While Sound Therapy using tuning forks has not yet met the scientific rigor required for a treatment to be considered evidence based, at Approach to Balance, we will be documenting our findings in an effort to meet this threshold.
About 3 years ago, I experienced Sound Therapy using Tuning Forks for the first time. The tones were pleasant, even relaxing…but, so what?
The next morning I woke, purring like a kitten. It may have been the best night’s sleep I ever had. Knowing, like most of you, that many people with mental illness have great difficulty sleeping, I believed I was onto something that could be important. Since then I have had several more sessions with tuning forks and a few months ago completed training in the use of Inner Sound Tuning forks.
A woman by the name of Arden Wilken started Inner Sound and the use of these tuning forks about fifteen years ago. Arden was born with the ability to see people’s auras, and was surprised when she found out other people couldn’t. She trained as a musician and one of her joys was watching the auras of the audience shift, move around and change colors in relationship to changes in music. She began studying the sequence of tones which facilitated these changes, first developing music to create specific shifts and later, at the suggestion of her husband, Jack, a physicist, started using specially designed sets of tuning forks. Each tuning fork is able to produce a single pure sound, based not on the musical scale, but on the human body and that of nature.
These tuning forks are in pure fifths, which in mathematical terms is 3/2. Each tuning fork is precisely one and a half times the frequency of the lower pitched one. They are accurate down to two decimal points. The forks are always in harmony, one at each ear which produces a third, resonant frequency which travels not just to the ear drum, but via a person’s bones and connective tissue, throughout the body.
In 1706, in the German town of Jena, a musical showdown of sorts occurred in the gothic church of St. Michael’s. On one side was Nicholas Bach, a cousin of the not yet famous Johann Sebastian Bach. Nicholas was a well know musician and master organ tuner. On the other was Johann Georg Neidhardt, who had devised an easier way to tune keyboard instruments.
While I’m not capable of going into the complexity of tuning keyboard and fretted instruments, a linear progression exists in music, but the spacing on an instrument, in a physical sense, is not equal and this makes the tuning of keyboard instruments very difficult. Neidhardts’ method was to essentially fudge a little on the harmony of the instrument.
The Chinese, according to The Story of Harmony, two thousand years ago claimed that should the system of musical harmony ever be distorted, society would become more materialistic and less spiritual. Perhaps it is just coincidence that the piano was invented just before the start of the industrial revolution.
In 1706, in the German town of Jena, a musical showdown of sorts occurred in the gothic church of St. Michael’s. On one side was Nicholas Bach, a cousin of the not yet famous Johann Sebastian Bach. Nicholas was a well know musician and master organ tuner. On the other was Johann Georg Neidhardt, who had devised an easier way to tune keyboard instruments.
Bach won that showdown, at least as far as being able to produce more harmonic music. Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach and Mozart all wrote music in pure tuning. But over the next fifty years, this keyboard instrument, the piano improved and became popular. Most piano tuners do not have Nicholas Bach’s fine ear. And, either a separate piano would have to be tuned for each key, or the piano would have to be re-tuned with every change of key. It would be an arduous task. So gradually, the fudge system, or the tempered tuning system as it is more properly known as, became music’s choice method of tuning instruments. Beethoven’s earliest works were written in pure tuning, later in life, however, he began to write music in the tempered style. Tuning forks bring back pure harmony. In a way, tuning forks are a return to purity of sound.
Music and sound have been used for more than 2,000 years to alter mental and emotional states as well as for physical healing. Pythagoras used it in ancient Greece to soothe and heal people in emotional crisis. In Eastern cultures, chants and mantras aid in meditation and inner reflection. National anthems help to generate feelings of patriotism; while lullabies help the young to sleep.
Imagine the body as a string. It wants to vibrate over its entire length; however, it cannot vibrate as one, for it is cut at the diaphragm having chronic tension in this muscle, which is the largest in the body. The tension is created in this area in order not to feel the various emotions, both pleasurable and unpleasant. To continue the analogy, when the string is divided, the frequency goes up, and the more times it is divided, the higher the frequency becomes. This does not mean more energy; as the frequency goes up, the amplitude goes down, so the body has less capacity and force, and there is more nervousness along with the reduced capacity to feel.
The medium by which sounds heal in relation to the body and systems is the principle described in physics as sympathetic resonance. “Resonance” is the natural undampened frequency of any system. The human body can incorporate and in fact needs to move with its natural frequency to attain and maintain a state of harmony and health. Music creates the vibration to resonate the body. In healing sounds and music there must be vibrations, which are equal to the natural frequencies of the body. Neither higher nor lower frequencies will have a healing effect.
The body vibrates at all levels from the sub-atomic all the way up to the level of each organism. Each part and system of the body has its’ own unique frequency pattern. One example of this is the receptors and ligands, which bring about the chemical changes in the body such as the activation of endorphins, the body’s natural opiates or painkillers, which actually vibrate into place.
Ligands are neurotransmitters, steroids, which include sex hormones, and peptides, which chemically regulate practically all the life processes. Receptors are sensing molecules on the surface of cells waiting to receive the information from the ligands.
The musical thrills that we have all experienced come from the rush of endorphins (ligands) entering the receptors. In fact, all emotional responses are keyed throughout the body simultaneously by these ligand / receptor interactions.
Biophysics, the study of matter and energy as it relates to the body, gives some explanation of why sounds works to help unblock chronic tension. The pathway of travel for the sound waves is through the connective tissue that forms a continuous network into all parts and systems of the body down to a cellular level. The primary routes through the body can be mapped as the acupuncture meridians.
A healthy body resonates at its maximum potential because the symphony of its parts are in harmony. Emotional blockages and traumas are stored in the connective tissues of the body. These blockages are stored in such a way that they dampen the body’s natural resonating frequency. Just as a violin string will come to life when the identical note is struck on a piano, the body’s symphony will come alive when its music is played.
Tuning forks are precision made instruments designed to produce a single frequency. At the proper frequencies they help to calm and harmonize the nervous system, enhancing the body’s regeneration. The sound harnesses the body’s natural resonant capacity to create movement and release. A pure 5th is the natural tuned form of the musical interval known as the perfect 5th. The use of tuning forks in this interval, one at each ear, produces an organized wave throughout the body. This occurs at all levels, helping the body to relax deeply and facilitate healing.
