Sound baths as your daily shower.

INSIGHT (what we need)

Full body exposure to sound vibration is another level experience to headphones.

If you haven’t had a sound therapy experience, let this be the invitation to go out and find your local sound bowl, gong, percussion or didgeridoo studio. There’s nothing quite like the soothing sounds and waves of ‘live music’: be it from a mother cooing lullabies, concerts putting crowds into trance, or symphonies crescendo’ing crowds to tears. Low or high brow, ancient or modern instruments, human-made or natural – sound is that primordial element that adds life to the ethereal spaces (or voids) between us. 

Modern technology has done the miraculous feat of compressing sound to plugs in our ears. Innovations in audio technology are starting to make it feel like whole symphonies are infiltrating our living rooms! Yet, compression and exclusion of sound to our ears is truncating the vibrational dimension that takes it from ‘nice tune’ to ‘full body tune up.’ 

Sound waves get distorted through headphone technology. Pure surround sound has a different quality altogether because of its visceral impact on the whole body, and not only in the ear canal. These physical sensations are crucial to the perception of low frequencies especially (why we love that deep bass!) – which affect the vestibular system. This is the part of the body which is associated with the sensation of bodily movement and finding balance to both self and externally generated forces. That awesome feeling of being “blown away” by sound and needing to hold yourself up to re-orient is one of the earliest ways babies learn about ‘self’ and ‘other’ as an experience. There are even psychoacoustic studies of how long term usage of headphones (and even noise canceling ones) can actually impair the acuity of our vestibular system. Being able to orient to sound in our environment is an important sense mechanism to train.

Nothing, however, replaces the artistic mastery of a sound healer playing in communion with your mind, body and spirit. But access to this level of healing is limited and not easily accessible. As such a powerful modality, sound healing could be more readily available. And although we can access ample playlists online, the experience loses dimensionality, and we risk the habit of adding tons of ‘noise’ into our lives rather than carefully curated sound. 

INSPIRATION (what we want)

I was going to add some pretty cool acoustic technology here but the true inspiration behind this week’s innovation, albeit a tragic story, is the piano guy.

“The Piano Guy”: classical pianist and street performer Colin Huggins brings people to tears when they lay under his piano.

This is a necessary story for our times because it shares both the best people can offer and the worst. Known as the piano man of Washington Square Park in New York, Colin has been using music to help people deal with their emotions. 

Passersby are invited to lie beneath his piano as he plays his Steinway baby grand. For more than a decade, Huggins has been manually hauling his piano to the square to perform as the park’s star musician. People are invited to lay under his piano to receive a vibrational shower of musical love – often bringing the most tense to tears. 

Covid dramatically impaired his ability to continue busking. Since coming out of the pandemic with rising rents, he’s been unable to afford an apartment and is now living on the streets with his piano as his bed. He continues to play; inviting people to get a moment of sound solace even when the inhumanity of some vandalize his piano and times of inhumane treatment of others fills the news. Read more of his story here and a way to donate.   

INNOVATION (what we wish for)

Songdelier: a symphonic chandelier to decorate your home and deliver healing frequencies to your body and environment.

• Receive the full benefits of therapeutic directional sound with your own bespoke daily sonic shower.

• Part home speaker and part sound therapy machine, this audio chandelier hangs from the ceiling and can be lowered down to a foot above your body in any desired space (ie. living room, bedroom, etc).

• Programmed to a selection of healing symphonies, you select your 5-minute sonic shower based on an input of words of your current state (ie. sluggish) and desired state (ie. refreshed). The Songdelier then algorithmically designs the proper frequencies to shift your state.

• The core library is designed from a series sound waves that induce sound associated with healing frequencies of the body. The closeness of the speaker uses cymatics (or the visible resonance on mediums) to compose sound that creates multiple forms of universal geometry and symmetry to entrain our cellular structures.

• Sound healers can upload their compositions in a public library so users can also enjoy a varied selection of sounds made by humans from all over the world.

“Nothing is ever completely at rest. Everything you can observe all around you is vibrating at one frequency or another, including you.” ~ Albert Einstein

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