GOOD VIBRATIONS: The Healing Power of Sound

by Wendy Kagan and illustrations by Annie Internicola, April 29, 2011

On a recent car ride, my two-year-old daughter made it clear to me that she wanted to be just about anywhere else than strapped into a metal box and hurtling down US Rt. 28 at 45 miles an hour. Amid her cries, I slid Elizabeth Mitchell’s Sunny Day CD into the dashboard player. If my toddler were a computer, this was her reboot. Mitchell’s molasses-sweet voice filled the car, instantly quelling my daughter’s protests. Helped along by feather-light guitar pickings and soft drumbeats, we sailed peacefully down the highway.

Ever since people have had the ability to record sound, we’ve bottled up soothing rhythms to uncork at just the right moments—piano sonatas, rain showers, bird songs, a heartbeat, ocean waves lapping the shore. We hardly need science to prove what we already know: Certain sounds wash over us like a balm, relaxing and restoring and sometimes transporting us to another dimension entirely, beyond daily pressures and proliferating to-do lists.

Yet many musicians, healers, doctors, and scientists are taking a closer look at the way sound works to shift our awareness and even change our biodynamics to bring about healing. The arts of sound healing and music therapy, alongside participatory practices like kirtan chanting, have gained a toehold in the Hudson Valley, and not just among bearded yogis and self-proclaimed energy workers.

Dr. John Beaulieu—a board-certified naturopathic physician and licensed counselor based in Stone Ridge—has written about the therapeutic applications of sound in his own books and for the peer-reviewed Medical Science Monitor. Like a mad scientist in the music studio, Beaulieu—who is also a classically trained pianist—has conducted various experiments in search of a holy grail: the most calming sounds on Earth. Some of these are nearly universal, while others are more subjective. “I have used Guns ‘n Roses and had it be healing,” says Beaulieu. “It just depends on how it’s received.”