The beneficial effects of playing and listening to music have long been recognised – music is a mood lifter, raising negative energy to positive. Of the musical instruments we can play the human voice is considered to have the most powerful healing capability of them all.

Exploring the voice and sound takes us back to the very root of all things. In fact to quote a book title by Joachim Ernst Berendt “The World is Sound”. Sound is the primordial substance from which our whole reality is made and it is produced by vibration.

Sound background
Over 2,500 years ago, the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras acknowledged what modern physics has only proven in the last century and that is that everything from the planets to the smallest grain of sand vibrates - in fact everything is in a constant state of vibration.

When something vibrates on our planet it creates a mechanical sound wave which is carried from one location to another. Usually the medium through which this is carried is air although it could be any series of interconnected and interacting particles or material such as string, steel and even water.

Some sound waves are below or above our audible hearing range. Furthermore audible hearing ranges vary between species on this planet. While the human ear is capable of detecting sound waves with a wide range of frequencies, ranging between approximately 20Hz to 20,000Hz (1Hz=1 cycle per second), animals are able to detect different frequencies. Any sound with a frequency below the audible range of our hearing (i.e. less than 20Hz) is known as infrasound and an elephant possesses the ability to detect infrasound with an audible range between approximately 5Hz and 10,000Hz). Any sound with a frequency above the audible range of hearing (i.e. more than 20,000Hz) is known as ultrasound and dogs, cats, bats and dolphins have an ability to detect ultrasound with dolphins detecting frequencies as high as 200,000 Hz.

It is common scientific knowledge that sound does not exist in a vacuum as a mechanical wave is not capable of transmitting it’s energy without a medium such as air and so it was deduced that sound did not exist in outer space.

However another type of wave was discovered which is capable of transmitting its energy through a vacuum and this is called an electromagnetic wave. Altogether, electromagnetic waves make up what is called the electromagnetic spectrum (or energy spectrum) and include heat, light, radio, and gamma rays. It was the radio astronomers with their radio telescopes who discovered that space is filled with sound. Radio waves are in the range of about 10 kHz (or ten thousand waves per second) to 100GHz (which is one hundred million vibrations per second).

Our ears can’t directly sense radio signals and they must be converted into sound waves. From 1920 to 1950 Galena crystals were much used in radio “crystal” sets, which are simple radio receivers now relegated to the electronic museums and amateur science kits and classrooms. In a crystal set an antenna picks up a signal from the air and grounds it. However antenna currents are too high frequency to flow through to the earphone and radio frequencies produce ultrasonic sounds which are vibrations that are too fast to be heard by human ears. However when the earphone was connected to a crystal detector which was also connected to the antenna and ground the crystal detector works like a one-way valve or rectifier and makes the signals audible to our ear. Electron surges in the antenna flow through the crystal and “Cat’s Whisker (a fine wire on the crystal) to the earphone.

Recent advancements in the science of sound have now given us the chance of hearing many cosmological sounds like the sound of Jupiter or the sound of a super-massive black hole located in a cluster of galaxies 250 million light years from Earth, the galactic cluster, known as Perseus. In January 2005, astronomers reported “that they had convincingly detected, in the patterns of galaxies scattered across the night sky, the vestiges of sound waves that rumbled through the universe after the Big Bang”

These sound waves are now acting as a record, recording all of history as we know it, a giant long playing record!

Resonance
Everything has a sound and it also has a natural resonance which is a frequency at which it will vibrate easily. Resonance is the property, which most objects have, of vibrating more strongly when exposed to an external force which is itself vibrating at the object's natural frequency. This is the principle behind the singer causing a glass to break – she hits the objects natural frequency causing the vibration to amplify to the extent that with enough force it breaks the glass. Every object vibrates at its own natural frequency - even the planets! In fact it stands to reason that if everything has a sound, if the world is sound, then everything has a resonant frequency and it will all vibrate in harmonic proportions.

This above theory is not new and Pythagoras’ Music of the Spheres was respected and contemplated two and half thousand years ago in the Greek philosophical schools and has been influential ever since inspiring not only great philosophers such as Plato, Pliny, Cicero and Ptolemy but in later years, Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) who is said to be the founder of modern astronomy and the mathematician, Astronomer and Clergyman Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).

The Music of the Spheres or The Elegant Universe where the “only difference between one string and another, whether it's a heavy particle that is part of an atom or a mass less particle that carries light, is its resonant pattern, or how it vibrates” or what sound it makes with it’s harmonic sense - none being more constant and harmonious than the crystal.

The Voice
Resonance is also the principle behind voice healing. There are numerous books on and sites on the healing qualities of sound - we all know how singing can make us feel good and energise us - also observations have shown that sound can actually re-arrange the molecular structure of cells. In some cases diseased cells can actually destabilize and break down when exposed to sound and vibration. In the early 1980's French composer and bioenergeticist named Fabien Maman, along with Helene Grimal, a biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, explored the impact of sound waves on healthy and diseased cells. Specifically, uterine cancer cells. They used a camera mounted on a microscope, and noticed that the cells reacted to various acoustic instruments, but the most amazing observation was when Maman noticed how quickly the cancer cells became disorganized when he sang musical scales into them.

According to Maman as quoted in Dr. Gaynord's book: "It appeared that the cancer cells were not able to support a progressive accumulation of vibratory frequencies. 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."

Using sound through singing and toning with conscious intention brings about healing, in fact each person holds a unique soul tone that brings about healing when resonated with. The voice also has further potent tools to help - the power of vowels and speech. But firstly, what do we mean by "conscious intention"?

Intention
In terms of successful healing, the intention is one of the most important factors. Our thoughts bring forward an intention and Beta waves represent our ability to consciously process our thoughts. Beta waves are associated with the frequencies of our linear three-dimensional world (known as left-brained activity) linked to the five senses and we need Beta waves to be focussed and successful within it.

Beta waves are important for us to be able to reason and function in the third dimension but they do not bring about healing as these waves are constantly processing and interrupting us. In fact is is realised nowadays that most of us have become slaves to reason, entrapped by our thoughts, and we often are unable to break out of the hold this wave has on us.

Alpha, Theta and Delta brainwaves are associated with the frequencies of expanded multi-dimensional consciousness which uses the whole energy system. From here we are able to heal ourselves, connect to the source, communicate with the other dimensions and know no boundaries. It is from here that the voice takes on another dimension!!

From this perspective one can also bring the Beta wave activity into balance, thereby controlling or managing our thoughts and this is the desired outcome - a balance between the left and right sides of the brain. When we are balanced we can practise mindful meditation, live in the Now as opposed to the past or future and in fact function much more effectively as we can process messages not only our five senses but also from our intuitive, healing and creative consciousness. We can hold the intention brought forward and BE with it multidimensionally.

The Power of Vowels and Speech
Many references have been made to the divine power of vowels as written in the Kabbalah, by Pythagoras and the ancient rishis (sages) of India who taught that the pronunciation of the vowels corresponds to the vibration of the five inner planets. Words also hold divine power and here I'd like to quote from a wonderful book "The World is Sound" by Joachim Ernst Berendt:

“Scattered through various religious traditions, we find references to the divine power of words. The Latin word cantare, root of the English “cantor”, is commonly translated as “to sing”. However, some linguists believe that the original meaning was “to produce by magic”. The Mexican Huichol Indians use the Spanish world cantor, “singer” to mean “shaman” - a clear indication of the power they attribute to the voice. Another Latin word, carmen, is often translated as “poem”, but originally it meant “magic formula”

This gives more weight to sayings such as “think before you speak!”. Your world and health are directly affected! In fact I have read that thought, word and deed are considered the three levels of creation with thought being the least dense form of energy, becoming denser as thought is expressed in word and then when finally expressed as action it becomes energy in heavy physical form.

This is why so much emphasis is placed on the importance of positive thoughts and words - once spoken a fantastic amount of creative energy is put into motion and it stands to reason that negative words may have a detrimental effect on our sense of wellbeing. Positive thoughts and affirmations call forth creative power and there is none greater than “I am”.

Many people believe that the process of repeating affirmations to oneself works on the principle of auto-suggestion and whilst this is true, recent Russian scientific evidence shows that human languages are a reflection of our inherent DNA (an article on this new scientific evidence can be viewed - in English - on the Kontext website http://www.fosar-bludorf.com/index_eng.htm.

This recent scientific evidence is not news to healers - the article explains:

"Esoteric and spiritual teachers have known for ages that our body is programmable by language, words and thought. This has now been scientifically proven and explained. According to their findings, our DNA is not only responsible for the construction of our body but also serves as data storage and communication. The Russian linguists found that the genetic code - especially in the apparent "useless" 90% - follows the same rules as all our human languages."

The Voice and Crystals
Here is an example of a way to effectively use the voice and crystals together. Affirmations offer a powerful approach and one that can be made even more intense with the aid of crystals. This combination works on many levels: