How Music Generates an Energy Field

“…we explored the effects of sensory stimuli, that is, light, sound, touch, and environmental vibrations on the human field…we created sounds both above and below the known range of hearing. We discovered that the energy field sometimes responded even when the person experienced no conscious sensation.  Even more dramatic, the field responded before there was any increased activity in the brain or in the circulation and some times even when the stimulus was too weak to  activate the nervous system.” Infinite Mind, Dr Valerie V. Hunt

http://valerievhunt.com/ValerieVHunt.com/Valerie_Hunt_BioEnergy_Fields.html

What does this mean to us as therapists and as consumers constantly moving in and out of sound fields, planned and unplanned?  We don’t think of sound or music as being an energized field because the bulk of our surface interaction with music is mental. Music is actually a wave field, an orb of harmonic energy radiating from a vibrating source and pulsing through the air. It is translated to meaning by our immaculate pattern recognition neural network. It takes microseconds for the oscillations to travel from air to tissue to bone resonance to amplified liquid pulsation.  In the inner ear, via the cochlea, music is sorted into constituent frequencies, assigned spatial relevance, and, via the neural networking in various brain centers, understood as geometry and felt as emotion.

In truth, vibration is all around us and within us, and the air itself is oscillating. Researchers have found that sound waves at the quantum level can influence atomic structures. At the quantum scale, photons are particles of light, and phonons are particles of sound. Photons and phonons also exhibit wave-like properties. This level of transmission has been used in ancient forms of sound healing that have resurfaced in recent times.  Tibetan bells and bowls are tuned to produce internal oscillations, beating frequencies between harmonics that both entrain brain waves and energize spaces. This charges the air with sound vibration.  Shamans use gourd rattles that generate sound in audible frequencies, as well as infrasonic sound above the threshold of human hearing (20,000Hz). This soothing sibilant percussive sound is often used to clear the mind of distraction before prayer.

The felt sense of vibration can be extremely subtle.  Music at low volume opens up perception at a deeper level because the brain is not stimulated to form an objective analysis. This can help facilitate a relaxation response. Volume or amplitude, the size or depth of the sound wave, is an easily controlled influence that can deliver profound benefits.

Most of us are familiar with the measure of volume or amplitude, the decibel. There is however another measure of sound levels that defines the intensity of the sound wave. “Intensity is defined to be the power per unit area carried by a wave. Power is the rate at which energy is transferred by the wave.”

https://www.coursehero.com/study-guides/physics/17-3-sound-intensity-and-sound-level/

Intensity is measured in watts per square meter. This form of measurement is little used outside the realm of physics, but it offers a glimpse into the nature of sound and the way we experience it. The watt is a unit of power and it is a shift in perspective to consider the sound you hear and process via hearing is a wave form with a spatial power that can also be felt. Usually the sound intensity we feel is on the extreme end of scale, but intensity exists from the quietest sound to the loudest across all frequencies heard and unheard.

In the therapeutic setting, your treatment room will have its own unique acoustic atmosphere depending on the dimensions and surface coverings and furnishings. When sound moves through air in an enclosed space the waves will hit the walls, ceiling, and floor and bounce back toward the source, creating what is called a standing wave, as newly created waves collide with returning waves. This is resonance. As the sound builds in this back and forth motion it generates a unique frequency, a resonant tone that is characteristic of the geometry of your space. If the music is played too loudly (and there are notes that are close in pitch to the resonant tone) things will begin to vibrate.  Perhaps a bowl on top of the speaker will jump, or the window begins to rattle. The famous example of the opera singer shattering the crystal glass demonstrates the power of resonance. The singer sustains a note that is the resonant frequency of the glass, and the back and forth echoing inside the cylinder of the glass builds to a vibrational crescendo that shatters the crystalline structure of the glass.

At high volume musical sound can generate pressure waves in air with enough force to be physically felt in the liquid matrix of the human body, but music just as powerfully influences the body and mind at subtle levels as well. The ability of the human psyche to feel and react to energetic stimuli in advance of the physical wave engaging with the sensory system, as described by Dr Hunt’s experiments,  is an indication of the true power of sound and music.  There is a transfer of information at the intentional level that is encoded in the harmonics and dynamics of music.  This information is absorbed at a very deep level, and it generates a different type of resonance within the human consciousness that can influence the subtle energies of the human biofield.

Music used in therapy can be thought of as a form of energy work, encoded sound waves oscillating and traveling through matter. As music traverses the delicate hearing mechanism it becomes neural energy, ultimately triggering an array of biochemical responses, which translate to meaning and emotion.  There is another level of quantum processing that we moderns are only beginning to name that has been a part of healing music for millennia. The subtle energy encoded in the harmonics of music underlies all creation and interacts with human consciousness on all levels, while the sound intensity oscillating through the air establishes an energy field in any resonant space.