By Donnie Yance
I am thrilled to introduce you to The Mederi Center’s new healing room experience, which harnesses the combined therapeutic powers of vibroacoustic therapy, music, and specialized infrared light. If you don’t live near the Center in Ashland, Oregon, you may be able to seek out similar technologies offered at other healing centers.
Good Vibrations
The entire universe resonates with vibrations—some audible, others felt only through our bodies. This fundamental truth forms the foundation of our innovative approach to healing. Though it may seem ephemeral, the power of sound and vibration carries remarkable healing potential.
Beyond their aesthetic beauty, sound waves interact with our bodies at the cellular level, influencing our physical, mental, and emotional well-being. This understanding has led us to develop a comprehensive sound healing program that integrates advanced physics and biological principles to promote holistic health.
Understanding Frequency
Frequency, measured in Hertz (Hz), represents the number of vibrations per second. In sound healing, we work with various frequencies to achieve specific therapeutic outcomes. Higher frequencies—like a bird’s song—create bright, elevated tones, while lower frequencies—like a deep drum—produce grounding, resonant vibrations. Each frequency range offers unique healing properties that we carefully calibrate in our treatments.
A Personal Perspective As A Musician
At heart, I view the entire Mederi Care medical approach through a musical lens. Our healing protocols mirror the principles of harmony, rhythm, and resonance. When people say “music is healing,” I often respond that “healing is music”—they are intrinsically connected.
Sono-Photo Dynamic Therapy (SPDT): Using Light and Sound Together to Heal
Sono-Photo Dynamic Therapy (SPDT) combines sound and light to create a safe and effective cancer treatment. This innovative approach merges two therapies: Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and Sono Dynamic Therapy (SDT). While these healing methods trace their roots to ancient practices from as far back as 3,000 BC, PDT began its development as a scientific treatment for cancer and other diseases about 100 years ago.
Ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, Greeks, and Chinese, recognized the therapeutic properties of light and sound in healing. They used sunlight exposure and musical vibrations in their medical practices. These early observations laid the groundwork for modern SPDT, though it would take thousands of years for science to understand the underlying mechanisms.
The Science Behind Sound Healing
Harvard visiting scholar Leonid Perlovsky notes, “While language splits the world into detailed, distinct pieces, sound and music unifies the world into a whole.” This observation aligns with emerging research suggesting that music serves a crucial evolutionary purpose. As Beethoven eloquently stated, “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the human spirit lives, thinks and invents.” 1
At the Mederi Center, we’ve integrated these scientific insights with traditional healing wisdom to create a therapeutic experience that engages your body’s natural healing responses through carefully calibrated sound frequencies, harmonious music, and healing light.
The Connection of Music to Herbal Medicine and Healing
The fascinating similarity of the Chinese characters for ‘music’ and ‘medicine’ is a vivid expression of the ancient Chinese understanding of the relationship between the two. It was believed that music had the power to heal, enrich, and harmonize as a therapeutic tool.
Traditional Chinese characters of ‘music’ (A) & ‘herbal medicine’ (B).
In ancient China, one of music’s earliest purposes was for healing.
The two characters are similar in both strokes and pronunciations. Spirituality, psychology, and physiology are regarded as a unified whole in Traditional Chinese medicine, which means in etiology, pathogenesis and treatment- changes in spirituality, psychology, and physiology all interact together.2
Dr. Lee Bartel’s TEDx talk at Collingwood, Ontario gives an excellent overview of the current state of vibroacoustic medical research. Dr. Bartel explains how scientifically developed sound played through Vibroacoustic devices can help reduce the symptoms of Fibromyalgia pain, Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Depression, and increase blood flow.
You can watch the talk on youtube here: https://youtu.be/wDZgzsQh0Dw?si=IbMfUKyqpTfDWZr0
Potential For Supporting Cancer Care and How SPDT May Help
The treatment works through a sophisticated yet natural process. Special compounds called “sensitizers” are introduced into the body, where they concentrate primarily in cancer cells. These sensitizers are carefully designed to respond to specific wavelengths of light and sound energy. When activated by these energy sources, the sensitizers undergo a transformation that releases reactive oxygen species (ROS). These ROS are powerful agents that target and eliminate cancer cells while largely sparing healthy tissue.
Photo Dynamic Therapy uses light-sensitive compounds that activate when exposed to specific wavelengths of light. This process has proven particularly effective for treating surface cancers and tumors that light can easily reach. Mederi Center uses LED lights that lie above the table, illuminating the entire body.
Sono Dynamic Therapy employs ultrasound waves to activate sensitizers in deeper tissues. Sound waves can penetrate much farther into the body than light, making SDT effective for treating deep-seated tumors that light-based therapy alone cannot reach.
When PDT and SDT work together as SPDT, they create a more comprehensive treatment approach. This combination therapy often achieves better results than either treatment alone.
Vibroacoustic Therapy (VAT)
VAT therapy utilizes a special vibration sound table with speakers that send soothing vibrations through your body. These vibrations influence your heart rate and brain waves in positive ways, which help you relax deeply and feel energized at the same time. Sound tables are used in vibroacoustic therapy, combining music and vibrations to improve your physical, mental and spiritual well-being.
Vibroacoustic therapy is a recently recognized technology that uses sound in the audible range to produce mechanical vibrations that are applied directly to the body. Benefits include pain management, anxiety relief, symptom reduction, physical therapy, and health improvement. The VAT therapy alone can produce powerful effects in the body. However, when combined with music, light, and other modalities, it creates a one-of-a-kind synergistic healing experience.
A narrative research review3 on the mechanisms of sound vibration including the physiological, neurological, and biochemical effects, was recently published. It begins by narrowing music to sound and sound to vibration. The focus is on low frequency sound (up to 250 Hz) including infrasound (1–16 Hz). Types of application are described and include whole body vibration.
Basic mechanisms of the hemodynamic effects include stimulation of endothelial cells and vibration-percussion. The neurological effects include protein kinase activation, nerve stimulation, vibratory pain relief, and oscillatory coherence. Musculoskeletal effects include muscle stretch reflex, bone cell progenitor fate, vibration effects on bone ossification and resorption, and anabolic effects on the spine and discs.
How Do Sound & Music Actually Facilitate Healing?
According to experts, music affects us on a primal, unconscious level. Our bodies intuitively adjust to the rhythm of music in a phenomenon known as entrainment. When you find your foot tapping or your body swaying to the beat of music, that’s the power of entrainment at work. Music with a strong beat stimulates brain waves to synchronize with the beat. Faster rhythms increase alertness and focus, while slower beats encourage a relaxed or meditative state.
These alterations in brain waves influence the body via the autonomic nervous system, which governs functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and glucose levels. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is designed to defend the body against danger, and elicits the “fight-or-flight” response. When the crisis has passed, the parasympathetic branch takes over, and the body downshifts back into the mode of healing and regeneration often called the “rest and digest” response.
Because of the stress of modern life, many people stay in a constant state of alertness, which is not healthy in the long run. When the body is always in crisis mode, stress hormones wear it down. All energy is used for defense, leaving no time for the body to recover, heal, and grow. Cultivating a parasympathetic state is a powerful way to encourage physical and emotional healing.
One challenge for health researchers is distinguishing between “music” and “sound vibration” as the main influence on the body. When studying music, researchers often focus on its effects on: mood, emotions, relaxation, and stress. These reactions can come from personal enjoyment, memories, or natural brain processes. Many of these responses are shaped by culture and early exposure to music. Another way to study music is by looking at how it activates brain circuits and specific brain functions. This has been especially useful in rehabilitation.4,5
When music or audible sound is considered for its vibratory (rhythmicity) effects, a third category of response mechanism emerges and its focus becomes primarily cellular. The most basic and oldest use of vibratory effect is the mechanical “shaking” of the body and more recently specific areas and cells. Another more specific category of cellular response is the effect of driving a balancing response in the nerves.6
Music is one of the easiest and most immediate ways to produce a parasympathetic state of healing. Studies show that music with a slow tempo (such as Bach or Mozart) will calm the nervous system and encourage parasympathetic activity. Heart rate and breathing tend to synchronize to the beat of the music; a tempo of about 70 beats per minute is perfect because it mimics the average healthy heart rate at rest.
Music is a way to tap into the innate knowledge that resides deep in our cells. Music can harmonize us with the Divine. It is capable of bridging heaven with earth, or our human mortal-self with our spiritual immortal-self. Music can bring joy to our inner heart like nothing else. I am sure everyone at some point in their lives has had music pierce through their heart leaving them with tears of joy.
Music brings about the excitation of the limbic system with corresponding changes in neurotransmitters. We live “in” music. Great music nourishes us in ways we don’t even realize. It inspires us, relaxes us, energizes us; in short, it heals us and keeps us well. It resides everywhere in our world. While we may not always be listening to a Beethoven Symphony or a Mozart Sonata, the universe is a tonal harmony of many sounds interacting and vibrating together.
Music is the pulse of energy that courses in and through everything through vibrations. Don Campbell, author of The Mozart Effect, says that, “music can be delicate and quiet, but never sedentary.” Even a tone that extends for hours at a time, unvarying, carries a pulsing wave that affects our mind and body at many levels. What we bring to each sound is also of vital importance. Campbell goes on to say, “You, the listener, determine the final impact: You are an active conductor and participant in the process of orchestrating health.”
Music is a way that the innermost parts of our being and the universe communicate with us. Music speaks where no words are found. Music knows no boundaries created by cultures, race, governments, religions, or laws.
Research from Tel Aviv University found that premature babies who are exposed to music by 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gain weight faster. The research is based on a controversial 1993 study showing that college students improved their IQs by listening to a Mozart sonata for 10 minutes. When the study was reported, parents in the U.S. started buying Mozart CDs, hoping to boost their children’s brainpower.7
New research from McGill University8 reveals that music works best for pain relief when played at a person’s natural rhythm. This discovery could lead to personalized music therapy where songs are adjusted to match each patient’s internal tempo.
Key Findings of the study found that:
- All music reduced pain compared to silence
- Music matching a person’s natural tempo provided the strongest pain relief
- The effect worked for both musicians and non-musicians
The Science Behind Music and Pain
While music has long been used for pain management, researchers wanted to understand exactly how it works. The key appears to be tempo—the speed at which music is played. Everyone has their own natural rhythm, called the spontaneous production rate (SPR), which may be connected to our biological rhythms.
Music allows us to transcend the everyday states of consciousness and travel to either remembered places or see vistas created only in our imaginations. This process of transcending the mundane evokes mind-body responses when people shift to altered states of consciousness. When an individual uses music for relaxation, their abstract thinking is slowed down as they remain in a normal waking state. As they continue with their process of relaxation, the individual moves through the remainder of the six states of consciousness: expanded sensory threshold, daydreaming, trance, meditative states, rapture, and the witnessing state.
The 6th State of Consciousness: Witnessing
“True Spirituality is always bringing us back to the original knowing that is a unitive experience.” Richard Rohr
The 6th state of consciousness, known as witnessing, combines the 4th state with our normal waking state. It allows us to experience reality from two perspectives simultaneously, proving that consciousness can bring our physical bodies into a deeper realization, that of spiritual enlightenment and interconnectedness to the Cosmos (meaning everyone and everything).
This 6th state represents a path toward enlightenment, expanding our awareness beyond ordinary consciousness.
Within the 6th state, you remain fully present in your body while also observing yourself from an external vantage point. You become an impartial witness (witnessing state) to your experiences, thoughts, and emotions without getting caught up in them. This detachment frees you from limiting beliefs and biases.
The witnessing state reveals that your true self is the Observer—not your ego, personality, or instincts. As Nirmala Srivastava explains:
“When you reach that state… you’ll develop a complete state of witnessing with joy.”
Christian Mysticism and the Path to Divine Consciousness
The Eastern Christian monastic tradition offers another perspective on transcendent consciousness through the practice of kenosis—a profound spiritual emptying. This practice involves:
- Releasing the ego’s grip
- Removing our constructed personas
- Surrendering personal will
- Discovering our true telos (divine purpose)
Through this process of spiritual emptying, monks would discover their authentic divine nature, becoming vessels for bringing love and goodness into the world.
Saint Bonaventure’s Path to Enlightenment
Saint Bonaventure, known as “the Seraphic Doctor” (Doctor of Enlightenment), exemplified this transformative journey. His approach to divine consciousness followed three stages:
- Foundation in Faith: Beginning with spiritual belief
- Rational Understanding: Developing through intellectual comprehension
- Mystical Union: Culminating in direct divine experience
His title reflected the divine love that suffused his being—demonstrating how Western mystical traditions, like their Eastern counterparts, developed sophisticated paths to higher states of consciousness.
In recent years, new techniques to measure the brain’s response to auditory cues in real time have given researchers valuable data to address the issue. “We can see how these ingredients of sound are processed by the brain,” says Nina Kraus, an auditory neuroscientist at Northwestern University. Today some evidence suggests that musical training may enhance a suite of cognitive functions, including listening, linguistics, focus, memory, and spatial, motor, and mathematical skills.
Music Therapy Improves The Lives Of Cancer Patients
A systematic review of 30 trials and 1,891 cancer patients also supports the use of music therapy during cancer treatment.9
Music therapy is found to have positive effects on decreasing anxiety scores, “the mean state anxiety score was significantly lower in the experimental group than those in the control group at each of the three post-test measurements.” 10
A 2001 study of 20 patients awaiting breast biopsy showed that, when some of the patients had a 20-minute music therapy session while in the preoperative waiting room, their anxiety and respiratory rates were much lower than those of the patients who did not have a music therapy session.11
Music Listening Reduces Anxiety & Enhances Well-Being During Radiation Therapy
Music listening has great potential as a noninvasive, safe, and cost-effective approach for enhancing the well-being of patients with cancer undergoing radiotherapy.
Listening to background music effectively reduced anxiety symptoms in patients with cancer undergoing initial radiation therapy, according to study results published in Radiation Oncology.12
A Sample Sono-Photo Healing Session
While remaining fully clothed, you will listen to the music via headphones as your body and energetic field absorb the vibrations like a sonic sponge. You hear and feel the music simultaneously washing over you bringing you into a harmonious state of mind, body, and energetic bliss. Just lie down, close your eyes, take a deep breath and release… as the sounds and vibrations begin moving in and around your body, a floating sensation begins, you release, relax and let the vibrations take you away.
Included with the vibration-sound-music experience, we offer the following additional options:
- Infrared light therapy– Infra-red light has been shown to improve mitochondrial performance which fuels cellular repair and regeneration. It helps release nitric oxide and improves blood circulation and reduces oxidative stress by enhancing vasodilation. It can also help reduce chronic inflammation, and promote cellular collagen synthesis, and tissue regeneration.
- The Pulsetto- (https://pulsetto.tech/) vagus nerve stimulating device, to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and help your body rest, restore, and reset.
- A glass of fresh hydrogen water, or tea
- Aromatherapy – diffusing essential oils into the room. We have several single oils, as well as a few blends such as “ReNew.”
Whether you are able to visit The Mederi Center in person, or research the options for sound, vibration, music, and light therapies elsewhere, I know that these healing modalities can support your mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health.
Conclusion
The integration of sound, vibration, music, and light with other healing therapies offers a profound and scientifically-backed way to support physical, mental, and emotional well being. By harnessing these natural elements, we can activate the body’s innate ability to heal, relax, and enhance overall health.
From ancient traditions to modern technologies, the power of sound and light continues to be recognized as a vital force in healing: whether through Sono-Photo Dynamic Therapy, Vibroacoustic Therapy, or music’s deep impact on the brain and nervous system.
At The Mederi Center, we are committed to advancing these innovative healing experiences and making them accessible to those seeking holistic approaches to wellness. Sound and music are not just art forms or sources of entertainment, they are essential tools for harmony, renewal, relaxation, and profound healing.
About the Author:
Donald R. Yance is the founder of the Mederi Center. A Clinical Master Herbalist and Certified Nutritionist, Donnie is renowned for his extraordinary knowledge and deep understanding of the healing properties of plants and nutrition, as well as of epigenetics, laboratory medicine, oncologic pathology, and molecular oncology. He is a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild, National Association of Nutrition Professionals, Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, and the Society for Integrative Oncology.
References:
- Savage PE, Loui P, Tarr B, Schachner A, Glowacki L, Mithen S, W Fitch T. 2020. Music as a coevolved system for social bonding.. Behav Brain Sci. :1-42.
- Dai, H., Han, J. & Lichtfouse, E. Smarter cures to combat COVID-19 and future pathogens: a review. Environ Chem Lett 19, 2759–2771 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-021-01224-9
- Bartel,L.;Mosabbir,A. Possible Mechanisms for the Effects of Sound Vibration on Human Health. Healthcare 2021, 9, 597. https://doi.org/10.3390/ healthcare9050597
- Thaut, M. Neurologic music therapy: From social science to neuroscience. In Handbook of Neurologic Music Therapy; Thaut, M., McIntosh, G., Eds.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2014; pp. 1–6.
- Altenmüller, E.; Marco-Pallares, J.; Münte, T.F.; Schneider, S. Neural Reorganization Underlies Improvement in Stroke-induced Motor Dysfunction by Music-supported Therapy. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 2009, 1169, 395–405.
- Bartel,L.;Mosabbir,A. Possible Mechanisms for the Effects of Sound Vibration on Human Health. Healthcare 2021, 9, 597. https://doi.org/10.3390/ healthcare9050597
- Mandel, D., Lubetzky, R. Mozart Therapy: A Sonata a Day Keeps the Doctor Away ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2010), Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine
- Wenbo Yi et al, Individualizing musical tempo to spontaneous rates maximizes music-induced hypoalgesia, Pain (2025). DOI: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000003513
- Bradt J, Dileo C, Grocke D, Magill L. Music interventions for improving psychological and physical outcomes in cancer patients. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011;(8):CD006911.
- Li XM, Zhou KN, Yan H, Wang DL, Zhang YP., Effects of music therapy on anxiety of patients with breast cancer after radical mastectomy: a randomized clinical trial. J Adv Nurs. 2011 Oct 6. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05824.x.
- Haun M, Mainous RO, Looney SW., Effect of music on anxiety of women awaiting breast biopsy. Behav Med. 2001 Fall;27(3):127-32.
- Yang HF, Chang WW, Chou YH, et al. Impact of background music listening on anxiety in cancer patients undergoing initial radiation therapy: a randomized clinical trial. Radiat Oncol. 2024;19(1):73. doi:10.1186/s13014-024-02460-3