CHAPTER 1
SONG OF THE SPINE
In the beginning
there was the word
the sound
the Song
IN ALL CREATION, animals communicate with sounds and songs.
The humpback sings beautiful songs that sound very much like
human ballads. It is only male humpback whales that are known
to sing, and their songs are like a deep, haunting mournful raga
that once heard cannot be forgotten. These songs contain complex
vibrational patterns, and although the humpback is capable of
singing over a range of seven octaves (similar to the range of the
piano), it typically sings notes belonging to only one octave. Like
humans, whales use rhythm to remember their songs from season
to season. Scientists believe that humpbacks use their songs to
communicate with one another over hundreds or even thousands
of miles. In some Native American cultures, it is said that whale
medicine shamans have the ability to tap into universal
consciousness.
Other mammals, such as bats, emit a steady stream of high-
frequency ultrasonic clicks or chirps, up to 200,000 times per
second. Electronic devices are needed to reduce these ultrasonic
sounds to frequencies our ears can hear. Bats use echolocation to
find their way and their prey. These echolocation chirps are
like musical notes, so that the bat receives a "musical" picture.
The timing of the echoes composes an image of the landscape
that describes the type of prey, the direction of its movement,
and its velocity. Medical researchers are now developing a
navigation device for blind persons that emits ultrasonic bat-like
calls and converts the echoes into sounds that can be heard
by the person using the device. Preliminary tests of the device
show that humans adapt remarkably well to the bat echolocation
system.
The American Museum of Natural History once had an alligator
named Oscar that would bellow a B-flat whenever it heard a B-flat
played on any kind of instrument. Some observers believe that the
B-flat bellow is used by alligators as a mating call. But perhaps
the alligator¿s B-flat bellow is something much more primordial.
Astronomers have recently discovered that a black hole in the
Perseus star cluster emits a B-flat sound wave 57 octaves below
the middle B-flat on a piano.
Birds compose songs using various rhythms, changing pitches and
permutations. Citing the work of the late Luis Baptista, Patricia
Gray (head of the biomusic program at the National Academy of
the Sciences) wrote, "The canyon wren's trill cascades down the
musical scale like the opening of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude."
Baptista's analysis revealed that the canyon wren sings in a
chromatic scale, which divides the octave into 12 semitones.
Birds can identify a wide range of frequencies and remember their
arrangement. Within a bird's song, many frequencies or tones may
be sounded simultaneously, and quite different birdcalls may sound
the same to our ears. A bird's brain can distinguish between the
subtle rise and fall of pitches, perceive the changes in the sound's
shape, and listen for repetitive patterns. So the next time you are
called a birdbrain, take it as a compliment!
An ancient Chinese proverb says: "A bird does not sing because
it has an answer -- it sings because it has a song."
Is it coincidental that many different species share a similar pattern
of songs and melodies? I think not.
Music calls to the heart of our emotions. Music can bring tears of
joy or tears of sadness. The appreciation of music is universal and
profound. The question remains whether there is any evolutionary
advantage to the songs of humans and other animals. In searching
for answers, many scientists are delving into the origins and
purpose of music.
Could it be that music predates human civilization or language?
I think so. Flutes made by Neanderthals more than 43,000 years ago
have been recovered in France and Slovenia by paleoanthropologists.
Where in the brain is music processed? Are there specialized
neurons that interpret music? According to Daniel J. Levitin
and other researchers, when a person listens to music, neural
structures in the cerebellar vermis, a primitive region of the
brain, are activated. Because music so profoundly affects our
emotions, Levitin suspects that it must have some ancient and
important function.
Levitin proposes that music stimulates our innate drive to find
patterns in the environment. He writes, "From our culture we learn
(even if unconsciously) about musical structures, tones, and other
ways of understanding music as it unfolds over time, and brains are
exercised by extracting different patterns." He also suggests that
music may serve as a means of communication.
The father of chiropractic, Daniel David Palmer, stated that
"Chiropractic is founded on tone." When the spine loses its "tone,"
the result can be what chiropractors call a subluxation, a partial
dislocation of the vertebrae that affects the nervous system and
surrounding tissues. There are 12 vertebrae in the primary or
kyphotic (thoracic) curve, which starts at the T1 vertebra and runs
through to T12. The secondary or lordotic (neck and lower back)
curves also have a total of 12 vertebrae.
It dawned on me that the spine, with its kyphotic and lordotic
curves, looks like a standing wave. A standing or stationary wave
consists of a wave and its reflection. Energy is transferred back and
forth between the two parts of the wave. Is it possible, I thought,
that some kind of energy echoes between the primary and
secondary curves of the spine in order to maintain the structural
and neural integrity of the spine and nervous system?
That question led to a long period of research into the resonance
of the spine. From physics, I learned that any object that vibrates
has its own natural resonance and that the range of the resonance
can be broad or narrow. When an object encounters vibrations
that are within its natural frequency, it will begin to oscillate and
produce vibrations that augment the original vibrations. I thought
that a vertebra, like most objects, is likely to have a natural
resonance. Because the vertebrae of the spine differ in size, shape,
and weight, each vertebra is likely to have its own natural frequency
of vibration.
My first step was to determine the resonant frequency of each
vertebra. Because of my background in music, I quite naturally
thought of using tuning forks to apply different frequencies to
the vertebrae. I used a technique called muscle testing to
determine if a specific frequency had a strong effect when
applied to a vertebra. Muscle testing is a comprehensive yet
exquisitely specific system for discovering the innate resonance
of the whole person.
I used 12 tuning forks, one for each of the 12 semitones in the
octave. I applied each of the 12 tuning forks individually to each
of the 24 vertebrae, and performed muscle testing during each
application. The results were remarkable: for each vertebra, only
one of the tuning forks resulted in a strong muscle-test response,
and the remaining 11 tuning forks produced weak responses.
In other words, each bone of the spine has its own tone and
frequency. These tones of the 24 movable vertebrae form what
I call the Song of the Spine.
The next step was to determine if applying specific vibrational
frequencies to the vertebrae would generate a sympathetic response
that would activate these embedded harmonics that lie within the
spine. In many cases, the results have been astounding. I call this
vibrational therapy bone toning. It is my great hope that this book will
stimulate and encourage others to experience the power of sound
healing, and further investigate the therapeutic uses of sound.
Although tuning forks have proved to be an effective tool for
restoring harmonic resonance in the spine, using them for extended
periods of time is not very practical. So I commissioned an
electronics engineer to build a device that generates the specific
vibrational frequency that I found corresponding to the bones of
the spine -- a device that can easily be applied to any location on
the spine. Such a frequency generator will soon be available to
researchers and practitioners.
Every system in the body has a rhythmical nature and inherent
harmony. This rhythmic harmony is expressed, for example, in the
expansion and contraction of the diaphragm, the beating of the
heart, and the circulation of the cerebrospinal fluid from the skull
to the sacrum. And to all this, we can now add the Song of the Spine.
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