Sound Health: music as medicine for the new millennium

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  Oct, 2002  by Lily G. Casura

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Recently, I had an opportunity to attend the first annual international conference of the "Music for Healing and Transition Program," held at Seattle University and featuring speakers from across the US. The conference's decidedly holistic mission was to "explore live music and resonant sound in healing as it applies to wholeness in body, mind and spirit." Of particular interest to readers will likely be the work of composer and sound researcher, Joshua Leeds, and Dr. Arthur Harvey, who researches the effects of music on the mind and body. In this issue, we'll take a look at Joshua Leeds' work.

Joshua Leeds' name may be familiar to some readers from his collaborative work with Andrew Weil, MD, on the 1997 recording, Sound Body, Sound Mind: Music for Healing, or his earlier work with Louise Hay. He's also the author of several books, including Sonic Alchemy and The Power of Sound. Joshua Leeds is a composer, music producer and sound researcher who lives in the Bay Area, and presented a workshop on the topic of "Psychoacoustics for Musicians, Therapists and Educators." He also closed the conference with a keynote address on "Music and Sound: Frequency Medicine for the 21st Century." In addition to his own work writing, speaking and recording, Leeds teaches seminars on psychoacoustics for healthcare and education professionals as well as musicians, producers and recording engineers.

Leeds has an extensive background of several decades in various aspects of sound, as a recording engineer, a composer, author, a sound researcher, and most recently, something of what he would call a "sonic activist," raising awareness about noise pollution and the importance of being able to have your own personal sonic space. He's done some exceptionally interesting work in the new field of psychoacoustics, studying the effects of sound on brainwave function, and then using his composing, recording and producing talents to produce recordings that optimize these findings.

Leeds says humorously that he first heeded the call of Apollo, ancient Greek god of music and medicine, years ago. Musicians, he claims, are "frequency doctors." Body pulses (heart, breath, brainwaves and craniosacral fluid all have them) all speed up or slow down to match an external, regular pulse -- that's rhythm. Everything emits sound, he says, but we can't always hear what that is. And through resonance, one sound can create another. "When you're creating music," says Leeds, "you're sculpting atomic material."

Leeds was greatly influenced by the groundbreaking work of Alfred Tomatis, the French physician and ear specialist, often called "the Einstein of the Ear," whose work Leeds discovered in 1986. (Tomatis passed away in December of 2001). Tomatis' work demonstrated the ear's importance to the human system, showing, for example, that the sense of hearing is surprisingly evident in utero, four and half months before birth, making it the earliest of the functional senses to develop. Much of Tomatis' work centered on the importance of two tiny muscles in the middle ear, the Tensor tympani and the Staedipus, which he showed could be toned, exercised and retrained, for example in the case of hearing damage. Tomatis understood the importance of the auditory nerve, and developed ways to stimulate the ear to improve learning and behavior. The Tomatis Method, better known in Europe and elsewhere, has demonstrated success with difficult therapeutic and educational problems such as stuttering, autism, dyslexia, balance, mo tor control and integration by showing that they can in fact, be controlled and improved by the ear.

Leeds found his work revolutionary and it spurred his interest in the brand-new field of psychoacoustics, the scientific study of the perception of sound. (Anna Wise, who worked with Leeds and Andrew Weil, MD, on the Sound Body, Sound Mind series, specializes in music and its effect on brainwave states, is also a pioneer in this field, as are several others).

Collaborating with fellow musician Richard Lawrence, and the Archangelos Chamber Ensemble, which Lawrence directs, Leeds in 1999 produced "The Sound Health" series, a set of eight CDs using "psychoacoustically refined arrangements" of classical music in a "therapeutic application of music and sound." Leeds and Lawrence believe the selections, arranged by CD according to topic -- concentration, relaxation, inspiration, etc. -- can have an impact on health, learning and productivity, and they make use of sophisticated sound engineering concepts such as gating and filtration to accomplish their goals. (Listeners beware, though: this music is powerful stuff. I came home from the conference so intrigued that I listened to too much of it back to back and had to call my acupuncturist for help with what amounted to a self-induced sonic overdose. Now I'll be careful to approach these enjoyable CDs with the respect they deserve -- considering them music as medicine.)

The "Sound Health Series" is partway down the continuum between what Leeds calls "over the counter sound" and "prescriptive sound." (The Weil collaboration CD, while still powerful, is towards the 'OTC' end.) A more recent series, produced by Leeds in collaboration with Utah's Advanced Brain Technologies, is what Leeds refers to as more prescriptive sound. "The Listening Program" is "a music and sound stimulation method designed to train the auditory system," according to the manufacturer, which adds that "this innovative program may be used by people of all ages to enhance listening skills and remediate auditory perceptual problems." They suggest benefits may be found with "attentional problems, learning problems, central auditory processing difficulties, difficulty retaining information, sound sensitivities, and energy level and confidence."