Do singing bowls heal? « Himalayan Bowls

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Do singing bowls heal?

Posted in Singing Bowl Facts & Myths, Sound Healing by Himalayan Bowls on March 16th, 2011

Singing bowls are a wonderful support for the healing process. Remarkable things happen when people play singing bowls or listen to the sound of singing bowl recordings. The effects of the sound are so special that the experience can be life changing.

Singing bowls produce a uniquely warm vibration that feels great. They produce a clear fundamental tone that sounds as pleasant as any musical instrument. They also produce multiple harmonic overtones that sound angelic. The combination of the smooth vibration, warm fundamental tone and singing overtones makes listening to singing bowls a very unique experience.

However, the real magic is in you. The bowl produces a nice vibration but what happens next? We do the real work. We are self healing and self regulating systems. Our system uses the vibration in various ways.

We consciously listen and experience the sound. It is enjoyable and our own enjoyment, comfort and good feeling is an important part of the healing process.

We feel the vibration and it has a relaxing effect. Like sinking into warm water, the gentle sound of a nice singing bowl has a relaxing and comforting effect.

The harmonic overtones interact with our nervous system. This is a controversial and little understood part of the experience. But one can deduce from the pleasing effect of the sound, the tendency for people to become relaxed and even go to sleep, and the deepening of meditation practice that the singing bowls have some effect on our brains.

While the so called “Mozart effect” has largely been dismissed, there does seem to be some effect of sound on our brains. Tomatis and others have worked in this field for many years. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence about alpha and theta waves, but nothing conclusive. Hopefully in the future someone will research and better understand the hidden power of sound.

Singing bowls are tools and perform a function in this regard. They do one thing extremely well, perhaps better than any other object. Singing bowls vibrate and produce a spectrum of sounds that are universally loved due to the pleasant quality of the tone, calming effect on people and the environment.

But the responses are not limited to that. Singing bowl sounds elicit surprising responses including wonder, joy, creativity, personal breakthroughs, deep relaxation and support profound healing experiences.

Singing bowls facilitate our own process of growth and healing. However, singing bowls themselves have no ability to help anyone. In fact, they need us to perform their function at all. We make them sing. How we play them is part of our own awakening and self knowledge. Any experience we have with the sound is really from our own mind. The effects and even the sounds themselves are in fact created within us. The bowls just vibrate. We do the rest.

It is our own profound ability to listen – to perceive, feel, grow, create and heal that brings about the profound effects.

The magic is in you – singing bowls do not heal. They vibrate and the vibration is translated into sound in our minds. Sound does not heal. People feel the sound, hear it and vibrate in resonance with it. There is no sound, really, there is only vibration and even that is our perception. We perceive the vibration, experience it, interpret it as sound. If there is any lasting effect it is because we then utilize the experience as part of our spontaneous life processes.

We can leave the experience changed or refreshed or calmed by the vibration, but the vibration did not change us – we change ourselves. Healing is part of the spontaneous life process. It is happening all the time. We can use singing bowls and other wonderful tools to help us in this amazing process of life.

4 Comments

I can relate to your ideas presented here easily. I enjoyed presenting a series of concerts with two friends utilizing my large singing bowl, cello and manipulating sound from my alto flute head joint. The results were beautiful, eerie, other worldly, if you will. It led us to many beautiful and creative areas of experimentation, the sound enjoyed not only by the three of us, wondering where we would go next and end up, but also by our listeners. The bowls are surely unique and the sound goes right to one’s core. Love the feel.

Comment by Donna Wood — July 21, 2011 @ 5:44 am

Since we are resonating bodies, any sound (beautiful or ugly) does have an impact in our physical being (including our brain), also certain parts of our bodies resonate in harmony with certain notes of the diatonic scale. Ancient cultures knew how to cultivate those sounds that vibrate in harmony with us and avoid those who produce stress and illnesses…..just think how we react when we are exposed to a prolonged alarm sound of an ambulance.
Music Therapy is a field that uses sound as a way to trigger our own healing mechanisms in the body, and many studies have shown that certain types of sounds, or music (which is organized sound), elicit many states of mind, from anxiety to relaxation, from anger to joy.
So singing bowls do have a therapeutic effect on those who use them regularly and mindfully, with knowledge of what sounds affect the body in particular ways. As you say, the bowls just vibrate, we absorb and direct those vibrations to heal, or relax, or change our mood, we are in charge of how we put them to use.

Comment by Patricia Dixon — August 12, 2011 @ 7:02 pm

THANK YOU——for the sense——-your whole site has a lovely sound .com

Comment by roger edwards — September 1, 2011 @ 12:06 pm

I believe sound has a very profound effect but we need to put the conjecture and assumptions aside. In the 90′s, there was a lot of buzz about the so-called “Mozart effect” and the effect of sound on our brains. This theory has been largely dismissed. All those kids who were pumped full of Mozart didn’t turn out to be geniuses after all.

It’s easy to say sound has an impact on our brains and I think so, too, but that’s a very big assumption. No one has done real research to prove or disprove the effect of music or ambient sound on our brains. Sure – music can effect your mood or state of mind temporarily. That’s obvious to anyone who likes to sing or listen to music, but it’s a leap to say that this has a meaningful impact on our brain or nervous system. Simply listening or even unwanted exposure does not generally have a lasting impact on our brain or nervous system. Spend a minute with a two year old to see how meaningful and lasting changes in mood are.

If there is prolonged exposure to a particular type of sound then there can be a more lasting effect. This phenomenon seems to happen with chanting, prayer and even heavy metal music. However, this type of effect is also short lived and will begin to subside as soon as the music stops. This type of lasting effect happens through our own neurological processes, like our tendency to recreate our sensory experience and repeat music in our heads. It’s actually related to our learning systems.

We are complex dynamic beings and our nervous system have remarkable plasticity, or ability to change. Some people believe musical notes have a specific effect or that sound will always have a predictable impact but this notion is false. It is a disservice to our amazing complex nervous system. We are not passive machines that will change simply because we hear a sound. The truth is much more complex and interesting.

Sound does not heal. Healing is a spontaneous natural event. Pleasant sounds can certainly help the natural healing process, as can looking at trees outside the window, but it is not accurate to say that sound heals us. It is also false to say that sound triggers our own healing process. If that were the case, every patient in every hospital would be handed a pair of headphones upon admission and listening to music in an airplane should prevent motion sickness.

Music is simply another event in an endless sea of vibration. It’s more accurate to say that we like nice sounds and dislike unpleasant sounds. We prefer certain types of music and avoid others. If we listen to music we like, we feel good. If we were feeling bad to begin with, then we will feel a little better. This may or may not have an impact on health. This is the simple truth.

Sound is magic, profound and amazing – just like everything else in life. But it also fits within the realm of reality and is not immune to the laws of thermodynamics. Sound does not have a supernatural ability to heal. Sounds that we enjoy and find soothing can help us to do our internal work better.

Unfortunately, there have been very few studies related to sound and health, and much of the anecdotal evidence has largely been disproven or dismissed. The work of Tomatis and others is interesting but still little understood. Most researchers seem to think the field is “cute” and not worth real investigation.

Our nervous systems are always seeking to improve. We optimize to the best of our ability. Our brains use what we know to our advantage at every moment. Thinking in this way, sound and music becomes information that our brains can translate into knowledge.

The tendency of our nervous system is to seek homeostasis. However, in the case of our nervous systems the tendency towards self correction is interrelated with our tendency toward habit, so homeostasis in a human being includes both optimization and reinforcement of habits.

This constant effort of the brain to self-regulate and maintain our accustomed state contradicts the notion of sound healing. Sound cannot effect us so easily because our systems contradict any lasting effect, except in the case of injury.

Yes – the sound of a jackhammer is jarring for a few minutes, but when exposure to the sound ceases, we adjust and get over the insult. The same is true for sounds we like. We try to keep a song in our head as long as possible by humming and singing but as soon as our attention is taken in a new direction, any pleasant effect from the music vanishes.

The effect of light works in a similar manner. Our eyes adjust to the light and if you go from a bright room into a semi-dark room, it will seem very dark and it will be difficult to see. However, if you go from a very dark room into the same semi-dark room, it will seem brighter than the dark room and you will see everything fine. Neither case is better or has a lasting impact on our brains. It is simply another sense experience, interpreted by our brains to the best of our ability.

Just because you see a bright light doesn’t mean your brain will be effected, even if you see lots of halos and colors for a few minutes after. In extreme cases light can cause permanent retinal damage or cause disorientation or even sickness. However, this is not typical and the effects are generally temporary. The same is true of sound exposure.

Hearing is a sense – it is a means for us to interact with the environment. Our nervous system translates vibration into sound, filters important sounds and ignores what it can. Hearing is a way to interpret events in the environment. Sound has a temporary impact on our nervous system, unless the vibration is strong enough to cause damage to tissues, as in nerve deafness.

There is no knowledge of which sounds affect us in particular ways or even if particular sounds affect us in particular ways. So-called “chakra tones,” or specific musical notes for specific health related purposes, are conjectural and in my experience completely false. If you hold a singing bowl near your heart, you will feel it in your heart whether it’s an A, B, C, etc.

The western musical scale is a very limited way to measure the spectrum of frequencies. To think that all our experience is captured within those 12 tones is oversimplified to say the least. The spectrum of sound is vast. In the one octave from A 440hz to A 880hz there are 440 degrees. We can consciously discern notes from 1-3 hz apart. So, in that single octave a person could discern anywhere from 146 – 440 distinct tones – that is many more than just 12.

There has been profound work done with sound including destroying cancer cells with focused sound vibrations. Ultrasound, radar, sonic surgery – real scientific work has been done with sound for decades. The use of sound in medicine has amazing potential and I believe sound is the future of medicine.

The power of music, including singing bowls, is at the same time simpler and also more complex than people think. Sound does not have a magic ability to heal. The spectrum of sound is more complex than people realize and the benefits of sound are real, even if different than what people claim. Music and singing bowls do have a profound effect, but the work is done within us.

So, the next time you are enjoying your singing bowl sounds or favorite music, remember: you create the sound. That sound and the great feeling that accompany it was actually generated by you, not by the source of the vibration.

Comment by Himalayan Bowls — October 8, 2011 @ 9:54 pm