The Ultimate Guide To Audio Therapy

The Ultimate Guide To Audio Therapy

There are various types of sound therapy, such as vibrational sound therapy that uses special sounds that make use of vibrations said to improve brain waves.

The process of healing with sound is believed to have its roots in ancient Greece. This was also a time when music was used to attempt to cure mental disorders.

Throughout history, music has always been a source of boosting morale in military troops and also helping people work productively and speedily. It’s also been used to ward off evil spirits by chanting.

However, in recent years, music has been linked to a number of health benefits as well, such as boosting your immune system, reducing stress levels, and ultimately improving the health of premature babies.

So the question remains, what exactly is sound therapy, and how does it work?

Sound healing therapy uses the aspects of music to improve your emotional and physical health and well-being. The person who is participating in this treatment or therapy engages in the experience with a trained sound healing practitioner.

Sound healing usually involves listening to music, moving to the beat of the music, singing along to the music, meditating, and playing an instrument.

In the following article, we’ll take a closer look at exactly how sound therapy works.

What exactly is audio therapy?

In a general sense of the word, sound therapy is basically using music to encourage the body to activate its own healing abilities by helping you destress and relax.

Since most of us live extremely busy lives with hectic schedules, and this leads to high-stress levels, we can all benefit from slowing down. Ideally, the problem is that we are too used to having something to focus on at all times. This refers to cell phones, computers, etc.

sound therapy for couples

Traditional meditation tends to be challenging for people living in the 21st century. Sound meditation helps keep you occupied and allows you to go into a deeper state of relaxation and meditation with less effort.

There are lots of different types of sound therapy, such as vibrational sound therapy, which uses unique sounds that ultimately create vibrations. These vibrations are thought to enhance brain waves.

A large part of this is due to the fact that music was never discovered; however, it is something innate in everyone. So it comes as no surprise that for centuries, music or sound has been used to heal and cure many ailments.

And it is also used for expression, celebration, entertainment, ceremony, and communication as well. So whether you are musically inclined and not, ultimately, this is the one thing that connects humans to all cultures, creeds as well as cons of yet.

Music is played at weddings to celebrate love, it is played at funerals to say goodbye, and people listen to music when depressed. They also dance to it and have fun. Praises and worship are offered to deities in the form of music.

However, perhaps one of the most important purposes of music is to provide healing.

Ultimately sound healing is a process in which a practitioner uses music, including the emotional, spiritual, psychological, social, and mental, to improve the health of their patient.

Inevitably sound healing can improve various aspects of the patient’s life, such as emotional and social developments, motor and cognitive functioning, as well as psychiatric and psychological health.

Healing with sound can take place in a number of ways. You can either sing along to the music or listen to it. You may also choose to meditate, chant, or participate in musical arts. Some people even choose to play musical instruments.

Additionally, certain practitioners introduce patients to specific types of sounds that induce positive brain waves.

Different types of music therapy

Receptive music therapy

Involves a client listening to music in one or more ways. Lots of people sometimes choose to respond silently; others respond verbally or via another modality.

music and brain waves interaction

Ultimately the listening experience focuses on physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and aesthetic aspects of the music, and inevitably the client’s responses are designed according to the purpose of the experience.

So it can be used to stimulate a certain emotion or physical response.

Receptive music therapy methods include:

Music relaxation – music chosen and played with the intention of creating a calming and relaxing experience. Music, in this case, is often accompanied by the therapist talking softly through a calming voice and tone, connecting the client’s mind and body.

Imaginal listening – this can be either guided to unguided music imaging

Song lyric discussion – selected song serves as a stepping stone for discussion of the adolescent life, which can either pertain to life’s issues or experiences.

Music appreciation activities – this involves a therapist helping adolescents to appreciate and understand the aesthetic value of music

Song reminiscence – this method uses songs to promote reflection and discussion

Music collage – it’s ultimately a presentation of artwork that is stimulated when someone creates arts while listening to music

Bibliotherapy

When dealing with certain personal issues such as depression and anxiety, or in some cases coping with grief, it can often be difficult to make sense of what’s really going on in your body and mind.

This is especially if you don’t have a similar experience to compare it to. Bibliotherapy aims to bridge this gap and improve your life by providing support, information, and guidance in the form of the reading activities such as stories and books.

young woman listen relaxing music

Ultimately it is a therapeutic approach that uses literature to enhance and encourage good mental health. It’s also cost-effective and versatile when used to supplement other types of therapy. Several mental health conditions can be successfully treated using reading activities.

Individual and group therapy use this method, which is considered appropriate for adolescents, adults, and even children. In most cases, mental health professionals will encourage those undergoing therapy and those waiting for therapy to read for guidance and for developmental purposes.

It’s also encouraged that you read to learn more about mental health concerns and take into consideration the therapeutic benefits of imaginative literature.

So what exactly is bibliotherapy?

Ideally, it’s the concept of reading as a way to help facilitate the healing process and achieve your therapeutic goals using a common strategy usually found in treatment approaches. However, what separates this approach from other behavioral therapy is the fact that it is typically viewed as a therapeutic approach and use it as a crucial part of the treatment process.

In most cases, it is used to support other forms of therapy and is appropriate for individual and group situations as well.

If it sounds like a good fit, you’re probably wondering how therapists make use of this tool during a counseling session? Mental health professionals who specialize in counseling describe this remedy as a dynamic three-way interaction that involves a book or some form of literature, a counselor, and a patient.

Creative visualization

Creates initialization is basically a powerful tool that helps you manifest your goals and attract what you desire in life. You can use this visualization to create your dream life and get a precise idea of what you want.

Creative visualization is basically a type of mindfulness exercise that can be used to promote success in every area of life. It’s a process of putting together visual, mental imagery of what you are desiring or wanting to manifest.

woman plays guitar for relaxing

Consequently, you can start to gain emotions associated with the desired image. Therefore, you can visualize what you want and experience emotions or feelings that you would experience had it actually been happening in real-time.

This ultimately helps you put your goals and desires out into the universe and start to feel motivated to achieve it. Much like a vision board, however, the imagery is in your mind and not physical. However, it’s a creative vision board and shares similar purposes ith a physical one.

It is inevitably  an extremely powerful tool that is the mind’s eye to create detailed images of what you want in life. This helps to give you positive feelings of motivation and ultimately pushes you to reach your goals. When you use visualization, the goal is to feel inspired and ready to take action to achieve your goals.

Ultimately creative visualization is a powerful form of therapy as well. When you constantly focus certain thoughts, the subconscious mind starts to accept and receive these thoughts that ultimately changes your mentality or mindset in the long term.

Ultimately this change of mindset changes your feelings, habits, and behaviors, which is why it is so effective. Visual images created through creative visualization determines strong feelings and emotions that you will experience when using this method.

So it’s crucial that you put thought into what you want to visualize and determine why you want to visualize it.

Guided imagery

Guided imagery or guided therapeutic imagery is a  technique that helps individuals in therapy focus on mental images in order to evoke feelings of calm and relaxation.

It is used by mental health professionals as a treatment method and is based on the concept of the mind-body connection. Ultimately it upholds interaction between the body and mind, and this assists one’s personal overall health and well-being.

beautiful lake in sunrise

In guided therapeutic imagery, a person can focus more on mental images that improve their emotional and physical state of mind.

This technique is used in a wide range of concerns and modalities, including individual and group therapy.

Once you’ve done it, it can be practiced independently as well without taking direction from the therapist. They are lots of guided imagery tips that can be found in self-help books and also on the Internet.

Individuals may obtain benefits from practicing guided imagery independently; however, seeking instruction from a trained professional at first is recommended. Getting proper instruction can help you become more independent in the future and not need a therapist’s intervention.

The therapist usually takes an approach of using verbal direction to help the patient focus on the images. They also encourage the patient to be aware of and notice sensory aspects of the scene.

So ultimately this process involves using all five senses. It’s designed to impact the body as well as the mind, and once you do this correctly, you’ll notice that your breathing slows down and becomes more controlled, so your muscles are also inevitably calm and relaxed.

This is why lots of therapists choose to include music in the process or technique to help the process along.

Guided imagery has been used to treat various mental health concerns such as stress, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, grief, relationship issues, posttraumatic stress and parenting issues as well.

Aside from emotional and behavioral issues, this technique is also used by many patients to address high blood pressure, pain management, and a decrease in unwanted behaviors such as smoking.

It’s used by athletes to enhance the performance and to target specific problems.

History of audio therapy

Sound therapy is believed to affect physiologic parameters. Some of these parameters include heart rate, and breathing, high blood pressure and neuromuscular tone.

It’s also thought to relieve symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, the terminally ill, dentistry, childbirth, and hospice environments. However, perhaps one of its main purposes is to help fight stress.

three tibetan bowls

Sound therapy, although used today, is an ancient practice. It is believed that the aboriginal peoples in Australia first used it for 40,000 years ago as they made use of musical instruments.

It is also believed that the ancient Greeks and Egyptians made use of this approximately 200 B.C using vowel sounds chants to heal as they believed that these sounds are sacred.

Musical instruments were also used, and more emphasis and value was placed on these instruments as opposed to healing chapels.

The Greeks used similar healing chants and various musical instruments in the sanatoriums.

Tibetan monks have been using singing bowls for quite some time. The bowls can be rung by themselves, or combined with sacred chants or mantras.

One interesting fact is that the sound vibrations emitted by Tibetan bowls and the chanting have been found to be chemically metabolized into “endogenous opiates” ultimately, these substances help to act in the body as internal painkillers.

Recent studies and breakthroughs

A new class of soundwave has been created by acoustic experts and is the first in more than half a century. They hope to achieve a revolution in stem cell therapy using this breakthrough.

It’s been decades since a new class of sound therapy has been discovered. These sound waves are also gentle enough to make use of in biomedical devices to ultimately manipulate highly fragile stem cells and not cause damage or affect their integrity.

man lying on couch with headphones

It is also believed that sound therapy has an effect on us because our bodies contain energy frequencies. Therefore sonic frequencies are effective in keeping these energies in check when they go off-key.

Sound can also promote the physical and emotional health of the body, and this has been proven throughout history. So sound therapy is deeply rooted in ancient cultures and civilizations. It’s been used by the Egyptians, Tibetans as well as Indians in medicine.

Related Questions

What are the main benefits of sound therapy?

It is extremely useful in promoting both physical and emotional health of the body. Ultimately, it is great for reducing stress and trauma as well as mental health and well-being.

How old you need to be to use sound therapy?

Well, sound therapy is suitable for individuals of all ages. This includes adults, adolescents, as well as young children.

What is creative visualization, and do I need a therapist to practice it?

Creative visualization is basically a concept that involves focusing on your desires and the things that you want most in life by using your five senses.

Ultimately, this gives you the inspiration and determination that you need to achieve your goals. This technique can be done independently, and you do not need help from a therapist.

However, it is advisable to first take instruction from a qualified therapist before deciding to venture out on your own.