CYMATIC THERAPY

Dr. Hans Jenny, a Swiss scientist, spent ten years of his life observing and photographing the effects of sound upon inorganic matter. He would put water and other liquids, plastics, paste and dust on steel plates and then vibrate these plates with different frequencies. Much of this work was originally inspired by the work of Ernst Chaldni, an eighteenth-century scientist who put grains of sand on glass and vibrated them with a violin bow. The sand would take on the most beautiful and symmetrical shapes. The experiments of Jenny took this understanding of the relationship between sound and form a quantum leap ahead.

Dr. Jenny spent thousands of hours experimenting with the effects of different frequencies upon the different inorganic substances he was using. Within the hundreds of photo- graphs which he and his staff took are pictures that look like starfish, human organs, microscopic bacteria and underwater life. In reality, these shapes are nothing more or less than lifeless mounds of plastic, dust and other inorganic material that had been exposed to sound.

Cymatics is the name which Dr. Jenny gave to his work. The name comes from the Greek kyma, a word which means wave. Cymatics is the study of wave-form phenomena. It is proof positive that sound has the ability of creating form. Once they are exposed to sound waves, the inanimate blobs of liquid, pastes, and other materials in Dr. Jenny's experiments begin to undulate and move. Slowly as the sound continues to affect them, they begin to take form. No longer shapeless blobs, these forms pulse and vibrate with the sounds that course through them, looking for all the world like living breathing creations. They are, however, not alive, but merely assume the features of life through the extraordinary power of sound. Once the sound is stopped, these shapes cease and the inorganic creations resume their shape as formless blobs.

Dr. Jenny, in Volume II of Cymatics wrote:

Now it is beyond doubt that where organization is concerned, the harmonic figures of physics are in fact essentially similar to the harmonic patterns of organic nature.... In the first place, we have the certain experience that harmonic systems such as we have visualized in our experiments arise from oscillations in the form of intervals and harmonic frequencies. That is indisputable. ... If biological rhythms operate as generative factors at the interval-like frequencies appropriate to them, then harmonic patterns must be necessarily forthcoming.

According to Dr. Jenny, harmonics and harmonious patterns are interrelated. The intervals created by the frequencies and their harmonics were responsible for giving shape to the different substances with which Dr. Jenny experimented.



Barbera Hero


Barbara Hero has demonstrated a similar effect of harmonics using a laser and scanner system. Barbara placed a mirror under a speaker system which vibrated the mirror when two different frequencies were created. She then projected a laser at the mirror and the laser was reflected on to a screen, revealing the images created by the sounds. Barbara found that those intervals which were created by the harmonic series created shapes which were geometrically perfect. These shapes, such as a circle, remained stationary as long as the intervals were sounding. Intervals which were not harmonically related created shapes that were not geometrically perfect and their shapes decayed.

Barbara experimented with the human voice using this laser and scanner system. The results were the same. When two people sang notes that were harmonically related, the perfectly symmetrical geometric shapes appeared. This was especially true when the people created vocal harmonics. When the voices created sounds that were not harmonically related, the shapes were not symmetrical.

The potential of the voice as a healing and transformational instrument intrigued Dr. Hans Jenny, whose experimental focus consisted of
But the real work on what might be called melos, or speech, is still to be done. This brings the larynx and its action in the scope of our studies. And at the same time, we are confronted with origination of vibrations effects, the generative element; we must learn about the larynx as a creative organ which displays a kind of omnipotent nature .