Tuning Fork Therapy

A tuning fork is a steel instrument with two prongs that acts as an acoustic resonator (Oriental Healing Oasis). Tuning forks create vibration usually just by being struck with the heel of the hand. Each tuning fork has a different frequency ranging from 64 Hz to 4096 Hz, but typically 128 Hz is used.

After being struck the tuning forks produce waves creating strong vibrations in the air. Our brains process these sounds and it changes the flow of energy in the body.

It also may help repair DNA structure.

Because tuning forks help with self-healing, the balance of energy from tuning fork therapy can help the body receive greater benefits from other healing modalities such as massage, yoga, or even meditation. 

Who Can Tuning Fork Therapy Help?

Tuning forks can help people of all ages at all stages of their life. Tuning fork therapy helps with biofield (field of energy surrounding a person) imbalances. Biofield imbalances can be created by emotional constructs, including victimhood, codependency, addiction, discontent with aging or health challenges, feelings of unworthiness, or poor body image (McKusick). It is one of those things where it can help even if you don’t have a glaring health issue, the body is constantly shifting and experiencing changes in the biofield.

Evidence for the existence of the biofield now exists, and current theoretical foundations are now being developed (NCBI, 2015). 

How Can Tuning Forks Help with Healing?

Possible benefits seen with tuning forks include improving:

• Anxiety
• Chronic Stress
• Inflammation
• Digestion
• Physical Energy
• Sleep
• Balancing Nervous System
• Allergic Reactions
• Cognition
• Joint Pain
• Recovery from Muscle Strains & Increases Bone Density 

Improves your circadian rhythm (the natural cycles of your body); helping your body to balance and lead to healing physically, emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically (Oriental Healing Oasis). It brings the body back to homeostasis.

A person will begin in a comfortable lying down position. Then, a tuning fork will be activated by striking it against a professional mallet, the palm of the hand, or hitting a knee cap lightly. You will then hear the sound of it, and the tuning fork will vibrate in the person’s hand a couple of hundred times per second. The tuning fork actually produces waves in the air that create vibrations.

The tuning forks are passed over different areas of the body to help with healing. Just like a musical instrument is tuned, the body is tuned using tuning forks. Tuning fork therapists follow specific techniques and steps for moving the tuning forks through a person’s energy field around their body.

The type of tuning fork used will depend on what waves need to be created to help the body to heal. These back-and-forth vibrations disturb the air molecules surrounding the tuning fork at great speed, smashing more air molecules that, in the end, hit our eardrums and get processed by our brains as gentle humming sounds (Sound Healing Academy). Since the body is 75% water it is a good conductor of sound, so the sounds help release energy blockages in the body. Energy will then flow more freely through the body getting the body back to a homeostasis state. The nervous system also becomes more balanced allowing for mental clarity.

Understanding the Energy in the Body

All living things are made up of energy and have an energy field. Each cell in the body is made up of energy. All of our cells emit energy in different ways, and different cells will emit different kinds of energy depending on where they are located within the body and what their job is (Berman, 2016). The concept of the body being made up of energy in present in Chinese medicine (Acupuncture), Qigong, Ayurveda Medicine, Yoga, Reiki healing and more. This is also present in modern medicine with radiation, lasers, sound vibrations, and different forms of magnetic energy therapies.

NOTE: Have you heard of the 528 Hz frequency being the love frequency? Sounds do have an effect on the body. There is actual science tied to this, it isn’t a new discovery. The connection between music, cosmos and nature has been known since ancient times (Lovetuner, 2022).

The energy system in the body has chakras and meridians that perform specific functions. Tuning fork therapists have special training on the meridians and the chakras of the body.

When the body pulls energy in, the energy at the chakra point will swirl counterclockwise, and when it pushes energy out of the body it will swirl clockwise at the chakra point. They take in the universal life energy that always surrounds you and transform it into subtle frequencies your energy system needs to keep you healthy (Nancy M.). If one of your chakras is closed or underactive, there is a very good chance that another chakra will be overactive to make up the difference (Berman, 2016).

This concept of the chakras has been in existence for thousands of years and is supported by multiple cultures and medicinal therapies. Each chakra corresponds with a set of organs and systems in the body. There are seven chakras located at specific places along the body’s meridians.

Seven Chakras:

• Root Chakra (adrenal glands, spine, blood, and reproductive organs)
• Sacral Chakra (kidneys and reproductive organs: ovaries, testes, and uterus)
• Naval/Solar Plexus Chakra (central nervous system, digestive system, liver, pancreas, metabolic system)
• Heart Chakra (thymus gland and immune system, heart, lungs, breasts, arms, hands)
• Throat Chakra (thyroid, neck, throat, shoulders, ears, and mouth)
• Third Eye Chakra (pituitary, eyes, brow, base of skull, biorhythms)
• Crown Chakra (pituitary and pineal glands, brain, hypothalamus, cerebral cortex, central nervous system)

Energy also flows along meridians. Meridians are a web of energy streams that flow through the body and connect at certain points. They were mapped out and numbered by the Chinese over 5,000 years ago. It has been validated by western science with the use of sensitive electrical devices.

We also possess an energy field around the body called an aura. An aura is so subtle that Western science has yet to measure it, though it has been detected with methods like Kirlian photography (Nancy M.).

Eventually they were made into sets to help measure other sounds as tone generators. As a very precise scientific instrument, they eventually became popular for high-precision timing standards. Albert Michelson, for example, used light reflected from the vibrating tines of a tuning fork to make his historic measurements of the speed of light (Smithsonia).

Tuning forks are also used in watches to create the most precise, long lasting watches. This is due to quartz transforming energy into mechanical energy allowing the quartz to continuously vibrate until it finally deteriorates.

In the 1970’s Fabien Maman, professional jazz musician, worked with Helen Grimal, the senior researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, on new discoveries. They studied the effects sound has on cells using all different types of musical instruments. They discovered that at 30-40 decibets, the sound always produced changes in the cells and the higher up the musical scale they went, the frequency would travel outward from the center of the cell to its outer membrane (Milford). Additionally, by passing sound waves through different organs of the body, Barbara Hero along with the International Lambdoma Research Institute calculated optimal frequency for each organ. They did this with mathematical formulas utilizing the speed of sound.

Tuning fork therapy was officially established in the 1960s by Sir Peter Guy Manners, an English Osteopath. He saw the potential of healing with tuning forks for chronic inflammation, arthritis, and more.

There are specific tuning forks you want to use based on what you are working to heal the body. Some tuning forks generate more sound and shouldn't touch the body, but just hover over the area of the body that needs healing, others are to be placed on joints to help reduce pain. Tuning forks may also be placed on different chakras or energy points along the spine to help with energy healing. This can help improve the health of organs.

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https://meinlsonicenergy.com/en/topics/tuning-fork-therapy

Sound Healing Academy/How to Use Tuning Forks for Healing. (2022, August 1). Retrieved from: https://www.academyofsoundhealing.com/blog/how-to-use-tuning-forks-for-healing

Oriental Healing Oasis/Tuning Fork Therapy. Retrieved from:

https://orientalhealingoasis.com/tuning-fork-therapy

THE SPRING RESORT & SPA/THE BENEFITS OF TUNING FORK THERAPY. Retrieved from: https://the-spring.com/the-benefits-of-tuning-fork-therapy/

Smithsonia/Tuning Forks. Retrieved from:

https://americanhistory.si.edu/science/tuningfork.htm#:~:text=The%20invention%20of%20the%20tuning,they%20are%20still%20used%20today.

Milford, Francine NCBTMB, LMT. Tuning Fork Therapy/The History of Tuning Fork Therapy. Retrieved from: http://www.tuningforktherapy.com/about.html

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https://theshiftnetwork.com/Harmonize-Imbalances

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https://www.thesoulmedic.com/chakras-the-art-of-harmonizing-the-energy-body/

Martyr, Philippa. (2019, November 21). THE CONVERSATION/From Marie Kondo’s tuning fork to vibrators for ‘hysteria’: a short, shaky history of curing with vibrations. Retrieved from:

https://theconversation.com/from-marie-kondos-tuning-fork-to-vibrators-for-hysteria-a-short-shaky-history-of-curing-with-vibrations-127443#:~:text=But%20it%20wasn't%20until,arthritis%2C%20and%20even%20bacterial%20infections.

Lovetuner (2022, July 21). NEWSWIRES/The Science Behind the 528 Hz Frequency. Retrieved from:

https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/582366013/the-science-behind-the-528-hz-frequency

Kfatos PhD, Menas C. Chevalier PhD, Gaetan. Chopra MD, Deepak. Hubacher MA, John. Kak PhD, Subhash. Theise MD, Neil D. (2015, November 1). NIH/ Biofield Science: Current Physics Perspectives. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4654779/#:~:text=Evidence%20for%20the%20existence%20of,of%20origin%20of%20the%20biofield.