The story of the fascinating art science of sono-cytology - the sound of cells - begins with two curious healing stories. The first is the quite remarkable story of John Reid and his sound experiments with the sarcophagus of the pharaoh Khufu in the King's Chamber, in the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt, 1997. The second story is my own, rather much more ordinary, quite less spectacular case of healed tennis elbow. But I digress. For Reid, his experiences sparked a lifetime investigation into the qualities and medicinal powers of sound and in particular, of sound in water. For me, my unexpected and quite literally unbelievable experience with sound healing has lead me to deepen my appreciation for it and to add it to my therapeutic and educational offerings in the cre8ofit creative arts practice.
Whilst I have made reference to my own experience with the healing power of sound, I must defer to the story of John Reid to light the way to your possible acceptance, dear reader, of the notion that sound alone heals. To summarise, Reid is a specialised sound man and an inventor at heart : his fascination lies in making ways of making sound visible to the human eye and in the concept of resonance and how that interacts with the water in biological : aka human tissue.
Reid visited Egypt and the Great Pyramid of Giza with his sound gear to record the resonance in the Kings Chamber on several occasions. It is worthy to note that upon commencement of his sound experiments and recording in the Great Pyramid, Reid was plagued by a chronic back injury so debilitating that he had personal aids with him on his expeditions to carry his equipment and to assist him to access chambers and tombs, up steep stair cases and through narrow and low openings. He was in substantial pain and was quite crippled most of the time when he arrived in Giza.
John Reid in the Kings Chamber with his recovered injury and hieroglyph experiment
On one of those occasions journeying into the Great Pyramid with his aids to record the sound of the King's Chamber, Reid being fascinated with the desire to make sound visible, concocted an experiment to stretch a film over the top opening of the sarcophagus and lay that film with sand. He then sung an ascendsing hum inside the chamber to create resonance. He was able to observe the sound and its resonance as sand vibrating on the stretched film. What he witnessed and experienced next astounded him and his recording team. In front of his very eyes, Egyptian hieroglyphs began to form and move in the sand : first the Djed Pillar (snake - see image below) snaked and wove across the film, followed by the eye of Horace and a number of other hieroglyphs. Reid felt this could be no coincidence and he became determined to unravel the nature of this phenomena.
Eye of Horace
Dijed Pillar
Ra - Sun God
As well as the appearance of the hieroglyphs, the vibrating chamber overtook and submerged his entire body in the sounds he had made, but at the resonance of the chamber, and he remarks on experiencing an enormous sense of wonder, joy and well being. After the resonance of his own sonic presence in that space subsided, Reid found that the chronic pain in his spasming back was completely dissolved. He was overcome by appreciation, wonder and confusion all at once, and was amazed to also know over time henceforth, that the pain in his back did not seek to return. This extraordinary experience set him on a journey to investigate how this could be so and what the Egyptians must have known about sound. So much so, that the science of sound healing has since become his life's work.
Before we unravel a taste of the scientific mechanics of sound : of sound in water and of how this creates healing, I will now briefly share my own experience of sound healing and how it lead me to take the science extremely seriously as an authentic alternative mode of energetic healing. I commenced my degree in arts psychotherapy in 2019, nursing a chronic elbow injury gained from too much strenuous heavy lifting with a shovel, as I funded my return to full time study with manual labour to pay my rent. By the sixth month into my three year degree, my elbow was so achingly sore as to ache much of the time and to just never be comfortable : I was resorting to wearing the arm in a sling at times as it offered some relief.
During one of my Saturday lectures, I was fortunate enough to attend a guest lecture session with a visiting sound healing practitioner. During this session we were introduced to the concepts of vocal toning, of hearing the sounds of our cells, of hearing and vocally expressing the sounds of our injuries or of our sufferings and traumas and of using those sounds, expressed outwardly in tone and breath to induce healing. I was enormously sceptical. At this point chronologically, I was not aware of John Reid and the Kings Tomb experiment or of any body of knowledge or research regards the healing power of sound.
To summarise, I was asked by the practitioner to locate a pain site in my body, to identify the sound the pain made and to vocalise that pain. I was promised that if I repeated my vocalisations loudly and with feeling a few times a day that the pain would immediately subside : if the pain came back, to keep vocalising, and that soon the pain would vanish forever. Living high in the mountains in relative peace and solitude, it was no problem to go outside and vocalise loudly to the sky the pain of my chronic elbow. I would experience instant relief in the elbow immediately after vocalising. The pain returned sporadically over the next few weeks : I repeated the instructions, buoyed with confidence at the results ... and soon within weeks I was indeed pain free and the chronic injury has not ever returned. That was now 3 years ago.
So how on Earth does all this sound healing business work?
Well to begin with, let us examine the mysterious phenomena of sound and what it is and what it does with a quote from John Reid himself:
"When we sing to the stars the atomic inelastic collisions created by our singing create infrared light that is modulated by our individual voice frequencies. The infrared light zips through the atmosphere into space where it will travel forever unless it meets dark matter." (2021).
In much the same manner, the action of waves crashing onto a beach creates infrared light that is modulated by the sound of the waves itself. In exactly the same manner, according to Dr James Gimzewski, using a term he coined "the song of the cell'; each and every cell in the human organism emits sound as a part of its metabolic process (Niemetz, 2004) and furthermore, sick cells emit different frequencies to healthy cells. This cell noise, what is more, was discovered to also emit infrared light as a by product of the inelastic collisions created by the cell sound, then of course, that light is also modulated by the cell sound itself. Cell to cell communication it is discovered happens in this infrared spectrum of light.
cell-cell communication diagram: trends in Microbiology
So therefore, it stands according to Gimzewski and Reid, that the infrared light created in cells by the phenomenon of sound is the same process as the way infrared light is created by nature : but how does this effect healing?
One of the most beneficial substances that is made naturally by the body and aids in healing is Nitric Oxide (NO) (Reid, 2021) which is produced both in the lungs, on the out breath, and in the sinus cavity as a byproduct of out breath and vocalisation. (Reid, 2021)
credit image : John Reid
It has been found in many clinical studies that a person who hums or sings can actively increase the production of healing NO, as does nasal breathing. It has also been shown that immersing the entire bodily organism in low frequency sound or music with a frequency of between 5 and 40 hertz can passively increase the body's natural production of NO by significant amounts.
Further studies into these sound and light making qualities of cells has discovered that full body immersion in a soundscape we love is a healing experience in itself. The music can be of any persuasion or genre : it must only be entirely loved by the listener, who listens bodily. Listening to music we love : immersing ourselves in the surrounding vibrational soundscape, increases NO production levels as well as increases white blood cell creation, which in turn promotes and creates healing. How?
Well now we return to that light that is made by sound. Just as internal cell sound modulates cells, so too does exposure to external sound frequency that creates infrared light : these external light making sounds also program our cells. See below the exquisite image of a cross section of a single cell : this beautiful and symmetrical image shows the way that sound forms a pattern in water that it touches : the pattern is photographed as light using a particular scientific microscope.
a cellular pattern made in cell water by sound : image credit John Reid
Sick cells offer up an a-symetrical pattern in their water. Gimzewski found that by playing back the exact same frequency that a sick cell generates, amplified and audibly expressed to that cell, that the cancerous cells will then die. The healthy cells may suffer some stress as a result of this process but have been found to remain unharmed in the long term. (Niemetz. 2004) The frequency of the sick cell is gleaned by the client, who can interpret and sing out the pain, as I did with my elbow and John Reid unwittingly did with his back in the King's Chamber. As this cell frequency is tonally vocalised by the client, the cell receives that noise back, and this according to Gimzewski, causes it to collapse on itself and die.
To close, we will now turn our attention to the title of this article - "the power of meh". In the oldest circles of sound healing there exists a practice of vocal toning : this was practised by the Egyptians inside the King's Chamber itself. This toning was based on the seven vowel sounds of the Egyptian language of which Meh is one. While this term has become a commonplace expression in popular culture to express disinterest, it is fascinating to learn that the sound and the word are a part of the vowel sound toning of the Egyptians. It is found that by repeating the vocal toning of the Egyptians, as well as an aid to healing, remarkable inner energetic ascension, peace and well being can be achieved. It is fabled that when repeated with sufficient expertise, light can be witnessed to be emitted from the bodies of participants. This vocal toning is reproduced here for you to sample the true depths of what it must have been like to seek healing with sound in Egyptian times. This recording is an excellent introduction to what vocal sound healing sounds like.
Today though, whenever I get an ache or a pain, I take myself off to a wide open space, like a paddock a park or the beach : and I listen to my pain : I tone it back to myself and I manage my own healing from pain with sound.
Melani du Jardin for cre8ofit ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
REFERENCES
Niemetz, A. (2004). Singing cells, art, science and the noise in between. MFA Thesis, UCLA Department of Design/Media Arts, University of California, Los Angeles.
Reid, J (2012) Ancient Egyptian Acoustics and Sound Healing, presented by John Reid FULL LECTURE : Pentos Television
Reid, JS (2021) Sound Therapy : Medicine of the Future with John Stuart Reid. Global Sound Healing Conference
Rosicrucian Vowel Sounds from The King's Chambe