera. I find that freeing myself from the habits of thought and the judging, controlling part of my mind is much easier without words.
• Throat singing and other kinds of overtone singing occur when a singer makes more than one audible note at the same time. Laboratory explanations of how this is done indicate that the singer, by creating various shaped chambers, mostly in the mouth and throat, creates several different resonating spaces, each of which can amplify a different harmonic quality of the sound being voiced.
No matter how science might explain it, the process of producing overtones requires developing a profound practice of inner listening, which often transports both the singer and the listener beyond physical awareness. Listening to "alternative" vocal traditions, like the Tuvan throat singers from Mongolia or the sacred monastic singing of the Gyoto monks from Tibet, will stretch most people’s idea of what’s possible with the voice.
Self-Healing
Exploring voice as an avenue into increased awareness and comfort in my body has become a major tool for my own self-healing. I like to share that process with others. Vocalizing creates increased awareness of two important things with which many of us have lost touch: breath and subtle sensations within the physical body. Vocalizing also stimulates a different kind of listening. Through my voice work, I have gained both a deep appreciation for my body’s wisdom and the ability to meditate and experience a profound sense of spiritual quiet.
I believe that sound can sustain and heal us. I wish you good listening — inside and out.
Marline Lesh coaches individuals in nontraditional voice, hosts regular sound circles, offers a monthly "sound bath" as part of the improvisational duo Sol Chanteuse, and speaks and writes about sound healing. To contact Marline at her business, Mute Stones Shall Sing, call (206) 364-7243 or e-mail <
mlesh@aa.net>. To receive a Sound Healers of Washington newsletter, call Marline or visit <http://www.soundhealers.com>.
