Every sound produces sound waves or disturbances in the air, which travel at about 332 meters per second. Through complex internal processes, we can pick up these sound waves through our ears and eventually perceive them in the cerebral cortex of our brain. Our brain is capable of receiving an enormous number of various kinds of sounds generated in our environment and, what is most intriguing: it can make sense of them. It knows how to differentiate all the numerous sounds and link them to our auditory memories. Some sounds are words, which we call language, others we call music, and again others we consider just noise.

Every sound that our brain cells perceive stimulates them to make neurotransmitters that subsequently translate these sounds into specific physiological responses in the body. For this reason, you may feel elevated and cheerful when you listen to your favorite music or you may become nervous and agitated when you hear the jarring noise of a machine or the scratching of a nail.

Some sounds affect different parts of the body more than others. Instrumental music for instance stimulates the right hemisphere of the brain and its related left side of the body more than it stimulates the left hemisphere and its related right side of the body. If vocals are part of the music, then the whole body is stimulated. All the cells in the body can ‘hear’ these sounds because they have receptor sites for the same neuropeptides that the brain makes when it perceives sound. This also means that the cells in our body are capable of producing the same chemical messengers as the brain and they use them to communicate with each other through sound.

Our skin, for example, is a very apt receptor for music. If sound waves reach and touch the skin, which they do when you listen to music, the skin cells respond by secreting ‘pleasure hormones’ and other chemicals that enhance immunity and vitality throughout the body, provided the music suits your psycho-physiological body-type. This fantastic ability of skin cells may be rooted in the fact that they are identical to brain cells, except that they die after one month whereas brain cells can live for as long as a hundred or more years. Some people report a pleasant tingling sensation running through their skin while

listening to music. Jarring noise on the other hand can make your skin shiver and your hair stand on end. In that case, your skin cells make stress hormones.

There is ample evidence now that all the 60-100 trillion cells in the body listen to and respond to all the sounds we perceive (that includes the cells of a fetus carried in a mother’s womb). Harmonious and coherent sounds make you feel healthy and alive. For this reason, music has played a major role in all the cultures of the world, throughout time. Every culture has developed its own particular type of music to suit the specific requirements of the various geographic and climatic conditions in each area.

Music is not just a fundamental need of every culture but a physiological one as well. In the field of health, music has been found to reduce the time of recovery after surgery and to strengthen a patient’s ability to fight infection. Patients are found to need less medication for pain, fewer tranquillizers and sleeping pills when they listen to their favorite music. A large number of American hospitals are already using music for therapeutic reasons. There is music that can reduce appetite, lower blood pressure or induce sleep.

Of course, not all music triggers a healing response. There is a musical frequency for everything that exists, even to cause disease. If you regularly listen to hard rock music, your lymphocytes begin to drop in number, leaving you more prone to infection. Low-pitch sounds can make you feel sad and depressed. For this reason, funeral music uses low pitch sounds. On the other hand, high-pitch sounds can make you feel happy and enthusiastic.

Yet again, as is the case with every other external influence, the responses vary according to body type. If you are a Vata out of balance (impatience, anxiety) then slow, low-pitch music may benefit you more than fast, high-pitch music because it reduces hyperactivity and nervousness. A lethargic Kapha type, on the other hand, can do with lively high-pitch sounds to get his circulation and metabolic rate going. A fast tempo is likely to increase your heartbeat and an irregular tempo can cause an irregular heart rhythm and even lead to cardiac arrhythmia as seen in the cases of some pop singers.