Healing from the Ear
by Steve Rees, Ret. RN, Harpist
A new acquaintance that found my Calming Harp music online, introduced me to a goldmine of information that helped me to understand why the music I produce has such amazing effects on people for health benefits, sleep apnea, easing tensions, and so much more. Until I was introduced to this research, I was mostly dependent on anecdotal accounts of the benefits of the Calming Harp music and the frequency work that I have identified over the past decade and more.
This article is a synopsis of an article: THE THERAPEUTIC EFFECT OF HIGH-FREQUENCY AUDITION
The full text is available at http://weeksmd.com/?p=714
© Bradford S. Weeks M. D. 1986:
To be clear, the frequency work was not my original discovery as I attribute much of the information to Dr. Leonard Horowitz and Dr. Joseph Puleo. However, even Leonard called me one time and told me that they knew the frequencies had to do with music, but they didn't know what to do with it. He then told me, "But you know what to do with it musically." That has been my contribution to this fascinating field of discovery; bringing specific frequencies into music and identifying types of music that bring the desired results.
But what does music have to do with the ear? What may seem like an obvious answer, is much more involved than I had ever understood. Yes, we must "hear" music to receive the benefits it offers, and the ear is what we hear with. I discovered that there are two kinds of hearing. There is active hearing, or listening, in which we are focused on what the music is doing. There is also passive hearing in which our ear apparatus is receiving the energy sound waves from the source, but we are not paying attention. Each has different effects.
The article begins by acknowledging that there are different schools of thought and research connected to the study of the ear and its mechanisms.
"Orthodox: It is commonly understood that the ear is divided into three parts - the external ear (meatus and canal), the middle ear (tympanic membrane, ossicles, middle ear muscles) and the inner ear (vestibule and cochlea)."
"Unorthodox: An appreciation of embryology suggests that there are, practically speaking, only two ears - an external and an internal ear. We know that the embryo originally consists of a series of five branchial arches [3]. The adult ear develops from the first two. More specifically, the first brachial arch will develop into the first two ossicles of the ear (the malleus with its muscle and the incus) and falls under the enervation of the trigeminal nerve (5th cranial nerve). The second brachial arch produces the third ossicle (stapes with its stapedius muscle) and is innervated by the facial nerve (7th cranial nerve). More can be made of the other organs which arise from these first two brachial arches (lower jaw with adductive muscles from the first and upper part of the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the anterior ventral segment of the digastric muscle with opposes the jaw adductors) …. My point here is that the ear is functionally understood as tripartite while comprising a polarity. This distinction becomes therapeutically significant in terms of high-frequency audition."
This is just a look at the anatomical differences in understanding how the ear works and is structured. There are also other anatomical considerations as well. "The ear is now understood to be neurologically involved with the optic or 2nd cranial nerve, the oculomotor or 3rd cranial nerve, the trochlear or 4th cranial nerve, the abducens or 6th cranial nerve and the spinal-accessory or 11th cranial nerve which is responsible for posterior-lateral musculature of the neck."