Now that the windows are open, I guess I need to explain to my neighbors—thankfully they are not close but might be out walking—that the unusual sounds emanating from my house are not a reason to call 911 or mental health professionals. No, they are the sounds of healing—chanting and toning long guttural ooos, deep, prolonged ahhs, higher pitched eees and the ethereal (or eerie) tones of quartz crystal and Tibetan singing bowls.

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to come to the realization of sound as a major piece of the whole picture of energy in healing and spirituality. It has been 40 years since my first introduction to the relationship between life force energy and health.

In 1967 an iconoclastic professor of psychology introduced us to the work of Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian psychiatrist and innovative scientist who settled in Rangeley, Maine in the early 1940s. He had discovered an energy, not acknowledged by conventional science that animates all living beings, which he called the “orgone.” In human bodies, the healthy movement of this orgone, the life force energy, is often blocked, Reich determined, in the areas of the eyes, throat, solar plexus and pelvis resulting in disease processes. The recognition of some of those blocks within myself and the realization of the possibility of restoring health by freeing the blocked energy initiated 40 years of exploration of many aspects of energy and spiritual healing.

Then, just last year at the age of 74, I experienced sound as a powerful healing modality that I had overlooked. Music and the sounds of Nature have always been important to my sense of well being but sound healing has opened another dimension.

After Anne Stuer welcomed me into her Bethel office for my first sound healing experience, she explained that she uses a variety of sound tools to help bring a client back into balance. Against background sounds of relaxing music and a burbling fountain, I lay fully clothed on her massage table and took several deep relaxing breaths while Anne worked out the individualized treatment strategy from the information I had given her. “Each individual has different, specific energetic needs,” she explained, and I learned that they could vary with each visit.

Each of my treatments has been a bit different, but I’m always enveloped in sound, perhaps from drums, singing bowls and a variety of rattles. Also Anne always uses tuning forks on the acupressure points and chakras that need help in freeing the energy. It has been as effective as acupuncture for me and is extremely pleasant.

With a background in science—she has a BS in biochemistry—and an abiding interest in spirituality, Anne said she was looking for “something more” when she took a weeklong workshop at Omega five years ago. Doug Von Koss led the program entitled “Outrageous Joy” in a whole week of singing, toning and chanting in a variety of languages from many cultures. “It was amazing, a most incredible week. It’s the first time I’d felt that kind of energy, of being high the whole time—outrageous joy.”

That experience, plus her first sound healing treatment, inspired Anne to expand her existing practice in Reiki and foot massage to include sound healing. She found Mitchell Gaynor, MD’s book, The Healing Power of Sound, at Omega and that was an important inspiration for her interest in using sound as a healing modality. In addition to several books about healing with sound, other books that Anne has found to be useful in her study and practice of sound healing are: Finding Effective Acupressure Points by Stephen Brown, Acupressure’s Potent Points by Michael Reed Gach, Acupressure for Emotional Healing by Michael Reed Gach, PhD

Gaynor, also an inspiration to me, says in his book, “I believe that sound, the most under-utilized and least appreciated mind-body tool, should become a part of every healer’s medical bag…." Gaynor acknowledges the influence of Sufis, a mystical Islamic sect who have a long history of being deeply immersed in understanding the effects of sound and music on body and mind. To Sufis, who “perceive the cosmos as a vast vibrating medium, sound is nothing less than food for the soul.”

Gaynor believes illness is a form of disharmony at a physiologic, molecular or genetic level and that the goal of healing is to reestablish harmony. The new medical worldview, he says, accepts that every biological action is accompanied by cellular activity governed by genes, proteins and cell surface receptors. In other

words, every bodily action occurs simultaneously with thoughts, feelings, hormonal changes, immune system modifications, the release of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides and countless other transformations, all remarkably coordinated. This perspective goes by many names, he says, but neuroimmunology seems to best describe the continuous interaction of all systems.

Sound waves, he says are “yet another form of energy that can conceivably influence neuropeptides and their cellular receptors. And if we recognize that our own biological healing systems are influenced by energy fields, we can begin to understand why sound and vibration are important tools for healing.”

In Yoga philosophy, prana is the name given the universal life force energy that flows through and nourishes every cell in our bodies. It was an exciting aha moment for me when I noted the similarity between prana and chi and Reich’s orgone.

The 3000-year-old discipline of Yoga, whose goal is to create a sense of harmony, gives particular importance to the breath as the outward manifestation of prana, creating a bridge between mind and body.

Gaynor quotes Laurel Elizabeth Keyes, founder of a lay religious order in 1963 dedicated to healing through prayer and toning: “Anyone can use toning, just as we use electricity. There are natural channels in the energy of our body, and if we recognize and learn to flow with them, they will keep us healthy.”

Gaynor incorporates the use of quartz crystal bowls into his medical practice because his experience and that of his patients has led him to believe that the overtones they produce have unusual resonant and healing properties. The bowls resonate with the human voice and the sounds permeate the human system. This resonance tends to transform inner chaos and dissonance into harmony.

Another proponent of sound healing, Don Campbell, says in his book, The Roar of Silence, and in the CD, Healing Yourself with Your Own Voice, that the toning and chanting of vowel sounds is a “way to massage, oxygenate and vibrate ourselves internally, from the inside out.” He emphasizes that the making of sound is not to be done for anyone’s approval but for its vibratory effect on body, mind and spirit.

Campbell leads listeners in making their own sounds and this led me into the next phase of my experience of sound healing: integrating the use of my own voice with a quartz crystal and a Tibetan singing bowl on a daily basis has greatly increased the impact of sound healing. It’s still very rewarding to experience Anne’s treatments once a month, but I feel as though making the sounds myself has given me an added dimension of control over my own well being.

Born on a small farm in Maine in 1932, Joyce has always found deep satisfaction in deciphering bits of the mystery of the natural world. The search to understand how it all works still informs all aspects of her life.