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AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. MIRIAM BURGER SOUND MEDITATION & MUSIC THERAPY
1. What are your suggestions for how we raise our vitality? How can we support health before sickness? The WHO defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. Sound meditation offers the benefits of meditation, only that you do not need meditation expertise, as it takes you quickly into meditative states. You can simply let a ‘sound bath’ gently take you into a meditative state. Without any experience, you still fully benefit from sound meditation. It is a great tool to activate the parasympathetic response, which balances the stress response. The parasympathetic response is also essential in preventing sickness. While we live in constant information overload and uncertainty during the pandemic, we translate stress into so-called stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol). As part of our natural hormonal cycles, stress hormones are physiologically meaningful. However, chronically secreted they can accumulate up to excessive levels, affecting health on many levels, even at the cellular level. Sound meditation can support the nervous system to become more ‘resilient’ to stressors. It can be a simple tool to release beneficial neurotransmitters (norepinephrine, dopamine, and endorphins) balancing chronic stress and pain, and improving mental clarity and physiological balance. Also, the quality of sleep can greatly benefit from the effects of Sound Meditation as it influences the release of melatonin and its derivatives. It may be possible that vibrations also enter tissue directly and travel to cell level. Interestingly, latest research at MIT shows that cellular structures emit vibrational signals in intracellular processes.
Photographer: Katharina Weins
