The Science of Sound Healing

Why do we listen to music? The way it makes you feel all the emotions, the way it soothes you, energizes you and uplifts your mood.

Everything in the universe has a vibrational frequency. We're hard-wired to have sound be part of us. In the brain, all our neurons fire at different frequencies based on the data they receive from things around us. Those vibrations interact with every cell in your body.

When you have two vibrating entities next to each other, the stronger vibration will affect the weaker one; eventually, they'll synchronize.

Anatomically, in our ear, there's the vestibulocochlear nerve, which connects to the vagus nerve, the major parasympathetic nerve in the body. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for rest and digestion such as reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, and relaxing muscles. This vagus nerve helps control hormone release, digestion, blood glucose levels, inflammation, heart rate, and blood pressure.

And there's a little branch of the vagus nerve that goes right to the tympanic membrane, which vibrates in response to sound waves. So that means that every sound that you process through your ears sends that information to the vagus nerve.

Why does that all matter?

An inactive or blocked vagus nerve is bad news for your health; stimulating it—via the right frequencies—could bring your body back to normal. We can actually use different sound frequencies to "hack" the brainwaves and promote physical healing. By using specific rhythms and frequencies, you can downshift your brain from the beta state (normal consciousness) to the theta state (relaxed consciousness) and even the delta state (where internal healing can occur).