Our Sonic Pathways

Abstract

ABSTRACT

We avoid the music that makes us uncomfortable because we have difficulty imagining that it can have any benefit. By doing so we do not use its potential to unblock the body to create change. Music that creates sublime experiences (musical thrills) and music that makes us uncomfortable use the same pathways and mechanisms for activation in the body. Sound enters through the cranial bones and the hearing mechanism and propagates itself in the form of sound waves through the connective tissue using the water the tissue contains to travel at nearly 5000 feet per second in an up/down direction. Sound waves are also produced internally and the body uses these for the regulation of more than 50 % of the biological processes through ligandlreceptor interaction. The frequencies that activate these processes lie between 20 and 20,000 Hz, the average range of human hearing. The transmission of both external and internal sound becomes blocked when the connective tissue becomes thicker, inflexible and dry by filling in voids created by incomplete emotional experiences. In bodywork, when this blocked tissue is worked, it heats up and softens and the water is reintroduced. The pain and emotional memory stored in the area is relived. Similarly, sound/music can cause pain or discomfort, and the listener can experience the memory of some emotional trauma. Through conscious listening to sound/music this can be brought to the point of resolution where the pain and the feeling associated with it will dissipate and a change in perception is noted.