Francois Tremblay

Someone has pointed me to a web site about "Healing Sounds", expressing curiosity about their claims. The web site basically proposes that sound can have a direct physiological effect on the human body.

The URL is
<a href="http://www.healingsounds.com/" target="_blank">http://www.healingsounds.com/</a>

Here are a couple of juicy extracts from their articles :

"Sound Healing, as the name implies, is the use of sound to create balance and alignment in: the physical body, the energy centers called "chakras", and/or the etheric fields."

Come again ?

"If you have a room full of pendulum-type grandfather clocks and start the pendulums in motion at different times, they will all swing differently. However, if you walk out of this room and come back the next day, you will find that all the pendulums are swinging together at the same rate."

"A concept of disease, observed by the ancients, and now speculated by certain scientists such as Itzhak Bentov in his book Stalking The Wild Pendulum is that illness is an out of tune behavior of the body. When something becomes diseased, it frequency changes and it begins to vibrate differently than it once did. Through sound, it may be possible to apply harmonizing vibrations which will cause the body to become in tune again."


Gee whiz ! It's the greatest medical discovery of the 16th century ! (mistake intended...) They also propagate many fallacies, such as the idea that everything has a resonant frequencies, or that the Bible is somehow evidence that sound is a creative force... It's quite pathetic, really.

Have any serious studies been done on the effect of sounds on the human body ? I know some have been made on particular aromas, with some positive results, but I never heard of measuring the medical effect of sounds.

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

liquid

I know that the US army was interested in using sasers (like lasers, but focussing sound instead of light) at the harmonic frequencies of the internal organs, in order to produce non-lethal nausea for crowd control.

The report I read was in Janes IDR, and it stated that it was more difficult than expected and it had been all but abandoned, in favour of glue-guns, nets, water cannon and the like.

But those claims are ridiculous. Any high-school physicist will tell you the clock claim is stupid, and illness is largely due to microbes, not oscillations! High-school biology.

DarkBronzePlant

I'd done research on the emotional effects of music (I think it's undeniable that those exist) as well as animals' response to different pieces and genres of music (believe it or not, animals can learn to recognize genres of music) but that's about as far as I went.

I wouldn't be completely blown away if it was conclusively proven that sound and/or music can have a physical effect on the human body. Sound is physical, after all. But I greet any such theories with great skepticism. And the resonant frequencies thing... I don't know much about that, but it seems like something that would have been invented to help science fiction writers along...

Boro Nut

That's certainly true. We conducted a study which showed our control sample rats responded equally indiferently to all types of classical, rock, & country music, but they became agitated when played the Sex Pistols. They would urinate in the corner and spit at each other, and dye their hair pink.

Boro Nut

Actually, it was me who dyed them pink, but for Christ's sake don't tell the Don.

elwoodblues

"But those claims are ridiculous. Any high-school physicist will tell you the clock claim is stupid, and illness is largely due to microbes, not oscillations! High-school biology."

Oddly enough, the clock thing actually is right. I hadn't heard of it until just this morning, when I ran across it at slashdot.com

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1820000/1820643.stm" target="_blank">http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1820000/1820643.stm</a>

Seems there IS something going on there.

However, this 'healingsounds' thing strikes me as pseudo-science at it's most sickening. Just enough truth to bring in the suckers with a touch of knowledge. Pathetic. The worst part is how the real science behind it becomes corrupted.

Marduk

I remember seeing something similar on TV a while ago involving the therapeutic aspects of swimming with Dolphins and wave therapy (as in ocean waves). Can’t remember the details on what the therapy treated, something to do with the sonar of the Dolphins. I know Dolphins can detect the presence of very small tumors with their sonar, not really sure about the healing aspect, maybe it’s just fun to swim around with Dolphins and you feel better.

[ February 21, 2002: Message edited by: marduck ]</p>

Francois Tremblay

Well gag me with a spoon... clocks CAN synchronize each other ! Weird... However, it seems to be a pretty specific phenomenon... Nothing with any application to the human body.

Marduk

"Well gag me with a spoon... clocks CAN synchronize each other ! Weird... However, it seems to be a pretty specific phenomenon... Nothing with any application to the human body."

I could be wrong but I think it has to do with the movement of the Earth, There is a huge pendulumn at the Franklin Institute in Phila. that demonstrates this (or something anyway)

Bookman

I don't believe so. IIRC from physics, this happens because the clocks are weakly connected by a surface that can transmit the vibrations (i.e. a fireplace mantle, a wooden floor, etc.) and it is this interaction that pushes them into an energy-saving synchronicity.

Shame the linked article couldn't have said more with fewer words.

Bookman

echidna

Damn sceptics, personally I’m a huge believer in acoustic remedies.

God knows, I feel better after a good healing dose of Hendrix, Sabbath, Zeppelin or Joplin.