BioAcoustics: Using Sound to Heal and Prevent Disease–An Interview with Sharry Edwards, M.Ed.

Sharry Edwards is the founder of the field of human BioAcoustics, and executive director of Sound Health Alternatives International, Inc., in Albany, Ohio, a nonprofit research center which trains and certifies health care practitioners in the use of the healing sound techniques she has developed to heal illness.

Edwards, who graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University, began her research over two decades ago, when audiological tests revealed that she was born with the unique ability to hear sounds beyond the normal range of human hearing, as well as vocally producing sine waves. In her first research project, testing showed that by the use of her voice she was able to control a person’s blood pressure by as much as 32 points. Since then, through the concept of vocal coherence, Edwards has demonstrated that the human voice is a unique frequency representation of the body’s structural and biochemical status, and that, through the use of voice spectral analysis techniques she developed, the body is capable of diagnosing and prescribing for itself.

Recognizing the potential of her innate healing abilities, in 1982 Edwards developed the BioAcoustics technology that enables others to mechanically reproduce the diagnostic and therapeutic results she has achieved. To date, over 3,000 health care practitioners have trained and been certified in her methods, which continue to garner serious attention from conventional health care facilities and HMO’s worldwide. In October 2001, the International Association of New Science, bestowed its Scientist of the Year award to Edwards in recognition of her pioneering work with BioAcoustics.

What is BioAcoustics?

First of all, let me say that the work I am doing is in human BioAcoustics. There is also a field of animal BioAcoustics which has been around for a long time. There’s a research center at Cornell University, for example, that is involved in this, and others in Texas and England. Researchers in this field analyze the sounds animals emit to determine their health, and it can also to tell where the animals are from. Birds from the south, even though they are the same species, sound a little different from birds of the north, for example. At the time I began my work, I didn’t even know the term bioacoustics existed; I thought I’d made it up.

BioAcoustics means “life sounds”, and as I use the term, it describes the field of research involving the use of voice spectral analysis and low frequency sound to help the body reverse its own disease. It can most aptly be described as a cross between music therapy and biofeedback. It is related to music therapy in the sense that certain sounds are use to stimulate the healing process, although not necessarily sounds that are considered musical. And it is related to biofeedback in that, as these low frequency sounds are presented to the person, they elicit specific biological and emotional responses.

I should point out that BioAcoustics is not to be confused with what is known as Frequency Therapy, which uses ranges that are not considered to be auditory and is delivered through transducers placed on the body. Nor is it the same thing as music therapy, because the sounds used are not always within the range of vocal or instrumental octaves. BioAcoustics uses low frequency ambient sounds which are delivered to the client in a sound chamber or through headphones.

What does the BioAcoustics process involve?

There are two distinct processes to BioAcoustics, both of which are essential if maximum results are to be achieved. The first process involves determining the individual vocal patterns of the person, which is done before any sound frequencies are presented. This process is called BioAcoustic Vocal Profiling. Once the person’s vocal pattern has been determined, sets of sound formulas are specifically created and presented to that person, which are designed to positively influence and integrate the systems within the body that produce, interpret, and otherwise use frequency. My research has found that, for health to be present, the body requires the presence of a full spectrum of harmonious frequencies working together cooperatively. In a very real sense, you can liken the body as a musical instrument. When it is out of tune, the result is discordant, but when the instrument is tuned, the sounds become consonant.

The idea of using sound to facilitate change within the body is not new, by the way. Almost every culture throughout recorded history has used sound and movement to influence mood. Four thousands of years, practitioners of Tibetan medicine have known of the positive vibrational effects of bells and chanting, for instance, and ancient philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle taught that the human body reflects the sounds and tones that exist within its personal environment. And, of course, in the Bible we are told that, “In the beginning was the Word,” and that through the agency of that Word all of creation came into being. In other words, frequency is the basis of our universe. It wasn’t until recently, however, that computerized technology and instrumentation advanced to the stage where we are now able to use this technology to use sound frequencies diagnostically and therapeutically.

To literally create “sound health.”

Yes. (laughs). The term “sound health” is actually a play on words. I think that we’ve known about the relationship between sound and health all along, but we were able to deal with it in our language much quicker than we’ve been able to deal with it as a technology or an idea related to well-being.

For instance, when my husband and I go to the grocery store and he picks up a grapefruit to see if it’s ripe, I listen to it, and if it was clear note of E, I know it is a nice, fresh grapefruit and I’ll say, “It sounds good to me.” This is an expression that people have always used to convey their perception that something is right or “sound.” This also shows up in phrases like “sound advice,” and so forth. Sound means “stable” or “foundational,” and it also refers to frequency and music. And there is a feedback loop between the sounds that people make and the sounds that people hear. It’s the only dual feedback loop that is like that in the body. You don’t make color with your eyes, for example, but you do use your eyes to perceive color.

Let’s get back to the grapefruit. You say you are able to “listen to it.” Obviously that’s an ability most people don’t have, so I’d like you to explain it.

When I say the grapefruit sounds good to me, most people would automatically think I mean that buying the grapefruit sounds like a good idea, but I literally mean that it sounds like a good grapefruit. This has always been an innate ability in me, and for many years it didn’t occur to me other people didn’t have it. I have always been able to tell what was going on with people by the sound of their voice. For instance, when I was young I noticed that my aunt had a sound that was new to her, and that it was the same sound that my grandmother had when she had diabetes. So I thought that maybe my aunt had diabetes too, and it turned out that she did.

I really think my ability is a trait that we forgot or have literally tuned out of our sensory repertoire. When you read some of the ancient literature about Socrates, Pythagoras, and people like that, you find that they heard these sounds, as well. I hear sounds from nearly everything. I cannot hear sounds from plastic, but I hear sounds from everything else — animals, trees and flowers. And I decided to use my ability as a means of helping others to experience better health, using BioAcoustics to make the diagnostic and therapeutic elements of health care more precise. We’ve already done it with cars. We can take our cars into the garage and plug them in and have a machine evaluate exactly what’s wrong, but with conventional medicine, we don’t have that ability in relation to our own bodies. We have MRI’s and X-rays, and other devices that we’ve created, but these are not diagnostic enough to individuate for each of us. When we look at people in frequency, we find that their bone and their muscle structure are pretty nearly the same, but when it comes to organs we start to become very individual. We’re all singing the same song when it comes to our structure, but when it comes to our organs we’re singing a slightly different tune. And when you come to emotions, we each create our own scale, not just our own song.

What happens when a person comes to you for a BioAcoustics’ session?

Before I answer your questions, let me tell you a bit more about how I got involved in this. As I mentioned, I was born with my ability to hear the sounds emitted by the body, and at first I just took it for granted that everybody could hear these sounds. Later on, of course, I realized that wasn’t true. Then, when I was in college and typing a paper for one of the professors on tinnitus, I read that hearing these kinds of sounds was an illness. So I went to have my hearing tested. It turned out that not only could I hear just fine, but that I also hear sound well beyond the normal range of human hearing, and that I can vocally reproduce these sounds in the form of sine waves. I did this with the man who was administering my hearing test, and when I did so he reported that his blood pressure decreased. He was very interested in the results for a couple of reasons. One, he was aware that Samurai warriors used to yell right before they attacked an opponent to decrease their blood pressure so they would have split second of advantage. Two, he was a young man and wanted to start a family, but the high blood pressure medication he was on was rendering him impotent, so he was very interested to see if through sounds we could help him with his blood pressure issue. This was the first research project that I was involved in. It was a pilot study and from it we found that by using my voice we could reduce blood pressure levels by as much as 32 points. From there, the research snowballed. I would listen to a person’s sound and then vocally reproduce it onto a recording and take it back to the laboratory to see what it revealed on a spectrograph. From this, we could determine what frequencies were too high or too low in the voice, and we found that there is no vocal coherence in somebody who is ill. When there are gaps in the measurements and things that are too high or too low, then we know that the person has some unbalance by way of his frequencies in the body. But I knew that if this could only be done by me because of my abilities, then we were very limited. This led me to search for a way to replicate my abilities through technology without me having to be present. By this time, we knew that the sounds I was hearing were being emitted from people’s ears, but when I talked to my professors of speech and hearing, I was told, “Sharry please, there is nothing in the ear that creates a sound.” But a few years later Dr. Wendell Browne, of Johns Hopkins University, published some papers about oto-acoustic emissions, which proved that there really was a sound coming out of the ear. And here we were doing all of this work under the assumption that this was something esoteric in my ears alone. Now I can teach almost anyone to hear their own sound if they’re not deaf.

As I continued my research, I eventually discovered what I was looking for and had computerized instrumentation built that can enable anyone, with proper training, to do what I do. Currently, approximately 3,000 people have received the training and use the equipment. About half of them are medical practitioners, and the rest are caretakers for family members or other people suffering from chronic disease. Instead of them having to return to us time and time again, we’re able to train them to take this out into the world. In exchange, we ask that they share with us the data they are collecting, since we are essentially an educational research center.

Okay, so let’s get back to what happens during a BioAcoustics session.

A session begins with the person speaking into a special microphone that we designed. The gives us a recording of the governing patterns of what I called their Signature Sound. This is entered into a computer, which then does what is called a Fast Fourier Transform and creates a computerized representation of the voice, decibel, and frequency, as well as the architecture of the voice itself, by way of the shape of the wave form. We then evaluate the reading to see what points are too high or too low. Points that are located high on the graph, called “risers,” indicate sound frequencies that are loud and overabundant, while points that are low, known as “stringers,” indicate frequencies that are not apparent. The objective is to create a smaller, more unified pattern of fewer risers and/or stringers, which is an indication of more coherence. The frequencies that are lacking, overabundant, or dissident can then be used to construct sets of frequencies that the person can use to help him reverse whatever imbalances may be present.

For example, our research has shown that adults and children who have been diagnosed with so-called attention deficit disorder have the Frequency Equivalent (TM) of adrenaline that is way too high, meaning that it’s in the body and it can’t be used. When we give them the Frequency Equivalent (TM) of adrenaline and they start using adrenaline it calms them down, because the frequency allows the body to identify the compound and use it appropriately. What we have found is that when people have risers that are too high, it means that there is either a toxin in the body, or some other compound that the body doesn’t know how to use because it doesn’t recognize it. Stress, man-made electricity, being around machinery, and these kinds of things causes our frequencies to drop out or to become over-abundant, and as we examine the vocal spectral analysis and find out what’s too high or too low, or what’s missing or thin in the voice, we can tell what’s going on with someone’s health.

Here’s another example of how precisely this can work. Recently, we sent a letter out some of the doctors that we work with, informing them that we were going to do a project involving gait. We asked them to send us patients who had problems walking. In the first week, we examined three people. The first was an older gentleman in his late 70’s who was not walking well at all, and had terrible difficulty turning around. He came in with his doctor and his wife, and our Vocal Profiling found that he could not process vitamin B-12, and that his cobalt levels were eight times normal. I had never heard of B-12 causing someone’s gait to be unstable, but that’s exactly what was happening, and this was verified in a lab test. By playing the Frequency Equivalent (TM) for B-12, we were able to have him running up and down the yard in a couple of hours by himself.

The second person was a young lady who was knock-kneed and pigeon-toed, and she also had trouble with her gait. It turned out that her condition was due to the gene for Frederick’s ataxia. The third man was paralyzed in one leg and didn’t have very much use of the other. We were able to trace that down to a trauma to his L2 vertebra caused by a skiing accident. He didn’t report that to us, but the computer was able to pinpoint that there was something very seriously wrong with his L2, and when we explained this to him, he told us of his skiing accident. By introducing the proper frequencies, we were able to get him to lay on his back and do bicycle kicks before he left that day, using both of his legs.

This is a clear example of how people with the same symptom can have completely different causes for that symptom. All three people had gait problems, but in the first person’s case it was due to a biochemical imbalance, in the second it was genetic, and in the third it was due to a structural problem. This illustrates why it’s incredibly important to individualize people’s medical care, and being able to do that is one of BioAcoustics’ strong points. And not only can we determine the causes for problems that have already arisen, we can also evaluate factors that are predictive of what is going to happen to a person, and use the frequencies preventively to avoid that.

How are the frequencies administered?

We have a little box that is a miniature computer and we set the frequencies up in that box. You hook it up to a speaker and turn it on and listen to the frequencies just as you would listen to music.

Are the results that you achieve permanent or temporary?

It depends on the person and on his or her condition. Depending on a person’s symptoms, treatment can be either short- or long-term. In most cases, reassessment, monitoring, and program adjustment are essential for continued improvement. But one of the big advantages of BioAcoustics, as the gait examples illustrate, is that a person’s symptoms that are often conflicting can be separated and identified using Vocal Profiling, including in cases where conventional evaluation is unable to determine the underlying cause. In the case of the man with the B-12 problems, for instance, he had originally been diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic as having peripheral neuropathy, which actually turned out not to be the case at all.

Another advantage of BioAcoustics is that it acts as an ideal complement or adjunct to other therapies, both diagnostically and therapeutically. In addition, what we are finding is that the diagnosis in and of itself is not as important as identifying and introducing the indigenous frequencies of the person’s originating patterns. The diagnosis of digestive upset, for example, is not as important as presenting the frequency that will enhance or resolve a person’s specific digestive difficulties.

I need to emphasize, however, that a person’s outcome using BioAcoustics is in large part due to his or her willingness to follow the protocol prescribed by the practitioner. Each person is evaluated on an individual basis, and each treatment protocol is designed specifically for that person. The most common frustration I have in this regard is convincing the client to continue to listening to the frequencies after he or she begins to experience improvement. This is similar to a physician’s frustration when a patient stops using antibiotics once he starts feeling better, and then his infection comes back. I’ve had a number of clients who came back to me embarrassed because their symptoms had returned and it turned out they hadn’t been following their protocol. Therefore, I tell the people I train as BioAcoustics providers that it is essential that they take an active role in supervising each case, to ensure that their clients use this technology in the way that the providers suggest.

One other thing I’d like to mention is the placebo effect. We’ve had skeptics try to dismiss the results we’ve achieved by saying the person got better because he or she expected to, not because BioAcoustics actually works. First of all, while I firmly believe in the power of the mind to influence healing, the outcomes BioAcoustics has achieved are verified by a variety of diagnostic tests and measurements and, in many cases, follow-up evaluations by our clients’ physicians. In addition, we have had many cases that have shown improvement among people who had little or no awareness about what is expected, including newborns and persons who were comatose.

Part of the basis of your work involves what you call a person’s Signature Sound. Explain what you mean by that.

A Signature Sound is the frequency representation of all that you are. Each person’s Signature Sound is influenced by his or her genetic make-up and the environment in which he or she lives. It reflects an individual’s physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual state, and iincludes the sound that is produced oto-acoustically by the ears.

And there actually is an ear focus. If you listen to me talk, then listen to something in another room, or the outside traffic, then listen to me again, you can hear or feel your ear focus change. We’re all very much aware of how our eye focus changes when looking at something close, and then far away, but most people do not realize that a similar change of focus occurs in the ear. When you begin to consciously change that focus of your ear, you’ll start hearing a very high pitch sound, which I believe is your Signature Sound — the frequency representation of all that you are. Everything that’s ever happened to you is manifested in that sound.

What we have found through voice spectral analysis is that when a person is not in an optimum state of health, both physiologically and psychologically, his or her voice will have missing notes or tones that are part of one’s Signature Sound. Indicators of physical and/or mental/emotional distress can then be categorized from these notes, and when the sound frequencies that correspond to them are provided, the ability to self-heal is significantly enhanced.

In other words, in a healthy state, a Signature Sound would be vibrant and contain the full spectrum of notes that comprise it, but in a state of illness something in the frequency would be lacking or off, correct?

Or too high, or too choppy. We’ve run tests on this. During the BioAcoustics’ process, when you present someone with their Signature Sound, it will synchronize their heart and brain. Your heart and your brain will synchronize to the beat frequency of it. I think the frequency is actually coming from your brain, but the rhythm of the sound is actually coming from your heart. When you listen to your own sound, it brings harmony and balance to the different systems of the body and is very relaxing. When we do the computer analysis, it gives us everything that makes up the Signature Sound. Almost like a chord.

And knowing everything that makes up a person’s Signature Sound, you then present it back to them in a way that creates a state of harmony?

Right. There are actually two frequency or sound formulas that are required. One is a formula based on the molecular weight of the compound or body part that we are targeting, and the other is a formula based on a frequency that will engage the energy of the compound or body part. As an analogy to this, consider a car. When you start the engine, the car is ready to go, but in order to put it into action, you have to put it into gear and step on the gas. This is similar to how we use these two sound frequencies with the people we see. The first frequency alerts the compound or body part that we’re about to engage its energy, and the second one actually does engage the energy, allowing us to control how much of that energy is expended. For instance, what we have found during a pilot study is that, if someone requires a particular compound, such as a nutrient, we can call that up and engage its sound frequency and then present it to the person, and the body will react just as if the person had taken ir orally, except that the reaction will be immediate. And by being able to shut the frequency off, we can avoid any side-effects the compound might otherwise cause. We would like to do more work to explore this potential.

Another area where we are finding success has to do with pathogens. We wanted to find a way to look at the cloaking mechanism of pathogens, because we knew that invading pathogens make use of leftover protein debris in the body to create a coating that prevents the body’s defense systems from recognizing them as something foreign. We wanted to find a way to look at the pathogens and destroy the protein barrier, and we found we were able to do this using frequencies. To do this requires different kinds of frequencies for different kinds of pathogens. The frequency for the Epstein Barr virus, for instance, is very different from the frequency for yeast or Streptococcus. Each pathogen has its own frequency and it buries itself inside this protein debris to cloak itself, so that even if there is a neutrophil right beside it that should recognize and attack the pathogen as a foreign substance, it doesn’t. This is one of the ways that disease takes hold in the body. But when you begin to decloak the pathogen by using the proper sound frequency, the body’s defense system of antigens, neutrophils, natural killer cells, and so forth come in and start to devour it.

You mentioned the Epstein Barr virus, as an example. Have you worked with cases of Epstein Barr where this technology has helped reverse it?

Yes, and we recently conducted a pilot study involving seventeen participants in which the Epstein Barr virus, yeast, and the Chlamydia pneumoniae bacterium were targeted, and in each case BioAcoustics successfully eradicated these conditions by decloaking the protein coating that cloaked them from the body’s immune agents. This was confirmed, incidentally, by darkfield microscopy [analysis of live blood cells] and conventional lab testing.

As I said, this was only a pilot study, but it’s indicative of the potential BioAcoustics has for detecting and eradicating a wide range of pathogenic disease agents.

Were the frequencies you used the same in each case?

No, the sound formulas must always be determined on a case-by-case basis. The same is true with people who have the same symptoms of infectious agent. Each person is unique and will respond to the sounds in his or her unique fashion. To determine the most effective frequencies, in all cases it is first necessary to employ vocal spectral analysis, and then proceed based on what the person’s vocal print reveals. In some cases, a very narrow frequency range is required to achieve the desired effect; in others, a broader range of frequencies may be more appropriate.

What are some of the other health issues that can be addressed by BioAcoustics technology?

The research is ongoing, but to date the frequency formulas based on Signature Sounds have been able to assist the healing process for a wide range of structural, neurological, and biochemical conditions. These include identifying pathogens, biochemical toxins, and genetic syndromes, and diagnostically and therapeutically addressing a wide range of health conditions, including muscle stress and weakness, nutritional imbalances, attention problems and learning disorders, environmental allergies, arthritis, emphysema, epilepsy, heart disease, cerebral palsy, chronic pain, osteoporosis, blood sugar problems, metabolic disorders, gout, and sports injuries.

Working with muscle has actually been the easiest areas in which to see the benefits that BioAcoustics can provide, because there is such immediate feedback from the musculature itself. We are able to take a vocal print and then use it to determine what muscles are going to be weak or strong, or which ones are already weak or strong, and to what degree. We then present low frequency sound that will change the muscle strength. We’ve shown this in double-blind studies. Think about the applications this has. Take sports injuries, for instance. We’ll be able to look at them before they happen. Nursing homes is another area. We can actually exercise the muscles of people in old age without them ever moving, simply by applying the proper sound frequencies. And for people who have operations and are cut over a muscle, we can begin to exercise that while they’re still under anesthesia. Assisting the recovery from surgery and other issues, like macular degeneration, is an example of this. We’ve already done that a number of times. And think of how this could work in exercise clubs. We could take a person’s vocal print and say tell people what you need to work on each day, according to which of their muscles that day are shown to be weak or strong. We can do this for all muscles at the same time, which is something that an exercise physiologist would have trouble pinpointing until a problem actually occurred.

Another area where we are having a high degree of success is in the resolution of gout. As you know, gout can be an extremely debilitating condition, and it affects over two and half million people a year, according to the National Arthritis Foundation. In addition, there is no reliable test for gout, nor are flare-ups predictable, and the side-effects caused by conventional medications used to treat it can be severe, including, in some cases, serious interference in bone marrow function. So I decided to see if BioAcoustics would have any benefit in this area, and what I discovered is that specific low frequency sound was able to positively alleviate the stress of gout pain in approximately 90 percent of the people I worked with. Further independent studies and observations by two physicians confirmed the results. My work in this area led to the development of the G-OUT Out(TM) tone generator, a small, portable device that gout sufferers can use. Although this work is still in an experimental stage, we are now authorized to share this technology with select physicians across the country.

Share, if you would, some other examples of the value BioAcoustics can have for health.

Well, as I mentioned, one of its value is that it can be used predictively to assess a person’s health status, including before health symptoms become apparent. As an example of this, we once had a visit from a man who had heard about the work I was doing and he was curious to see if BioAcoustics could reveal in this regard. I agreed to analyze his voice, and his vocal print indicated that he had a serious thyroid condition. This came as a complete surprise to him since he had no history or medical evidence of such a problem. To verify my findings, he went to see his physician, but the lab tests he received indicated nothing abnormal. So both he and his doctor had a good laugh about the worthlessness of my analysis and he went about his business. A few days later, he collapsed due to a series of mysterious symptoms that stumped the medical professionals who treated him. His heartbeat was erratic, he was sweating profusely, and he was anxious and disoriented, but they were unable to determine why. Then he remember my analysis and suggested they take a look at his thyroid. This time, tests showed that he did indeed have a serious thyroid problem that was causing his symptoms. The vocal print had revealed this nine days earlier.

Another example of this involved a seven-year-old girl who found herself unable to read in school. The year before, she was a top reader in her class, but suddenly she couldn’t read anymore. Things got so bad, that she was put into a special reading class. Eventually her mother brought her to see me. During the session, while receiving low frequency sound, the girl was able to read clearly, with no hesitation. Further BioAcoustics testing suggested that she suffered from formaldehyde poisoning, and this was found to be the case. After going through a detoxification program, once again she regained her ability to read, and returned to being the bright, cheerful girl she had been before the poisoning occurred. This is actually an example of BioAcoustics’ value diagnostically.

An example that illustrates the value BioAcoustics has both diagnostically and therapeutically involved a woman who had Paget’s disease, which left her bones light and porous and in a constant state of destruction. She came to me on crutches after breaking her hip and being released from the hospital, because Paget’s disease is considered incurable and her physician was not hopeful that her condition would not further deteriorate. In her first session with me, analysis of her voice revealed that her body was deficient in a specific nutrient mineral. I won’t say what it is, because I don’t want people to think that all they have to do to treat Paget’s disease is take a nutrient, but in this woman’s case, once the nutrient was added to her daily intake of vitamins, she began to improve and she is now off crutches. In fact, recently she called to tell me she had been out square dancing.

I’ve already told you about BioAcoustics’ value in the area of muscle stress and trauma, but let me share one final example with you. One of our local attorneys is an avid tennis player, but a few years ago he injured his leg in a motorcycle accident — so severely, that his doctors wanted to amputate. He refused this, but after four years of physical therapy, he was told that there was no hope that he would ever again walk normally. The lower portion of his leg was as large as a football; he could not walk straight, nor bend his ankle, and he’d lost all stamina for exercise. Eventually, he was forced to close his law practice and wound up living with his parents. That’s when he found out about the work I was doing. Within two months of regular BioAcoustics’ sessions, he not only could once again walk straight, he was back on the tennis court and was playing so well that he was asked to be the tennis court at the local high school.

These examples represent only a small part of the benefits BioAcoustics holds as a healing therapy.

It sounds as if the sky’s the limit. Are there any limitations that you have found regarding BioAcoustics and health.

Well, it is certainly not a cure-all, although our inventory of unsuccessful outcomes is short. BioAcoustics is most appropriate for nonemergency health conditions, on a predictive, diagnostic, and/or therapeutic basis. But I do not recommend it for emergency situations, such as poisoning, traumatic bleeding, broken bones, or situations like heart attack or appendicitis. I would never recommend that it be used to set a broken bone, for example, but I would not hesitate to offer it to accelerate healing, reduce pain and swelling, a reduce the recuperation time of such an accident.

Another area is which we are having mixed success is for metabolic conditions. It is effective for detecting such disorders, but not so much for reversing them. Reversal of issues such as obesity have so far been unsuccessful, for example.

You mentioned at the start of this interview that BioAcoustics is delivered to the client via headphones or in a sound room. Why is that?

For protection. This technology is very powerful, and as I mentioned, the frequencies that are used are specific to the needs of the client. But just as a healthy physician can become sick or develop side-effects if he takes medications intended for his sick patients, so can other people, including the BioAcoustics provider, be negatively affected if they listen to sound frequencies not intended for them. This is something people need to be very aware of. The potential of frequency is tremendous and you can’t just apply it willy-nilly and expect good and safe results.

To do this safely and effectively, you need to have been legitimately trained, you need to follow the rules, and you need to protect yourself, just as an X-ray technician protects himself when he takes someone’s X-ray. When people receive our training, this is very much emphasized, and we provide them with specific instructions regarding how the sound room should be constructed. But we also now have available a new machine that allows them to deliver the frequencies to their clients via headphones, so that they aren’t affected by them.

Is there a certification process for the people who train with you?

Yes. Each person not only has to take our course, but he or she also has to present us with a series of case studies, which we then evaluate. Only when we are satisfied with their competency do we certify them, and they then must renew their certification each year, since the research into BioAcoustics is still unfolding. People interested in experiencing BioAcoustics need to know they should only work with certified practitioners, whom they can locate by contacting our office or by visiting our website. That way they can be assured of working with someone who knows what he is doing.

What do your foresee as the long-term ramifications of BioAcoustics?

Before I answer that, let me discuss the short-term. The interest in BioAcoustics is definitely growing, especially among the health practitioners who are finding out about it. We are even beginning to receive interest by HMO’s and so forth. At the same time, however, many practitioners and organizations are hesitant to explore BioAcoustics because it isn’t approved by the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] or the AMA [American Medical Association], and organizations like that. I had one doctor contact me, for instance, who was very interested in the work I am doing with gout. He asked to see any double-blind studies I had on this. I don’t have any to offer him, because when I contacted the National Institutes of Health to inform them of what I was doing, they told me that the best way to faciliate it was through the collection and documentation of case studies, which is what I’ve done. But when I told the doctor this, he said he couldn’t get involved without double-blind studies because it would mean setting himself up to be sued. And he’s right.

Having investigated the entire field of nonconventional medicine for over a decade, I can tell you you’re far from alone in facing this dilemma that stands in the way of acceptance. At the same time, though, I think more and more people are recognizing that organizations like the FDA are hardly infallible. Especially since recent studies show that the drugs the FDA has approved, when properly prescribed, are the fourth leading cause of death in this country. I think positive technologies such as yours will only really become mainstream when the public en masse starts to use their dollars to demand that they become mainstream, which is a trend that is already very much underway.

I absolutely agree. At the same time, however, I think anybody who is bringing in a new paradigm should expect some resistance. I think it would be a sorry world if everything anybody said was automatically accepted. A certain amount of skepticism is needed to keep us on the path of doing the best we can. So it’s up to me, the person who conceived and developed BioAcoustics, to educate people and find a way for them to accept its usefulness, and to do that I have to meet them where they are. Which is exactly why I’ve set up my educational research center and am training people to bring this out into the world. The more people we train and the more data we collect, the faster we can grow.

That said, what are some of the areas in which you see BioAcoustics being used in the future?

I think the promise of BioAcoustics in terms of health care will continue to grow. Right now, one of the biggest problems facing us as a nation is the exorbitant costs associated with health care. A significant part of these costs has to do with the ability to detect disease before it progresses to serious proportions. BioAcoustics has much to offer in this area, due to its effectiveness as a predictive and diagnostic tool. Other areas of high medical costs include rehabilitation expenses, the side-effects of unsuitable medication, and long-term costs for lingering or incurable disease. These costs can also be ameliorated using BioAcoustics. For example, using voice spectral analysis, we have the ability to match medications or nutritional agents to a person’s specific needs. We can do this with insulin for diabetes for, for instance. There are many different kinds of insulin, and right now finding the right form to use can be a process of trial and error, sometimes even requiring hospitalization until the proper form is found. We can determine what form to use by looking at which form best matches a person’s vocal print.

Among the uses that I foresee for BioAcoustics are individualized, holistic, predictive and preventative health screening; drug and nutritional evaluation; nonintrusive blood chemistry screening; nonintrusive temperature control; depiction of disease root causes and disease pathways; identification of viral, bacterial, and fungal infections; and identification of stress, paralyzed, or inactive muscles. Among the areas of medicine that are most ready for a direct integration of BioAcoustics with conventional diagnostic and treatment methods are physical therapy, dietetics, physical therapy and massage, emergency medical technologies, and sports medicine. I also think it will prove to be of benefit during space travel, since we can use the frequency to exercise muscles during conditions of weightlessness.

Another area that I feel BioAcoustics could have much value is in addressing bioterrorism attacks from germ and biochemical warfare, which has now become a very serious challenge. Using voice spectral analysis, just as we have been able to identify and reverse infection due to pathogens such as the Epstein Barr virus, Streptococcus and Chlamydia pneumoniae, we can also identify the Frequency Equivalent (TM)s for pathogens such as anthrax and smallpox. In addition, not only can the Frequency Equivalent (TM)s of these pathogens be identified, but low frequency analog sound can be used to stimulate the body to eliminate them.

Ultimately, I would like to see BioAcoustics used in every facility that deals with people’s health in any way — from hospitals, health clinics, and HMO’s, to health clubs and health food stores. So that people everywhere could have the benefit of using it to determine what they need in order to achieve and maintain optimal health. Because it’s a complete system that is very predictive, diagnostic, and therapeutic.

But I also want to stress that health care is only one area for which BioAcoustics holds great value. Now that the foundation work has been completed, I’m realizing that the possibilities for it are far more extensive than I previously imagined. Among the other areas for which preliminary research indicates that BioAcoustics is feasible are medical monitoring through voice spectral analysis over the telephone, the individuation of medications to reduce side-effect risk, drug and chemical screening for law enforcement agencies, large area pest control without environmental side-effects, nontoxic fertilization, food preservation, and reversal of environmental pollution. As you said, the sky’s the limit.

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Toning and Discovering Your Signature Sound

The following exercises are recommended by Sharry Edwards as a means of working with sound to enhance vitality, and for discovering your own Signature Sound.

“All manner of systems have been devised to organize the various sounds we produce,” Edwards says, “but it is the natural tones that seem to have the most effect, even if we don’t often use them, at least not in public. Natural grunts, groans, and sighs are the sounds we make when we find ourselves in our most vulnerable states, such as during times of illness, fear, grief, anger, or when making love. These sounds are associated with the most fundamental aspects of our lives, and we didn’t have to learn them. They represent an untapped means of gaining dominion over our physical and emotional selves.”

To make use of such sounds, a practice called toning, Edwards advising making any sound, allowing it to originate from your throat, nose, or deep in your gut. Close your mouth and make the sound, noticing if you can feel it moving through your nose. Experiment, running a scale from the lowest to the highest note you can make. Notice which sounds you like the best, and which sounds most produce a vibrating sensation.

“The sounds that cause you to vibrate are the most helpful, “Edwards says. “Vibrating tones in your sinus cavity or throat, for example, can reduce the pain of a headache and decrease sinus, ear, or throat infections.”

To discover your Signature Sound, try this exercise: Listen for a few seconds to a sound that is very near to you. Now change your focus and listen to a sound that is several feet away, or in another room. Now listen close again. Now far. As you keep changing your focus between the near and far sounds, notice if you can feel your ears changing their focus as well. With practice, you will be able to. Eventually, you will begin to hear a high pitched ring in your ears. “This is your own personal sound,” Edwards explains. “It is exactly right for you, every minute of every day, and listening to it will feed you the tones you need.”

Another way to listen to your Signature Sound is to lay down and place a pillow over each ear, then listen as you practice changing your hearing focus. If you have difficulty hearing your sound this way, try making a very low note and then slowly slide up and down the scale as you listen for your ears to rings. You can also practice this while cupping your hands. Once your ears start to ring, stop making any sound and listen to the tones in your ears. “Actively listening to these patterns will take you into a theta brain wave state which, according to researcher Dr. Robert Becker, is the level of the body’s healing range.”

Resources

Sound Health Alternatives International, Inc.

P. O. Box 416

Albany, Ohio 45710

(740) 698-9119

http://www.soundhealthinc.com

By Sharry Edwards

The following products are available from Sound Health Alternatives International.

Helping People Help Themselves Through Sound Health: Published Papers, 1993-1995.

Signature Sound Technologies: Published Papers 1982-1993.

The Science of Sound (audiotape)

Bodies of Sound and Light (audiotape)