I adore the gong! It is such a powerful instrument that I feel reaches such a deep level, not only physically but on many subtle levels. I have interestingly found that not all gong baths are equal however and that it can be dependent on the person playing, which I find fascinating! This for me is where intention and ones own vibration comes in and if one is really sensitive, this can be felt. Gongs have the ability to send one into altered states very quickly! Sessions can induce the feeling of deep relaxation, epiphanies and realizations. Pain can even arise during a gong session, where it feels like retracing, where the body is taken back to a physical trauma to relive that pain, in order to relieve it. this healing works on all subtle layers, including the emotions, mental and spiritual bodies. I am an energy medicine specialist with over 19 years of experience and really feel the benefits of bringing this beautiful instrument into my practice to deepen and accelerate the healing process for my clients.
Single sessions one on one sessions can be booked aswell as booking a course, which can really assist with deep, chronic issues and traumas. private gong baths for multiple people can also be arranged in the privacy of your own home, if you have the space. if you are interested in this, please contact me at portal@janine-nicole.com
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How does sound Heal?
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Everything is frequency. Sound is a vibrational medicine and brings the body, physical and subtle from a state of imbalance to balance. Sound has been utilized for thousands of years by various cultures, from chanting, using voice, to using instruments and there is also speculation that sound frequency could have been used to levitate objects as large as the stone that was used to build the pyramids in ancient Egypt.
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Sound baths help to facilitate shifts in our brainwave state by using entrainment. Entrainment synchronizes our fluctuating brainwaves by providing a stable frequency which the brainwave can attune to. By using rhythm and frequency, we can entrain our brainwaves and it then becomes possible to down-shift our normal Beta state (normal waking consciousness; 1230 cycles per second) to Alpha (relaxed consciousness, visualizing, fantasizing, daydreaming; 8-12 cycles per second), and even reach Theta (meditative state, dreaming sleep, having visions, memories, repressed emotions, heightened spiritual consciousness; 4-8 cycles per second) and Delta (deep sleep, subconscious relaxes, telepathy; where internal healing can occur). Therefore healing can occur at all of these levels, bringing traumas up to the surface or increasing states.
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One of the most effective ways to change the energy field is through a science named cymatics.
Though he was not the first to discover that sound could heal, Dr. Hans Jenny, M.D. of Basel Switzerland put together some fascinating experiments where we could literally ‘see’ how sound works. Jenny created ‘cymatics’ when he put sand, fluid or some other powder on a metal plate that was attached to an oscillator. An oscillator is essentially a vibrator, but his oscillator was controlled by a generator that was able to produce many thousands of types of frequencies. Some of these can be found in nature, and others are created by man. By changing the frequencies on the oscillator, Jenny found that sand, or water or whatever substance he was using to create a visible medium for his sound, would morph into some very interesting shapes. These shapes mimicked the properties of divine geometry, and the higher the frequency, the more complex the shapes would appear to be. What Jenny was observing was really a simple way of observing matter come to life. Since we now understand, through the emerging field of quantum physics, that patterns emerge via waves of energy, the plates were showing the scientist a similar phenomenon. In ancient Sumerian society, this was a known fact. This is why practices like mantra were held in high esteem. The seed syllable, OM, for example, causes a certain frequency to imprint upon the ‘matter’ around it, and thus changes the energetic field. Since all matter is just different frequencies of the collapsed wave, or quantum field, then we have the ability to create a different reality with sound.
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Over the past decade or so, many of the most reputable doctors have already been successfully treating patients using the power of sound and vibration, using a variety of applications. For example, ultrasound treatments, which emit vibrations from sound wave frequencies have been used to heal wounds, mend bone fractures, and unclog blocked arteries. This type of treatment is even being used to help shrink malignant tumours! Doctors are also using other vibration-based solutions like devices that stimulate the vagus nerve—the longest nerve in your body, spanning from your brain stem to your abdomen. These particular treatments are being used to reduce drug resistant epileptic seizures, alleviate treatment-resistant depression, and improve the balance in Parkinson’s patients so that they may walk again. Most recently, other sound frequency therapies use vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) to address even more health issues like: anxiety, brain injury rehabilitation, headaches, high blood pressure, inflammation, inflammatory bowel diseases, tendonitis, and trauma-induced pain. Despite their ancient origins, sound-and vibration-focused practices are finally being "rediscovered" by modern medicine. Sound and vibration enter the body naturally, and in some cases, can help the body heal itself without medications or risky surgeries. In Bali, the gong is used to treat Schizophrenia and drug addiction.
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What is the role of the gong in sound healing?
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It is said that the gong makes the sound ‘Aum’, the sound of creation. It makes it the most effective instrument that can be used for sound healing. The gong is the sound of total resonance, incorporating all of the tones and harmonics of the sound spectrum, of which we can hear audibly and those which we cannot. It can take us automatically into meditation. It is a member of ideophone group of instruments, which means it makes its sound from itself by vibrating (Humans when in peak health are also Ideophones). It is able to vibrate the entire body/bodies and bring it back into a state of harmony through forced resonance. The gong will take over the space and blank out all other surrounding sounds, as it is the highest producer of resonant tone.
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The gong creates layers of tones and overtones that when played produce dissonant harmony, which are said to have their resolution on the Spiritual plane. This Sacred dissonance is also called Functional Harmony. Every gong has a fundamental note, which is the lowest. These sounds created by the gong create Frequencies beyond human hearing. For me as an Energy Specialist, the healing begins in the Divine bodies, filtering all the way through to the physical. Of course, there may be trauma, blockages, destruction within the field, which the gong and other healing modalities will assist that person with their healing journey.
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Normally when a note is played on a different instrument there is an initial sound, then a decline in the volume, it dies away. When the gong is first struck, it produces the initial sound, then swells before fading audibly. You can hear this more, the larger the gong gets. When the gong is played with slow, repeated strokes, which causes the sound to blossom. This is also known as the returning of the sound.
The returning of the sound confuses the human ear and the mind can not make sense it the sounds.
The layers of overtones and harmonics build up on the returning sound, creating a sound envelope. It becomes a dissonant harmony that is unlike any other. It causes the cells to vibrate, therefore causing changes to the physical and subtle bodies. It is said that prolonged gonging causes whole brain synchronicity/ synaesthesia, a mixing of the senses, which is felt to be essential in healing, rejuvenation and transformation. Due to this, people can often hear what they believe to be different instruments of a choir of Angels and this is called a Sonal Bouquet, combination tones that split again and again when the instrument is struck.
An ascending spiral of overtones goes into infinity, which is based on the golden mean ration of 1.618, its roughly equivalent to a minor 6th.The gradually fading sound of the gong is known as The Sustain. The vibration can often be felt long after the audible sound has disappeared.
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What is the Golden Mean? Where is it found in nature and what is its relevance to the gong?
Divine proportions are found everywhere in Nature; from facial features of humans and animals, the sections of their bodies, the spiral of a seashell, the formation of a flower. The “golden ratio” (sometimes called the “golden mean” or “golden section”) is a fundamental geometric ratio that appears in a circumscribed equilateral triangle.
The value of the golden ratio is 0.618 or 1.618. It is an irrational number often symbolized by the Greek letter “phi” ( Φ, φ ) and can be expressed by this formula:
Many of the ways the golden ratio (as well as its rational form, the Fibonacci sequence) appears in nature are well-known – a quick list of examples includes flower petals, seed heads, pine cones, shells, spiral galaxies, hurricanes, faces, DNA molecules and many more. None of this is new. It would be news to many people, however, that the golden ratio makes many precise (100% accuracy) and near-precise (accuracy of and near 99.99…%) appearances in values related to astronomical bodies that are often surprising and interesting. For example it appears, notably, in black hole physics: the golden ratio is precisely the point where a black hole’s modified heat changes from positive to negative, and it is part of the equation for the lower bound on black hole entropy. The golden ratio even relates to the loop quantum gravity parameter to black hole entropy. Therefore, the golden ratio may be the fundamental constant of nature.
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The possibility for great healing can be seen in the science of sound. The picture of the Sri Yantra, a mandala created by sound, and said to be imagined by a yogi in deep meditation, is a representation of one of the oldest sounds in the world. Some call it a manifestation of divine sound. The triangles that appear in the Sri Yantra are perfectly integrated based on the divine number, Pi, which is also the basis for the golden mean, Phi. The Greek philosopher, Pythagorus understood sound and Divine geometry, and it was written about by Euclid in “Elements” around 300 B.C., by Luca Pacioli, a contemporary of Leonardo Da Vinci, in “De Divina Proportione” in 1509, by Johannes Kepler around 1600. Many others knew of this ‘cosmic’ mathematics, and its power to heal throughout the ages. The harmonics of sound work to create order out of chaos. Disease, you might say, is a form of chaos in the body. According to Dr. Robert Friedman, the connection between the Golden Ratio and ideal health was a no-brainer. In the 1980s, Dr. Friedman began observing the Golden Ratio throughout the human body—on the anatomical, physiological, and molecular levels. “The deeper I looked,” said Friedman, “the more deeply I discovered this incredible and ubiquitous Code to be embedded throughout the structure and function of the body…it only followed that the more one could harmonize with this grand principle, the more efficient and effortless life could be.”
Over millennia, those who have studied the science of sound, have come to understand that certain frequencies are very healing for the human body. Overall, however, you are trying to create resonance – “When two systems are oscillating at different frequencies, there is an impelling force called resonance that causes the two to transfer energy from one to another. When two similarly tuned systems vibrate at different frequencies, there is another aspect of this energy transfer called entrainment, which causes them to line up and to vibrate at the same frequency.” (Richard Gordon)
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When we ‘entrain’ with healing frequencies, our bodies and minds vibrate in harmony. These include:
285 Hz – Signals cells and tissues to heal. Leaves the body feeling rejuvenated.
396 Hz – Liberates guilt and fear to make way for higher vibrating emotions.
417 Hz – Allows the ‘undoing’ of challenging situations.
528 Hz – Said to heal DNA, repair cells, and awaken consciousness
639 Hz – This is the vibration associated to the heart. It allows feelings of love for self and ‘other’ until there is no longer a distinction. To balance relationships, listen to this frequency.
741 Hz – Said to clean the cells and heal them from exposure to electromagnetic radiation. Helps shift someone into empowerment so they can create the reality they wish to see.
852 Hz – Awakens intuition.
963 Hz – Activates the pineal gland, and aligns the body to its perfect, original state. Of course, there are further frequencies, many of which that are not even within the human range of hearing.
“At the root of all power and motion, there is music and rhythm, the play of patterned frequencies against the matrix of time. We know that every particle in the physical universe takes its characteristics from the pitch and pattern and overtones of its particular frequencies, its singing. Before we make music, music makes us.” – Joachim-Ernst Berendt, The World is Sound!
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Everything in Nature has its own note at which it resonates. During a sound healing session with the gongs, the human body is brought back into balance by the process of entrainment. Resonance forces our cells and organs back into balance. This happens when a more powerful tone imposes itself on a less powerful tone and they start to resonate together at the same pitch, the weaker succumbs to the more powerful. When the frequencies of the gong penetrate the body, any weaker part not resonating strongly on its own will pick up the appropriately resonating tones in the gong frequencies and start to resonate in sympathy with the more powerful tones. As there are such a wide and complex array of frequencies and harmonics within the gong, it is an ideal instrument to be used for sound healing.
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