Origins and applications of music in chronic illness: Role of the voice, ancient chant scales, and autonomic nervous system

Abstract

Simple ancient chant scales were used prescriptively by our ancestors to treat chronic illness. These scales are remarkably similar to human vocal patterns, suggesting their healing power is related to something inherently whole already within us (Gill & Purves, 2009; Ross et al., 2007). Because we experience all of life as some form of frequency through our five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, our body selectively uses frequencies to initiate behaviors and coordinate our well-being. The vast neural, neurohormonal, and emotional responses seen with music, a form of ordered frequencies, imply a primary role for our autonomic nervous system (ANS) in discriminating audio frequencies for the management of emotions, motion, and communication (Ellis & Thayer, 2010; Porges, 2011). Hardwired from birth, we have a predilection for vocal frequency intervals and selectively filter them to communicate our physiologic state (i.e. fear or calm) and guide overall health. Spiritual healers of diverse healing traditions appear to have keenly understood our innate preferences for precise distances between two tones (i.e. intervals) and used music to mirror these inborn audio-vocal cues for modifying ANS cognitive, physical, emotional, and spiritual states. For them, the sacred healing power of music lay primarily in the unique and ineffable supremacy of the human voice.