A Private Experiment with Tone Therapy, Chez BR, Starring the Electrician, the Plumber, the Comcast Guy..
On vacation, I had a set of the N.O.W. speakers in my living room, a gift from the developer, Michael Joly.
It’s no secret that I love these things. When you press the PLAY buttons on them, each speaker randomly selects a tone sequence from about 120 of them, and whatever gets played on one syncs up with whatever is on the other speaker. You never know what you’re going to hear, which is why you can’t get so familiar with the sounds that you stop listening to them. So clever.
The tones are very pleasing – delicate but powerful. I can feel the effects in my bones, and it puts me in a calm, meditative state almost immediately.
I got a big kick out of sharing my N.O.W.s with my guests. I took to inviting random visitors to give them a try - my kids, grandkids, friends, neighbors, the electrician, the plumber, and the Comcast guy.
I don’t say much. I ask them if they have 3 minutes to try something and tell me what they think. I suggest they put one speaker close by, on either side of them, and then to just listen.
(I’ve come to think the sounds work best on a hard surface, but some people like to hold them in their hands or place them on their bodies. It all works. The proximity is a must, but other than that, you can put them wherever you like.)
With 2-3 exceptions out of about 30 people, I saw the same look in the eyes of my “subjects”, and the same soft expression, slower speech and smoother movements after the tones.
One family member reported that it took him a half-hour of meditating to get to the mind state he was able to reach after the 3 minutes of listening and that he’d be starting his practice with the tones. (I heard that from a few people).
The best was when a friend came over for lunch. She was a serious meditator and I was very curious about her reaction. She had a powerful response almost instantly, well before the 3 minutes were up. Then she said she had to listen again. And again. She had “the look”, in spades.
She then told me that she’d been having a very hard time with a difficult family member, her houseguest for the week, who’d gotten on her last nerve. She’d been having trouble getting any distance or perspective, and she had days to go, but the “pucks of peace” did it for her.
In her newly acquired peaceful state, she commanded me to hand over my laptop, where she ordered four of them – one for each family member! That was a jaw-dropper.
The only subgroup that didn’t seem to go for the N.O.W. tones as much as they like to listen to guided imagery was the grand dogs. They looked like they could take it or leave it, and one definitely preferred to leave it. I need to get more data on this canine response.
Anyway, I keep finding more uses for these marvelous things. Someone asked me for guided imagery to translate for calming hard-pressed docs and emergency workers, treating a traumatized population in the Middle East. It occurred to me that the tones bypass language and go right to the heart of healing - no translation needed. So how great is that?
Like I said, I love these things.
All best,
Belleruth
