Sound Therapy Demonstration group session
Healing chimes
My healing chimes from Peter Whitehart on Vimeo.
I incorparate the healing chimes into the first treatment of my goup introduction session; these are struck with a small rubber mallet to produce beautiful human organ sounds and frequencies. Each chime has two rings on string for ease of hanging them up. I have made a stand using microphone stands and I also used copper pipe wall mounts to hold each chime in place. These human organ chimes are a set of 15 tuned chimes, they represent the 15 main parts or organs of the physical human body. An organ is a tissue that performs a specific function or group of functions. Usually there is a main tissue and sporadic tissues. The main tissue is the one that is unique for the specific organ. These chimes are tuned to the frequencies of healthy human tissue. Sound waves were passed through healthy organs and the frequency is found using the speed of sound. Made from high quality heat treated aluminium, these chimes produce beautiful and long resonating sounds. Carefully tuned to the frequencies listed below.
These 15 Tuned Pipes are based on
Blood - E 321.9 Hz Adrenals - B 492.8 Hz
Kidneys - Eb 319.88 Hz Liver - Eb 317.83 Hz
Bladder - F 352 Hz Intestines - C# 281 Hz
Lungs - A 220 Hz Colon - F 176 H
Gall Bladder - E 164.3 Hz Pancreas - C# 117.3 Hz
Stomach - A 110 Hz Brain - Eb 315.8 Hz
Fat Cells - C# 295.8 Hz Muscles - E 324 Hz
Bone – Ab 418.3 Hz
The dimensions of these chimes are; Length of chimes – 21.5 to 45.5 inches approximately
Diameter: of these chimes are – 1 inch approximately
I purchased these chimes online from Tuning Fork Shop in India; they have a large selection of tuning forks and chimes. http://www.tuningforkshop.com/index.php
The playing technique is easy really, you make it up yourself and create your own way; this is definitely the best way forward with these chimes.
I use six of the above chimes during my group sessions.
Crystal singing bowl
My heart Crystal bowl from Peter Whitehart on Vimeo.
I incorparate the crystal bowl in my first treatment along with the tuning forks, healing chimes and sounding bowls.
The quartz crystal bowl is one of a number of vibrational healing tools available for use in sound therapy. As with ancient Tibetan singing bowls and bells, it can be used to balance the physical energies and to harmonize body, mind, and spirit. Many scientists, musicians, doctors and health practitioners are finding that quartz crystal bowls create a sacred spiral energy which can be used for healing and strengthening, calming the mind, improving meditation experiences, balancing the human energy system, cleansing the auric field, awakening creativity, creating or bonding relationships, manifesting abundance, and expanding consciousness.
There are three types of crystal Bowls, the opaque bowl, the clear bowl and the optically clear bowl (the optically clear bowl looks just like a glass bowl, (but it does not sound like one). It really is just a matter of personal choice as to which type of bowl you prefer to use. Some say that the optically clear bowls subtly emit a purer, clearer and more of a bell like tone to it. You can also get a Practitioner Bowl which has a crystal handle, and can be used directly over your client. Some therapists prefer working with this type of bowls, although they do tend to be very expensive and are only available in certain sizes. Crystal Bowls are produced using 99.8% of pure crushed and powdered silicon quartz crystal. The powder is dropped into a centrifugal force spinning mould and then an electric arc torch is ignited to several thousand degrees centigrade to integrate the individual particles of quartz. The result is an integrated structure of the purest resonance capable of sending an audible sound, which has been tested up to a third of a mile away.
The crystal bowl was first used in the communication field, crystal transistors and computer chips. But apart from its technological uses, they have been found to be excellent tools for sound healing work. One reason why the pure tones of the crystal bowl vibrate our body is that the human body has a natural affinity to quartz. Our bones, blood, and DNA are crystalline in structure, and so is our brain. Even on a molecular level, our cells contain silica, which balances our electro-magnetic energies. This is the same formula of silica as natural quartz crystal. When the crystal bowl is played, the crystalline cells in our bodies begin to vibrate at the same frequency as the bowls. If we know the optimum sounds and notes to bring our bodies into healing, we can logically use those notes to entrain the cells in our bodies to reach the optimum, healthy, balanced vibration and as with all crystals they have a certain resonation potential, and when we work with crystals and sound, such as with the crystal bowls, we believe there is a resonation and a harmonization.
A wonderful sound healing tool if you can master the playing of it. It is played by using a suede stick; firstly it is struck, and then the suede stick is rubbed around the bowl with medium pressure to create its wonderful sound.
I purchased my bowl from http://www.soundtravels.co.uk a wonderful website dedicated to sound therapy.
They also have a busy sound forum http://www.soundtravels.co.uk/Community
The Sounding bowl
My Meditation sounding bowl. from Peter Whitehart on Vimeo.
My Heart sounding bowl. from Peter Whitehart on Vimeo.
I will be playing my Sounding bowls, I have a Hermetic meditation bowl made from cherry wood and a heart bowl also made of cherry wood.
There are five types of sounding bowls, Meditation bowl, Melody bowl, Lyre bowl, Bridging bowl, and Heart bowl.
The sounding bowls are made in Devon by Tobias Kaye in his workshop in Buckfastleigh The sounding bowl was invented by Tobias who had a image appear during a meditation, of a bowl with strings, and as Tobias had already been turning bowls prier to his image it was not difficult to produce such an instrument.
Twenty years on from Tobias having that image during his meditation, the Sounding Bowls are now used in Hospitals, private clinics, Hospices, care homes and special education environments world wide. They are used by singers, healers, poets, therapists, doctors and nurses.
The playing of the sounding bowl is really easy; you just pluck the strings to make a sound.
With the melody bowl you can play a tune on it. As this is quite a modern instrument there is no set way of playing it, so it’s really about what works best for you. I tend to use my thumbs and start with the outer strings and work to the middle string and back again. It is possible to get many sounds from it with changing the tuning, this is done with a digital tuner, and turning the tuning pegs very slightly and till the desired note is found.
I visited Tobias workshop in Buckfastleigh and had the opportunity to play with many of his bowls before purchasing this bowl, he was very helpful with tuning the bowls before I arrived, so they sounded at their best.
For more details on the sounding bowl go to Tobias website.
Tobias also offers regular workshops.
Tuning forks
Tuning forks in sound therapy have been found to be effective in clearing long-standing mental blocks – these are the habits of thinking and reacting that hold a person back from achieving his or her full potential. Even deaf people can benefit. The resonance of the tuning fork will travel through the body just as it does for a hearing person, and can be felt as a vibration.
Tuning forks are held lightly at the stem and are struck gently on a rubber block to create resonance. There is one tuning fork in each hand, they are raised to the ears at the same time and are held about one to two inches away. They are held for ten seconds or up to a minute. The forks are then swapped from left to right and struck again, and held to the ears for the same amount of time as before.
Tuning forks are unique for sound therapy in that they produce a pure sound, a single frequency without any harmonics. This gives a precise and practical way to treat specific areas of the human organism.
I use the Inner Sound Tuning forks, these forks were developed by Arden and Jack Wilken of Inner Sound (USA).
The Inner Sound tuning forks are a series of micro-tuned forks designed specifically for sound therapy and for use at the ears allowing the sound to enter the body via the hearing mechanism and cranial bones.
The Inner sound tuning forks are a sequence of thirteen tuning forks that are labelled to be used as pairs, below is a description of how the forks are labelled. Beside that is the frequency of each pairs of forks.
1st Pair = tuning fork 1 and tuning fork 2 1st pair 31hz and 41hz
2nd Pair = tuning fork 2 and tuning fork 3 2nd pair 47hz and 71hz
3rd Pair = tuning fork 3 and tuning fork 4 3rd pair 71hz and 16hz
4th Pair = tuning fork 4 and tuning fork 5 4th pair 106hz and 159hz
5th Pair = tuning fork 5 and tuning fork 6 5th pair 159hz and 239hz
6th Pair = tuning fork 6 and tuning fork 7 6th pair 239hz and 358hz
7th Pair = tuning fork 7 and tuning fork 8 7th pair 358hz and 538hz
8th Pair = tuning fork 8 and tuning fork 9 8th pair 538hz and 806hz
9th Pair = tuning fork 9 and tuning fork 10 9th pair 806hz and 1209hz
10th Pair = tuning fork 10 and tuning fork 11 10th pair 129hz and 1814hz
11th Pair = tuning fork 11 and tuning fork 12 11th pair 1814hz and 2721hz
12th Pair = tuning fork 12 and tuning fork 13 12th pair 2721hz and 4082hz
The basic treatment consists of a long session or a short session.
The Long Session is when each Pair is sounded to each ear and then reversed,
i.e. 1st Pair would have fork 1 in the right ear and fork 2 would be in the left ear. Then it is reversed i.e. fork 1 in the left ear and fork 2 in the right ear.
A Short Session is played the same as the Long Session except only the following pairs are used.
1stPair , 3rd pair , 5th pair , 7th pair , 9th pair , 11th pair , 12th pair.
A short session is ideal if time is limited.
The inner sound has an advanced level of use with their tuning forks using 19 motifs, these motifs are:
Alpha. motif, Birth motif, Centering motif, Child motif, Cleaning motif, Conception motif,
Contact motif, Contraction motif, Equalization, Lubrication &Amplification motif, Expansion motif,
Foot stimulation motif, Front back alignment motif, Grounding motif, Hemispheric balance motif,
Hope motif, Integration motif, Left / right balance motif, Opening motif, Theta motif,
Each motif has a combination of pairs to use, these cover different areas of the body and for different emotions.
You pick a motif that would be suitable for your clients needs and you use that motif after a basic long treatment.
Sound each pair indicated in the chosen motif once for about one minute with the lowest frequency at the right ear and unlike the basic treatment it is not necessary to change sides.
Inner sound can be found here: http://www.inner-sound.co.uk/ they offer many sound therapy training courses including tuning fork basic and advance.
They also sell the inner sound tuning forks.
In my opinion Inner sound are by far the best tuning forks with biosonics coming second place. Biosonic forks can be purchased at: www.soundtravels.co.uk or http://www.biosonics.com
The Drum
The drum demonstration will start with a drum massage, Everyone will experience about two minutes of drum massage, the drum massage is when the drum is beat close to the body (about an inch away from the body) and then moved up and down the body whilst still beating. You can feel the sound waves penetrate through you, a wonderful treatment. Followed by a quick demo of the heart beat and entrainment and shamanic journey beat. I will then do a thirty to forty minute group treatment.
The Drum is an instrument that has been around since early human history and has always been used for sound therapy; Shamans from all cultures would have owned a drum and used it for the benefit and well being of their people.
One of the few things we know about our universe is that everything in it is vibrating, and is in motion and has rhythm. We are surrounded in a world of rhythm. When giant meteorites crash into the planet with great force, the earth vibrates like a drum and shamans the world over know that the drum is "The Great Spirit's favourite instrument.
The drum is the most ancient instrument in the world, dating back tens of thousands of years. It has been used within healing work, ritual & ceremony, rites of passage, clairvoyance, divination, celebration and for moving between the worlds. More than any other instrument, it gives us a powerful link with our tribal past.
Since earliest times, drums have been used not only for music, but for their consciousness-altering ability. Shamanic drumming slows down the brain waves, so that the client can 'journey' from the present to other levels of consciousness.
I highly recommend buying a remo frame drum; the remo will never let you down unlike a skin drum that gets affected by temperature and damp conditions. A good frame drum can be purchased from www.soundtravels.co.uk they have a good variety of drums available.
Bells, Shakers, Rattles and Rainstick for Grounding.
As sound therapy tends to leave you a bit spaced out, it’s helpful sometimes to use grounding instruments after a treatment to bring you back to beta brainwave state. Beta is the normal awake state.
Sound therapy tends to lead people into alpha or theta brainwave state. Alpha and theta are good states to promote healing but not so good for driving your car home after a treatment.
Bells are a great start to the grounding session; they are a very gentle sound.
Next would come some light shakers (wooden egg shaker and any other light shakers) these shakers are useful as a build up to the rainstick.
The rainstick is often a dried out cactus with seeds inside. This can be shaken or turned to create a rain like sound.
Finishing with heavy shakers, these are harsh sounding and great for waking you up. A good shaker to use for this is a Gourd Shakers these are a type of vegetable that has been baked till it hard, and it rattles with the dried seeds being inside it.
The grounding session only needs to last for five minutes finishing with a silence and then allowing your client to come around when they are good and ready.
www.soundtravels.co.uk is the best place to purchase grounding instruments.
The gong
Playing my new 40" Wind Gong from Peter Whitehart on Vimeo.
Paiste confontration gong. from Peter Whitehart on Vimeo.
The gong is a wonderful instrument for sound therapy work as it has so many harmonics.
All you have to do is lie comfortable and close your eyes and relax, The gongs are played very softly to begin with and after a while increasing volume slightly (the volume never get unbearable as they are played therapeutically) the playing technique changes frequently so there is no fixed rhythm this results in the brain not being able to follow and entrainment takes place, entrainment is the changing of brainwave frequencies.
Alpha brainwave state is achieved very quickly and is followed by the Theta brainwave state.
Alpha waves are defined as brainwave frequencies between 8 and 12 Hz. Daydreaming, imagination and associative thinking are all part of alpha brainwave activity. Alpha waves are present in states of relaxation.
Theta waves are defined as brainwave frequencies between 4 and 7 Hz. Theta waves occur during dreaming sleep - or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, although they also occur during deep meditation.
Theta brainwave frequencies is most often where the gongs will take you - even though you still feel present, you have entered a dreamlike, deep meditative state. Some people might enter the Delta brainwave state. (Deep sleep frequency) Theta is a good state of consciousness to be in for healing to occur as your mind is no longer getting in the way and this allows your body to heal on a deeper level.
There are many ways to play the gongs and there are many sizes of mallets to get different sounds from the gong, I play two gongs together, A Paiste planet gong and a Chinese wind gong this combines two completely different sounds to make the most wonderful sound. I play the gongs intuitively this means I play to what feels write at any given time.
The gong can be used for the treatment of one person or up to thirty people or more; infact the gong works really well in a group environment.
The gong has been in existence for thousands of years, No one really knows for sure the exact history of the gong. Some historians claim that Chinese gongs predate the second millennium BC. What is certain is that gongs were made and used during the first century; during an excavation in Wiltshire in the UK, a rimmed Roman gong was found and dated from the 1st or possibly 2nd century AD. The very beginning of the gong is believed to have originated from the start of the Bronze Age, possibly in India.
The gong was probably discovered by accident, perhaps as long as 6000 years ago and possible in the following way. During the agricultural age when wheat had been discovered to be a good food source to feed tribes of people and was widely grown, the wheat was ground up and made into flour and very large ovens were carved out of huge rocks with a fire in the base to bake bread. It is believed that as these ovens were getting larger and hotter over time, minerals would run out of the rocks. At first tin formed a molten pool on the oven floor and later as the temperature rose, copper appeared. As these two metals combined together, bronze was created and when the oven cooled the circle of hardened metal in the bottom of the oven was the creation of the gong and this could have been the start of the Bronze Age.
In ancient times and today, the gong is used to start sumo wrestling contests.
Some gongs are loud enough to be heard from many miles away, and were used to signal workers in from the fields. In Asian cultures, the gong is an important part of celebrations, births, weddings, and funeral ceremonies.
In the Buddhist culture, the gong is used today, as it was in the past, to start the beginning of meditation practice and to call group members to gather together.
Today, gongs are used in complementary therapy along with other instruments to entrain people to a theta brain wave state to promote healing.
Below is a few links to recommended websites if you should want to purchase a gong.
http://www.thomann.de/gb/index.html Thomann is a massive cyber store in Germany and is the ultimate place for music gear! Musical instruments, studio gear, lighting and PA equipment including lots of gongs, gong stands, mallets etc. I have purchased several gongs from Thomann with no problems.
http://www.soulnote.co.uk/ Soulnote are based in Dawlish Devon, so good if you want to see your gong before purchase. I have purchased a gong stand from soulnote at the quest festival.
http://www.soundtravels.co.uk/ Sound travels gets mentioned a lot, I highly recommend them, I have purchased a lot of instruments from sound travels over the years and have never had a problem. They sell many gongs, gong stands, mallets etc. however they do not sell Paiste gongs.
http://www.ecymbals.co.uk/default.asp Ecymbals is a great place to buy Paiste gongs, gong stands, Mallets etc. Julian the owner of Ecymbals is very helpful he is very much in the know of everything Paiste and he often has some second hand gongs for sale. I have purchased two gongs from Ecymbals and both were trouble free purchases.
http://www.collegeofsoundhealing.co.uk/ If you want to train to be a gong practitioner I recommend the college of sound healing and Sheila Whittaker as the tutor.
Links
http://www.tuningforkshop.com/index.php The tuning fork shop is a good website to purchase tuning forks and healing chimes, they are located in India, but don’t let that put you off, I purchased my chimes from them and I received them in four days and no problems.
http://www.soundtravels.co.uk Sound travels are a wonderful website for purchasing sound therapy instruments. They are located in Gloucestershire. They also have a busy sound forum http://www.soundtravels.co.uk/Community
http://www.soundingbowls.com Sounding bowls are made in Buckfastleigh in Devon by Tobias Kaye.
Tobias also offers regular workshops.
http://www.inner-sound.co.uk/ Innersound offer many sound therapy training courses including tuning fork basic and advance. They also sell the inner sound tuning forks.
http://www.biosonics.com Biosonics sell lots of tuning forks books, cd’s etc. Also www.soundtravels.co.uk sell Biosonic tuning forks.
http://www.thomann.de/gb/index.html Thomann is a good place to purchase Paiste gongs, and many others, as well as stands, mallets, gong cases and much more.
http://www.soulnote.co.uk/ Soulnote are based in Dawlish Devon, and is my local Paiste dealer.
http://www.soundtravels.co.uk/ Sound travels sell a lot of sound therapy instruments.
http://www.ecymbals.co.uk/default.asp Ecymbals is a great place to buy Paiste gongs, gong stands, Mallets etc
http://www.collegeofsoundhealing.co.uk/ the College of sound healing have tutors all over the country and teach most sound therapy techniques including the gong pracitioner training course with Sheila Whittaker.