The Power of Sound
The Power of Sound
Its Origins, Uses and Perspectives
Many cultures say “In the Beginning there was Sound” and the significance of ॐ (“OM” — also known as the Sacred Sound) cannot be overstated since it’s been highlighted in the oldest scriptures we still have available today — i.e. the Vedas.
My personal journey with sound started very young and wasn’t quite so pleasant. I was very sensitive and didn’t like loud music. I remember the fanfares at an annual local festival which were famous for their powerful sound and everyone went there to hear them, but for me as a young boy, whenever they passed by, it was pure terror.
Interestingly I still ended up studying music (piano) and thanks to a very inspiring teacher at the time, perfecting the quality of my piano sound became a real passion.
Her teaching lineage goes back to the same ancient Russian school under which Horowitz (and subsequently his students such as Byron Janis etc.) had studied and where effortless playing and the manipulation and “exciting of often unheard overtones” in the piano was a speciality.
She cautioned me though that most will never be able to “hear” the real quality of a sound and that I should be reasonable with my expectations during concerts. She was quick to point out that I shouldn’t be disappointed to practice a skill which quite possibly would only be noticed by a handful of people in the room of a thousand, yet that playing for those few in particular would be well worth the effort and that if only one of those few commented on it be all the reward an artist needed. Needless to say I loved her wisdom and foresight.
According to our normal audible senses, we can roughly hear from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, depending on our age, sensitivity, training, etc. — you can easily test it yourself:
If we have no hearing difficulties, we belong to the lucky group of humans who have access to this most beautiful sense. But this is not the case for all of us and it’s by far not the only “hearing” sense we have.
Many years ago, I was part of a special concert tour working with Sarah Neef1. She has been a ballet dancer since she was six, plays the piano and the flute. Sarah has been deaf since she was born but perceives music through oscillations and vibrations and feels it with her body. Working with the most emphatic and deeply intuitive Cellist Ekkehard Hessenbruch2 we managed to achieve a marvelous collaboration where vibration was our common ground.
Since that day I realized: Sound, in the truest sense, has many dimensions. And vibration is just one more key component of hearing.
Acoustic Holograms
The way we perceive sound today is not what nature originally had in mind. In fact, we’re still catching up from our original evolution to our current technology driven, noisy and jam packed lives.
Just compare a conversation in front of a roaring waterfall to a conversation in a noisy city cafe. Surprisingly (and even if the waterfall is much louder at measurable decibel level), we can usually hear each other much better compared to the ever increasing shouting environment of the cafe example. Why is that?
To me, sounds are different forms of waves which (when combined and coming into resonance) form a certain type of force field which can influence us at multiple levels.
The closest I've had to a genuinely holistic sound experience is described in this patent3 by German inventor Rudolf Mechow where two sound converters emit spherically, thereby creating an acoustic hologram, a kind of a three-dimensional sound pattern. The spectral frequencies of the natural sound vibrate through the body and interact with the body's own frequencies.
While healthy cells remain unaffected, irritated cells react to the harmonic sound waves. The natural sound (which also automatically filters out more undesirable frequencies which typically are formed whilst producing sound in the first place) has a balancing effect on their activity: it creates resonance, order and thus healthy harmony.
The aspect of lower (natural) frequencies from the infrasound spectrum isn’t to be underestimated either. Due to shock absorbing shoes for instance, we’ve literally “lost touch” with the Earth’s powerful vibrational forces which emanate all the way from tectonic shifts and are quite relevant for our bones and a strong physical stature. Osteoporosis patients for instance have reported relief being exposed to low natural frequencies formed by the right technology and “Earthing” and grounding is much more easily possible when such type of natural and structured infrasound is not always “shock-absorbed”.
Invisible, Inaudible but NOT Insignificant
Infrasonic Waves
Unfortunately, large cities have a lot of man-made infrasound, which compared to its naturally occurring counterpart isn’t structured and can be quite harmful.
This includes traffic related vibrations passing over from streets to buildings and thereby inside our living rooms, but also infrasonic sound waves emitted by so-called environmentally friendly wind turbines which have been reported4 to cause heart aches and psychological damages to humans and animals alike.
Black Noise
Perhaps this is a background to David Bowie's famous TV interview in the 1970ies where he spoke about “Black Noise” and how infrasound is the key5 to its inception:
Needless to say that where there is black, there is white, and in this case there are many other types of sound with different applications, i.e. “pink noise”, all which have different fields of application and uses depending on one’s interest.
Humming Sound
There is also the mystery of the so-called "Humming Sound"6 which is quietly touring the world. Much like an earthquake map, but with no obvious connection to the movement of tectonic plates, "The World Hum Map" records and maps self-reported data from people around the world who can hear “The Hum”, and also provides a serious and disciplined forum for scientific investigations and commentary.
Although they can be made visible by Cymatics, sound waves in general cannot be seen or touched, which means that in particular the non-audible frequencies part of their electromagnetic spectrum are tough to deal with for many humans today — perhaps quite simply because we didn’t have the evolutionary time to adapt just yet.
Ultrasonic Waves
Sounds emitted by stressed plants are in the ultrasonic frequency range of 20-100 kHz, which is inaudible to humans but can be detected by some animals such as bats, rats, and insects like moths.
This means that these animals could potentially use such plant distress signals to locate and target weaker or more vulnerable plants for food, shelter, or nesting material.
The discovery7 of plant "cries" also raises questions about the ecological significance of this phenomenon and its impact on plant-animal interactions.
Sickness in the Context of Sound
Many people who feel sick these days often have no (known) physical disease or a (defined) mental condition, so no clear diagnosis for why the feeling of sickness occurs.
It might be that we’re just not adapted to a new status quo in which our biological systems have not yet regulated themselves to the many frequencies we nowadays are exposed to and that we have to deal with in our Modern Times.
If you are interested to learn more about products and solutions which embed the true nature sound principles and thereby can help remedy certain disorders born from our Modern Times, please let me know, I’d be happy to explain and assist.
Bone Conduction
The transmission of sound vibrations to the inner ear (cochlea) bones of the skull is called “Bone Conduction”8. It allows you to perceive sound without blocking the ear canal.
Essentially sound is delivered directly to the inner ear without needing to pass through the eardrum and therefore is kind of a shortcut to hearing sound:
A friend uses these to permanently hear and feel a harmonious frequency (which he found suits him) in his head whilst yet being fully alert to what’s going on around him at all times.
Personally I don’t like the Bluetooth component of it, but otherwise I think they’re great fun to have, especially when in the outdoors or in a particularly noisy or stressful environment.
Vibrocymatics — Acoustic Whole Body Stimulation
Sound transmission doesn’t happen only by bone conduction. There are many sound conductors we have all over (and in) our bodies: the skin’s surface, cell water, bone/marrow, nerve tracts, cell membranes, etc.
Addressing every cell from every side with the same information and force until that area is regulated requires the kind of acoustic hologram which I referred to in the previous section and as described in the patent therein.
But there are also other opportunities to “feel sound” and make it come “alive within our body”. More than two decades ago, a very good friend, Dr. Alexander Wunsch, started to research, experiment and build a special type of massage bed, using sound transducers to transfer audible sound into physical body cells. He calls it “Körperhören” in German, which loosely translates into “listening to sound by feeling it with your entire body”, rather than putting the sole focus on our primary audio instrument, the ears.
If music is not only experienced through the ears, but with the entire body, a new dimension of sound effects is added, which can significantly deepen the effects of music. This allows you to create the ideal conditions for your individual form of therapy for body, soul and spirit —
Dr. Alexander Wunsch
The effects are astounding. People who normally have a hard time to relax and would never think of doing a meditation can do so in just a few minutes. Many go to sleep after a few minutes, not realizing what just happened. Needless to say — this type of instant deep relaxation has a profound effect on all sorts of disorders and diseases, more than this article could ever convey.
My personal highlight was observing body hair to actually start standing up by the mere conscious observation of sound through feeling. Note that genuine and authentically crafted sound beds are still a labor intensive job and therefore quite expensive, but they’re worth every penny. A piece of art they take a very unique combination of multiple skill sets which is hard to come by these days.
If you’re interested to learn more, please contact me as there are certain ways to turn them into a highly personalized future “MedBed” at home.
Another friend developed a simplified version of the soundbed in the form of a sound mat which you can put on top of your bed to sleep on it and which represents a slightly cheaper option for those who want to try out Vibrocymatics.
Using a combination of specially composed and recorded sound files linked to the planetary sound spectrum with pure vibrational frequencies ranging from as low as 10 to as high as 1,000 Hz, it is based on the groundbreaking research of the Swiss mathematician and musicologist Hans Cousto, whose calculations of the planetary frequencies are used today worldwide in the production of singing bowls, gongs or tuning forks.
His book “The Cosmic Octave — Origin of Harmony” has been a real gem for many generations interested in this subject and is worth reading for a deeper understanding of his mathematical approach and genius:
By converting the orbits of the planets into seconds and forming the inverse of them and then octaving (= doubling) them, a frequency in Hertz can be obtained which is audible and feelable to us humans.
I’ll dedicate more to this subject in a future article.
The Elements and Sound
Now that we have an idea about the different Sources of Sounds and how they affect our daily health and well-being, we may ask ourselves: what is hearing? If we feel music, but don’t hear it, does it have the same effect on a cellular level?
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