How can sound healing help with sleep?
Every month, my wife and I give our local community a sound bath. We bring our crystal singing bowls, gongs and other sound instruments, and we cascade positive sound over our audience while they are all lying down on their yoga mats. Over the course of an hour, typically half of the people fall asleep.
When participants are just lying there, letting the sound move them, they find stress leaving their muscles, they find their mind being soothed, and it is then very easy to just slip into sleep.
Meditation can be difficult. It can be difficult to soothe and quiet the mind to fall asleep. Sound bypasses the thinking mind, and so is highly effective. One study found that meditating for thirty minutes with sound, was more effective in relieving stress, then meditating in silence.
There have as well been numerous studies, but also just plenty of first-person experiences, that show that sound is a highly effective tool to promotes feelings of relaxation and wellness.
When we really relax, deeply, and our breathing slows, our body naturally produces melatonin, which is an essential hormone to sleeping.
Sound healing can be effective for sleep, because it is a simple tool to help us relax and slow down, to help regulate our breathing, and this can naturally result in our body starting to naturally go into the process of sleep.
What are sound healing tools that can help sleep?
There are specific sound healing tools that can support the sleep process. This is a list of tools brought to us by one of our teachers here, Dorothy Stone.
#1 Tools that promote theta and delta brain waves.
When the brain slows down in the process of sleeping, it begins to produce theta (between 4-8hz) and delta (between 1-4hz) brain waves. These are slower brain wave states than normal waking and thinking states. We can use specific sound tools, to help our minds create these brain wave states. This is called binaural beat stimulation or brainwave entrainment.
Tuning forks can be a simple tool to use in bed. Dorothy suggests using our “brain tuners” or our “3rd octave G theta” tuning fork sets. (The brain tuners set comes with both a delta and theta option. The 3rd octave G theta set is just a theta option).
With either set, you will be activating two tuning forks. Place either tuning fork up to each ear, and breath deeply with the oscillating tones you hear. You will hear the binaural. It will sound like a "wah-wah-wah" effect. As you listen to the binaural, just breath deeply, and then continue to activate the tuning forks when they loose their sustain. You brain will naturally start to elicit delta and theta brain waves.
Our teacher Dorothy Stone recommends using the tuning forks for 5 minutes to help promote either theta or delta brain waves as a way to calm down and support sleep.
#2) Tools that promote deep breathing, and simple relaxation, with little effort.
When you want to relax and get ready for bed, sound tools that require a lot of effort to play may not be the best solution. Playing a soothing drum may relax, but it is also invigorating to continuously hit the drum. Having sound tools that are simple to use from a relaxed posture can be beneficial.
The NOW Tone Therapy Speakers, are small speakers that can be placed on either side of the head. They play uplifting tones for three minutes, a mixture of harmonies and binaurals. They are a soothing experience. It is simple to turn them on, and feel the vibration going into your body, and feel your whole body relax with the tones.
Another option is the spiral sound rainstick. These are self-standing rainsticks so you don't need to continuously activate them. The rain stick plays a consistent rain noise for 2 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of rainstick you buy. You can find the large 10 minutes version here, and the smaller 2 minutes version here. The sound of the rain is consistent. It brings the mind into the present moment very clearly, and when paired with deep breathing, is a tranquil experience.
Lastly, our teacher Dorothy recommends either a set 2 zaphir or koshi chimes. Either the fire and water koshi chimes, or the sufi and twilight zaphir chimes. These two small chimes are harmonic with each other. A simple meditation one can do with them is to take a long slow inhale while playing either the fire koshi chime or sufi zaphir chime, and then a long slow exhale with the aqua koshi chime or twilight zaphir chime. The sounds of the chimes will resolve together, and matching your breath to the tones of either chime will help deepen the breath, and bring one into a state of relaxation. This is a simple meditation to do for five minutes or so, while sitting in bed, that will ease the body and mind.
Written by Jonathan Wood 5.21.24