Recent research has found therapeutic sound to be effective in a host of physiological and psychological issues. This includes reducing anxiety and ameliorating trauma, pain and depression.
Sound in Psychotherapy
Sound Work
Lisa offers experiential sound work integrated into your treatment plan.
Himalayan singing bowls with planetary frequencies are blended into somatic and mindfulness practices to foster inner reflection and awareness, stillness and healing.
Lisa's Himalyan singing bowls are measured in Hertz and have a therapeutic healing frequency that corresponds to a planetary frequency or other known healing frequency. Healing frequencies include those that correspond to Alpha and Theta brainwaves, for instance, that help to create a more meditative state.
Experience and Training
Lisa has been studying and working with sound for over two decades. Bringing together Eastern philosophies supported by neuroscience, Lisa has developed an integrative theory of practice that includes mindful sound as a psycho-spiritual intervention and spiritual practice. Lisa’s academic training includes a Masters of Pastoral Studies (Buddhism stream with a focus on Buddhist approaches to mental health) and Certificate in Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy as well as a Specialist Certificate in Applied Mindfulness Meditation. Lisa also has trained extensively and has certification with the Sound Therapy Practitioners Training program from Toronto Sound Therapy and Sound Planetarium Academy as a Sound Therapist Professional in Kathmandu, Nepal.
My greatest hope envisions sound therapy with singing bowls to transcend trauma and allow the jewel within to shine.
How Does Sound Heal
“With sound, we clear our habitual tendencies and obstacles and connect with the clear and open space of our being. This open space is the source of all virtues and is fundamental to each of us.” Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Tibetan Sound Healing.
In the application of sound, there is the opportunity for the experience of the body and the experience of the self to take centre stage.
"Vibrations can travel through our skin as well as the fluid and bones within us - just as they do through air - making our entire bodies strikingly receptive to sound vibrations." Kulreet Chaudhary, MD, Sound Medicine: How to Use the Ancient Science of Sound to Heal the Body and Mind.
The application of therapeutic sound has a fairly immediate effect, similar to meditation, of reducing our brain wave state. Soon, we are moving out of our busy beta wave brainwave state into slower and more meditative brain wave states like Alpha and Theta brain waves. Here our parasympathetic nervous system is induced and we enter a quieter "rest and digest" state. Much like meditation these lower, slower brain wave states allow us to reduce feelings of anxiety and to move our of habitual fight, flight and freeze responses. Further, as our brainwaves entrain with the sound, a “trance” state of openness and receptiveness is allowed. In this environment, the recipient can meditate, relax, explore and perhaps even allow the unconscious to become conscious and to find its way to healing.
The Healing Journey
My approach includes overlapping the sound therapy sessions to the transformational metaphor of the healing journey or the Hero's Journey, in each session and in the overall treatment plan. This includes the Departure or Crossing the Threshold stages; the Initiation or Creation stages; and the Return or Reintegration stages. This metaphor helps to provide a "travel map", if you will, for the journey and its stages and changes.
Sound Therapy Events
I have presented mindful and therapeutic sound with singing bowls as a powerful tool for reducing stress and for healing to staff and clinicians of teaching and community hospitals, church and lay pastors, school and university settings and to community groups.
Singing Bowl Therapy Research
Sound therapy with singing bowls, sometimes have Himalyan singing bowls, have demonstated its use as a stress management technique to enhance physical and mental well-being (Landry, 2014).
Singing bowl meditation was found to be a “feasible, low cost technology intervention for reducing feelings of tension, and depression, and increasing spiritual well-being” (Goldsby, Michael, McWalters, & Mills, 2017).
One study concluded that Himalayan singing bowl exposure “has the potential to create a deeper meditative experience with physiological benefits” and that this study is “bridging the gap between the effects of sound and vibration on physiological and relaxation responses” (Bidin, Pigaiani, Seghini, Casini, & Cavanna, 2016).
Within the framework of meditation, neuroscience and psychodynamic theory, the clinical use of “Best Self Visualization” (BSV) was facilitated with sound entrainment using a sound bowl (Schussel & Miller, 2013). In addition to sound entrainment, this study of BSV incorporated deep rhythmic breathing, meditation, visualization of an ideal self and sending and receiving loving-kindness in conjunction with principles of several therapeutic modalities including inter-personal therapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy, ego-state therapy and mindfulness techniques (Schussel & Miller, 2013). The study “postulated that the use of a singing bowl would prime BSV practice and help induce a meditative state through “entrainment”, or two oscillations falling into a state of synchronization, and that when played with one revolution per second, may cause neural entrainment influencing a deep meditative state due to the resonant effect of the bowl causing 4-6 beats per revolution, the equivalence of REM cycle number 1, Theta (4-6HZ)” and concluded that the state of mind facilitated by BSV contributed to openness toward the process of group therapy” (Schussel & Miller, 2013, p. 838).
Musicologist, Lisabeth Fauble, notes that “the body, brain, and mind interconnect and cooperate in an inner process that is combination of instinctual, evolutionary, and conditioned responses to outer stimuli” and “whether mental disorders are genetic, trauma-induced, or influenced by synthetic means, music and sound can open neural receptors, help create new neural pathways, and open the mind to healing” (Fauble, 2017, pp. 83-84).
Manuela Mischke-Reeds in “Somatic Psychotherapy Toolbox” notes that “playing with sound into the body is a tool to stay present and inquire into the body” and notes that studies demonstrate that even a short time of sounding will increase the level of immunoglobulin, an antibody, and create “a sense of well-being felt in the overall mood of the person” (Mischke-Reeds, 2018, p. 195).
