Shhhhh…..just listen

Sound has a healing power that can comfort or inspire action but is often overlooked as a natural cure to weary minds and bodies. The body responds to sound in a distinct and unique way which can directly affect your bodies’ natural healing process.

Sound activates your heartbeat, breath and brain waves to begin to slow down or speed up in response to what you’re hearing. Your body syncs up with the sounds rhythms and the results can enhance your relaxation response—stress lifts, your heartbeat slows, muscles relax and your body releases feel-good endorphins—or improve energy levels and increase heart rate.

Sound is most often used as a curing element to ease stress, relieve insomnia or increase energy and productivity. Sonic tools like a tuning fork and singing bowl help create a calming sound and atmosphere when trying to ease stress. The fork is gently run over the singling bowls rim and a melodic tune is produced that both soothes the ear and mind. Natural rhythmic sounds such as a gentle breeze or soft waves are the most successfully leveraged sounds to relieve insomnia while upbeat sounds such as a drum beat increase our heart-rate and desire to boost our activity level.

In my opinion, the most overlooked and underused natural curing sound is silence. In our fever to finish tasks and the hurry pace to get from point A to point B our lives are filled with hundreds of unnecessary sounds every day; otherwise known as noise pollution. Try and start each day by retuning your ear, mind and body with 5 minutes of silence. Just 5 minutes each morning to allow you ear to awaken slowly will have lasting affects on your stress level throughout the day. If you fill your ears with nothing but noise you’ll never hear the harmonic trio of a balanced mind, body and spiritual.