One important factor that contributes to a massage client's overall experience is the music chosen to create an aural ambience during the session.
Science has indicated that sound, or vibration, has a strong impact upon substance. However, more importantly, sound changes consciousness. Many ancient civilizations and modern indigenous cultures have used sound to heal and access higher levels of consciousness for thousands of years.
Sound affects us on four different levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
Physical effects
When it comes to physical healing with sound, the science is specific and proven. We can see this quite dramatically in both the work of Masaru Emoto, Ph.D. (www.masaru-emoto.net), and that of cymatics, the study of visible sound. In cymatics, we can also see how sound affects matter.
Everything in the universe has its own particular vibrational frequency. Physics tells us that if you play a sound into a cell at the cell's resonant frequency, it receives energy. For our purposes, we prefer to resonate physical parts of the body back into harmony, into their own natural, healthy vibration.
Sound is also especially effective in overcoming pain. Pain receptors in the body can only handle so much information, so when sound is applied, they essentially get filled up with sound and you no longer feel the pain. This is commonly done with tuning forks, but is most effective when using voice.
There are two powerful modalities that are often used during massage. One is to actually tone (ah, om, or any vowel sound) right on the body (normally about 6 inches above the body). You can also tone with the intention of healing while performing the massage.
The other mode is to use a sound table, which is a massage table with built-in speakers. The speakers transmit powerful and healing low frequencies into the body-essentially giving the person a whole-body massage.
Emotional benefits
Sound is incredibly powerful for releasing stuck emotions, deep emotional issues and subconscious negative beliefs. First, you can make the sound of the emotion with the intention of releasing the issue. You can also make the sound of the emotion and slowly transform it into a beautiful or loving sound.
Instead of focusing on the issue, you can also make the sound of any of the higher emotions, such as gratitude, compassion, love or joy. When in these high states, the stuck emotion often releases on its own.
All of these techniques can be done actively with clients, or you can simply do these sounds for them. Since most physical issues are emotionally based, the combination of massage with sound therapy can be quite effective.
Spiritual healing
People think of spiritual healing as simply removing emotional issues, negative beliefs and subconscious patterns that keep us out of balance. However, once we are in harmony, we can resonate to higher states of consciousness and higher vibrations with the use of sound. Higher vibrations you can easily access with sound include gratitude, compassion, love and joy.
You can access and resonate the sound of the higher emotions by simply tuning into their energy, then listening for a sound (or song) that resonates that particular energy. When you resonate energies of gratitude, compassion, love or joy with sound, it makes the emotion even stronger.
You can make the sounds of these energies by playing instruments like crystal bowls, Tibetan bowls, Tingshas or tuning forks with the intention of bringing in these energies. Also, if you have music that entrains you into any of these states, simply set your intention to bring the energy in the music through you into your client.
Brainwave entrainment
The science surrounding mental entrainment with sound has been well researched and proven. When you hook up an EEG unit to the brain, you can actually see the brainwaves entraining to the sound.
Delta frequencies (0.5 to 4 cycles per second) can be used to induce sleep. Theta frequencies (4 to 7 cycles per second) help people with creativity, to access the subconscious, while alpha frequencies (7 to 12 cycles per second) help with attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), memory and the inability to concentrate or focus.
The most intriguing aspect of brainwave entrainment is to create a brainwave map of people who are in high states of meditation, consciousness or pure bliss. Then have other people listen to these brainwave maps in order to entrain their brain into these same states.
Using music that has these frequencies embedded in them can take a massage session to a new level-not only for the client, but also the practitioner.
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