Say kind words, listen to soft music... The Power of Sound!

Sound, word, music... distinguish us (homo sapiens) from animal kingdom....

 

Most of today's music is a hindrance not a help. This has been written about from ancient Greece and even more so today but has fallen on deaf ears.

 

Let's review the evidence published and otherwise documented. Dr. John Diamond published a book called BK, Behavioral Kinesiology, later changed to Your Body Doesn't Lie.

 

He relates the story of feeling terrible one fine day in New York City. Being a health practitioner set him on a path of deduction. He wanted to know what common elements over two days made him feel ill. The only thing he could come up with was a visit to the record store Sam Goodys each day. But why would that effect him that way? The clue came when he realized the same song was played both days in the store. Voila! the common denominator. He just happened to be an expert in kinesiology and so began his odyssey of muscle testing himself and other people listening to various kinds of rock and roll for that is what he heard in Sam Goodys. The results startled him. The harder the 'rock' the weaker people became. From that harmless side trip to a record store, began a new career for Dr. Diamond. He has gone on to write several books on the positive side of music, discovering that even the consciousness and abilities of a conductor can effect how much 'energy' comes from a performance or recording.

 

In their 1973 classic, The Secret Life of Plants, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird devote a whole chapter on how music affects plants, called 'The Harmonic Life of Plants.' Dr. T.C. Singh, head of the Dept. of Botany at Annamalai University discovered that ragas helped plants grow. He observed this down to the microscopic level as well. They go on to describe several other experiments in Canada and the United States in the 50's and 60's where plants and crops grew faster and healthier when listening to Bach, Gershwin and certain sound frequencies.

 

The book continues to relate the story of a former organist and mezzo soprano, Mrs. Retallack, who decided to become a biology student. She remembered one of those experiments using music and set out to do some controlled experiments with her Professor, Francis Broman. Two other students intrigued by Mrs. Retallack's lead, conducted their own tests and:

"ran an eight-week experiment on summer squashes, broadcasting music from two Denver radio stations into their chambers, one specializing in heavily accented rock, the other in classical music.

 

The cucurbits were hardly indifferent to the two musical forms: those exposed to Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and other eighteenth and nineteenth-century European scores grew toward the transmitter radio, one of them even twining itself lovingly around it. The other squashes grew away from the rock broadcasts and even tried to climb the slippery walls of their cage.

 

Impressed with her friends' success, Mrs. Retallack ran a series of similar trials early in 1969 with corn, squash, petunias, zinnias and marigolds; she noticed the same effect. The rock music caused some of the plants first to grow either abnormally tall and put out excessively small leaves, or remain stunted. Within a fortnight all the marigolds had died, but only six feet away identical marigolds, enjoying classical strains, were flowering. More interestingly, Mrs. Retallack found that even during the first week the rock-stimulated plants were using much more water than the classically entertained vegetation, but apparently enjoying it less, since examination of the roots on the eighteenth day revealed that soil growth was sparse in the first group, averaging only about an inch, whereas in the second it was thick, tangled, and about four times as long." The Secret Life of Plants, p. 154-155

 

She went on to address critics by showing that plants indeed did shun rock music. She played rock first on one side of the plants then on the other. Each time the plants turned away, growing in the opposite direction. She went on to test various types of music and percussive sounds with varying results. Her research gained her exposure in newspapers and even on CBS. Some of this notoriety also brought the usual bag of skeptical scientists who immediately dismissed the findings with flippant remarks like, 'plants have no ears.'

 

In another study, reported by Insight Magazine, April 4, 1988, physicist Dr. Harvey Bird (Fairleigh Dickinson University) and neurobiologist Dr. Gervasia Schreckenberg (Georgian Court College) wanted to see how music affects animals. They used three groups of mice. One group heard voodoo music, another Strauss Waltzes and the third silence. The music was played at low levels so that loud volume would not be a factor. The mice had to run through a maze to find their food. The mice that listened to the voodoo music had a difficult time finding the food until it got so bad they were hopelessly lost. The other two groups had no problem finding the food. In fact, the mice listening to the Waltz music did slightly better. All groups received a break of silence for three weeks. The voodoo music group still got lost but the others had no problem finding their way back to the food. At the end of the experiments the brains were examined and compared. The rock/voodoo group did not fair well. There was excessive branching of the neuronal dentrites and significant increases in mRNA. Dr. Schreckenberg explains:

"We believe that the mice were trying to compensate for this constant bombardment of disharmonic noise," says the neurobiologist. "They were struggling against the chaos. If more connections among the neurons had been made, it would have been a good thing. But instead there were no more connections, just wild growth of the neurons. ... As a result of the exposure to the disharmonic sounds," she says, "we believe there was less capacity for memory in the exposed mice."

 

A high school student, David Merrell, who had won awards at science fairs conducted a similar type experiment with mice and a maze. The group subjected to the rock music did far worse navigating the course. In David's words, "I had to cut my project short because all the hard-rock mice killed each other. None of the classical mice did that at all." (Nexus Magazine 12\97; Washington Times 7\2\97).

 

If you trace Rock back to it's roots, Big Band and Jazz, then go back a couple steps further, you'll end up in New Orleans and Haiti and ultimately back to the voodoo beat, the drum beat of Africa. Why is the beat so debilitating? One can point to syncopation or stress on the off or weak beat. For example, the Waltz has three beats with the natural emphasis on the first: One, two, three; One, two, three. Change that emphasis to the last weak beat and you get: da, da, dumb; da, da, dumb. That's a syncopated rock beat. That explains the mechanics but not the effect.

 

Science points to this hypothesis as it continues to explore the effects of sound impacting matter. Sound travels through the ethers in waves and patterns. Several scientists have studied how sound creates shapes and patterns. Hans Jenny used clay materials, sands, and liquids. He created the form on the left, below. This particular frequency is setting up a Tai Chi kind of flow. In another experiment (right) at the Univ. of Texas, Scientific American (November 1996) reports on a device called an oscillon. Different frequencies made tiny brass spheres form pillars (additional link).

 

   

In both experiments, many different patterns resulted. Most of the time, the medium used was lifted up, defying gravity, as if it had a mind of it's own, wanting, yearning to explore beyond it's own physical universe and limitations. While some might say the sound created heat in the liquids causing it to rise, the same cannot be said of the numerous inert substances used, such as the two above. No, it was the sound causing movement. Each frequency has it's own little dance. Imagine the effect on us, not only on our spiritual body but on the 70% of water within us.

 

Researcher, Masaru Emoto, has done some revolutionary work on how water is affected by sounds, words and music. He subjected water and water crystals to different sounds, even swear words. Pure water looks like a beautifully formed crystal, a unique pattern like a snow flake. Polluted water looks like mud. Normal looking water turned to the intricate crystal pattern when prayed over or when classical music was played. When negative thoughts or even words like 'Hitler' were used, it turned to an amorphous non-descript glob like the one below. This same effect happened when heavy metal rock music was played and can be seen in the picture immediately below and at this link: Miraculous Messages of Water.

 

  The music of Bach impacts a water molecule and crystal.

  Heavy Metal music impacting a water molecule

 

Beautiful thoughts and sounds make beautiful patterns. The energy rises up and out, following defined pathways. Negative words and a syncopated beat prevent the water from this growth and expansion. It's as if the energy drives the water down, flattening the patterns pure water is intended to out picture.

 

 

So, stop saying words like: "stupid", "you are crazy", "useless" to other people, unless you want to really curse them!!

Avoid heavy-drum/hard/rock/heavy-metal music, unless you want to commit slow suicide (in that case, better add those with smoke, drug and alcohol, plus lots of meat... haha! )

 

Say positive words... encouraging words, listen to soft music, ... Peace to ALL!