Coffee Talks are free, engaging, informal lectures on music topics by MM ensemble members, staff, and friends.
From time immemorial, people have intuitively felt that sound promotes healing. For centuries, chants, songs, and various instruments have been used to restore harmony of body, mind and spirit. Nowadays, Midsummer’s Music lovers have experienced the health-promoting frequencies of glorious music every time they’ve attended a concert.
Science is finally providing evidence for this intuition. Physicists have shown that everything is in a state of vibration, including our bodies. Albert Einstein wrote, “We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned to the cosmos.”
Vibrations passing through matter in the form of waves are what we experience as sound. Even frequencies that are too high or low for the human ear are registered as vibrations in our bodies. We pick up audible and inaudible sounds all the way down to a cellular level. Researchers at Columbia found that cilia (antenna-like structures on our cell membranes) quiver like tuning forks, and vibrations in the environment (sounds) cause the cells to change shape. This has been linked to conditions as wide-ranging as arthritis, heart failure and cancer. Sound medicine is being incorporated into services provided by an increasing number of hospitals, such as the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Maja has long believed that the mechanistic model of health she learned in medical school is too narrow. She has found that sound offers a pathway to inner balance that is accessible to everyone and loves to share the science and art of sound healing.
Experience this for yourself as she plays her crystal alchemy singing bowls. And since breath is the language of the body, learn how to use yours to change your physiologic state (it’s like a superpower you never knew you had). Be ready for some fun toning with the bowls and retune, refresh and restore body, mind and spirit as your cells respond to the resonant frequencies of the sounds. Leave feeling reconnected with joy and wonder.
Seating is limited. Please reserve your free tickets.