In 1997, during acoustics experiments in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, I experienced a miraculous healing of my lower back. I had entered the pyramid in extreme pain, the result of a back injury sustained three week’s earlier, yet within 20 minutes of exciting the rose granite sarcophagus with sound, part of the experiments I was conducting, the pain vanished and never came back. So began my journey to discover the biological mechanism at work that day, that healed my back in a few minutes, when no amount of analgesics had helped relieve the pain, nor had visits to a physiotherapist.

This seeming miracle was the result of immersing my body in low frequency sound, coupled with the resonant effects of the quartz crystals in rose granite—the same granite that Dan and Joena have used in some of their healing pianos. Now, after more than 25 years of research in the fields of Sound Therapy and Music Medicine, I have acquired much new knowledge. Consequently, in 2021 I was honored to be invited to write a chapter on these subjects for a new medical text book, which was published in 2022 and is available as an e-book download, for those interested in learning more about this fascinating subject, one which I believe holds the potential to usher in a new paradigm in medicine: vibrational medicine, a future in which pharmacology plays a support role, rather than the primary role. Visit this link if you wish to download the (free) new medical text book, of which my chapter forms part: https://www.acuclinic.eu/ecompendium/

In the next three short paragraphs I have encapsulated, in short form, a few of the many important biological mechanisms that underpin sound and music's proven ability to catalyse the body’s innate healing mechanisms—for only the body can heal itself—when given proper therapeutic support.

Biological mechanisms catalyzed by immersion in (ideally) live piano music

When a system of your body is challenged by a pathogen invasion, such as a virus, or imbibing toxic substances, the cells in that system go to sleep, termed the G-zero phase of the cell cycle. This causes an imbalance in your body, resulting in you feeling ill. The cells sleep until they are sufficiently nourished to reawaken. Nourishment can come, in part, from eating quality foods, but it can also come from bathing your cells in the same frequencies that the cells “sing” when they are awake. (The fact that cells sing was discovered by Professor James Gimzewski in 2002, a new science he named sonocytology.) Rather like the kiss that awakens "Sleeping Beauty”, sleeping cells can be awakened by the "kiss" of beautiful sonic frequencies, moving their status from the G-zero phase to the G1 phase, in which they rejoin the cell cycle, leading to replication and thus a return to homeostasis in your body. But how can we know which frequencies are needed to nourish our cells? Actually, we don’t need to know, we simply bathe our cells in beautiful (ideally live) piano music, because live music contains a myriad of frequencies, right up to the high harmonics that our cells “sing" when they are awake and functioning normally. And when I say “bathe” I am referring to full body immersion, not listening to piano music through headphones.

This is why playing piano, live, or being in the presence of live piano music, gives your cells the great gift of healing, from immersing your entire body in its beautiful frequencies. In addition, playing piano music, live, lifts your mood into a state of joy, which in turn causes the generation of copious amounts of dopamine in your brain and gut, leading to a massive proliferation of your white blood cell count, your body’s primary defence against pathogens. Of course, other musical instruments also offer healing benefits, but none more so than the piano because no other instrument offers the piano’s wide range of frequencies and harmonics.

Playing the low notes on a piano also promotes oxygen binding in your blood stream, mimicking the low frequencies of your heart beats and causing the haemoglobin in your red blood cells to bind to the oxygen that is dissolved in your bloodstream, which means that you have oxygen available to power all the repair mechanisms in your body. The lower registers of the piano also stimulate your vagus nerve, via the tragus of your ears and such stimulation has been shown to mediate chronic inflammation and pain, improve cancer prognosis and slow the rate at which we age. These are just some of the many reasons why the piano is such a powerful healing instrument.