sound as the carrier of qi?

August 20, 2004

check out this article from the story I just heard on NPR.

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3859762

It is about the fact that all living cells give off sound vibrations,

the frequency of which varies depending on the stimuli (researchers

tried cold, heat and alcohol). This does not surprise me. It is

hypothesized that this sound system transmits vital information to

adjacent cells which can then reverberate throughout the body. We have

talked about channel qi as some form of information or connectivity

between things. We have seen arguments bordering from complete

reductionism (its all chemicals) to the mystical and the

pseudoscientific or cutting edge, as you like (postulating bioenergies,

morphogenetic fields, electromagnetic fields, ions, etc.). While not

dismissing any of these, it is distinctly possible it is something much

more mundane. The vibrations of sound. All work creates noise. If a

cell has to work hard due to excess it creates a certain noise, not

figuratively, but literally. If a cell is underworking due to vacuity,

it makes a different noise. Stagnation a different noise. Heat and

cold different noises. And so on.

What we thought was something subtle and mysterious or nonexistent or

perhaps just not to be found or measured in this plane may have just

been an artifact of having the volume turned down too low. Frequency

and intensity are two different things. Cells talk to each other using

" voices " . We just needed to stick a microphone in the right place to

listen and turn up the gain high enough. This reminds me a bit of

Rife's and other similar work (dark field micosocopy and such). I feel

the need to state that I don't think this research proves in any way

the validity of any sound related therapies used in CAM or OM; it

merely shows that sound plays a role in physiology. It is a great leap

to read any further significance into this. The chinese already have

reams of information on countless techniques and styles of practice.

While the idea of sound as both physiological mechanism and therapeutic

strategy is intriguing to me and deserves further exploration, I am

uncomfortable with experimenting with any methodology that has neither

an established pedigree in China nor modern research to back it up. I

understand that others are more daring than I. So be it. My primary

interest would be how traditional OM techniques (acumoxa and herbs)

alter cell " noise " . A worthy experiment.

Chinese Herbs

FAX:

August 21, 2004

This link comes up as not being valid when I try to follow it. Do you

have a copy of the article?

Thanks,

Mark

On Fri, 2004-08-20 at 10:32, wrote:

> check out this article from the story I just heard on NPR.

>

> http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3859762

>

> It is about the fact that all living cells give off sound vibrations,

> the frequency of which varies depending on the stimuli (researchers

> tried cold, heat and alcohol). This does not surprise me. It is

August 21, 2004

, Mark <mark.milotay@s...> wrote:

>

> This link comes up as not being valid when I try to follow it. Do you

> have a copy of the article?

>

It seems to have disappeared from the site. this one is better anyway:

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues04/mar04/phenomena.html

August 25, 2004

Re: Therapeutic use of sound and music, I have not seen much information in the

Chinese literature that I find credible. Dr. Cheung has helped me to gather what

he could find on the subject, and what he did find was certainly not on the

level of development of TCM herbology. Instead, it seemed to be at the level of

rudimentary 5-element theory, as in certain instruments and sound qualities

corresponding to particular elements. (If anyone on this list is aware of

Chinese research on this, I'd like to hear from you.) I've long been interested

in the applications of sound to health, and in spite of all the New-Age hype out

there, there is a solid body of research that demonstrates the effectiveness of

specific music in the context of certain diseases and conditions. The problem is

that, like much western research, it is stated in general terms of the effects

of particular sounds or music on western disease categories or physiological

parameters, so to attempt reading between the lines and translating it into a

clinically useful TCM framework will require some work.

For an article on our website that explores this topic:

http://www.rmhiherbal.org/review/2002-1.html

Effects of music and sound on human health

Following is a section from the Preface of a work in progress:

==============================

The idea of using music to improve health is a very ancient one.

Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Galen all commented on the

potentially beneficial and harmful effects of music to the

individual and to society. Modern research confirms that various

types of music can beneficially affect blood pressure, heart

rate, hormone levels, brain wave patterns, muscle tension,

seizure activity (in epileptics), and mental skills and motor

coordination during specific tasks. Moreover, the destructive

effects of certain types of music have also been repeatedly

demonstrated: plants shrivel and die, mice become aggressive and

cannibalistic with abnormal neuronal growth patterns revealed on

dissection, and humans develop learning and behavioral disorders.

With the wealth of existing research on the undeniable effects of

music on human health, one would think that medical and music

professionals would coordinate their efforts to apply this

research in clinics, hospitals, schools, nursing homes, and

generally toward increasing human potential. While much progress

has been made, there exists a wide variety of opinion on how to

go about the matter of what techniques are valid in research and

clinical practice. On one extreme, there are the " New Age

shamans " who have latched onto esoteric and ancient notions

regarding the relation of specific tone frequencies to

astrological and metaphysical properties, with little scientific

research to justify such beliefs. On the other extreme are the

hard-nosed scientific types to whom the notion of emotions

induced by music is such a difficult and slippery concept that

they have decreed it unworthy of scientific attention, thus

placing off limits a quality of music that seems obvious to most

listeners. Between these two groups are a large number of

musicians, scientists, physicians, and even highly insightful lay

people who have quietly and persistently investigated the

following types of questions:

Why do specific pieces of music affect each listener

uniquely, in sometimes very different ways?

Can individual differences in body type, physical

constitution, and personality be correlated with these

unique responses to music?

Do specific attributes of music (tempo, rhythm, harmonic

structure, major/minor mode, melodic sequence, timbre of

instruments, loudness dynamics, intonation, etc.)

consistently invoke characteristic emotional, affective, or

physiological responses, either in a majority of people or

in well-defined types of individuals?

While much of the scientific research focuses on effects of music

on a population of experimental subjects as a group, with

averages and standard deviations dutifully calculated, such

experiments fail to address any unique individual responses

within the group. Yet to the clinician or to the individual

hoping to improve personal health or performance, these

individual differences may be crucial. The time-tested aphorism

" One person's medicine is another person's poison " applies

equally to music. Why does a given musical composition evoke

ecstatic personal insights for one person, yet cause headaches in

another? Such is the nature of what I am attempting to reveal in

this book.

Ever since childhood and my first piano lessons, music has been a

close personal companion in my life. My love of music helped me

endure the trials of adolescence, college, and graduate school,

perhaps more than anything else. Though I seriously considered

studying music professionally, fate guided me through a series of

academic studies and professions that have indirectly enhanced my

appreciation for music: medical physiology, psychoacoustics

research, systems and control theory, and, finally, traditional

Chinese medicine (TCM).

My clinical experiences as a traditionally trained TCM herbalist

led me back to my involvement with music somewhat by accident. As

a TCM herbalist, I sometimes used acupuncture techniques on

clients. After inserting acupuncture needles, I liked to put

selections of classical music on the office tape player to keep

clients relaxed, while I attended to filling out herbal formulas

in an adjacent room. I usually palpated the client's radial pulse

before and after the session to get some indication if pulse

qualities were improving, a typical procedure for acupuncturists.

Clients would often comment on the music, whether they liked it

and what effects it had on them, so that I began to experiment

consciously with a wider range of music. Eventually I came to the

conclusion that the music itself was often having profound

effects on their pulse and on their health, confirmed by their

verbal reports. Over the years, clients with emotional traumas,

neurological and endocrine disorders (especially " Interior-Wind "

disorders), migraines, heart disease, and other conditions have

benefited in significant ways from listening to specific types of

music.

While acupuncture may be a useful technique for some conditions,

I became so excited over my observations about music and health,

that I stopped performing acupuncture and began to use carefully

selected music instead. Over the past decade, I compiled notes on

the effects that specific classical music compositions had on

various types of people, based on differentiating them according

to their TCM syndrome classifications. Friends often participated

in music listening sessions at my home, discussing their

individual impressions and reactions; sometimes I would check

pulses before and after for any changes. I also created

checklists of attributes for listeners to discuss after hearing a

recording.

The primary purpose of this book is to demonstrate how

differentiating individuals according to their TCM syndromes

(symptom-sign patterns) may allow a great deal of insight in

predicting which musical compositions will have beneficial

effects on specific individuals. Accurate syndrome

differentiation and assessment is the foundation of Chinese

medicine and has been successfully used to tailor diet, herbs,

and herbal formulas to individual needs, and as a general

foundation for understanding the complexities of human health. It

seems reasonable, then, to apply these same principles to

understanding music and health. These ideas are based on

empirical observations, as are many ideas in the long history of

Chinese medicine, and others may wish to design controlled

experiments to verify or disprove them. However, any research

must begin with cogent questions and hypotheses based on a

combination of knowledge, experience, and intuition.

While I use TCM theory and principles as a basis for

understanding and predicting individual reactions to music, the

TCM historical literature on music therapy as such is scanty.

Much of what is available is based on theories originating from

the earliest periods of Chinese history, during the time when

shamanic practices predominated. I have chosen to ignore much of

this work in this book, as many of these esoteric ideas are not

validated by modern research. As the available scientific

research on verifiable effects of music is quite voluminous, I

see no reason to dwell on unproven techniques. Rather, I've

chosen to focus on musical parameters that have been verified as

having physiological and psychological effects; the only new

twist I am adding is to attempt fine-tuning the clinical

application of this information based on a TCM classification of

individual differences based on symptoms and clinical signs.

After World War II, it became popular in academic circles to

denigrate the value of western cultural icons and institutions.

Sociologist-philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Theodor Adorno,

and Max Horkheimer contributed to this attitude by making

deconstructionist and relativist philosophies necessary baggage

for the politically correct academic. Such ideas crept into much

of the literature on music psychology research and music therapy,

with a resultant tendency to elevate all of the world's music

(rock, heavy metal, voodoo drumming, rap, schmaltz, and classical

alike) to equal status and to belittle the importance of European

classical contributions. However, the overwhelming result of

research on the health effects of specific music unambigously

reveals that among all the world's traditions, European classical

music demonstrates the most potent healing effects, not only on

humans, but on plants and animals. These results firmly disprove

the notion that preference for European classical music is merely

the result of cultural bias. (Witness the interesting phenomenon

that as China and East Asia become more prosperous, an increasing

number of world-class classical musicians are from these regions,

and educated Asians are showing interest in the European classics

at the same time that such interest has been declining in

America.) Consequently, I've chosen to focus primarily on the

works of composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn,

Brahms, and Schubert. While traditional Celtic music and Indian

ragas have also been shown to have beneficial health effects, I

am not as familiar with these forms, and have chosen to present

information based on my own training and experiences.

This book is intended to be used together with the " TCM

Database " , which includes a section on musical compositions

( " Music and Health " ) classified by their TCM attributes and

clinical functions, which are derived based on principles