My heart adventure started at the Spring Equinox 2016 when I had the first of three heart attacks a few hours after a powerful dream about my heart. Over the next couple years, I had three heart attacks and open-heart surgery. In order save my life I became an expert on the heart and heart health. I had been aware of the importance of sound and music from my studies of sound healing, so I began to use it for my heart.
There is a symphony of sound inside of you, from the beat of your heart, your breath and the blood flowing through your veins, which you can harmonize with to change your health. This activity is called coherence.
Music and healing once went hand in hand. The Chinese character for medicine includes the character for music. In ancient Greece, music was used to instill relaxation and to reduce stress, promote sleep, and ease pain. Native people around the world used singing and chanting as part of their healing rituals.
Every organism on the planet broadcasts unique vibratory signatures. The same is true of the organs in our body. The heart has a big job, as it is the receiving and responding organ that reads our energy. Hertz is the number used to designate the frequency of something. For example, the number of times in a minute that the heart beats divided by 60 seconds is its Hertz number.
The frequency of the average heart, which beats 70-72 beats per minute, is 1.17 Hz. The heart orchestrates a harmony of rhythms that serves as barometers of the heart’s status and health. The optimal state of your heart, mind and emotions and all the processes in your body, including the cognitive, hormonal, digestive, respiratory and immune systems, is marked by coherent or smooth and balanced heart rhythms. That is how important the heart is. A heart out of balance can throw your whole body out of balance.
After the first heart attack, I had a number of imbalances that I didn’t have before in my blood, endocrine system and heart. Some of them improved, but imbalances returned after each heart attack. I am still working on getting those systems back into balance.
Awareness of your heart coherence is one of the smartest, healthiest, easiest and fastest ways to improve your quality of life. Sound and music can contribute greatly to establishing and cultivating heart coherence.
Among the first sounds we experience in the womb are the internally resounding rhythms of our mother’s heart. It sounds like the steady beat of a drum or a rhythmic drone of large gongs. We recognize it after we are born, and it makes us feel safe. There are CDs that parents can buy for their newborns that reproduce the sound of the womb. This is a great way for baby to transition from life in the womb to birth into the world. It helps them sleep, stay calm and feel safe. This would be a healing sound to work with after a heart attack, because we relate it with safety, security, protection and nourishment.
A Harvard Health Letter reported on a research team that learned that cardiac patients on bed rest who listened to music for 30 minutes had lower blood pressure, slower heart rates and less distress than those who didn’t listen to music. When I was in the ICU, I would play ambient music all night to help me sleep and it put me in a sort of trance, which was good because there were so many nights that I wouldn’t have slept without it. It calmed me down when I was anxious and couldn’t breathe. It brought my anxiety down and my breathing back to normal.
Chanting, another form of sound healing, can synchronize brain waves to induce a calm, relaxed, meditative state. Toning with elongated vowel sounds and other vibrational vocalizations help release emotional blocks and encourage energy to flow through the body. Some of these techniques are best learned with the help of a healing practitioner.
Many studies have been done in the medical field to support the healing power of sound healing. With these studies in mind, let’s look at some ways that you can incorporate sound into your day to help your heart be happy and healthy:
• If you use an alarm to wake up, find a system that plays music and pick your favorite pieces to wake up to, so you are not startled awake like you are with a traditional alarm.
• Fall asleep with a recording of some music that is created specifically for sleep or relaxation. I always listen to a CD to fall asleep at night.
• Listen to your favorite music while taking a relaxing bath.
• When you eat, have soft, relaxing music playing in the background.
• Work with a sound healing specialist to heal your heart.
• Explore the work being done at Heart Math Institute on heart coherence and purchase an EmWave from the Heart Math Institute for home use.
• Learn to play a musical instrument.
• Set aside 15 minutes a day to do a relaxation meditation with relaxing music.
Over time as you work with sound, you will find a sound that sings specifically to your heart and makes it feel happy and healthy.
