Music for your Health
We all love some form of music. It can be an energizer, a catalyst for focus and creativity, or a cathartic medium for emotional expression. It can evoke a personal sanctuary, whether you’re listening to a favorite album, playing an instrument, partaking in a sound bath, or singing along at a concert. We intuitively know that music provides a positive experience, but there has been incredible, measurable progress on how to hone its ability to cure mental and physiological illnesses.
"Music heals" is a tagline of Blue Bear Music school in San Francisco. By chance, a friend and I stumbled upon a deejay school exhibition at a well known bar/lounge. The downstairs area has a second bar, dance floor, and fantastic sound/stage setup usually reserved for established house music DJs to perform. That night, four novice students were showcasing tracks they’d likely been dreaming of playing in a crowded club, weaving a seamless experience song by song. I signed up for Blue Bear’s deejay classes on the spot elated with joy; for nearly two decades I dreamt of moonlighting as a deejay being the music fanatic that I am. This was my first concrete step towards that. For several months, our diverse class of four ranging in our late 20’s and 30’s was led by a veteran female DJ.
Twice a week for several months we’d practice mastering mixing and performing, learning about music technology and song structures, and how to play to a crowd. I felt energized, nervous, connected, and at peace simultaneously at each class and through our showcases, no different from my childhood piano recitals.
I found that interacting with music this new kind of way within a community to be one of my most therapeutic experiences personally. From that experience, I’ve been reflecting back on what music really means to me and how I’ve subconsciously used music as therapy throughout my life. This notion inspired my curiosity to investigate the hard sciences of physics and neuroscience in relation to sound through research, coursework, lectures, conferences. Speaking with brilliant and compassionate doctors, physicists, sound healers, and musicians on these topics and recent breakthroughs has compelled me to share.
One of the many treasures of music is its ubiquity and ease to consume now more than ever. We have access anytime to almost every song ever created inside our pockets. We see athletes sporting their Beats by Dre headphones before a game. Business travelers with Bose noise cancelling headphones sound asleep on a plane. Music sets the tone in movies and at auspicious gatherings. Hearing an old school jam will take us right back to that middle school dance. Everyone can benefit from listening to music and we are beginning to uncover its healing possibilities. Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics that studies how we perceive sound and more specifically, the psychological response to sound. Beyond improving our mood, we have seen people afflicted by a stroke remember how to play complicated pieces of music, or those suffering from dementia able to recite songs and tell specific stories of their youth when they heard music of that era. The science of sound is being medically validated to combat diseases and common disorders: PTSD, Alzheimers, ADHD, Depression, and cancer. Yes, cancer.
Cognitive Music Healing
Mental health is of monumental focus in the 21st century. Our world is innovating and developing faster than our primitive brains can evolve. Although we have benefited from music for thousands of years, we are now pouring research into how to deliberately use components of music, including frequencies and vibrations, to help modify behavior and for mental and psychological health. Binaural beats is a very powerful sound tool to transition your brain frequency into different functional states, known as entrainment. Essentially, two frequencies (tones) are listened to in each ear that your brain synchronizes in about 15 seconds into a 3rd new tone. Headphones are required to isolate sounds in each ear.
This entrains your brain into different states similar to what exercise, sleep, or meditation does. Because we can measure neural oscillations in measured hertz (Hz), or cycles per second, binaural beats can be used to intentionally guide your brain into the following states:
delta (.5 to 4 Hz) for relaxation and deep sleep.
theta (3 to 8 Hz) for REM and dream sleep state, reduced anxiety, as well as getting into meditative and creative states to receive universal downloads. This is also believed to help access deep emotions.
alpha: (8 to 13 Hz) for accessing relaxation, positivity, and decreased anxiety. This is also sometimes referred to as the daydream state.
beta (14 to 30 HZ) for increasing alertness, concentration, problem solving, organizing/planning ability, and memory. This state also is associated with reduced anxiety, and intuitive place where you get creative downloads (listening to the universe).
epsilon (less than .5 Hz) for very slow, trance-like deep state of rest. A person is experiencing a wave as slow as one wave per 10 seconds; one’s heartbeat and brain waves get close to 0 hertz.
lambda (between 100 - 200 Hz) this state is technically faster than gamma. One would expect it to be hyper and intense; however, the experience is much more similar to an epsilon entrainment with less drowsiness. This is a lesser known and rarer brain state.
How do you access binaural beats? Entrain in the membrane (sorry, I had to). An internet search will yield many free and paid resources for certain binaural frequencies, sounds, ambient music, and sound resonance meditations to help with entrainment to guide the brain into these states. Amazingly, studies have shown that a person diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) has difficulty accessing beta state where the brain isn’t operating fast enough to access those frequency cycles naturally. Through listening to these frequencies or music that contains these frequencies, the effects of beta brain state can be attained. If you think about the inward rhythm of our pulse and the rhythms of our natural world, there are a lot of city noises and disruptions in between.
Sound frequencies can help synchronize our brain to our natural rhythms. I’ve been trying out Youtube binaural beats videos of different frequencies and have felt more focused and less anxious when listened to. I remember while cramming for college finals or writing endless poli sci papers in the mid 2000’s, I’d access playlists containing a new subgenre of electronic music called IDM (intelligent dance music, yes really it’s a thing) which were cerebral in nature rather than danceable to help with focus; I now know why.
the brain on music
“Music has been an integral part of the human experience as long as humanity has been around. It’s been intuitively felt to have healing properties, but now we are in a position to study the mechanisms and optimize music-based interventions,” according to John’s Hopkins Center for Music & Medicine. “Though acknowledging the role of music in addressing illness is not new, recent research is illuminating how music affects the brain and other body systems in a measurable way. Using that knowledge, practitioners can now integrate music with medicine to augment healing. The Center for Music & Medicine is continuing to expand research on the effect of music on neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy and stroke.” With life spans increasing, an unfortunate byproduct has been an increasing case of Alzheimers and dementia. Although millions of dollars are going into researching medicinal cures and prevention for this disease, it is easy to observe the transformation of seniors when playing familiar music from their childhood and early adult years. Ability to recall lyrics, specific stories of when they heard the song, let alone spirits lifted.
Harvard Business Alumni hosted a virtual event during last summer in 2020 with a non-profit organization, Music and Memory, who provide personal playlists and resources to get music in the ears of people experiencing cognitive conditions. During this event, they presented an astonishing study showing double- digit percentage decreases in depression, aggressive behavior, and the need for antipsychotic medication through their music program. Music has also proven to reduce symptoms from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Parkin’s, and strokes through effective programs run by The Institute for Music and Neurological Function.
Physiological Sound Health
Everything in our physical world is in motion, causing vibrations that can be measured in frequency. At the micro level, each of the millions of cells of the body emits a unique frequency. Cells working together combine to form frequencies for each organ. David Gibson, founder of the Sound Healing Center in Sausalito, California, lectures about when the body’s cells are operating at optimal frequency, the body is in harmony. He terms this concept of your main vibration as your “home note”; that is the average of your heartbeat rate and brainwave rate at rest. When you are in tune with your home note, inflammation is minimized and your immune system is at rest.
Breakthroughs are happening as you read this. Researchers at Caltech are “proposing a radical new technique for killing cancer cells using low-intensity ultrasound waves. The preliminary in vitro studies have demonstrated sound waves pulsed at a specific frequency can effectively destroy cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact,” according to an article by New Atlas. An advanced method of this is using high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) to target cancer cells with non-invasive, powerful and precise sound waves to destroy diseased tissue.
In physics, this concept is referred to as “forced resonance”, where an oscillating vibration when close to the original source of another vibration causes the frequency to shift. To illustrate this, if you sing a note close to a piano with the dampers off the strings, the strings will start to sing the same note back to you, having the same frequencies as your voice. The sound waves that you projected are resonating in response within the strings; this is an example of the fact that objects can be forced to oscillate but oscillate best at their natural frequency.
Astonishingly, almost a decade ago, radiofrequency experiments were being conducted on pancreatic cancer cells. Dr. Holland, a Ph.D and composer, teamed up with a surgical research laboratory in Philadelphia where he conducted frequency experiments with harmless microorganisms, bacteria, and cancer cells. The Thomas Jefferson University’s Medical College published Holland’s findings. “I began to try different frequencies, and at first nothing happened. Then I tried putting more than one frequency into the organism simultaneously.” Then a light bulb went on for Dr. Holland. “If I added one additional frequency, in a special relationship to the first frequency, I’d be creating more power and have a better chance at landing on the frequency necessary to change the organism,” Dr. Holland says. “When I added the eleventh harmonic, I looked through the microscope and discovered that the microorganism had shattered. It reminded me of how a crystal glass shatters when a soprano hits just the right note."
Although relatively nascent, an impressive amount of progress is being made in understanding the medical application of sound and psychoacoustics. But beyond perception, we are gaining understanding of how our nervous system and our biological makeup is responding. David Gibson’s Sound Healing Institute is paving the way to map the frequencies of the entire body, cleverly coined as the “Human GeneOm Project”. The hypothesis is that by observing the frequency for different parts of the body at a healthy state, such as organs, healing will occur when a new precise frequency is introduced to alter the frequency of defective cells through forced resonance. Extending beyond humans, Bioacoustics is the science of studying sounds of animals and nature. The application of sound can be used to heal organisms and replenish vital ecological resources, such as coral reefs.
528 Hz waves vibrating on water surface
I know I've inundated you with names and terminology, but this is all so incredibly exciting. We live in a complex existence in an intricate world with challenges of disease, destruction, depression, and anxiety. However ,we are identifying innovating and unconventional ways of combating these challenges. I've always thought of music and sound as a mystical power which has given me so much. Now, with science backed discoveries of its healing properties, I am excited about how we evolve our interaction with sound and music to improve the quality of our lives. Gaining a modest amount of awareness and understanding has inspired me to share a poem I wrote.
Profound was the sound,
Resonance to be found,
Shimmering waves ocean refract into a mound,
Claps thunderous bestow a crown,
Lift up, cradle you down,
Unbound was the sound
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