How music can improve your health

Bioacoustics – Tuning the Human Instrument

I’m sitting in a bare, soundproofed room. My guide, Rebecca, is visible through a small window from which she issues instructions as she consults a computer screen. My middle finger is attached to a meter that monitors my pulse and oxygen uptake. I speak into a microphone by which my voice is recorded and fed through a frequency analyser. In the corner is a large speaker that looks like a giant seashell from some alien world.

After a while Rebecca flicks a switch and a low hum emanates from the ‘conch’. I immediately begin to smile; I feel as if every molecule in my body is being massaged. Inside the acoustically sterile room the sound is something primordial, strangely familiar and soothing, as if it is me. “You like that one!” says Rebecca, my high-tech medicine woman.

She flicks the switch, the pitch changes and once again my reaction is immediate. However, this time I feel uneasy, suspicious and uncomfortable. Rebecca, reading my facial expression and elevated pulse, switches it off. I feel better instantly.

Using this method, several different tones are tested. Some produce laughter, some make me drowsy, and others produce a delightful reluctance to talk or even think, a remarkable calm and clarity.

Signature sounds

I have been strummed and tuned by the invisible hand of bioacoustics, a healing modality that uses sound to diagnose and heal the body. Every process, substance and structure in the body has its own specific vibration. Your speaking voice contains your signature sound, the imprint or accumulative data of those frequencies. Each individual’s signature sound is distinctive and unique and relates to their physical and psychological status.

“It’s like an oral autograph,” says Rebecca. “It’s the sum of all the vibrations as represented by a person’s vocal capacities.” The voice is recorded via computer and is broken down by a frequency analyser into extraordinary detail. Any vocal tones in stress indicate imbalances in the body. Replacing the stressed tones with sound delivered at brainwave frequencies provides the body with the means to heal itself.

There are many therapies using sound and frequency as a healing tool, of which bioacoustics is one. Even methods such as magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound use frequencies primarily for diagnosis, but they, unlike bioacoustics, have limited therapeutic application. The essential difference is that bioacoustics is precise and individualised. Each signature sound is unique. A specific and exact frequency is what is required to heal someone; a frequency with a difference of only one- or two-hundredths of a cycle per second (cps) will have no effect or could actually make them ill. The same frequency needed to heal one person can have the opposite or no effect on another.