Status Updates From What is Sound Healing?

Can sound help me listen betfer to my own self and to learn more about how I think and feel?
In my opinion the best way to work therapeutically with sound is to use it as a consciousness-altering reflective fool.
The more you work with sound in this way, the more you have the ability to listen to your inner goings on.

Western practitioners use the sound
'AAAHHH' for the same effects. It doesn't really matter what sound you make, then, it's the sustained tone that's sending your body into a deeply relaxed state. After a few minutes, the effect of holding this long, sustained tone may be to expand your sense of space and time, lulling you into an altered state of consciousness (ASC)

Arguably the most well-known mantra is the 'seed syllable' Om (see box, page 78). According to Vedic tradition, Om is the sound of creation - it is the sound that the rishis heard during deep meditation, the sound of God, from which everything sprang. When we chant the Om mantra, we tap into this primal, all-giving, life-affirming energy.

I remember one student telling me that she was treating a woman who was terminally ill with cancer. In her case cure didn't ever happen, but healing did. At the end of the therapeutic sound treatment, the woman said that she felt so relaxed, pain-free and at peace she could quite happily die. She wasn't cured but she was healed of her suffering, so much so that she was ready to let go of her life.

her focus was to rid her knees of arthritis. She told me that she was in so much pain, she wanted it gone in just four sessions. I explained to her that it may be more helpful to think about the next four sessions as being part of a therapeutic process and to see to what degree her symptoms changed during that time, then review.

Healing comes in many forms; fixing on a single oufcome may hamper the healing process and even prevent its full success. A fixed goal might mean you stop looking for further healing once you reach that goal, when perhaps there was more to come. Therapeutic sound practice is a holistic process and healing may not present itself in the form that we originally hope for, or indeed expect (see box, opposite).