Music of many different genres can help enhance the mind/body connection. Healing mantras, chants, and incantations have ancient and obscure origins but are seen throughout history and in every major world culture -Hinduism, Muslim, Judaism, Native American, Polynesian, Asian, Sufi, etc.
The power of chant involves bridging the two worlds of humanity and eternity. It allows a person to touch a deeper world that is organic and flowing. Chant has no set rhythm and is based on the breath in combination with tonal patterns of sustained vowels.
Toning is a powerful form of chant with many definitions. Laurel Elizabeth Keyes, forerunner of toning as a healing art, and author of Toning: The Creative Power of the Voice, says, “Toning is an ancient method of healing… the idea is simply to restore people to their harmonic patterns.”
Don Campbell describes toning as, “Simple and audible sound, prolonged long enough to be identified. Toning is the conscious elongation of a sound using the breath and voice.”
John Beaulieu, author of Music and Sound in the Healing Arts says, “Toning is the simple and natural process of making vocal sounds for the purpose of balance… toning sounds are sounds of expression and do not have a precise meaning.”
Keyes recounts the time when she first started to experiment with toning. She said that it was more than just a release of tension. When she allowed the tones to emerge without trying to control them, she experienced a cleansing of her whole body.
Toning and chant have been making their way into mainstream culture over the last 20 years. Chant, the popular recording from the early 1990 by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, Spain, sold over 4 million copies in 42 countries by the spring of 1994.
These monks have committed themselves to a lifestyle that is based on cycles. Others do not experience these cycles in the world in the same way.
The cycles revolve around the sacred liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, and include an intricate series of interlocking patterns within the organisation. By submitting themselves to these cycles, the monks actually become part of this great tapestry of history and sound.
Katherine Lee Mee, producer of the CD, says about this recording, “Time seems to stop. The darting mind falls still and attentive, arrested from its worldly concerns and preoccupations… like fire, each line has its own brightness and energy, a force that is called forth, raised and then surrendered.
Like water, the music rises and falls in a gentle wave of love that bathes, cleanses, and caresses our spirits, leaving us buoyed up and restored.”
The San Francisco Examiner music critic said this about Chant, “What we’re talking about is inner peace, transcendence, a serenity, beyond mortal care. For a generation that frowns on organised religious movements (or organised anything), this is, without a doubt, the new soul music.”
Powerful effective responses to music can be witnessed in the lives of spiritual masters. Their physical health reflects their spiritual health as well. They experience this power through practising the art of music and chant as a means of obtaining spiritual enlightenment.
Where did the ancient chants originate? Were they evolved from logical thought processes that were later transferred to a musical format? Or rather, were they birthed from those who had learned to harness the healing powers of their spirit, and given expression through their spiritual practice to bring the ecstatic experience into vocal and instrumental form through music?