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>> Researchers in the 1960s began noticing that
by introducing music to psychedelic therapy sessions,
the anxiety and emotional stress would alleviate.
They would report that the feelings and visuals
of the experience had more profound meaning to their life
and circumstances.
Classical and world music was found to be more
universally appreciated.
However, the preferences had a wide range
due to people's personal history and present mood.
But it's not simply music that causes a profound alteration
of psychedelic states.
Simple sounds and vibrations can deeply
influence the unfolding of an altered state of consciousness.
What if there were simple sonic techniques
we could employ in order to navigate the ever-changing
and often intense phenomenon of a psychedelic journey?
What if the understanding of vibration on the body
could give us a glimpse of why music and psychedelics go
together so well and why our shamanic ancestry has
been using sonics and psychedelics together for ages?
>> Music and sound can not only enhance psychedelic journeys
but can initiate psychedelic experiences without anything
else.
There are many traditions throughout the planet
that in order to enter altered states of being will simply
use sound.
Whether it is their voice, or drumming, or bowls, or bells,
or some sort of other instrumentation,
this basically alters all sorts of aspects
of the brain and our consciousness.
The instruments that have been used
to achieve altered states of consciousness
have been multitude, myriad, and many.
Probably the most popular, of course, has been the voice--
shaman and priests and various types
of practitioners using different mantras,
making different tones, speaking in different tongues,
altering different states of consciousness,
literally shifting the vibrational
frequencies of the space, within and without,
using their own voice.
>> Vibration plays a role in many of the world's religions,
especially in their stories of how the world began.
In Genesis 1, verse 2, God's spirit
moved across the face of the waters.
The Cherokee wisdom-keeper Dhyani Ywahoo
states that in their creation myth,
"from the mysterious creator came forth
a sound, the fundamental tone of the universal song underlying
all manifestation."
Native American Peyote Church Roadman Kuauhtli Vasquez
recounts the creation myth of his ancestry
and how sound or vibration played a vital role.
>> They say that in our culture, the creator spirit wanted
the world to begin in motion.
So he told the old coyote to go to the ocean
and take one of those conch shells
out and make a trumpet out of it.
And when he blew it, it started creating
this spiral wave of sound, which sounds kind of like ohm.
So the old coyote blew it, and this
started everything vibrating.
So when you speak, you're vibrating
at a level of the mind.
Like, you understand what I'm saying
if we speak the same language.
Sometimes when I hear people singing songs, I can visualize.
I get a feeling of what they're singing about.
So singing is another form of communication
that supersedes the mind.
You don't really have to understand the words,
but you get the feeling.
>> This is where yogis, just like other shamanic traditions,
actually start to use sound.
So there's an understanding that sound is vibration,
and that vibration is at the essence of everything.
And usually our awareness is caught in all this noise
and sound of the outside world.
A lot of times, it'll be a mantra.
And what's important to know and understand about mantras
is that mantras are vibrations.
They're not things that we make up.
They're actually sound frequencies and vibrations
that are already part of this physical world.
And so as yogis start to hone their awareness in, detach
from the outside world, the awareness starts to pull in.
You can actually start to hear more subtle frequencies, more
subtle vibrations, more subtle sounds.
And this is where the yoga tradition
will say that we're starting to tap
into different levels of consciousness.
We start to move beyond the thinking mind that
identifies us as this body, as this person,
as our experiences.
And we start to drop more into a state that is
beyond the mind, a state of--
instead of individual consciousness,
we start to merge with universal consciousness, which
is really the essential goal, if you will, of all yoga.
>> Yogis using mantra seems to be different than speaking from
the intellect.
Oftentimes, plant medicine enthusiasts
will structure their ceremony or journey with a focus
on using as few words as possible, as they
can be irritating and distracting except for when
those words are sung.
The vocal apparatus of the human body is very complex.
The power comes from the lungs.
The vibration comes from the vocal box.
And the resonation comes from the throat, nose, mouth,
and sinuses.
Speaking comes from the same range of anatomy
as does singing.
But the active use of them is as different
as walking is to dancing.
The greatest difference is the psychological state
one is usually in when singing as opposed to speaking.
The very act of singing, opening the throat
and holding extended notes, directly
affects the nervous system through the vagus nerve.
>> So the vagus nerve, extremely important nerve,
wanders through your entire body.
People who are stressed out and sick
have poor vagal nerve tone.
Sound is one thing that can affect it, particularly
vibrations, vibrations created through sound,
which means that when you sing, when you hum,
when you chant, when someone around you
is singing and humming and chanting,
when you're listening to very good music,
you actually see an improvement in vagal nerve tone.
And an improvement in vagal nerve tone
specifically affects your heart, the electrical signal
of your heart.
And so, absolutely, sound can affect vagus nerve tone
in a very profound manner.
>> In over 25 years of studies coming from HeartMath
Institute, it has been found that the heart sends far more
information to the brain than the other way around.
The heart, in fact, influences emotional processing,
attention, perception, memory, and even problem solve.
And under a psychedelic state, all these faculties
are highly influential in the way the experience will unfold.
So how does an act as simple as humming
have such a deeply relaxing effect on the body?
>> We found that the hum literally is a sound that is
probably the most powerful vibroacoustic tool that exists.
When you close your eyes and [HUMMING],, it's more powerful.
As soon as you open your mouth-- and of course,
the ohm, if you like, is based on the hum.
If you go (HUMMING) ohm, but it's just to go [HUMMING],,
as soon as you open your mouth, the sound
begins to escape through your mouth.
But if you have your mouth closed,
it's totally a vibroacoustic experience
causing a massage on a cellular level
and causing different organs, bones, and tissues to vibrate.
And when we project our intention onto the sound,
that can really affect it as well.
So it can really affect our nervous system.
And this type of thing has been used for eons,
ever since, if you like, one made a holy sound,
or one made a sacred sound, or one did a prayer to the divine,
or one did a prayer to the animal kingdom,
or one emulated the sounds of jaguar,
to when one emulated the sounds of all sorts
of different creatures on this planet.
They've been using sound to travel
to different states of consciousness
since the beginning.
The voice is our primary instrument.
And I think even before we spoke, we made tone.
And in fact there are, if you like,
legends of us singing the language of the birds
before we ever spoke.
>> Researchers like Michael Harner,
who wrote "The Way of the Shaman,"
focus on animal movements and sounds in shamanic traditions
to enter altered states.
He says that shamans in ecstatic trances
will not only mimic the movements of animals
in their dances but use animal noises
to connect with these specific power animals.
And to back up Jonathan Goldman's claims,
Shigeru Miyagawa, professor of linguistics
in MIT'S Department of Linguistics and Philosophy,
coauthored a paper showing direct correlations
between bird songs and human speech patterns.
But how can vocalizations induce states of consciousness
that open us up to the nature around us as the shamans did?
Perhaps it must be understood that most everything
we do in our bodies involves movements.
In her TED talk, Amy Cuddy explained
how putting hands up in victory pose or hands on hips
like a superhero caused testosterone to increase, which
gives a sense of strength and power,
whereas the stress hormone, cortisol, drops.
By using the voice, the throat opens up
and resonates in the chest right where the vagus nerve travels.
If singing, and even prosodic speaking, increases vagal tone,
this would affect the heart, lungs, gut, and much more,
causing the nervous system to prompt an altered state
of consciousness.
Even beyond the words that are being sung,
the intention behind them, including how and when
they are used, seem to make all the difference
in the shamanic traditions.
>> So there's a way to communicate through songs not
only among humans but to everything that exists.
So that's why I say you can sing to the sun.
You could sing to the earth.
You could sing to peyote.
You could sing to iowaska.
So what you're doing is you're singing gratitude.
You're singing love.
You're singing appreciation.
You're singing the desire for information.
You're singing this unifying--
creating harmony through music, through playing songs,
through singing songs.
This is a language.
Singing and songs, whether they're with your voice
or whether they're instruments, is a vibration
of spirit communication.
It's a whole different sensory perception.
I mean, if you're in a ceremony and you're just
sitting there listening to songs,
once the songs come from within you
and your voice is activated, you're
like in another dimension.
It's a total new dimension.
Then you're, things-- it's like it activates more information.
>> Whether the sounds are self-produced or listened
to, ancient civilizations have used sonic manipulation
to induce expanded states of consciousness since
the beginning.
As noted in Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal's book "Stealing
Fire," Greek cathedrals were built with walls
close together in order to create a sound that mimics
the flapping of angel's wings.
The 1,100-year-old temple of Kukulkan in Chichen Itza was
built so precisely that if you were to clap at the base
of the pyramid, the echo will come back to you with
the chirping sound of the national bird,
the sacred quetzal.
The ball court on the same temple grounds
would also echo seven times before the sound would escape.
The Greek Telesterion, the Peruvian Chavin de Huantar,
and other ancient underground sites
have been found to be constructed
for their unique acoustic properties.
Even in the 5,000-year-old mortuary temple
of Malta's Hypogeum Hal Saflieni is said to have not only housed
elongated skulls and stories of the paranormal,
but this is the oldest prehistoric underground temple
in the world and is said to have been created for sonic rituals.
Archaeoacoustic researchers have found that ritual chanting
in this ancient sonic chamber, which deactivates the language
center and shift's hemisphere dominance in the brain,
effectively causing states of consciousness related to mood,
empathy, and social behavior.
It seems that our ancient ancestors
revered the use of sonics as well as psychedelics in order
to bring about religious-type experiences.
Sound healer Kimba Arem employs the knowledge
of sonic resonance on the body, and even experiences
deeply expanded states of consciousness herself,
with the use of one of the oldest instruments
on the planet, the didgeridoo.
>> So the didgeridoo definitely has these very meditative,
calming-type frequencies encoded in it.
I was once involved in some research where they actually
hooked me up to a brainwave monitor.
And you can actually see the brainwaves
that you're creating.
And so you can see the feedback.
And there was one that said gamma.
And I was asking them, what is gamma?
And they said, well, we don't see that often.
It's usually Buddhist monks who have
been meditating for all of their life can get it up there.
It's like above 35 hertz.
It's kind of an unusual brain state.
But this technology was so we can
learn the feedback of the brainwaves we're creating
and how to affect them and try to--
like a biofeedback experience.
And while I was playing the didgeridoo, the gamma one,
this little ball goes up to the top, showing the highest level.
And then as soon as I stopped playing, it goes back down.
So I start playing again, and it goes back up.
I couldn't touch it otherwise.
So I was able to tap into some frequency,
but only while I was doing this breathing
pattern with this sound.
>> As the didgeridoo is believed to be over 40,000 years old,
other wind instruments in Europe have been discovered that date
back even farther.
The mammoth-ivory flute was found
in a cave in southern Germany dating back
almost 44,000 years.
In present-day Slovenia, the Divje Babe flute
was discovered and dates back to 67,000 years ago,
making it the only musical instrument associated
with Neanderthals.
Iegor Reznikoff, ethnographer of music
at the University of France, found
that there are cave paintings roughly a kilometer deep
and all throughout the Arcy-sur-Cure caves with bone
whistles and flutes found there.
Reznikoff and his team studied the acoustics in caves
across France painted by early man.
They found that up to 90% of the paintings
were directly at places where the acoustics were
best for ritual and mind-altering ceremonies.
These dates coincide with Graham Hancock's work on the clues
that we have about ancient rock and cave
art and their connection with shamanic or expanded states
of consciousness.
>> The oldest traces we have are in the range of 30,000
to 40,000 years old.
It goes much younger as well.
There's much more recent rock and cave art.
You can find it in many different parts of the world,
whether you're looking in Indonesia or Europe or South
Africa or Australia, as a matter of fact.
And very important, very detailed work
has been done on this imagery.
And I want to pay tribute to Professor David Lewis
Williams of the University of Witwatersrand
in South Africa, who is the originator of the notion
that this art was inspired by altered states
of consciousness.
David began to put that idea forward
with particular reference to South African rock and cave art
back as early as the 1970s.
There's really no other way, satisfactorily,
to explain them except to say that what we are looking at
is likely the work of ancient shamans who
are doing what shamans still existent in the world today
still do.
Because shamanism, the essence of shamanism,
is a deeply altered state of consciousness.
And while there are a variety of ways
of getting into a suitably deeply altered state
of consciousness which don't involve substances--
for example the Kalahari Bushmen in Southern Africa
achieve an equally powerful altered state of consciousness
by dancing for 24 hours around the fire
and becoming deeply dehydrated and falling
into a rhythmic trance-like state.
>> Vocal and wind instruments are just the beginning
of the instruments used to induce altered states.
The drum-- the earliest known drums are roughly 8,000
to 10,000 years old, with one reference to a 37,000-year-old
drum made with elephant hide.
Drumming has been an integral part
of many shamanic rituals dating back many thousands of years.
>> One of the explanations that we have based upon contemporary
clinical research is that people are able to deliberately induce
these kinds of experiences, special people.
And when they do, there's a breakdown
in the integration of a specific part of the brain called
the temporal parietal junction.
And what the drumming does is it basically overwhelms
this part of the brain.
When the brain gets repeatedly stimulated,
it eventually habituates.
It no longer responds to the signal.
And this part of the brain apparently
habituates by disintegrating these different parts
of the brain that normally all function together.
So all of a sudden, the sense of our body
is no longer tied to the visual field,
the perception of the environment,
or the sense of self.
So we're able to have these experiences
of our body traveling to other places
because the brain is no longer integrating the real body
sensations with the environment.
>> Rhythm may be one of the most powerful sonic tools
for affecting the human organism,
particularly for affecting our nervous system.
Slow frequencies, slow rhythms, basically
cause us to calm down--
are having our brain waves and our heart rate
and our respiration slow down.
The sound is going into our ears and affecting this.
Fast rhythms will cause us to want to get up and dance.
It's really that simple.
If you use slightly out-of-tune frequencies,
you find that it really helps induce
deep states of consciousness.
Tibetan bells that people hit together-- tingshas,
as they're called--
if they're well-made, will fall right within the state
called theta, which is really one of the really wonderful
states where very much shamanic and deep inner-traveling
work goes.
And yet at the same time, there are
a lot of really fast rhythms that
are used by many different indigenous people,
to including those in Africa, that put people into trance.
>> When listening to a rhythmic drumbeat that goes
on and on throughout the night, usually in a group,
the most common response is for the listeners to get up
and dance, to move their bodies and express the rhythm back
to the group.
And to further elaborate on the power of music
to bring groups together, author of "This
is Your Brain on Music," Dr. Daniel Levetin, found
that people who listen to music out loud together
spark stronger relationships, often
causing people to spend more time with loved ones, more time
hugging, making love, cooking meals with one another,
and even close the distance of physical proximity
between housemates.
Perhaps this is why we see a high emphasis
on communal bonding amongst tribes
who take psychedelic plant medicines
and dance and sing as a group.
>> In this ancient city, in Tenochtitlan,
people would come from the entire confederation,
which was from Canada all the way to the tip of South
America.
They knew the same dances, the same beats.
There's thousands of these dances--
dance to the earth, dance to the rain, dance to the ego, dance
to the corn.
They're the same dances danced by an entire civilization
across an entire continent that were
done at certain precise moments, like the equinox, the solstice,
the eclipses, the new moons, the full moons.
People are doing the same movements
to the same vibration--
humans interacting.
This is very powerful.
People are singing and dancing and taking medicine.
This is like geometric progression.
>> The fact that music and psychedelics pair well and go
hand-in-hand with dance and community gatherings says a lot
about the nature of psychedelic experiences.
Many people express how the world around them
dissolves its barriers and becomes
one continuous phenomena under a psychedelic state.
The inside can become indistinguishable
from the outside.
This seems to be seen in the complementary relationship
between psychedelics and music, music and dance, dance
and community, community and harmony.
All communities seek to quell disputes and foster cooperation
just as the trillions of cells in the body
cooperate to make up the super organism that is the human.
All these phenomena are seen in culture
since the dawn of the modern era of man
and were not separated into individual categories
like they are today.
And one reason the experiences of psychedelics
can be so meaningful when paired with music
is shown in a recent discovery by the neuroscientist Mendel
Kaelen at the Imperial College of London.
He found that the interaction between psychedelics and music
increases information flow going from the parahippocampus
to the fusiform cortex.
Once personal memories and contextual associations
from the parahippocampus are sent
to the fusiform, or visual, cortex,
the visions that emerge from the psychedelic experience
becomes much more personalized.
Because music increases this information flow,
the tone of the music may have a dramatic effect
on how those memories are relived in the moment.
Could this be the basis to shamanic traditions creating
music during psychedelic ceremonies?
>> So why is music so important here in the context of using
psychedelics?
We're getting this opportunity to move our sense of self
and being into this visual space that's
provided by the integration of these deep processes
of the brain.
Some of the other kinds of effects
that are achieved through the use of psychedelics
have more to do with psychodynamic processing.
So on one hand, the psychedelics are
going to stimulate you to deal with issues
about past trauma, repressed memories,
your emotional concerns and preoccupations.
But what happens with that information
depends a little bit upon the interpersonal dynamic
and the processing of that information
so that you're able to make more effective use of it.
>> As many psychedelic researchers today,
such as Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins University
and Mendel Kaelen at Imperial College of London,
have created personalized, psychotherapeutic playlists
to amplify personal journeys of the participants--
however, the use of music in some iowaska as well
as other psychedelic ceremonies also
put emphasis on the silence after the song.
And for modern sonic explorers, listening to silence
has taken on new methods.
>> There are even these things called anechoic chambers that
are so quiet there's no external outside noise.
You can literally hear your heartbeat, your respiration.
If you listen hard enough, you can
begin to hear your brain waves.
And in fact, there is a level of yoga
called Shabd Yoga, which is--
or Nada Yoga.
And this is oftentimes utilized.
But there also is just listening.
The yoga of listening is so very, very powerful.
And oftentimes, it is an inner listening that occurs.
So our nervous system is affected by the sounds
that we listen to, but it can also be really affected
by the sounds that we don't listen to
and we listen to internally.
>> It has been said by many who enter anechoic chambers that
the silence is deafening.
There is so much noise present internally
that it becomes unnerving for the novice.
However, some long-term meditators
claim to hear harmonics and melody within the silence.
This phenomenon is different from musical ear syndrome
in which faint, musical auditory hallucinations occur
frequently.
Maharishi Shiv Brat Lal wrote that "various sorts
of sound currents reverberate in the human system from which
the initiate has to pick up the right one and listen to it,
otherwise he will go astray."
Swami Vyasanand is quoted as saying, "Only the central sound
has the power to attract the consciousness to the center
and carry the soul to the center of a higher realm."
And even Maharishi Mehi, in his book
"Philosophy of Liberation," warns that there are misleading
sounds due to the gross vibrations in the body.
The true central sound is distinct
and is the same vibratory force that organizes the cosmos.
As many within sacred circles believe
that shamanic traditions and psychedelic experiences
amplify sounds from Mother Nature,
could this inner sound be a wave current
that shamans and meditators tune into in order
to reach expanded states of consciousness?
>> The sound of nature, and it's called the Schumann resonance.
It was discovered in the 1950s.
And it literally is, if you like,
the frequency of the ionosphere, the electromagnetic field
of the Earth.
And it's based upon the speed of sound going around the Earth.
And it's around 7.83 cycles a second.
And this falls right within that theta range
that I was talking about that helps induce shamanic states
of consciousness.
And what's very, very interesting
is that, oftentimes, you'll find that crickets
and a lot of other creatures of nature
will oftentimes be making sounds that
are very, very close to that.
That's quite important.
So what happens is when we listen
to that, or the waves of the ocean
rolling in and rolling out, they're also attuned to this.
And this basically slows down our heart rate,
our brain waves, our breathing, putting us in tune with nature.
And by putting ourselves in tune with nature,
we're able to, if you like, travel to higher
realms of consciousness.
>> The music of nature, the harmony of the higher realms
of consciousness, the music of the cosmos might be exactly
what shamanic traditions tuned into during psychedelic
ceremonies, which were always rooted within and surrounded
by the elements and creatures of the Earth--
all of which are attuned to and harmonizing with the symphony
that Mother Nature composes.
If the set and setting for sacred ceremonies
are carefully constructed, and the sounds
of ritual instruments as well as nature are present,
perhaps the healing capacity of these traditional practices
can be amplified.
And maybe the world will come to understand the power of sonics
and psychedelics.
Up next, our journey into psychedelica
wraps up, exploring how to produce
psychedelic states of consciousness
naturally from within.
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