Sound baths are becoming an increasingly popular method of healing. Here, sound therapist Farzana Ali explains how they can help bring you back into balance.
We use sound and music in many ways to reflect or alter our moods. Do you have a favourite running track? Have you ever put on music to get ready for a night out? Has a favourite album helped you through a relationship break-up and made you feel empowered? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you have already used sound or music to self-medicate. As well as connecting us back to ourselves, sound tethers us to the present. It blocks out the noise of the past and the fears of the future, cuts through worries and tension and brings us back into a moment.
To understand how sound healing engages you in deep rest and allows for healing to take place, let me explain a bit about how your brain works. Neurons communicate information throughout your grey matter and, in doing so, create an electrical signature. Depending on which activity you are doing and how your brain is responding to that task, these signatures can be grouped together by rhythms with different speeds that make up your brainwaves. For example, beta waves have a fast, regular frequency and are dominant when you are awake, alert and concentrating – your day-to-day brainwave state. Alpha is a more uniform, synchronised brainwave, the brainwave of relaxation, and the one we speak about most in meditation, yoga nidra or anything that is designed to bring you back to a place of calm and peace.
Slowing down
Meditation takes you from a stressed and anxious beta-dominant brainwave state and puts you into a relaxed alpha-dominant brainwave state. While extremely worthwhile, this can take many years to master. Sound healing works by providing a shortcut to this process. How? The instruments used in sound healing recreate these slower frequencies. Then, through a process called auditory driving and sympathetic resonance – which basically means that your brainwaves change to match the frequency of the sounds you are hearing – your brainwaves slow down and sync into that restorative and dreamy alpha-dominant brainwave state. Not only does this require little effort from you, but response by your brain to whatever you are listening to, it just happens. This is why sound healing is an attractive option for someone who has always struggled with regular forms of meditation and finds it hard to switch off that ‘monkey brain’ chatter.
When your brain syncs to a slower wave pattern, this tells your body that you are safe, you can relax and you do not need to be concentrating or on high alert. As a result, your heart rate starts to slow down, your breathing gets slower and softer, and your blood pressure drops. Your parasympathetic system is activated. You are in ‘rest and digest’, which is the opposite to the fight-or-flight response. You are calm and become deeply relaxed, your overall sense of wellbeing improves and your mood is lifted – you do not feel as stressed as you were.
Music to your ears
Using a sound bath is the ideal way to access sound healing. In a sound bath, therapeutic-grade instruments are played in a way that slow down your brainwaves, in turn activating your parasympathetic nervous system. The result is that you start breathing more slowly and your heart rate slows down. Your focus goes inward. You start to detach from the physical world around you and your mind enters a deeper state of consciousness. This allows you to reach a deep state of meditation. It is an invitation to rest – a way to heal and to put down and recover from the stress you may be carrying around with you.
A sound bath is good for the time-pressed and super stressed, for those who want to calm their inner chatter and let their mind switch off, or for those who want to feel rested but have found that traditional meditation has not worked for them. Sound healing can also help you when things are going well. Working with your subconscious mind from a place of rest and happiness can also amplify other objectives. Want to manifest something? Chase your goals more efficiently? Perhaps you wish to reframe any negative thought patterns that have held you back in the past? The best time to do this is when you are not presently dealing with the consequences of it.
The main instruments used for sound baths tend to be crystal singing bowls (the large, white frosted ones as well as the colourful alchemy ones), Himalayan singing bowls, drums and gongs. All these instruments can help you achieve what sound therapists called an Altered State of Consciousness (ASC) and help your nervous system downregulate, i.e. calm you down.
The type of session you go to is completely up to you. Some sound baths will feature several instruments so you may not have the option to pick, but others may focus on only one particular instrument. If the options are available, try to listen to as many different instruments as you can.
Reaching an ASC is the pinnacle of a sound bath and one of the ways in which sound healing provides mental rest. It is a trance-like psychological state that is different to when you are awake, and usually happens when your brain is in either an alpha- or theta-dominant brainwave state. Having an ASC is good for both your brain health and overall health. When you are in an ASC, your brain has time to correct its internal mineral levels, repair cells and bring your nervous system back into balance.
Sound Bite – The humming boost
I often recommend my clients hum between sessions, as this is a great way to introduce a sound healing exercise into their daily life with ease. When doing breathing techniques such as the box breath (inhale for 4, pause for 4, exhale for 4, pause for 4) or extending your exhale, simply add in humming when you breathe out. By doing this, you will increase the amount of nitric oxide in your body by an impressive 15-20 times. Nitric oxide has antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial properties. Known as the miracle molecule, nitric oxide aids your immune system by protecting your body against many airborne pathogens and stops you from getting ill.
Extract taken from Sound Healing: how to use sound to beat stress and anxiety by Farzana Ali (Watkins, £12.99), out now.
