Healing with Sound: The Science of Sound Therapy

By Case Adams

Utilizing sound for the purposes of healing is an ancient art that has been passed down for generations for thousands of years. Here Dr. Adams reveals this healing art together with modern scientific evidence showing how sound affects every element of our being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Logical Books
• Release date: Jan 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781936251384

Case Adams

“One summer decades ago, as a pre-med major working my way through college, I hurt my back digging ditches. I visited a doctor who prescribed me with an opioid medication. I didn’t take the drug but this brought about a change of heart regarding my career in medicine. I decided against prescribing drugs and sought an alternative path. During college and afterwards, I got involved in the food business, working at farms, kitchens, and eventually management in the organic food and herbal supplement businesses. I also continued my natural health studies, and eventually completed post-graduate degrees in Naturopathy, Integrative Health Sciences and Natural Health Sciences. I also received diplomas in Homeopathy, Aromatherapy, Bach Flower Remedies, Colon Hydrotherapy, Blood Chemistry, Obstetrics, Clinical Nutritional Counseling, and certificates in Pain Management and Contact Tracing/Case Management along the way. During my practicum/internships, I was fortunate to have been mentored and trained under leading holistic M.D.s, D.O.s, N.D.s, acupuncturists, physical therapists, herbalists and massage therapists, working with them and their patients. I also did grand rounds at a local hospital and assisted in pain treatments. I was board certified as an Alternative Medical Practitioner and practiced for several years at a local medical/rehabilitation clinic advising patients on natural therapies.“My journey into writing about alternative medicine began about 9:30 one evening after I finished with a patient at the clinic I practiced at over a decade ago. I had just spent two hours showing how improving diet, sleep and other lifestyle choices, and using selected herbal medicines with other natural strategies can help our bodies heal themselves. As I drove home that night, I realized the need to get this knowledge out to more people. So I began writing about natural health with a mission to reach those who desperately need this information and are not getting it in mainstream media. The health strategies in my books and articles are backed by scientific evidence combined with traditional wisdom handed down through natural medicines for thousands of years.I am hoping to accomplish my mission as a young boy to help people. I am continuously learning and renewing my knowledge. I know my writing can sometimes be a bit scientific, but I am working to improve this. But I hope this approach also provides the clearest form of evidence that natural healing strategies are not unsubstantiated anecdotal claims. Natural health strategies, when done right, can be safer and more effective than many conventional treatments, with centuries of proven safety. This is why most pharmaceuticals are based on compounds from plants or other natural elements. I hope you will help support my mission and read some of my writings. They were written with love yet grounded upon science. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.”Contact: case(at)caseadams.com

Book preview

Healing with Sound

By Case Adams, Ph.D.

Healing with Sound

Copyright ©2024 Case Adams

LOGICAL BOOKS

logicalbooks.org

All rights reserved.

Printed in USA

The information provided in this book is for educational and scientific research purposes only. The information is not medical advice and is not a substitute for medical care. Information provided is not to be construed as health or lifestyle advice. A medical practitioner or other expert should be consulted prior to any significant change in diet, exercise or any other lifestyle change. There shall be neither liability nor responsibility should the information provided in this book be used in any manner other than for the purposes of education and scientific research.

Publishers Cataloging in Publication Data

Adams, Case

Healing with Sound

First Edition

1. Science. 2. Health

Bibliography and References; Index

ISBN ebook 978-1-936251-38-4

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Anatomy of Sound

2. The Resonance Principle

3. Sound Therapies

4. Supersound

5. Conscious Sound

6. Deep Sound

7. Healing with Sound

References and Bibliography

Other Books by the Author

Introduction

We might stop for a moment and listen to all the sounds surrounding us. If we are fortunate, we will be hearing birds, crickets, and maybe some wind or even sounds of the ocean. If we are in a house, we may hear the ticking of a clock and the hum of the refrigerator.

We may also hear other sounds of our mechanical society. We may hear cars, trucks, and other machinery such as lawn mowers or chain saws. All of these sounds taken together form a layer surrounding us. This layer may be invisible, but it is nonetheless a thick layer of pressurized rhythm.

This layer is composed of more than just the sounds we hear: The sound layer is an evolving web, containing an accumulation of sounds from the past and present.

The rhythmic layer of sound envelopes us just as thoroughly as flesh and blood surrounds us. Sound is not simply something we hear. It is a realm of waveforms with particular frequencies and amplitudes swirling with harmonic resonance.

1. The Anatomy of Sound

As we survey sound outside of the environmental sounds of nature, we find sounds arising from consciousness. Thus sound transmits intention. If we include the assumption of a living planet, the sounds of wind, rain and the crack of an earthquake are also sounds of consciousness.

Each species has slightly different sound reception mechanisms. The body of each species is designed to pick up a slightly different waveform range from the sound layer. The human ear is tuned to frequencies ranging from twenty to 20,000 hertz or cycles per second, and is especially sensitive to the range between 1000 and 4000 cycles per second:

The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch of the sound. The lower-pitched, softer sounds are the lower-frequencies. The high-pitched frequency of a dog whistle will not be picked up by human ears, for example.

The dog’s ears receive and recognize sounds in lower frequencies and higher frequencies than humans. Dogs’ ears are also supported by muscle receptors that allow the dog to tilt and rotate towards the source of the sound to isolate the sound’s location.

Meanwhile, various marine mammals can hear frequencies in sonar or echolocation waves, which conduct through the water in much slower frequencies and longer wavelengths—around two to five cycles per second. Dolphins, for example, are believed to receive sound through their lower jaws.

This form of tympanic membrane then transmits the vibrations through to the middle ear, which converts the pulses to neural signals.

Cycles of sound

Thirty cycles per second will barely produce musical sounds. The base organ notes will vibrate at fifty hertz, while a base human voice will beat at 100 to 200 cycles per second. Higher notes from the human voice can go as high as about 8,000 hertz, which is almost at the peak of what the human ear can pick up.

In the human body, sound waves are mechanically transduced through a series of stages before conversion into neuronal electromagnetic pulses. Once brought into the ear canal, the tympanic membrane (eardrum) begins oscillating at the same beat as the sound vibration. This oscillates the ear bones of the malleus, incus and stapes, and the resulting pulses are transferred to the liquid portion of the inner ear.

The liquid labyrinth of the inner ear conducts the pulses into the motion of tiny cochlear hairs. These hairs conduct their movement to the auditory and vestibulocochlear nerve as electromagnetic signals. They then pulse through the ion channels of the vestibular nerve through a relay system of the cochlear nucleus and interior colliculus to the thalamus.

The thalamus acts as a conversion and relay station for the waveforms, sorting and broadcasting the pulsed information through to the auditory cortex.

At the auditory cortex, the pulses are integrated throughout the neural network as nerve gateway impulses. As these information waves enter the limbic system, they are ‘switched up’ to high-velocity gamma waves, where they are reflected through the neural web and onto the mind’s screen.

An electrophysiological encoding takes place as sound waves are converted to mental perception. This process has been called cortical auditory evoked potentials. Researchers using EEG spectra modeling believe it takes place within specialized neuron populations within the corticothalamic pathways.

A deaf person can also interpret sound vibration physically. A deaf person may indeed feel the shaking of the floor as their parents walk into the room. These vibrations can be translated into information just as the spoken word might be translated by a hearing person.

With training, a deaf person can tell what kind of emotion another has by touching or simply sensing the seismic vibrations of their walking. Once these vibrations intersect with the rhythmic body, they can be converted to cortical perception just as sound waves or visual waves might.

Waves in the head

Prior to its entry into the ear canal, sound is a longitudinal wave. These waveforms simply undulate through air molecules without actually moving this medium. We might compare this to the movement of tension through a spring. The spring does not go anywhere, but the tension travels through the spring as it undulates.

This is often referred to as a transfer of motion through particulate matter without the actual particles moving. While symbolically correct, this would not be consistent with the waveform view of reality. While we might picture molecules floating around the air like tiny balloons, each of these molecules are combinations of waveforms themselves, as we have covered earlier. Each molecule is a stable combination of resonating waveforms, balanced by so many waveforms interacting through the environment.

This means that longitudinal sound waves move through this matrix of resonating waveforms by interaction. The specific method of interaction takes place with resonance and interference. As the wave pulse connects with an air molecular combination of waveforms, it is transduced through the molecule and its localized electromagnetic environment.

The pulse is then handed off so to speak to neighboring molecules and their localized environment (which we might call a micro-environment). This pass-through effect creates a channel through which the existing waveform structure pulses, allowing a particular waveform to be conducted from one molecule to another.

This conductance can be measured through pressure gradients, because the waveform interference modulates the density of waveforms within each microenvironment. (This microenvironment is somewhat symbolic because the localized environment around each molecule is continuous in a homogenous atmosphere.

Still this local environment is important. For example, an air molecule bubbling within a liquid environment will not conduct sound in the same way that an air molecule might within the atmosphere of air. Its electromagnetic surroundings are completely different.) This modulation of air pressure through resonating wave interaction is enough to physically vibrate the eardrum.

We can see a similar effect as we watch a boat moving through the water. The boat’s movement creates waves, which interact and ripple through the existing ripples on the water.

Interference waves

The new ripples interfere with the existing ripples, and a new waveform is created from this interference pattern. If the existing ripples are small as on a lake, the boat’s movement might create a bow wave. If the existing ripples are rather large—like large ocean swells—then the boat will be surrounded by larger waves and the boat’s waves will create a different resulting waveform pattern—noticeably different from the bow wave created on the lake.

The wave signature of the boat’s movement is specific in each case, but the resulting effect on the water’s surface will be different in each circumstance. At the end of the day, the specific waveform created by the boat will not only be specific to the type of boat and its speed, but to the existing waveforms in the water.

Even shortly after the boat is gone, we will still be able to probably identify the size and speed of the boat by looking at the waves it created—as they will have changed the existing water surface. If the boat was a large supertanker, we would see very long, slow waves with large amplitudes. If the boat was a ski boat, the resulting waves would be shorter, faster and smaller.

This illustrates the movement of sound in many respects. Just as the boat is identified by its effect upon the existing water surface and existing waves, the information within sound is determined through its effect upon the air surface molecules and waveforms already existing within the air. The motion existing within the air environment will often determine the intensity of the sound.

On a very windy day, our voice may be severely dampened, when compared to a still day, for example. If there are a lot of other sound waves in the air—say a train passes by—our voices will also be muted and even possibly transfigured a bit. We may have to shout loudly to communicate in these conditions.

Just as the wave motion within the water affects the resulting waveforms created by the boat, sound is carried through interference with the waves moving through air rather than through particles of air. Again, because molecules are gathered envelopes of waveforms, interfering waveforms can be conducted through them.

Sound may be further interfered with a solid or fluid surface. The slower-moving waveforms of the solid and the fluid will subtly be affected by the sound as well. Sound cannot be conducted through solid mediums very