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Going deeper into sound healing Aurelio C. Hammer Svaram
Sound healing has a tradition that stretches back thousands of years to some of the world’s most ancient cultures. One person who has attempted to harness its fundamental benefits Aurelio C. Hammer is Aurelio C. Hammer, mentor and founder of Svaram, a community of artisans, designers, healers and sound enthusiasts in the southern Indian experimental township of Auroville. The organisation provides sound-based wellbeing experiences and journeys in a range of indoor and outdoor environments, including corporate wellness events for companies including Microsoft. “I find the wellness sector at this moment very interesting because it is exploring new modalities,” says Aurelio. “It is much more open than medical science, which is almost stuck in a materialistic dogma and doesn’t Clockwise from above right: Aurelio leads a sound healing class using instruments made by Svaram (and below right); the Sonorium is an immersive sound healing installation
allow anything that cannot be measured on their instruments. In the wellbeing sector there is strong demand for experiences and for a shift in the state of people, however they are feeling. There is a longing for harmonisation. A room full of sound Svaram produces a variety of more than 100 musical instruments, some of which are made by its craftspeople and nowhere else. These are used in a range of ways to provide healing experiences, but perhaps most impressively as part of its Sonorium – a collection of instruments that aims to transport clients on a primal journey using a strong combination of harmonic and chaotic sounds. “The Sonorium uses what I call ‘tuned’ sounds, but they are polarised with elemental, primal sounds – the sound of thunder or a waterfall, the sound of stone used as a friction instrument,” says Aurelio. “What the Sonorium offers is a complete immersion in sound. If you are surrounded by a few singing bowls it is fine and beautiful, but the Sonorium is full of
massive instruments. We have tubular bells and the gong may weigh 25-30kg, and the person is lying on a bed that has 50 strings underneath, so its can be quite powerful.” Just as you can play a wine glass with a wet finger, so you can play one of Svaram’s stone instruments, except these can weigh up to 80kg. “Think of the sound that an 80kg wine glass would make if you rubbed it,” says Aurelio. “It actually can be quite overwhelming. It definitely has a strong and immersive effect.” Therapeutic benefits Aurelio believes the clash of harmonic and primal noises that the Sonorium provides plays a vital role in delivering a deeper level of sound therapy. “At the core of most chronic diseases there are usually traumatic experiences, and if you are not tapping into these you will not get to the root cause of the disharmony,” he says. “The sonorium’s combination of harmonic, tuned sounds and primordial elemental sounds create a polarity in that field which surprises people. It can shake people up.” www.svaram.org
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