Sound baths, Meditation and Sound Waves

In MAD Academy, we were given the privilege and delight to work with Alex Falk in his sound baths. With all of us in our most at ease state, we would lie on the ground on matts and be enchanted with the vibrations as well as sounds of the Tibetan bowls used during the meditation. We all had been through multiple sound baths due to Alex's dedication and self transformation of it. When we first started it, I wasn't entirely sure what I was totally in for. If anything, it sounded like a form of witchcraft. However, once I got a taste of it, my conscious had completely mellowed out. Often, I'm at such a peaceful state during the baths, that I even find myself passed out at the end of it. The vibrations aren't sharp, but they're very delicate and overwhelming. They seem to have similar traits with the moment you're falling asleep that soothe your conscious state so well that you don't even have the full ability to take notice in it. Its almost a meditation like no other. You fall asleep while still conscious and its a stunning ability to realize you can have unknowingly.

We reach sounds through air being vibrated, torn and stretched in order to construct sound waves. When these waves make their travels through vibrations, our eardrums join with them in vibration, letting our brain welcome the sound to us.

Vibration of sounds moves continuously backwards and forwards. The different tones are seen to move so frequently at a consistent pace, that they form what is known as a binaural beat. This is the third internal tone of sound that is found especially when two different tones are accompanying each other.

For thousands of years in Central Asia, modern neuroscience has brought to our attention that sound meditation can heal us, inhabiting us in such a curious unknown space. It assists people in their process to healing mentally as well as physically. Sounds offer us a stronger immunity and has been seen to treat insomnia. Its an entirely valid tool used for altering a person's state of mind, helping them detect absolute stability within themselves.

Sound work is “creating a frequency and vibration for someone that’s conducive for him or her to heal,” says Joshua Leeds, the author of The Power of Sound and an expert in the field of psycho-acoustics, the study of the effects of sound on the human nervous system.

Carol Moore, a marketing director of Monroe Products (a place that sells verbal meditations and sound practices, stated, "When the brain is in synchronicity, there's more focus. Our sleep titles help drop you into the deep delta waves. Electrical activity in the brain gets slowed down."

This proves that sound baths can heal a person, and much more, let themselves be healed. Often your subconscious does not let you heal because part of you doesn't trust it. When it comes to sound baths, a person can break through starting with a location in the brain that needs to find peace.

I had the pleasure to join other students in a meditation session at MNDFL located in the lower east side.

SOUND WAVES

Sound consists of waves that are compressed and move through the air as well as other materials. Many know the study of of sound waves as acoustics. They travel in wavelengths, frequency, amplitude and speed. The way that sound waves are created are by the vibrations of an object. All sound waves move in the same fashion, traveling through certain mediums which create molecules, shaking them back and forth. However, they vary as well. Due to there being different volumes, loud and quiet, high-pitched and low-pitched, the energy made when these objects vibrate produce sound waves that have a very precise pattern that follows after them. Large sound waves have what we call a high amplitude, making us detect them in louder sounds. Despite the intensity of amplitude, sound waves' pitch is also very important. We call this frequency. This is just the number of waves an object with produce within a second.

Light and sound both travel like literal ocean waves. They crash, reflect and send out ripples. However, as the ocean waves work up and down, sound travels more in a back and forth sense. The vibration move through their mediums before even reaching our ears. We have the ability to hear the variety of sounds that we do, due to our ears having a vibration within them as well. It is not possible for sound to travel through an empty area of matter. An interesting fact about sound waves is that when traveling in water, sound can move around four times as faster when it travels through air. The speed of sound works up to 767 miles per hour.