Hearing and Listening

Without the remarkable mechanism and process of hearing, music would simply be silence. The design of the ear is pure genius, a perfect tool for experiencing a dimension of vibration. You can go online and find out all you need to know about hearing, its mechanism, and compromise. So, we will forgo that study here and look at elements related to music creation for healing purposes.

The quality of the listener’s hearing will impact the experience. Quality can be compromised through mechanical, emotional, or mental issues…actually, the sources may even transcend lives. Emotions effect the receptivity and response. Intentional song, chant, mantra, words, music can be a powerful vehicle to stir, move, and clear emotional vibrations stored in the body tissue and energy bodies. Music created for the purpose of clearing emotional bodies is an essential element in the healing musician’s tool bag. Specific songs can free emotions held in check for years. Many times I have worked with individuals who had not cried in years. My musical choices were one of the vehicles to clear the blocks.

Mental resistance in the form of beliefs, experiential memories, cultural programming, familial experience and programming is a common area of focus for the healing music musician. Personal experiences with music, traumatic attachments to songs, injunctions around singing, negative associations triggered by sound, song, or music…all impact a person’s ability to listen and hear. Be aware of your audience and specific personal issues to guide your approach to your musical creations.

A child in utero has developed the ability to hear by 4 and a half months. Words spoken, attitudes kept, experiences had by the parents, especially the mother, will significantly impact the child’s sense of safety in the world. Mothers who sing to their child, or play music that is soothing or intentional, are finding their pregnancies, birth, and early life experiences to be smoother.

Hearing is compromised by loudness and repetition of specific frequencies. Much of the music of today is at very high volumes, done in the studio to get the attention of the listening audience first. And with the explosion of personal music players, earphone volumes are creating a sea of listeners with compromised hearing. Loud music looses its dynamics and its feel. The ebb and flow of the song is lost to a wall of sound. Music is felt in the body by cells and tissues and organs as well as heard by the ear and interpreted by the brain. I implore you to keep dynamics and flow in your creations. They will more likely do their intended work.

As a music for healing musician it is essential that you listen well to the inner and outer worlds of sound and vibration. Your inner is giving you rhythmic and sound clues consistently. You can use them to create music that aligns with the inner. When in the presence of a client or even an audience, your own system will adapt to the vibration and give you clues as to the song choices most appropriate. Pay attention.

The natural world is healing when one allows it to be. The rhythms of nature and the full frequency wash of the wind and the waves are vehicles to return to center. Incorporate what you hear in your work. The sound of running water brings balance and stirs the release and letting go of energetic debris. Bird sounds and the wind through the trees are relaxing aids. Life affirming words or melodies put over beds of natural sounds continues to be a powerful vehicle for inner change.

The vagus nerve, the longest cortical nerve in the human body, runs from the medulla through the middle ear, the larynx, the heart, the lungs, the stomach, the intestinal tract, and the back muscles. Is this the unifying factor that unites music/sound and emotion? The brain requires 3 billion stimuli/second for at least four and a half hours each day to stay conscious and alert. The stapius muscle in the inner ear never rests…providing stimuli. The human voice is a primary stimulant in the critical frequency range, 2000 to 4000 HZ. Use it…sing, speak, make sound, play…listen to it. Gregorian Chant is the perfect tonic for concentration and focus and relaxation due to its stimulation of the ideal range. When you are really tired, perhaps singing, sounding, etc. is the perfect remedy .