Mystics have
known and taught for thousands of years that sounds can have profound
health-giving effects on the body. Some have said that the sounds `Ah' and
'0' are primordial sounds, the sounds of creation, and so are found in the
name of the creator in just about every culture in the world: God,
Jehovah, Yahweh, Ra, to name but a few. In the New Testament, the Gospel
of John begins with 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.' So, according to John, creation began with the
Word – a sound vibration! A meditation technique known as the Japa
meditation involves vocalizing the sound of the creator, whatever that may
be to you, over and over again. It is believed to bring you into conscious
contact with the creator.
You may have
noticed that certain pieces of music affect your mood. Some have a
relaxing effect on your body and mind while others have a stimulating
effect. Some even give you `flashbacks' of past experiences, and
flashbacks are visualizations, so they probably alter the expression of
several sets of genes and alter the patterns of growth in your brain. In
fact, you have probably heard of the 'Mozart effect', which popularizes
research that listening to Mozart (Sonata for Two Pianos in D major,
K.448) can improve mental function.
Research has
also shown that music can affect your immune system. A scientific study
published in 1996 in the scientific journal Stress Medicine showed how
certain pieces of music increased levels of the immune system's salivary
immunoglobulin A – remember that? One particular piece used in the
experiment increased s-IgA levels by 55 per cent. Earlier we learned that
a feeling of appreciation could raise s-IgA levels. The scientists put the
two together, asking the test subjects to think 'appreciation' while a
specific piece of music was played, and the levels of s-IgA went up by 141
per cent. Quite a therapy! A study published in 2002 in the journal
Alternative Therapies showed that group drumming facilitated by a music
therapist also boosted the immune system, and even reported that there was
a reduction in the levels of some stress hormones with shamanic drumming
during the experiment.
Drumming is
also used by some shamans to help them enter an altered state of
consciousness. The sound vibrations (waves) presumably resonate with some
of the body's natural rhythms and cause the production of mind-altering
opiate-type neuropeptides that fit into receptors in the emotional areas
of the brain. Prolonged drumming probably even involves a number of genes
being switched on and off. In 2005 scientists from the University of Pavia
and the University of Oxford found that listening to music affected the
heart. When playing selected pieces of music to 24 men and women they
found that fast music increased circulation and breathing, and slower,
meditative music caused a substantial fall in heart rate.
Similarly, in
2005 a research team led by Dr Shmuel Arnon of the Neonatal Unit at
Netanya Hospital in Israel studied the effects of music on premature
babies. After playing music for 3o minutes, they found that the babies
slept more deeply and had reduced heart rates. In particular, they found
that live music (a lullaby, for instance) had the most powerful effect,
which should come as no surprise to parents everywhere.
But it is not
only music that has this effect. A kind word said to someone can be music
to their ears and make them feel comforted, and such a feeling will have a
positive effect on their health. The meaning of your words is clearly
important because it triggers thoughts, feelings and mental images. The
words `I love you,' for instance, may mean a lot to a person and make them
feel fantastic, and this will have knock-on health-promoting effects. But
the actual sound of the words, the vibrations of the vowels and
consonants, also affect the body, and this occurs independent of the
words' meaning. The sound of the word 'love', for example, contributes to
its biological effect just as its meaning does. So words affect us on two
levels, through what they mean to us and through the vibrations of their
pronunciation. A word, then, is more than a mere description of something,
it is a set of vibrations in space. These vibrate at various levels
throughout your body. Some may be felt on the skin and some feel as though
they go right through you. For instance, have you ever stood beside a
loudspeaker in a nightclub? On a deeper level some sounds may resonate
with internal organs and, almost certainly, with the chemical bonds
between atoms in DNA and in some of the vital proteins and enzymes in your
body.
Have you
heard of how the human voice can shatter glass? Ella Fitzgerald could
shatter a wine glass by holding a specific note. The sound resonated with
the internal structure of the glass, eventually causing it to explode into
tiny pieces. In a similar way, ultrasound can be used to deliver a
knockout blow to kidney stones, shattering them into fragments that can
easily be eliminated from the body. In 2006, at Borders General Hospital
in Scotland, Dr Paul Syme reported a significant reduction of stroke
symptoms using ultrasound. Could it be possible, then, for human vocal
sound to have a positive effect upon serious disease in the human body?
I once
watched a video where three doctors from the Huaxia Zhineng Qigong Clinic
and Training Centre in Qinhaungdao, China demonstrated this. They stood
behind a woman who had a cancerous tumour in her bladder that was
approximately three inches wide and a real-time ultrasound scan of the
tumour was shown on a screen for the audience to see. Then the doctors
began to rapidly chant a sound that means 'Already gone' or `Already
accomplished.' As the audience watched in astonishment, the tumour began
to shrink right before their eyes. Amazingly, it disappeared completely in
2 minutes and 42 seconds. The story is recounted in Gregg Braden's
excellent book The Isaiah Effect.
Researcher
Fabien Maman has also studied the effect of sound on cancer. In the early
198os, he discovered that a series of acoustic notes would destroy cancer
cells, leaving healthy ones intact. He also found that a chromatic scale
of notes would alter the energy emitted from healthy human cells. Although
some of this work hasn't been fully embraced by mainstream science, it may
be just a matter of time before it is. It is often the case that
discoveries that are outside our mindsets take time before they become
part of the furniture, so to speak.
Maybe there's
more truth in the wizardry teachings of Hogwarts than any of us imagine!
There might be ancient words, mostly forgotten, that have been used in
past times to achieve the most remarkable of things. Who knows? There is
much we have to learn and I believe that we are only scratching the
surface in understanding how sound affects biology. In fact our
understanding of sounds and how they affect matter –biological and
non-biological – is still primitive but deserves a great deal of research.
In his book
Power vs Force, Dr David R. Hawkins uses a technique known as applied
kinesiology to determine 'levels of consciousness'. He calibrated a scale
between i and 1,00o, where i would represent the consciousness of a
bacterium and i,000 would represent the consciousness of historical
figures such as Christ, Krishna and Buddha. He found the average level of
consciousness of humanity to be a little above 200, but found that much
classical music scored around 500.
It may be
that we have an unconscious awareness of the effects of certain pieces of
music and other sounds, and just as our beliefs affect our physical
bodies, as shown in the placebo effect, so some pieces of music and other
sounds may have powerful effects on our bodies. And of course the
vibrations of the sound will affect us too.
During 2003 I
personally conducted some simple experiments that measured the biological
effects of some words. I wrote the words 'love', 'fear', 'happy' and 'sad'
on labels and stuck them onto plastic cups. I then put a small amount of
water in each of them. By unconsciously triggering tiny levels of emotion
in myself, I believed that my awareness of each word would imprint energy
associated with its meaning onto the water in each cup. I then took a set
of 3o pots and put approximately 5o seeds of cress in each of them. I then
used the ‘love'-labelled cup to water six pots of seeds every day and I
did the same with ‘fear'-labelled cups and the `happy'- and `sad'-labelled
cups. I also watered a set of six pots with unlabelled water to serve as a
control. Each day I put a small amount of water in each cup and used an
exact amount of it to water the seeds.
I used six
pots for each word so that I could obtain a statistically accurate result
– the effect of each word would be measured against 300 'control' seeds.
Each set of six pots received water from the same cup every day so that
there was no overlap of words on any seeds. After watering them for seven
days I measured the length of every sprout of cress, something I can
assure you was no five-minute task.
The results
surprised even me. I discovered that the seeds that had been watered from
the ‘love'-labelled cups grew much taller than the seeds watered from the
‘fear'-labelled cups, and the seeds watered with 'happy' water were much
taller than the seeds grown with 'sad' water. There was a 7 per cent
difference in the height of sprouts between the 'love' and 'fear' cups and
a 15 per cent difference between the 'happy' and 'sad' ones (see
References). 'Happy' water made the seeds grow tallest of all. And this
was after only seven days!
It may be
that my awareness of each word, even on an unconscious level, altered the
energy output of my body. We know that the electrical output from the
heart, for instance, can be measured several inches from the body, and
also if you feel, say, embarrassed, people can feel an increase in heat
emanating from your face. Some aspects of this energy output may imprint
water in such a way that it affects the growth of seeds. In addition, as
outlined later in the book, everything is connected at the quantum level,
and so my awareness of the water immediately changed it – the word that I
was aware of, as I thought of the water, changed it.
Japanese
scientist Masaru Emoto proved that such changes can take place in water by
photographing changes in the crystal structure of water brought about by
words. A year or two before my experiments he had written down words,
stuck them onto bottles of water and used a technique called darkfield
microscopy to take photographs of the water after it had been frozen into
ice. This clearly showed that different words produced different crystals
of ice.
For example,
Emoto discovered that the words 'love', `thank you' and even 'Mother
Teresa' produced highly crystalline sparkly ice crystals, but negative
words caused crystals to be dull and undefined. He also recorded
differences in the structure of water when people had prayed or when
different pieces of music had been played in its vicinity. Tibetan or
Buddhist chants or pieces of classical music produced sparkly crystals.
Emoto has now produced thousands of crystal pictures of water from all
over the world. Many of these can be found in his books Messages from
Water, The Hidden Messages of Water, The True Power of Water and Love
Thyself.
This research
can be useful to us all every day. I often write inspiring, compassionate,
uplifting, peaceful or healing words on labels and stick them onto the
bottles of water that I drink from, because I believe that they will
nourish my body in some way.
