Resonance may be the most important principle of sound healing and has various definitions. In the context of healing humans or animals it can be described as the frequency of vibration that is most natural to a specific organ or system such as the heart, liver or lungs. This innate frequency is known as the prime resonance.
All cells emit sound as a consequence of their metabolic processes. There is an interaction between the cells own sounds and those imposed by the environment, including those applied by sound healing devices.
The resonance principle relates to the cellular absorption of the healing sounds and/or their harmonics. In sound healing, resonance principles are employed to re-harmonize cells that have been (hypothetically) imprinted with disruptive frequencies. Such troublesome imprints may have been a result of toxic substances, emotional traumas, pathogens, or long-term exposure to noise pollution.
Another possible explanation of how sound is able to trigger the healing response relates to cellular ion channels. Situated within a cella membrane, ion channels are the means by which the cell receives nourishment and communicates with neighboring cells. In dysfunctional cells it is proposed that some of these vital channels are shut down causing cell senescence, so literally the cell is sleeping. In this hypothesis, sound opens the closed channels, supporting the cell to awaken and resume normal functioning and replication.
Dr James Gimzewski, of UCLA, California, has taken a revolutionary approach to studying cellular function. He uses an atomic force microscope, a kind of super-sensitive microphone, to listen to the sounds emitted by cells. The focus of this new science, called a sonocytology, is mapping the pulsations of the cella's outer membrane, thus identifying the song's of the cell. Gimzewski's work has revealed that every cell in our bodies has a unique sonic signature and 'sings' to its neighbors. Sonocytology is a potentially powerful, diagnostic tool for identifying the sounds of healthy cells versus those of injurious ones. But it introduces an even more exciting prospect: the ability to play the destructive sounds of rogue cells back to them greatly amplified, so that they implode and are destroyed. In this scenario there would be no collateral damage to surrounding tissue since healthy cells would not resonate with these frequencies.
Dr Gimzewski, himself a Nobel Prize winner, is one of a large number of innovative minds at work in our world that share the vision of creating modalities to assist the body to heal. Audible sound therapy may offer the greatest potential in non-invasive healing. In the years to come we may well see diagnostic and therapeutic beds that resemble a scene from the futuristic Star Trek sick bay. We will certainly see a proliferation in modalities in which sound is the governing principle. Sound heals life naturally.
It is now widely accepted that electromagnetic interactions are fundamental to the workings of biological tissues. The drawing below shows this effect diagrammatically, derived from the work of Allen & Cross 1963 and Sauer 1995. Even though the two protein molecules are not in direct contact, the oscillating electric component of the electromagnetic field (termed biophotons) causes the amino acid of protein 2 to oscillate in sympathy with the corresponding amino acid in protein 1. However, the important point to remember is that all electromagnetism is created as a direct result of sound collisions. Sound is always the precursor to electromagnetism.
Entrainment between two protein molecules (Energy Medicine, The Scientific Basis)
The work of Herbert Frohlich (Frohlich 1968) predicted that crystalline molecular arrays, within the structures of the human body, would be extremely sensitive to electromagnetic energy fields in the environment. (Again recalling that sound is always the precursor to electromagnetism.) His prediction was confirmed by a number of laboratories and his later work showed that cells also share data via electromagnetic transmissions, an effect termed ''coherence'' by Frohlich. (His work was later confirmed by Callahan 1975; Popp et al 1981, 1992.) It is generally believed that biological coherence is the means by which the body integrates processes such as growth, injury repair and defense.
Other related research (Weisenfield and Moss, 1995) concerns cellular emission of biophotons. Intrinsic random noise, created by the activity of membrane ion channels, may be entrained by incoming weak electromagnetic fields to create cell signals that harmonize with the incoming frequency. This effect is known as stochastic resonance and can have positive effects on cell function.