From a leading neuroscientist and practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine, rigorous scientific investigation of sound as energy frequency, showing readers how to use its powers for healing and wellness.
Why does a baby’s cry instantaneously flood a mother’s body with a myriad of stress hormones? How can a song on the radio stir up powerful emotions, from joy to anger, regret to desire? Why does sound itself evoke such primal and deeply felt feelings?
A vibration that travels through air, water and solids, sound is produced by all matter, and is a fundamental part of every species’ survival. But there is a hidden power within sound that has yet to be investigated by modern medicine. Sound Medicine takes readers on a journey through the structure of the mouth, ears, and brain to understand how sound is translated from acoustic vibrations into meaningful neurological impulses. Renowned neuroscientist and Aryuvedic expert Dr. Kulreet Chaudrahy explains how different types of sound impact the human body and brain uniquely, and explores the physiological effects of sound vibration, from altering mood to healing disease.
Blending ancient wisdom and modern science, Dr. Choudry traces the history of sound therapy and the use of specific mantras from ancient Aryuvedic texts, to explain the biology of sound as frequency and its therapeutic applications for common ailments. Sound Medicine offers practical, step-by-step lessons for using music and mantras, whether you’re a beginner or searching for a more advanced practice. Bringing together Vedic mythology and medical therapy, this marriage of the ancient mantras and modern neuroscience can help you heal—and keep you well in body, mind, and spirit.
Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary’s combined expertise in both modern neurology and the ancient science of health known as Ayurveda has uniquely positioned her as an expert able to pull from the broadest possible base to treat her clients. She is passionate about raising awareness for the need of a paradigm shift in contemporary medicine that focuses on patient empowerment and a health-based (rather than disease-based) medical system. Dr. Chaudhary is a regular guest on the Dr. Oz show, where her teachings about Ayurvedic medicine have been applauded by a national audience.
Dr. Chaudhary was the Director of Wellspring Health in Scripps Memorial Hospital for ten years, and remains a pioneer in the field of Integrative Medicine. Dr. Chaudhary has successfully developed a powerful system to manage chronic neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and migraine headaches, by incorporating fundamental changes in diet, behavior, and stress, in addition to the standard allopathic approach to these issues. This program has been so successful that many patients now use it not just for neurological issues but also for a wider range of health concerns, including weight issues and chronic disease.
Dr. Chaudhary now serves as the Chief Medical Officer for New Practices, Inc. where she is changing allopathic medical practices into healing centers using compassion-based health coaching, meditation, and integrative medicine to combat chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease, addictions, and more. She also oversees ongoing research in management and reversal of chronic disease through lifestyle intervention. Dr. Chaudhary is creating a new model for healthcare that is based on teaching patients the principles of health and personal transformation in an environment of compassion, empowering them to live in a way that promotes maximum healing and vitality.
Dr. Kulreet Chaudhary is also a neuroscientist. She has participated in over twenty clinical research studies in the areas of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, and diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Her research includes groundbreaking work in stem cell therapies for diabetic peripheral neuropathy and drug development for the treatment of ALS.
The Longfellow poem “There Was a Little Girl” has a line that says, “…When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid.” That’s kind of how I felt about this book. At its best, it reports findings about how practices involving sound (i.e. mantra chanting) effect health and well-being, and lends insight into why sound sooths. At its worst, it tries to sledgehammer the square peg religious / spiritual practices into the round hole of quantum physics and foundational physics, often engaging in leaps that are at best wildly speculative, while presenting them as though they are as likely as not.
My favorite professor from undergraduate studies was a folksy Religious Studies Professor who cautioned against two opposing fallacies. The first he called “the outhouse fallacy.” This is assuming that because people of the past didn’t have indoor plumbing that they were complete idiots. Let me first say that, until recently, yoga (and other complementary health practices) suffered its fair share from this fallacy among doctors and the scientific community who felt that it couldn’t possibly help with health and well-being because it wasn’t rooted in the latest scientific findings. However, there is an opposing fallacy that my teacher called the “firstest-is-bestest” fallacy, which assumes the ancients figured it all out and we are just bumbling around in the dark hoping to stumble back into what they once knew. Scientists are prone to the first fallacy and the second is rife among religious folk. As a medical doctor who turned to siddha yoga (a form that puts a great deal of belief in superpowers and magic), Chaudhary had a rough road to not fall into one of these fallacies and, in my opinion, she falls more into the second -- sounding at times like the ancient yogis knew more about the subatomic world and consciousness than science ever will. Most of the time, she words statements so that a careful reader can recognize what is well-supported and what is speculative, but she’s rarely explicit about the degree to which speculations are such, and I don’t remember an instance in which she presented an alternative that would undermine her argument. (i.e. The unstated argument seems to be that mantra is special among practices, that its usefulness is embedded in the fundamental physical laws of the universe, and, therefore, that it works by mechanisms unlike other meditative / complementary health practices [i.e. by engaging the parasympathetic nervous system so the body can make repairs using established biological mechanisms.])
In a nutshell, there is a “god in the gaps” approach to the book that says, look we don’t understand consciousness or all the “whys” of quantum mechanics, ergo there must be supernatural explanations. I don’t think that because we’ve used EEG since the 1920’s and fMRIs since the 1990’s and still haven’t yet unraveled the hard problem of consciousness that we need to say that god / supernatural forces are where we must look for explanation. The gap is ever closing, slowly but surely, and there’s no reason to believe it’s reasonable or useful to cram commentary from Vedas (or any other scriptures) to fill the gap.
It's not only the science where Chaudhary presents a belief as though it is established truth without alternative explanations. Early on, she states that colonization is the reason for the decline of meditation in India. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as accepting that colonization resulted in a great number of evils as anyone, but it’s a leap to say that – therefore – every negative a society faces is because of its colonizer. I would point to Thailand, a society that was never colonized (except a brief period by the Burmese) and which is primarily made up of Theravadan Buddhists (a system for which meditative practice is considered central,) most of whom also do not meditate regularly today. I suspect a more logical explanation for the fact that most Indians don’t meditate today is that: a.) it’s hard work and time consuming (as a productive endeavor it’s not bread-winning and as a leisure time activity it’s laborious,) and b.) the majority of Indians (like the majority of Thais) probably never mediated. (When we look back in time, we often want to create this wholesome and uniform image that what we have writings about was how everyone lived, and that probably never reflects the truth.)
So now that my rant is over, I should say that I didn’t think this book was horrible, by any means. It has a lot of good information, and some of the speculative bits offer interesting food for thought. As long as one reads it carefully and with a healthy dose of skepticism, it’s a beneficial consideration of sound and vibration in health and well-being. It’s just that when I compare it to, say, Davidson and Goleman’s “The Science of Meditation” (which I reviewed recently) this book is far less careful about presenting the science, eliminating pseudo-science, and letting the reader know what is controversial and speculative versus what is well-supported by sound and rigorous investigation.
The book would work nicely as a purely religious commentary or - to certain degree - as a purely scientific treatise, although a strong tendency of cherrypicking is to be witnessed here and there (for example concerning Transcendental Meditation's benefits "that numerous studies have proven"). But the author's pursuit to try and connect these two - namely Vedic lore and scientific study - using as bold as feebly cart bridges is often highly questionable. "Scientific study has shown support to theory x which could be interpreted to have mentions in Vedas too, therefore Vedas must be true and ancient rishis knew all the science all along" style of reasoning just isn't very plausible.There are also certain factual errors that set the author's credibility to a questionable light in reader's eye... Firstly some carefree Einstein quotes that are either pseudo or removed from their context. Secondly the comments concerning "Akashic records" which is purely Theosophian concept and not traditional Vedic term even while "Akasa" is a real thing in, for example, Patanjali's yoga philosophy. Thirdly the Freudian term "subconscious" should be replaced by "unconscious" while referring to Jung but luckily this is fixed in the latter part of the book. Overally, I would have expected much more rigorous attitude from an actual doctor of medicine. Uniting science and spirituality is a venerable pursuit but it surely does disservice to both if done lightly.
As a yoga teacher and someone who has studied a field of medicine that encompasses both Western and Eastern approaches, I found this book really interesting. I still have many questions and wonder about the limitations, but I enjoyed the exploration of quantum physics and electromagnetism to explain the effects of sound on our bodies. This feels like a calling for me to give transcendental meditation a try.
This is more of a primer on Mantra Meditation with a lot of anecdotal evidence rather than a scientific book about how sound effects humans biologically. Still a good read.
Maybe this is one of the most important books I have ever read. Using the mantra, I found strange and interesting things occurring. I catapulted forward in my meditation practice and that took me by surprise. I already have a mantra from my teacher, which I use for my twice daily TM practice, and the author does not advise using any of the mantras in the book if that is the case. However she waited till the last pages to say such a thing and now I’ve already started chanting the chakra mantra too. It is very strong. I do it for 10 mins before bed and my sleep is better. I will need to reflect on the mantra practice as the author herself was given a single mantra as a child but moved on to the chakra mantra so perhaps it is actually ok for me to do that…. Eeesh! Either way the chakra mantra is pretty magical.
First of all, bravo to the narrator for pronouncing things like mudra and chakra correctly throughout the whole book.
I was hoping this audiobook would be about singing bowls, tuning forks, and other forms of sound healing, with some creative usage of the audiobook format. Instead, it was mostly about mudras and transcendental meditation. There are some good explanations of physics and science in some of the chapters as well as a decent review of the Koshas, which usually get skipped over in books like this.
The main downside in my opinion, besides the misleading title, is how the author treats the book as a way of explaining her personal journey towards becoming a siddha, which is half authentic vulnerability and half pretentious bragging.
Really empowering book that highlights the intricacies of our bodies and minds. However, early on the author cited a fake Einstein quote that has since been debunked on Snopes. Einstein never published the quote, “We are slowed down light and sound waves...” It doesn’t even mimic his normal speech patterns. It sounds like a fabrication of his thoughts mixed with Nietzsche.
This misinformation made me skeptical of the research which lead me to stumble across the book Transcendental Deception by Aryeh Siegel. Reading that next to gather perspectives from both sides. However Kulreet helped me to remember the importance of mindfulness and I plan to start meditating in my own way. I do believe that we are special and that everything is connected but this is rather prescriptive and she mentions very specific ways to meditate which is a bit too religious for me.
I sat with this book for months, respected my will to read it whenever it called to me, didn't rush it one bit. I wouldn't say I am a facts/"sciency" person, but I ate every little bit of the book as if it was sweetest of treats. What a inspiration to read the story of Dr. Kulreet and how she defied and used everything around her in her favor.
I had never tried mantra meditation before this book, but I felt it everywhere in me that it was for me. How could it not be? It's been two weeks now, since I started my very humble attempt to meditate to the chakra mantra, and it's insane the changes I noticed right away, I can't even imagine in some months. I had never meditated for 20 minutes so easily in my life.
I will forever remember this book and how much it consolidated my belief in sound as medicine.
Meh. In all fairness, I literally bumped into this book and wondered if it was what I was looking for. It was, and it wasn't. I think it's an excellent introduction for many people, and Dr. Chaudhary's story is very compelling. However, many of the scientific connections she pulls forward are on a bit of shaky ground. To be honest, I don't think she needed to put forward such a scientific charade. Either you believe it or not, and yes, science is demonstrating there is way more than meets the eye, but it felt she made the whole book about it. Anyway, some good introductory concepts and some good context to understand how sound music operates in India.
Some girls at my work wanted to do a book club and this was the first book we chose. It was much better than I was expecting. However, it took us 6 months to get through it. It's probably the slowest I've ever read a book. I really enjoyed breaking it down chapter by chapter. Getting insight from the girls I read it with made it better. I loved hearing what stood out to them verses what I noticed. This book proves with science and Western philosophy but also informs you of the eastern approach. I really enjoyed it. Sounds is literally everything. The vibration is there even when audible sound isn't present. Very cool.
Forced myself to finish this boorish book. Just a 250+ page book about the author patting herself on the back for being so super special fantastic. There are essentially ZERO practical examples of sound medicine and healing practices in the entire book other than her shamelessly pumping herself up by dropping that she went on the Megyn Kelly show talking about chakra meditations (which by the way is more meditation and Ayurveda than sound healing).
A complete waste of time and money. I would only recommend this to someone who wants to be dissuaded from sound medicine. Terrible author. Terrible writing. Could not more strongly recommend AGAINST reading this book
This book contains a lot of information and it would deserve multiple read through to be able to fully get the most benefit from it. It explain the journey of the author between western and eastern medicine and how her life was influenced by meditation. It has basically aims at creating a bridge between different source of knowledge and explain eastern medicine in a more scientific way while still keeping the "faith" part of it. It is a very interesting read. The last part gives more practical explanation how to apply the sound medicine to your own healing and life using mantra meditation.
This book starts out with a solid argument in favor of sound having a healing affect on the body. The author abandons this argument towards the last third of the book. She then takes mystic approach stating that healing/medicine most at some point go in this direction. She believes that uttering mantras can produce real life effects. As a Christian, I believe in spiritual/supernatural things but I can’t get on board with mantras having a magic/mystic effect. Even in Christianity there are not words that unlock healing/spiritual benefits. There is only the will and providence of God.
I wish the author had included more points of correlation between the human body and sound. For example, which frequencies benefit specific ailments, moods, or diseases, and how to use available sound resources in everyday life for someone living in the West. Instead of focusing extensively on chanting and mantras. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed that aspect of the book, just not what I was expecting.
This is an excellent study of the Vedic/Ayurvedic foundations of sound as medicine. Every sound healing practitioner should be familiar with this material. Chaudhary gives a thoughtful and personal overview of vibrational healing, as she bridges traditional practices with the science of sound healing today.
It was a bit more about eastern religion where I thought it would be about the connection of certain frequencies to healing properties. It touched on that, but got more into chakra's and other yoga and eastern chants. Interesting, but not what I was looking for when I selected the book.
I picked up this book already inclined to like it as I've had a mantra practice for several years now that is very meaningful to me. I thought it would be interesting to learn the "science" behind why it works. And it was, to a degree. I understand completely why Dr. Chaudhary would write this book for those of us in the Western world. We are not at all accustomed to accepting scientific phenomenon without a biological mechanism. But, it turns out for me, the proof is in the pudding....in how chanting mantra makes me feel. I really don't care how it works because I know it does. So, yes, read this if you feel the need to know "why". And then dive in to learn that it doesn't really matter.
I really enjoyed this book. Very fascinating. Definitely going to try more mantras and chanting in the future. Thankyou Dr Kulreet Chaudhary MD for the insight to this information. I truely goes to show how much we still need to learn about our human body’s.
interesting background to sound and affecting health
interesting background to sound and affecting health. Give many details of the meaning of sacred mantra's. Proposes updating allopathic practices to be more perceptive and inclusive.