Music Therapy – If Alpha Waves Fail, Coldplay Will Lull Us to Sleep

The sound capsule that is not swallowed but opened to find the code necessary for downloading twenty digital sound recordings that positively affect discomfort, certain ailments, or conditions was developed and launched on the market by the innovative company Sonic Group.

Playing with a well-known and recognized pharmacological concept and delving deep into the growing and increasingly potent niche of smart body management, where a vast number of applications and other technological solutions are offered for the quickest and most effective improvement of mood and psychophysical states, the product Sonic Pill is used for therapy based on sound frequencies.

The assortment includes seven different sound capsules that should improve the mind, spirit, and body by alleviating stress, relaxing, improving concentration, enhancing libido, or relieving headaches – all non-invasively and without side effects or contraindications. The sound capsule works by having frequencies associated with the body region and binaural sounds that affect brain wave changes, contained in the digital recordings, initiate individual states. To reproduce digital sound recordings, or to apply quick sound treatments, an internet connection is required along with a computer or smartphone, and the best results are achieved with headphones.

A reader unfamiliar with the broad world of sound and music therapy, which has long surpassed the fringes of alternative medical methods and entered the health mainstream, might think they have just read news from some imagined better future or an advertisement for some quack remedy attempting to profit by capitalizing on human naivety.

Sound from the Pill

However, this is about a proven effective innovative product that last year, almost immediately after its inception, won several awards at innovation fairs from Nuremberg to Seoul, the result of domestic intelligence and creativity behind which stand sound therapist and producer Petra Crnetić and lawyer Lara Ljubičić, business partners who joined forces in Sonic Group.

– Sonic Pills capsules were created as a result of years of research, education, and experience in the field of sound frequencies and their beneficial effects on human health. The idea was to create a quick and effective solution for alleviating the most common physical or mental discomforts and conditions. I believe that sound frequency therapy is the future of a smart approach to human health and well-being, and that future is happening right now. We have become accustomed to taking pharmaceutical supplements that reduce or avoid symptoms, but in the long term, these substances can have unwanted side effects, contraindications, and develop dependency. Alternative approaches like meditation, bioenergy, or homeopathy can have great outcomes, but it takes longer to experience the real result. More and more studies are emerging daily that show the advantages of specific sound frequencies and their positive impact on many psychological and physical conditions, especially in today’s time marked by the advantages of digital technology – says Petra Crnetić, the author of sound technology for smart management of the mind, spirit, and body based on brain waves and body frequencies, who has also published the Soundhealz application and protected the Blackbird method.

Fourfold Better Concentration

The market for technological aids, primarily mobile applications with various sound recordings that positively affect discomfort, specific ailments, or conditions, has exploded in recent years. Most among them are those that induce therapeutic effects by reproducing pleasant melodies and sounds from nature to the ear and brain and serve as aids for sleep and stress reduction.

There are also those with advanced functionalities such as adding alpha waves to music and applications that advertise that they can significantly reduce pain sensitivity or increase concentration levels by 400 percent using binaural beats.

Specifically, Focus@Will, a company based in Los Angeles founded by Will Henshall, has developed and launched an application that promises users a fourfold increase in concentration. It requires them to complete a personality test before the application recommends suitable music.

An application for pain reduction was developed, for instance, by Binaural Beats Meditation. The founder of that company, Peter Lix, states that they use binaural beats and low-frequency music and that they have found that exposure of chronic patients to this type of beat at that frequency for twenty minutes a day after two weeks results in a huge reduction in pain severity.

Altered State of Consciousness

Applications that ‘sell’ calming the mind and stimulating creativity using background sounds like rain, thunder, wind, crackling fire, or combining relaxing music and soothing tones are becoming increasingly popular. Among the more well-known and praised is Pzizz, an application primarily designed to help its users fall asleep more easily and wake up more rested.

It is equipped with functionalities for short afternoon and longer night sleep, from ten minutes to twelve hours, and binaural tones are also used here for quick sleep induction, meaning simultaneous playback of the same recording at different frequencies and volumes for each ear.

There are also products on the market like the I-Doser application that offer a feeling of altered states of consciousness using various sound frequencies, with offerings including experiencing psychedelic and religious experiences, trance, visions, hallucinations, and orgasms.

In recent years, numerous scientific studies and research have proven that certain sounds and music positively affect human health and can have therapeutic effects on various segments. Many studies have shown that exposure to music in the brain’s synapses stimulates the release of dopamine, that certain types of music or frequencies can also cause physiological effects such as slowing down heart rates accelerated by stress, and improve the condition of people suffering from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases or dementia.

Attack on Viruses

It has also been proven that exposure to certain music positively affects concentration and memory ability, with classical music (Mozart ranks highest) yielding excellent results, and researchers worldwide are increasingly realizing that music can be therapeutically used in rehabilitating the consequences of strokes and treating mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

Interesting are the results of a study that confirmed that some types of music help reduce fatigue and maintain muscle endurance, as confirmed by visitors to communal exercise halls.

Some of the studies were conducted by Simon Durrant, a musician and neuroscientist from the University of Lincoln in the UK, who has proven, among other things, that besides listening to Bach and Chopin, singer Ed Sheeran and the band Coldplay also help improve sleep. He states that listening to music can activate areas of the brain involved in regulating emotions and reduce anxiety, and one study found that listening to music once a week alleviates symptoms of depression after less than a month.

Evidence of the health role of music in many aspects of clinical practice has also been found by neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin from McGill University in Montreal, who is also the author of several popular science bestsellers, including ‘This is Your Brain on Music’. Among other findings, he established that exposure to music increases the production of immunoglobulin A and antibodies that attack invasive viruses and enhance the effectiveness of the immune system.

On HZZO’s Referral

All these undeniably established benefits of music and sounds have given scientific legitimacy to music therapy and sound therapy, disciplines that are applied in many clinics, including the Zagreb Polyclinic for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases and Rehabilitation – Heart. In collaboration with the Croatian Association of Music Therapists, interventions using receptive music therapy​ are applied there in the recovery of cardiovascular patients, primarily to reduce anxiety and stress, as well as to strengthen coping mechanisms with illness, and this is done on the referral of the Croatian Health Insurance Institute.

Music therapy and sound therapy have been applied in Eastern cultures for centuries: gongs, Tibetan bowls, shamanic drums, bells, rain sticks, and shakers have proven effective for disorders caused by stress, fatigue, exhaustion, negative emotions, and anxiety.

In recent years, sound therapy and music therapy have become increasingly recognized and accepted in the Western civilizational circle as aids for quicker and easier alleviation of various discomforts, ailments, or conditions. Although they may seem abstract and difficult to understand without knowledge and experience of exposure, there should be enough scientific evidence that they truly work to convince even the greatest skeptics who firmly believe only in pills and consider sound and music therapy as quackery.

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