My introduction to sound healing came through a friend of a friend. Monique Mead is a violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, an accomplished musician who has a passion for using music to induce the positive feelings of relaxation. She’s a neighbor of my friend Pam, who during the pandemic, had joined with Monique and other musicians and neighbors to hold outdoor porch concerts in their neighborhood during the summers when everyone was house bound. Once it became possible to gather indoors, Monique established and outfitted a place to hold sound healing sessions. As I had been researching and writing about how music and singing help us process loss and feelings of grief, I couldn’t wait to try out this simple edgy method of what might be labeled self-healing.
Monique’s sound healing studio is designed to delight all of our senses. The scent of aromatherapy greets us as we step off the elevator and the high ceiled light filled room outfitted with comfortable loungers invites us in to lie down and get comfortable for our one hour of deep relaxation.
Sound does not come to us just through our ears. As friends and I experienced last weekend at a group session, sound is physically felt through vibrations in the body. As the human body is 75% water, our bodies are great conductors of the vibrations created by musical instruments. Monique plays, in addition to her violin, Tibetan and crystal bowls, a gong, bells, and an ocean drum, and maybe some others I didn’t identify. Our bodies vibrate at the same frequency as the sounds produced by the musical instruments, so as Monique plays, physical and emotional tensions held in the body release. Scientists would say that the sound frequencies slow down brainwaves to a restorative state, which activates the body’s self-healing system.
My personal experience of this was that during the first sound bath session, my awareness of an area of my upper jaw where I knew I had chronically held tension in years past was heightened. The sensation was not at the level of pain, but definitely uncomfortable. As the session progressed, the sensation diminished, and by the end, it was completely gone.
With this encouragement, a few weeks later I went back for another session where this time, the sensation of tension returned in the same place, but it was much less prominent, and it dissipated more quickly. During my third session Friday evening, where I brought several friends with me, the sensation and tension did not occur at all. But something else quite remarkable did. By the middle of the third session, in the place where those tense sensations had been I began feeling a sensation of openness, like the cells had room to breathe. I thought, “Is this how my upper jaw is supposed to be? Is this the normal vibratory frequency of these cells when I’m not unconsciously clamping down on them?”
Text messages from the friends that accompanied me to the session streamed in the following morning. “Slept great!!” (From someone who can’t make that statement often.) Another– “Two months ago: Diagnosis bursitis, right shoulder. Last night & today: 90 percent improvement in pain reduction and range of motion. Sound Healing! Hallelujah!” A third– “Thank you for organizing us!”
In the interest of full disclosure, my friends and I spent time together after the session, and our individual outcomes may have been influenced by a phenomenon known to bio musicologists as entrainment-the synchronization of organisms to an external rhythm. To psychologists, entrainment is defined as the adjustment or moderation of one’s behavior to synchronize or be in rhythm with another’s behavior. “Group Sound Healings! Hallelujah!”
Visit Monique’s website to learn more
https://moniquemead.com/wellness/sound-healing
