Sound Affects Matter All Around Us
If you haven’t read Part One of this article, you may do so: here!
In the eighteenth –century, a German scientist and musician Ernst Chladni, also known as the father of acoustics, demonstrated that sound affects matter using simple, visual experiments.
He would draw his violin bow around the edge of a plate covered with fine sand; the sand would form various geometric shapes and patterns in response to the vibration of his violin bow.
Dr Hans Jenny, a Swiss medical doctor and scientist, realised the importance of vibration and sound and spent most of his time studying them. His studies and fascinating experiments into the phenomena of waves (which he called cymatics, from the Greek kyma, meaning “wave”) provided fascinating images of how sound influences matter.
In the ‘60s, Dr Jenny would place sand, fluid and fine powders on metal plates. He would then apply vibration to the plate using a particular frequency generator and a speaker. His experiments produced the most unique and beautiful patterns unique to each vibration. These patterns would remain intact until the sound was stopped, which would bring about their collapse. See images (below)
For many, these experiments proved that sound could affect and alter the form, those different frequencies produce different results, and that sound creates and maintains structure.
Hans Jenny was a physician and natural scientist who coined the term cymatics to describe the acoustic effects of sound wave phenomena.
Dr Jenny was well known for his incredible cymatic images, but many didn’t know that he was also an artist, a musician, a philosopher, a historian, and a physicist. With excellent powers of observation and a deep interest in nature. Dr Jenny always saw an underlying, unifying theme in the world about him, which was wave patterns produced by vibration.
For Dr Jenny, everything he saw reflected vibration patterns involving number, proportion and symmetry; he called this the “Harmonic Principle.”
Our bodies do respond to sound.
The studies and experiments of people like Dr Jenny and people before him have vast implications for healing and vibrational medicine. If sound can alter form, how can it change our inner life? We know how patterns of vibrations are everywhere in nature, but what role do they play in creating, maintaining, and altering our bodies’ very cells? How different are the vibrational patterns of a sick body from that of a healthy body? Is it possible to turn unhealthy vibrations into healthy ones?
The effects of sound on matter
Dr Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist, played classical music and folk songs through speakers placed near water. He would then freeze the water to make crystals, comparing them with the crystalline structures of different samples. See images (left)
When different musical pieces were exposed to the water sample, they formed various beautiful geometric crystals. If Masaru played heavy metal music, the basic crystal shape would break apart.
Dr Emoto wanted to measure the impact of words and phrases on the water’s crystalline structure in taking the experiments further. These experiments yielded results that match what psychologists, philosophers and spiritual teachers have been teaching for years- that the words we speak and the thoughts we think impact our well-being on all levels.
In another experiment, Dr Emoto taped various words and phrases to jars of water; after freezing them and taking photographs of the crystals, he found that words like love/appreciation, thank you etc., produced a variety of beautiful geometric forms. Phrases like, you make me sick, or you fool produced crystals that were disconnected and chaotic.
Fabien Maman, a French composer, acupuncturist and bio-energenician, and Helen Grimal, a biologist, experimented with healthy and cancer cells to see how they would respond to voice various instruments. The most dramatic effects of sound they captured in photographs were the progressive destabilisation of the cancer cells’ structure. When they played sounds that would progress up the music scale, these cancer cells would finally explode.
The implication of what has been discussed here, although minimally, is profound. Since our bodies are made up of 70% water, think about how our environment’s external sounds affect our internal environment right down to the cellular level. Imagine how the words we speak about ourselves and others affect our health and the health of those around us.
Intention powered by sound healing energy is the key to improved health and other improvements in one’s life.
Notes:
- Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), pp.15-16.
- Richard Gerber, Vibrational Medicine, 3d ed. (Rochester, Vermont: Bear & Company, 2001), p. 65.
- In the book: “The Role of Music in the Twenty-First Century”, Fabien Maman
- The book: “Messages from Water” (Dr Masaru Emoto)
- www.cymascope.com sound healing
- Pelling A, Sehati S, Gralla E, Valentine J, and Gimzewski J. Local nanomechanical motion of the cell Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Science, 20 Aug 2004;305;5687:1147-50. http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/gimzewski
