spa therapies
The Healing Power of Music Everyone from Rock Stars to Spa Directors is noting Music's healing powers. From spas to psychologists’ offices to operating rooms and cancer centers, music is demonstrating its power to soothe both the mind and the body. "I’ve never found anything more powerful than music to begin to heal and transform every aspect of people’s lives," says Mitchell Gaynor, M.D., Director of the Cornell Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine in New York and author of Sounds of Healing (Shambhala Publications). "There is no system in the human body that has not been positively affected by music." It seems as if science is just catching on to what cultures around the world have known since ancient times. Throughout history, sound in the form of chanting, singing, and drumming has been used to ease pain. In ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt, temple priests sang as they healed the afflicted. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras is considered the spiritual godfather of sound medicine. According to the fourth-century philosopher Iamblichus, Pythagoras and his disciples composed music to cure "passions of the psyche" such as "despondency, mental anguish, anger, and aggression." Native Americans and many other peoples use drumming rituals to achieve altered states of consciousness in hopes of finding insight, enlightenment, and health. The Sufis call sound ghizaI-ruh or "food for the soul." They believe the universe vibrates with tones so intricate they cannot be perceived by ordinary human beings but that through chanting and singing we can experience a euphoric merging with the divine. Spas, long in the forefront of the mind-body movement, have made music a part of spa life from the lobby to the treatment rooms, and they continue to find new ways of implementing its benefits. The
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Ojai Valley Inn & Spa in California and Willow Stream, The Spa at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in British Columbia, Canada, are among several spas that have recently installed underwater music systems in their swimming pools. These sonic baths are a great idea, according to experts, because water is an excellent conduit for sound. "Our bodies are 70 percent water," says Dr. Gaynor, "so we’re not just hearing with our ears. We’re literally feeling sound vibration with every cell in our bodies." One of the ways in which music works on the body is by producing relaxing alpha and theta brain waves. The primal sounds of drumming are very effective at producing the latter, which are associated with a trancelike state similar to the stage just prior to sleep. And many types of music produce alpha waves, which are also linked with deep relaxation. Some spas, such as New Age Health Resort in upstate New York; Miraval, Life in Balance, in Arizona; and Green Valley Resort and Spa in Utah, offer drumming classes. "There’s been a resurgence of interest in drumming, which hasn’t been part of our culture for a long time," says Martin Klabunde, who leads a weekly drumming workshop at Miraval. At Sanibel Harbour Resort & Spa in Florida, music is quite literally used to heal frazzled guests. The individual lies in a hammocklike contraption suspended inside a geodesic dome and is "massaged" by vibrations from BETAR- a Bio-Energetic Transduction Aided Resonance machine. Proponents say it "reads" the electromagnetic field that the body produces in response to music and adjusts the sound level to soothe away imbalances and stress. When Gaynor began his career as an oncologist, he focused solely on the physical. But when he observed a number of patients who seemed to make miraculous recoveries, he was intrigued. One who had breast cancer told him she had worked with an
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energy healer. Another said she had been treated by a qi-gong master. Over time, Gaynor became more familiar with meditation, guided imagery, and deep-relaxation exercises. But it wasn’t until he treated Odsal, a Tibetan monk, for a rare heart condition that Gaynor began to incorporate music into his practice. Odsal presented Gaynor with a Tibetan healing bowl. The monk took out a small wooden baton and ran it around the rim of the bowl, producing a deep, rich sound, like that of a church bell. "All the sounds of the city receded into the background, and I could feel the vibration physically resonating through my body," Gaynor recalls. "It touched my core in such a way that I felt in harmony with the universe. Today, along with radiation and chemotherapy, Gaynor routinely prescribes visualization and chanting for his patients. "I believe that sound is the most underutilized and least appreciated mind-body tool, and it should become part of every healer’s medical bag," says Gaynor. Dr. Oliver Saks, author of many books on neurological disorders, including Awakenings, , says that music is "crucial" and as powerful as any medicine for patients with these disorders. Dr. Saks, has observed patients with Parkinson´s disease "who can´t talk but can sing, can´t walk but can dance. People with Alzheimer´s can sometimes start to remember themselves and be themselves with familiar tunes." Gaynor is hopeful that the medical community will continue to open its ears to the sounds of healing. "I envision the day in the not-too-distant future when music therapists regularly visit and work with patients in all our healing institutions," he says. Gaynor wants to hear "singing, toning, chanting, and other forms of music echoing through the corridors of every hospital unit."
