Imagine you enter a quiet, dimly lit room. But it’s not totally silent. You hear the gentle trickle of water hitting rocks and a gentle hum from a sound bowl. There’s very light music playing that’s almost a whisper.
Sounds relaxing, doesn’t it? There’s a physical response that your body makes and is cued to enter a parasympathetic state.
Sound is powerful, it can trigger an array of emotions that can in turn cause a physical response in your body – whether good or bad. So the question remains: what is sound healing and how can it benefit you?
Holly Husler is a sound healer who helps people heal through the vibration of sound. You can learn more about Holly and her work here:
What it is:
“A sound bath (also known as a sound journey or sound healing) is an experience to help you slow down, get still, and reconnect with yourself when life might feel a little busy or complicated. Generally, you’ll enter a safe space, you’ll be invited to lie down, and the sound healer might begin by guiding you through some breathing or relaxation work to help you settle. Then you’ll be immersed in a bath of sounds.”
How it’s performed:
“The healer might use just one instrument or many, which can include gong, singing bowls, chimes, voice, rain sticks, etc. There’s nothing for you to do but surrender to the sounds, and allow the healing vibrations to wash over you and through you.”
What it’s like:
“It’s a very personal experience which will feel different each time. You might just feel a few tingles. You might see colors and visions. You might receive ideas and insights. You might relax deeply and connect with inner peace. You might even feel uncomfortable, as you meet something inside yourself that needs looking at. The more you trust and embrace the experience, the more you’ll get from it. Setting an intention before the session is also very powerful.”
How it works:
“The pure frequencies of the crystal singing bowls essentially work to ‘tune’ us back to harmony by shifting the disharmonious cells back into place through the use of vibration. It helps to think of the body, mind, and soul as an orchestra, with all of the organs, systems, thoughts, and feelings as instruments. Sound healing is a tool that helps the orchestra play a beautiful melody again.
On a scientific level, we are all energy, made up of vibrating atoms and molecules. In an ideal world, we would vibrate at a frequency of harmony, where all our cells work and vibrate together to sustain optimal physical and mental health. But in reality, life happens, and stress and anxiety knocks some cells off-key or ‘out of tune’, creating disharmony, and eventually, if not treated, potentially dis-ease.”
Benefits:
“Aside from lying down under a cozy blanket and doing absolutely FA for an hour that is…
- The sound waves that rainbow out from the crystal bowls draw your brain waves into theta and delta states (the slowest in humans), associated with deep relaxation
- In this deeply relaxed state, your body releases the hormone oxytocin (love/kindness hormone) and serotonin (happy hormone)
- Nitric oxide is also released in some parts of your body, which helps with immunity
- Your thinking mind drops away, giving you the freedom to explore the magical space between asleep and awake
- In this space, you’re more likely to find answers to questions you’ve been searching for, creative ideas, clarity, an understanding of internal blockages, peace, a sense of coming home
- The body is essentially tuned back to a state of balance and harmony through use of healing vibrations and intention”
Holly’s final thoughts:
“Sound healing is a form of meditation. It helps us to journey below the thinking mind and into the body and breath; into a deeper sense of awareness. In this space, we are able to release layers of fear and worry and stress, and come home to our centre and our natural state of being, which is peace and harmony. When we connect back to this place, we have more clarity, feel more inspired, receive answers to questions that we’ve been searching outside of ourselves for, and are given a better insight into our internal world and what might need to heal.”
Sound healing is an innovative way to connect to your deeper self and allow the vibration of sound to penetrate your cells.
Learn more about Holly and her work here:
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