Sound Healing: The ancient art and new science of using sounds and voices
to treat pain and life-threatening disease
by Janet Aschkenasy
During 21 hours of labor, Stephanie Rose seriously considered taking Demerol, but changed her mind when she realized that just by singing "Om," "Uhhhh," and other fluid, open sounds, she could endure her contractions and ride with the experience. "I wasn't crying out for help," says Rose. "I didn't have any fear during the birthing." Instead, "I was meeting each moment with sound. By the time I was riding out the sound, the pain had passed."
Weeks later, expectant mother Michelle Kopper Seymour went from 3 to 10 centimeters dilated in less than two hours, also without drugs. To deal with the pain, she stood naked in a wide-legged power stance and made long, open-vowel sounds (think of opening wide and saying "ahhhh..."). Sinking into the rhythm of her yoga class tape, she mimicked bits of a Sanskrit phrase seeking deliverance from limitation and fear. "It was about going into the pain, using my own vibration to actually match that level of pain, instead of checking out mentally," says Seymour.
The power of sound is a well-kept secret in the visually oriented West, but not at the small Manhattan yoga studio Rose and Seymour attend. Its liberal use of humming and toning (creating sound with an elongated vowel for an extended period), together with the chanting of Sanskrit verse and seed syllables, distinguishes the practice from other New York City yoga schools more concerned with hatha yoga, or mastery of movement. Rasa yoga students chant or hum — neither pushing the vibration too far nor holding back too much — as they hold yoga postures with the same mindful intent. The combination deepens the breath while often creating a hypnotic sea of vocals that can foster profound relaxation and may deeply affect even extreme pain.
Yet there's more to it than meets the eye, or ear. Such sounds are not only singing new babies into the world, they're helping cancer victims withstand the rigors of chemotherapy and even go on living lives they'd been told were finished.
On the frontier of new research into this 4,000-year-old practice is Mitchell Gaynor, M.D., clinical professor at Weill-Cornell Medical College and founder of Gaynor Integrative Oncology in New York City (www.GaynorOncology.com). Gaynor, author of The Healing Power of Sound: Recovery from Life-Threatening Illness Using Sound, Voice and Music (Shambhala, 2002), reports that his success treating victims of life-threatening disease has improved markedly since he began having his patients chant mantras while drinking in the sound of crystal or metal singing bowls.
Gaynor says, "If somebody had told me when I was a medical student in Dallas that one day I would be teaching my patients to use singing bowls to heal themselves, I would have thought he or she was crazy." Then, in 1991, Gaynor was brought in on a hematology consultation for a Tibetan monk with a dangerously enlarged heart. Sensing that emotional blocks held the key to a cure, the doctor led the monk in a guided imagery meditation. The patient was so grateful that the next thing Gaynor knew, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor listening to the sound of a wooden baton tracing the rim of a metal Tibetan singing bowl. The "rich deep note and strong vibrato" spoke to Gaynor in a way he'd never known, and so it has been for many of his patients since then.
Marisa Harris is among them. The smiling, energetic woman of 59 was diagnosed five years ago with stage four pancreatic cancer, the final stage of this often deadly disease. For a long time, Harris says, her ears rang mostly with the words of her doctor at Memorial-Sloan Kettering telling her she had at most nine months to live, even with chemotherapy. But Gaynor told her that he'd seen worse cases who were doing fine, and that she could come see for herself if she didn't believe it. So she attended one of his support groups, which he tries to hold twice a month.
At a recent meeting of this kind, Gaynor brought out three translucent crystal bowls and two of the metal Himalayan variety, which are usually combinations of metals such as copper, iron, tin, and gold, sometimes with minerals such as zinc and quartz added. Striking some of the bowls like gongs and pulling deep, sustained, complex tones out of others by tracing the rims, he carried the instruments one by one around the room as attendees closed their eyes and listened to Gaynor gently guide their breathing, suggesting they allow themselves to experience their always-available "infinite love," "infinite wisdom," and "infinite beauty." Together, everyone chanted the sounds of "om" and "ray" — which Gaynor describes as "heart-centered sounds used a lot for creating overtones" — that is, hitting multiple notes simultaneously.
"The music and chanting created this enormous space where there were so many possibilities," says Harris, remembering her first such meditation session. With Gaynor's guidance, Harris went ahead with chemotherapy, but also began a multifaceted regimen that included nutrition, changes in her dealings with her husband and children, and lots and lots of sound.
Gaynor believes that it is becoming the norm for medical schools to embrace an integrative, holistic approach to treatment. Within the last few years, he addressed a seminar on the topic sponsored jointly by the medical schools of Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since then, both schools have added programs to address the connection between mind, body, and spirit and link them with cancer treatments.
The Science of Sound
While there is no pat explanation for why certain sounds aid in healing terminally ill patients, Gaynor believes that their vibration affects the disrhythmic motion found in cancer cells. When you place water in a one of Gaynor's singing bowls and draw a baton around the rim, the harmony that results turns the liquid into "beautiful shapes like snowflakes," he says. With the use of certain sounds, the same harmonious transformation can occur within the cells of the human body.
Some might argue that while all music has curative properties, the human voice has an unparalleled ability to heal. In the early eighties, French composer and bioenergeticist Fabien Maman teamed up with Helene Grimal, a biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, to explore the impact of sound waves on healthy cells and uterine cancer cells using a camera mounted on a microscope. As Gaynor recounted in The Healing Power of Sound, the cells reacted to various acoustic instruments, including the guitar and xylophone, yet Maman was amazed at how quickly the diseased cells became disorganized when he sang musical scales into them.
"It appeared that the cancer cells were not able to support a progressive accumulation of vibratory frequencies," Maman reported. "As soon as I introduced the third frequency in the series, the cells began to destabilize. The human voice carries something in its vibration that makes it more powerful than any musical instrument — consciousness."
Maman used his findings to support experiments with two breast cancer patients, each of whom toned for three and a half hours a day for a month. In one case the tumor vanished, reports Gaynor. The other woman had her tumor surgically removed. The surgeon found the malignant tumor had shrunk and there were no metastases; the patient recovered nicely.
Gaynor also cites research by David Simon, M.D., medical director of neurological services at Sharp Cabrillo Hospital in San Diego, who found that chants are chemically metabolized into "endogenous opiates" that act on the body as both internal painkillers and healing agents. There is also a report from scientists at Michigan State University showing that listening to music can significantly increase levels of interleukin-1 (IL-1) in the bloodstream. Interleukins are a family of proteins associated with blood and platelet production, lymphocyte stimulation, and cellular protection against AIDS, cancer, and other diseases. Participants in the study who listened to music were able to reduce their levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that can depress the immune system, by as much as 25 percent.
While there is no guarantee that sound-based healing will work miracles for everyone, it's important to understand that "healing" is not exclusively about relieving pain — sometimes, quite the contrary. People frequently need ways to sit with pain, to learn its lessons and literally become friends with what ails them. Tools like sound and yoga can guide us in that process —even if it means accepting that a cancer will not, in fact, be cured.
That said, even the simplest humming exercise can be an effective stress or headache reliever. With a bit more effort, practices such as chanting, yoga, and meditation can complement the latest scientific discoveries — helping us to relax without chemical relaxants, mend without extensive surgery, and prepare mentally when surgery or chemotherapy is unavoidable.
Seriously, who needs an epidural when you can om?
MORE INFORMATION
This article first was published in Spirituality & Health Magazine in July/August, 2003.
Janet Aschkenasy teaches yoga as a volunteer at the Momentum AIDS Project and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City. She continues to practice and train at Rasa Yoga (www.rasayoga.com) and can be reached at editor@janeta.com.
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
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