Gaynor - The healing power of sound : recovery from life-threatening illness using sound, voice, and music

Dr. Mitchell Gaynor is one of the physicians who is crafting the medicine of the future.

Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words and Healing Beyond the Body: Medicine and the Infinite Reach of the Mind

This book is about healing your life through rhythm and harmony. Read it and learn how to orchestrate your life.

Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles

ABOUT THE BOOK

Since 1991, Dr. Mitchell Gaynor has been achieving remarkable results by integrating music, vocalization, breathing, and meditation techniques in his work with patients. In The Healing Power of Sound, he presents his sound-based techniques for self-healingtechniques that anyone can use, whether faced with a life-threatening disease or simply seeking relief from the stresses of daily life.

Numerous studies have demonstrated the health benefits of music: it can lower blood pressure and heart and respiratory rates; reduce cardiac complications; increase the immune response; and boost our natural opiates. Gaynor shows how, when integrated as part of a mind-body-spirit approach to wellness, music can play a significant part in maintaining a healthy lifestyle or in healing serious disease. The Healing Power of Sound includes twelve exercises involving breathing, meditation, and toningusing pure vocal sound to resolve tension, release emotion, and spur the healing processthat can be used by anyone to improve health and quality of life.

MITCHELL L. GAYNOR, M.D., is the founder and president of Gaynor Integrative Oncology and has held the position of Director of Medical Oncology and Integrative Medicine at the Strang-Cornell Cancer Prevention Center, affiliated with New York Hospital. The author of Healing Essence and Dr. Gaynors Cancer Prevention Program, he has been featured in numerous publications, including Newsweek, USA Today, Fitness, Healthy Living, and Common Boundary. He lives in New York City.

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The Healing Power of Sound

Recovery from Life-Threatening Illness Using Sound, Voice, and Music

Mitchell L. Gaynor, M.D.

Shambhala

Boston & London

2013

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1999 by Mitchell L. Gaynor, M.D.

The author acknowledges permission to reprint the following:

Excerpt from "What Is Toning and How Do You Do It?" in The Healing Voice by Joy Gardner-Gordon. Copyright 1993. Reprinted with permission from The Crossing Press, P.O. Box 1048, Freedom, CA, 95019.

Excerpt adapted with permission from Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY, 10016, from Healing Imagery & Music by Carol A. Bush, copyright 1995 by Carol A. Bush.

Excerpt from The Mother Within You by Shelley Katsh and Carol Merle-Fishman. Copyright Barcelona Publishers, 1998. Reprinted by permission of Barcelona Publishers, 4 Whitebrook Road, Gilsum, NH 03448.

Excerpts from Your Sixth Sense by Belleruth Naparstek 1997, by Belleruth Naparstek. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Excerpt taken from Infinite Happiness , written by Masami Saionji. Copyright 1996, by Masami Saionji. Used by permission of Element Books, Boston, MA.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gaynor, Mitchell L., 1956

[Sounds of healing]

The healing power of sound: recovery from life threatening illness using sound, voice, and music/Mitchell L. Gaynor.1st Shambhala ed.

p. cm.

Originally published: Sounds of healing. New York: Broadway Books, c1999. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2426-3

ISBN 978-1-57062-955-6

1. Music therapy 2. Holistic medicine I. Title

ML3920 .G22 2002

615.85154dc21

2002004533

To the Children of Tibet

DISCLAIMER

The patients whose stories Ive told in this book have given me consent to use their clinical histories. To protect their privacy, I have changed names, transposed events, merged the stories of different people, and altered identifying characteristics. The techniques described in this book are no substitutes for professional care. Because everyone is different, a physician must diagnose individual conditions and supervise all health problems. I urge you to seek out the best medical resources available to help you make informed decisions.

Contents

I would like first and foremost to acknowledge my wife, Cathy for her ever-present love and encouragement. I would also like to thank Narayani Amma for the wisdom, kindness and healing that is being created at the Peedam in Vellore, India and from there imparted to the world. I am also indebted to Deborah Chiel for her invaluable creative input and editorial assistance; without her, this book could not have been written. My agent Jim Levine, has been unfailingly encouraging, insightful, and wise in his ability to bring this book to fruition. Thank you to the superb team of individuals at Shambhala who have labored with me to make this book a reality, especially Joel Segel. Special thanks are in order to all the physicians and staff at the Weill-Cornell Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine Center whose commitment to the scientific study of holistic medicine and nutrition remains steadfast.

The following individuals were also very generous with their time and expertise in the area of sound, music, and mind-body healing: Bracha Adrezin; Phoebe Atkinson; Joseph-Mark Cohen; Shulamith Elson; Steven Halpern; Shelley Katsh, C.M.T.B.C.; C.S.W.; Govindha McRostie, O.M.D., N.D.; Hollis Melton; Jim Oliver; Con Potanin, M.D.; Jill Purce; Mark Rider, Ph.D.; Linda Rodgers, C.S.W.; Bri. Maya Tiwari; Jeffrey Thompson, D.C.; and Alicia Trombla. A special thanks to Henry Dreher, who unstintingly shared his time and knowledge of the mind-body field.

I would also like to thank those teachers who have facilitated my own growth and abilities as a physician-healer: Dr. Larry Dossey, Dr. Robert Jaffe, Fran Richey, Shylapa Rinpoche, Ron Young, Masayoshi Yamaguchi, and Dr. Bud Rickhi.

The Singing Bowls

I n 1991, I was asked by another attending physician at New York Hospital to evaluate a new patient in the Intensive Care Unit. I was immediately drawn to dsal, a Tibetan monk in his late thirties, a gentle, soft-spoken man, whose warmth and humility were tinged with a sense of sorrowful stoicism. dsal had a rare disease called cardiomyopathy, an enlargement of the heart that normally results in congestive heart failure. As is typical of people with this life-threatening ailment, he had developed progressive anemia and was extremely ill. He urgently needed a heart transplant but was having no success finding a match.

Having been brought in for a hematology consultation, I proceeded to conduct a battery of tests and started him on the appropriate drug regimen to combat his anemia. Because I subscribe to the beliefwell researched by mind-body scientiststhat what happens to us on the emotional and spiritual levels affects us physiologically, I asked dsal to tell me something about his background and how he had grown up.

He explained that he had fled his native Tibet as a young child with his parents and brother after the Chinese invaded his country in 1950. He vividly recalled the searing sense of dislocation and poverty that he and his family experienced as exiles in India. The family lived a hand-to-mouth existence; there was barely enough money for food. When he was three years old, his parents decided to leave him and his brother at an orphanage rather than watch the two children starve to death. All these years later, his pain was still fresh when he described his feelings of abandonment, how he called out to his mother and father as they said good-bye and walked away.