Vision

There is a light in all of us that often dims as we grow. The conditioning and constructs of society can lead to destructive behaviors. What if we could catch this early? The Resonant People Project is committed to facilitating and researching the effects of sound and vibration to bring greater awareness and acceptance of this powerful modality.

The Resonant People Project organizes sound baths for different groups such as at risk youth, first responders and people diagnosed with autism. Sound practitioners use a variety of instruments such as quartz crystal bowls or gongs to help facilitate relaxation in a calm environment. The sound bath creates a deep cellular massage encouraging the body to come back into a tuned state and switch on our own natural healing abilities.

Through published research we hope to encourage more funding to create a community of sound practitioners offering sound therapy programs that are free for participants from under-served communities. The intention is to create formalized rituals around sound healing in every classroom, hospital,  workplace and in our homes.

Sound healing has been used by ancient cultures such as the Egyptians and Greeks for thousands of years. Pythagoras is credited with being the “Father of Mathematics” and he also discovered the musical intervals and taught that you could heal using sound and harmonic frequencies. He was the first person to prescribe music as medicine. He is considered the “Father of Harmonics”. It’s time to remind everyone of the healing potential of sound.

Mission

Our mission is to raise funds to create a team of sound practitioners and equip them each with a set of Quartz Crystal Singing bowls. Each practitioner will be trained and paid to facilitate sound baths on a regular basis. This will enable the communities that need this the most to have access to free and regular sound healing and it also provides a fair and consistent income to sound practitioners who are often undervalued and underpaid. We also intend to support the project with quantitative research to help understand why the sound healing is so beneficial.

Quantitative research - monitoring brain and heart activity during the sound bath sessions to understand what is actually happening. Through the use of high-tech monitoring equipment, Emotiv for EEG and HeartMath for VHR, we intend to see what is happening to volunteers during the sound bath.

The hope is that with this research paper, sound healing will become more widely accepted and funding can easily be raised to support free programs for teens and other populations in need.

History

Paradigm clinic in San Rafael runs a 5 week live-in program for teens suffering from conditions such as depression, addiction, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Over the last 12-months sound healing has been offered once a week using quartz crystal singing bowls. It has become clear through observations and documented feedback from the teens (250 verbal reports), how powerful sound can be as a treatment for these conditions. KQED radio interviewed one of the Paradigm clients in February 2017. She says the best medicine for her anxiety is the centers sound healing class, “The sound is so deep and really calms me and makes me tired.”

The aggregated feedback from the teens suggests that the sound healing sessions greatly help with the following: reduced anxiety, induces restful sleep during and after the session, clear blocks to allow access to suppressed trauma, creates peaceful emotions, sometimes elicit euphoria and often allow vivid insights and deeper understanding of themselves. It can also help with pain management, most notably headaches.

Traditionally teens are treated with talk therapy and medication which has its value, but on it's own isn't always capable of getting to the root of the issue. Pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in the amount of medication prescribed to teens. To use an analogy, medication is like a safety net for someone jumping off a roof. It will break their fall but will not address why they were on the roof in the first place.

Sound healing is a powerful complimentary medicine which elicits the relaxation response through well document sound techniques such as binaural beats and entrainment. During this relaxed meditative state stuck energy can be unblocked by the vibration, brainwaves lower in frequency, sleep is often induced due to melatonin release, lowering of blood pressure and heart rate, stimulation of the vagus nerve and sometimes accessing blocked trauma.

"If we accept that sound is vibration and we know that vibration touches every part of our physical being, then we understand that sound is heard not only through our ears but through every cell in our bodies.” Dr. Mitchell Gaynor