Sue Wadden, LAc
Oriental Medicine Journal, Fire/Summer 2003
The Acutonics® system of vibrational sound healing, whose musical tones and intervals are based on ancient mathematic calculations known as the Music of the Spheres, is the most profound and effective form of medicine that I have experienced. I have been working with the meridian system professionally for over ten years, first as an acupressure therapist, and now as an acupuncturist. I also hold an undergraduate degree in Preventative Medicine. I discovered the depth and power of Acutonics during a very stressful period in my life. My father was dying and I was worried deeply about his spirit and concerned about the pain that he was suffering. I was exhausted, having just finished my acupuncture degree and exams while working every weekend. I was also in the midst of my Chinese herbal studies, starting a practice and trying to make ends meet. I felt like what the Tibetan monks call the nature of the mind: a horse running in a thousand different directions.
My friend suggested that I go have an Acutonics treatment, and while I had no idea what was involved, I knew that all I had to do was call the Northwest Institute of East Asian Medicine where the students were practicing Acutonics under the guidance of the director of the clinic, Donna Carey, and make an appointment. I had heard that this amazing woman, Donna, had helped facilitate the development of acupuncture clinics in Cuba, and that she was a pioneer in this new field of vibrational sound healing. Having been a Peace Corps volunteer, I was interested in working with someone who saw the importance of organizing health care systems in less fortunate communities. I remember the moment Donna first swept into the room after the students had taken my pulses. From her presence I sensed a certain grace and power that only a few healers possess. She made a few suggestions to the student clinicians, read my pulses, and was gone. That first treatment has always stayed with me. How could I explain the wholeness I felt while being attended to by these soothing and gentle tuning forks that were placed on specific acupuncture points, along the kidney, spleen and lung channel. I actually felt my breath return. The room was then filled with the sound of Tibetan bowls being softly rung all around my body. It was then that I felt the pieces of me that I thought were long since scattered into the wind being called back to the person I had almost forgotten: my own true self.
It has been said that the soul orients itself to sound. How could it not? When the soul leaves the body, it knows its way by the Music of the Spheres, the tones of the planets, the hum of the stars. Everything has vibrational essence. Every cell in our body carries the awareness of vibration. How else could the body communicate within itself? I believe that our physical bodies are organized through sound. The sounds and tones used in the Acutonics system are the pure tones of the mathematics of the planets. Miraculously, I learned the frequencies assigned to the planets, as calculated by great scientists such as Pythagoras and Keplar, actually harmonize musically with each other. The tones of Mars and Venus, for example, create a musical fifth when “played” together. Not only are the planets balanced in a harmonious way with one another, but their influence on our physical and spiritual bodies are thus profound and deeply healing. In Chinese medicine, we pride ourselves on looking for root causes of disease. We see the body as energy and life force. We strive to balance the individual through the ancient rivers of Qi in the body known as meridians. The Acutonics system goes further. It calls the theology of the stars back to what I believe is the root of the medicine itself: its Shamanic past, its celestial origins.
The meridian points are themselves orientations to the stars. What are Window to the Sky Points? How can we remember their original translations? How can we treat them with the original reverence in whose light they were once held? These are heaven’s points: Celestial Pillar, Celestial Storehouse, Celestial Chimney, Heavenly Pond, Celestial Window, and Heavenly Appearance. Each of these points’ names are approximate translations for these portals to the eternal soul. This medicine is steeped in the acknowledgement of our heavenly origins. We learn of points that are entry points for the corporeal soul. We know where the Hun enters and leaves the body via the gates of the Liver outer Shu points. We know that LU 3 carries the memory of all of the soul’s past and that the blueprint of this energy is carried through each lifetime. We speak of congenital essence: an inherited vibration of Qi that is carried, like a flame, through all of the generations through the kidneys. These are the concepts that are woven into our medicine that reveal its comprehensive nature and understanding. Yet, in TCM we are limited in our way of accessing the deeper longings of these energy centers in which all of history is held. The Acutonics system provides us with the tools and a methodology to address such universal energy.
I have witnessed the most astounding results clinically when applying these tools created by the Acutonics system on these sacred and mystical points. Inherent in the system are concepts, first studied by Plato and Pythagoras who drew their wisdom from sacred books known as Books of Thoth such as: “As Above, So Below”. Diving below the surface of the points using the lowest frequencies in the system, accessing deep energy, then calling the patterns and energy to the surface using the middle tones, and then using the highest frequencies above the body to clear the etheric imprints and patterns that linger beyond the physical symptoms, the patient begins to feel old and disruptive energies disappear. The patient also experiences a sense of peacefulness during an Acutonics treatment. Since sound continues to resonate beyond the application of the tuning forks themselves, patients report days of deep peace following their treatments. Pain falls away. Asthma attacks become less and less frequent. Anxieties are replaced with feelings of hopefulness. Night sweats decrease. Skin conditions shift and are healed. The entire scope of the medicine is enhanced with this music held gracefully in the tools developed by Donna Carey, LAc and co-founder Marjorie de Muynck, MA, LMP.
Every single health concern can be supported on all levels with this exquisite modality of sound healing. I have seen results with each and every one of my patients, whose health and life paths seem to shine ever more brightly as they incorporate these treatments into their lives. One public health trend that I see and would like to help change, is an increasing rate of asthma in children. I am alarmed at the statistics of not only the number of children who are using inhalers, but also the knowledge that these medications could potentially be quite dangerous to their future health. This blast of steroids has a direct affect on the heart, and over time could deplete the very energy that carries the future of all generations: the kidney qi and essence. All asthma conditions hold in common an underlying lung and kidney qi deficiency. What is also unique in asthma is the concept of wind lodged in the bronchial and usually an underlying yin deficiency. Most of my patients with asthma present with a more rapid and tight pulse, and their tongues are not coated, as one might expect. The tongues are often thin and slightly red and there is a stagnation quality in the color. Many times, their asthma is worse at night. This indicates to me more of a yin deficiency, which makes sense due to the nature of the kidneys and the lungs which are prone to such a deficiency. Where in allopathic medicine will one speak of wind and yin in relation to an acute asthma attack? Yet when a patient, young or old, is on my table struggling for breath, applying the Acutonics Ohm/Chiron 2nd Musical Interval to UB 12, the wind point of the urinary bladder channel, I feel within minutes, a deeper breath return.
In Acutonics, often we begin a treatment by applying the paired Ohm Tuning Forks along the Huato Jiaji points along the spine and include the eight sacral foreman points. When I have a patient in my office who is in the midst of an asthma attack, even if she is eight months pregnant, I will indeed follow the application of the fang feng/UB 12 point with this grounding technique. All asthma attacks also have a relationship with the heart, on some level. Certainly they can be wind heat, wind cold, allergy or exercise induced. They can even be liver induced: wood insulting metal. However, calming the nervous system with the Earth tones of Middle Ohm instantly lets the body know that a shift is being made to a more parasympathetic state. I can always tell if the body is shifting, and it happens every single time with an asthma patient if their stomach begins to make sounds, showing me that we are “out of the woods,” so to speak. The body simply won’t digest food if it is on high alert. If a child has had a series of wind invasions and is treated only with antibiotics, the wind is never fully resolved, and the condition that ensues is one of chronically lodged external wind. Often, there is an emotional component due to an internal agitation that is never fully resolved. Again, Acutonics is the most brilliant way to clear, on all levels, this complex mesh of conditions. Children are fine with needles, especially when they know they will feel relief from the pressures of the stagnant energies. However, children love and respond naturally to music. Place a set of tuning forks in front of any child, show them how they work, and they never hesitate to listen to each and every one of the forks. Children, like adults, crave these celestial tones.
One other focus with the Acutonics system is the acknowledgement of the power of the extraordinary vessels. All of these original grids of energy run through the kidneys. The Chong and the Ren actually store Kidney qi. The Yin Qiao Mai transports kidney essence to the eyes. The Yin Wei Mai originates at KID 9. The Du Mai tonifies kidney yang and nourishes the spine and the brain. The Yang Wei Mai connects all Yang channels. One question I have had in regards to asthma is why the eosinophil white blood cell count is always higher during an asthma attack. This histamine producing leukocyte is an angry factor in the inflammation patterns of all asthmatics. Where are these cells produced? They are formed in the red bone marrow, which in Chinese medicine is ruled by the kidneys. The application of the tuning forks on these extraordinary points, these channels that are formed in the minutes following conception, have been essential in the treatment of all conditions related to kidney deficiencies, including eczema. Applying the Full Moon 6th on P 6 as an opening to tonify and nourish yin and sooth the heart while grounding the energy of the yin Wei Mai by placing the Middle Ohm fork on Spleen 4 has proven effective over and over again as a healing medium for all conditions related to anxiety and a feeling of tightness of the chest. Young boys who are coming to see me for skin conditions as they step into their years of puberty and transformation are greatly balanced by applying the New Moon 5th on LU 7 and then balancing the Ren Channel with the Middle Ohm on KID 6. This same combination is also essential for supporting asthma patients in the summer and between attacks when the kidney and the lung qi need to be replenished. Young people who are trying to come to terms with the divorce of their parents, whose symptoms might include eczema, insomnia, leg pain, and depression are supported in the most profound ways by using the Acutonics system. The Ohm/Chiron 2nd and the New Moon 5th are applied to the Yin Qiao Mai Channel, opening KID 6 first with the Chiron Tuning Fork, Chiron represents the wounded healer, and then with the New Moon, while balancing the meridian with the grounding Ohm energy to LU 7.
A full-term pregnant woman’s labor contractions will become more regular and powerful using the Zodiac 3rd on LIV 3 and LI 4. Using the Solar 7th musical interval on UB 67 has shown me the power of helping position a baby for delivery. It is much more convenient to use the tuning forks at a hospital birth than moxa and needles. In a world where we are striving to find peace and harmony, positive and trusting communication, a renewed sense of caring for our lovely planet, and a feeling of hopefulness for our future, this beautiful and poetic, ancient and effective, comprehensive and integrative model of medicine, known as Acutonics, is clearly the cool drink of water that we have been craving. Working with women during their pregnancies has been one way for me to help contribute to a healthy future for these babies yet to be born. Babies hover in dream time. They too respond to the healing tones of the Acutonics Tuning Forks. They love the Tibetan bowls.
Where would music be without the stillness between the notes? In dreams we are carried to the places of the subconscious that only the soul knows. In healing, we find change happens in the spaces between. Music carries us to other realms and takes us outside linear rhythms into a more universal language of time.
If the kidneys rule growth, so too must they rule our aging. By feeding the kidney system with these ancient and original tones, are we following in the footsteps of shamans who knew how to walk between the worlds. There is home that our souls know which has no clock. It is the place that in Taoist traditions were known only by the immortals. In Sumerian cultures, there were men made from the “original mold,” who were known to have transcended time and who joined those realms of the gods. We do not know what is ultimately encoded in our DNA. However, we do know that our genetics, according to Chinese Medicine, is stored in the essence of the kidneys. Acutonics, then, gives us a glimpse of our immortality: the eternal quality of the soul. Even in life we can know the dimensions of the soul without form, held in reference to the vibrations of sound. Perhaps this is why these tones sound so familiar. And remember, the ear is the first sense organ fully formed and functioning in the fetus at four months, intimately related to the kidney, and it is our first link to awareness. Through sound we have our first sense of our selves as individual and yet connected to everything that is around us. From the beginning we remember the biology of one, and from the one, the ten thousand things…Are we just a vehicle through which the universe is praying? Namaste.