What is Sound Healing?

Using sound and making music is currently becoming an integral part of the wellness movement in the Western world. As a result, music is increasingly acknowledged not only as a form of entertainment, but also as an effective tool for healing, self-expression, and connection. Using sound for healing purposes is, however, not a new invention but really a concept that is almost as old as the beginnings of time, just quite recently rediscovered. In fact, the sacred and medicinal uses of sound can be traced back at least to the third millennium BCE and our ancestors in different parts of the globe have intuitively embraced sound as the very essence of the life force. Long ago shamans recognized the power of sound when they first used chants and drumming to heal people. In ancient Egypt, Greece, and India as well, the use of sound and music for healing was a highly developed science. Also Chinese medicine and Indian Ayurveda have incorporated sound as a modality to healing. After the ancient times, other approaches have overrun our connection to this powerful modality, but slowly it has been reincorporated to the healing repertoire by an increasing amount of practitioners as the effects of sound work have become more and more proven by modern science as well. 

Tibetan singing bowls have become very popular healing instruments in the Western yoga and wellness world.

Sound healing (also known as sound therapy) is essentially about bringing together the body-mind-spirit connection, thus helping people to return to wholeness. Sound energizes the healer within by providing a profound state of relaxation that creates the optimal conditions for self-healing. Sound healing is not about pushing or forcing anything: it is rather about providing a space for our inner wisdom to guide us and allow us to heal from within. It is an integrative wellness practice similar to yoga and meditation, focusing on the wellbeing of the entire person, not just the part which is diseased. Healing is then fundamentally about restoration of harmony from disharmony, which allows us to reconnect with our own life energy or essence.

(Originally published in September 2017)