The biological experience of art and music

by Dr. Hildegard Wöhler Granados Life and health sciences

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” Nikola Tesla

“Music expresses the reality of the will of to be able, still it is tragic and melancholy, the background of all life, but also a stimulating of life, seductive incitement to life.” Friedrich Nietzsche

“If you open my heart you will see music, if you open my brain, you will also find music, music is my life.” Dimash Kudaibergen

The search for the meaning of music is one of humanity's oldest known unknowns. Musical expression was and is as important a concept to human life, as it is to understand the aesthetics of art, philosophy and mathematics; and it also constitutes part of the medicinal language for man. Most human beings are inherently musical, however, there are people who lack the processing center that allows them to appreciate tones and melodies, that is, they are a-musical.

Music is completely intrinsic to human kind, is universal and it is present since the oldest known settlements of man, around the globe. More than 300 thousand years ago, the first hominins already gave signs of musical expression, both through vowel sounds and with instruments of wood, bone or stone. Anthropologically speaking, in non-literate societies, art in all its expression, including music, was part of everyday life, that is, without being "professional" musicians, a large number of people were both involved in the elaboration of musical instruments, as in the expression of music.

The process of musical production became increasingly complex and the sense of music became so important, that it became a multipurpose instrument for all kinds of activities, rites, artistic and emotional expressions. When you contemplate the relationship between the architecture of spiritual temples (cathedrals, churches, chapels, temples, etc.) designed for its best sound acoustics; you can get the idea of the intimate relationship between music and the most intimate aspects of human consciousness, since the beginning of time.

The "spirit of music" is immersed in all cultures. There is a great diversity of groups and subgroups of beliefs, thoughts, concepts, ideas, rites and attitudes of a mystical nature, that include musical manifestations. Music is used as a bridge between the mental structure and emotional – spiritual states of people, in almost everything related to human behavior.

Charles Darwin classified the appreciation of music as one of the most mysterious faculties developed by humans. Freud said, that music and art existed because they meet human and social needs, which cannot be satisfied or provided by other cultural activities. Anthropologist Charles Keil distinguishes functions in music such as solidarity, cathartic and downloading.

Universally, music is considered a magnificent point of reference for human beings, to identify widely in societies and particularly as individuals. Each geographical, historical, social and psychological point, has its musical peculiarity, which is strongly linked to its idiosyncrasies, experiences and personalities. You cannot separate music or ideology from the individual, nor from its spirituality-that underpins it. Music expresses, in all cultures, "Emotions". Music communicates various emotions and connect human beings with present and past experiences, encoded in his psyche, but not necessarily conscious.

Dr. Alfred Tomatis, otolaryngologist, son of Humbert Tomatis, who was a professional singer, "bass noble" at the Paris opera, combining his love for singing, music and interests in clinical practice, conducted serious studies in 1991 in the University of California, at its Center for Neurobiology, working with a control group that increased its spatial IQ (Stanford Scale –Binet) by 10 points after hearing for 10 minutes Mozart's piano sonata in D major, coining the term "The Mozart Effect." He also discovered that certain sounds that are particularly high in vocal harmonics, will stimulate and load the cortex of the brain and nervous system with different hormones such as melatonin, dopamine, serotonin and endorphins; He is the creator of the Tomatis method or Audio-Psycho-Phonology (APP). His discoveries, deepen the close bonds between the ear, voice and nervous system.

Since then, countless neurobiological and neuroelectric studies such as those conducted by Dr. Margaret Patterson and Dr. Ifor Capel, have explain that each brain center, generates impulses at a specific frequency, based on the predominant neurotransmitter that secretes. In other words, the internal communication system of the brain - its language - is based on slingshot frequency, which has led science to claim that the brain waves found in the Alpha state, from 8 to 14 Hz, allow a vibration that stimulates the production of hormones responsible for pleasure and motivation (dopamine), mood-relieving (serotonin) and happiness (endorphin). Therefore, when we send electric energy waves in some particular Hz tuning, certain lower brainstem cells will respond, because they normally trigger hormones within a specific range of Frequency.

Today it is known that the study of a musical instrument such as voice, violin, cello, etc., promotes the production of grail cells in the brain, which are responsible for neurological support for brain synapses.

Scientific research over 40 years, such as that of Dr. Herbert Benson MD, a pioneer in mind and body medicine and one of the first Western physicians to bring spirituality and healing to medicine, supported awareness of healing capacity with sound; Dr. Ranjie Singh, a neuroscientist, demonstrated that singing certain specific mantras, releases the hormone melatonin, capable of reducing tumors and increasing sleep.

These and many scientific discoveries, in addition to the work of Researchers of Sound and Song therapy, such as that of specialist Flavia Vallega, conclude that harmonic music, the belle singing, produces a relaxation response in the individuals which stimulates the release of chemicals and brain signals, causing muscles to relax, slows down the breathing and drops the blood pressure.

It is scientifically proven that melodies that integrate super-low frequencies, no more than 28 cycles (Hertz) per second, such as the delta ranging from 1.3 to 3 hertz per second, the alpha that oscillates from 7.5 to 15 hertz per second and the beta from 16 to maximum 28 hertz and that are not perceptible at the auditory level, stimulate the limbic and glandular system of living beings, promoting harmonization in both brain hemispheres and in the body, stimulating synaptic exchange and the endocrine system, which leads to improved memory and slows down neurological aging.

Music can define and express feelings, both for the musician or singer, and for the listener, who have no translation, not because it is too abstract but because it is punctual and concrete, giving us an unlimited opportunity, to lead ourselves to the discovery of our deepest interiority.

Music is one of the most special and complex forms of thought and nothing can express outside of itself. Enjoying it like this, without wanting to understand it and just to listening to it, living it and feeling it, allows to reach beyond faith, science and reason, allows to reach our deepest emotions. Love is by definition the most present and profound emotion, in the life of any human being.

The research of the psychologist, humanist psychotherapist, specialized in the management of stress Dr. Doc Lew Childre had explain and understand that our heart, in addition of being a vital organ in the body, is a communication organ, with the ability of emitting electromagnetic waves 60 times wider than the brain, waves that contain information. Through his extensive research of more than 25 years, he has exposed concrete neuroscientific evidence, which shows that the human being has the capacity of a geomagnetic sense and that it is through an electromagnetic field, that the human heart is profoundly connected to all living things and to our planet, with an intelligence of its own. It is the powerful vibratory energy of our heart charged with information, which literally emits and receives information that connects us as human beings, generating and exchanging information, thru an unspoken language, which is then captured by our brain and can modifies our emotions, as well as our reactions.

Recent discoveries of neurocardiology have shown that the heart, acts with some autonomy, that it has its own intelligence and that it sends bio-information to the brain at all times, that deeply affect its functioning.

Dr. John Andrew Armour, of the University of Montreal, found in 1991 that the heart has a complex intrinsic nervous system made up of a network of more than 40,000 neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells. It has been shown that the heart learns, remembers, perceives and even feels, without any intervention of the brain, having more communication from the heart to the brain, than the other way around, and also that the heart can inhibit or reinforce the commands of the brain, according to the specific circumstances. It has also been shown that the heart produces the hormone FNA, which helps to obtain the overall balance of vital signs (homeostasis) and serves to inhibit the production of the stress hormone and to release oxytocin (the so-called "homeostasis hormone) love").

The heart is by far the organ of our body that produces the most electricity. The heart's magnetic field is a powerful body magnet, it is the most important and powerful electromagnetic motor in the entire body. The electromagnetic waves it produces have a power five thousand times that of the brain. It wraps our body in a 360-degree range and up to two to three meters in range, and is measurable by magneto cardiograms.

When we are feeling frustration or anger, the electromagnetic signals of the heart are unstable and chaotic. When we feel love, compassion, or gratitude, their signs are stable and orderly, impacting our well-being or discomfort, and also that of those around us.

Scientific advances have found that two or more people can also synchronize the beats of their hearts. It is what happens between mothers and their babies, and is possible also among lovers, good friends, in a symphony orchestra, listening to a singer or in a celebration that celebrates the triumph of a single man in a sporting event, of which they conclude that emotions are the consequence of regulation of the autonomic nervous system (NSA), composed of two systems, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.

A harmonic heart function is only achieved when there is a balance between these two systems. If the heart sends incoherent and chaotic signals to the brain, some brain centers will have trouble functioning properly. But if we transform these signals into stable and orderly signals, the brain will better perceive what the senses give in information and it will be able to function more effectively, while the rest of the body reaches a biological efficacy, achieving harmony in the interrelationships of the circulatory, respiratory, digestive, hormonal and neurological systems. Neurobiologists continue to study the extent to which we can act on the connection between brain intelligence and heart intelligence.

Howard Martin, who is founder of the Heartmath Institute, has provided important information to the area of neurocardiology, verifying that the experimentation of positive emotions such as gratitude, affection, compassion and their connection with the thoughts linked to them, reduces stress. Allowing a state of greater coherence, between brain and heart, promoting better health and personal balance, being more effective and more decisive in our interpersonal relationships.

When we achieve harmony between heart and brain, we project a positive magnetism into the multi-meter geomagnetic fields that our heart projects expanding serenity and calm to the people we interact with. In other words, we foster peace and harmony in the society around us.

Dr. Candace Pert (1946-2013) Known as the "Goddess of Neuroscience" and "Mother of Psychoneuroimmunology", was a professor and researcher in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Georgetown. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize for her research in molecular biology in the scientific field of psychoneuroimmunology, an area that involves communication between mind and body and the importance of emotions, as a bridge between these two parts, usually treated as separate.

It is best known for her discovery of the opiate receptor in 1973, the starting point for a succession of findings of other receptors and their neurotransmitters, with the consequent impact on knowledge of the chemical basis of the functioning of the neurotransmitters and endorphins. Her studies ploy that as our feelings change, a cocktail of molecules, known as peptides, travel through the body and brain, to literally be changing the chemistry of every cell in the body.

In the development of mechanistic biology, we can find early the English writer Samuel Butler, who stated in his book "Unconscious Memory" of 1881, that all life implied an inherent unconscious memory: habits, instincts of animals, the way embryos develop, etc., all reflected a basic principle of inherent memory within life. He even proposed that there should be an inherent memory in atoms, molecules and crystals.

In contemporary biology, in 1981 the British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake, postulates in his book "The New Science of Life" the concept of "Morphic Resonance" proposing that growing organisms are made up of fields that are in and around them, fields that contain both, the form and information of the organism. An analogy that explains this is, as an oak develops, the acorn is associated with an oak field, an invisible organizing structure that organizes the development of the oak, if you cut an oak into little pieces, each small piece, treated properly, can grow into a new tree. So from a small fragment, you can get a whole. Machines don't do that; they don't have this power to stay whole if parts of them are removed. A computer in small pieces, it's a broken computer and it doesn't regenerate into a bunch of small computers. If you cut a flatworm into small pieces, each piece can become a new flatworm. If you cut a magnet into pieces, you have many small magnets, each with a full magnetic field. This is an integral property that fields have, which mechanical systems do not have, unless they are associated with fields.

This principle explains that each species has its own fields, that in each organism there are fields within the fields. Within each of us is the whole-body field; fields for arms and legs and fields for kidneys and livers, where the information that develops them is located, beyond the DNA information, which is the same in all cells of the body; within the different organs of the body, there are fields and within the different tissues that form them there are fields, and within them, fields for cells, and fields for sub-cellular structures, and fields for molecules, and so on. There are a whole series of fields within the fields and in each field there is information with a built-in memory, derived from the previous form.

Each animal, plant or mineral species has a collective memory to which all members of the species contribute and to which they form up, these fields are called morphogenetic fields, which are invisible organizational structures, which shape plants, animals, human body, and also, have an organizing effect on the group's behavior. Likewise, in family systems we find the same principle of the morphogenetic field, which explains that the behaviors and minds of all individuals of a single species, a group of belonging or a family system, are united and forming part of the same field of information, of the same consciousness, which intertwines the minds and information of individuals belonging to a particular field, this is what is known as a systemic approach.

The Systemic Approach arises from the synthesis of different fields of research such as: The Theory of the Logical Types of Whitehead and Russell, 1910; Theory of Games by Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1944; Cybernetics of Nobert Wiener, and Heinz von Foerster 1948; Shannon and Weaver Information Theory, 1949; Studies of the Palo Alto (California) team led by Gregory Bateson 1949; General Systems Theory by Ludwig von Bertelanffy, 1962-1968; Theory of Human Communication by Paul Watzlawick, 1974; The New Science of Life: Rupert Sheldrake 1981.

This systemic approach produces a logical leap in human thinking, through the discovery of another way to look at reality and to understand the human being as a system, and within a system. Its main characteristic is that its unit of analysis is the system and not only the individual, modifying the angle of observation of reality, moving from linear optics to a circular one and from mechanical to holistic. This approach explains that humans connect with other human beings, both from the similar unconscious emotional information and from the way from which we manage our own life and from where life has been managed inside our own family.

The systemic approach explains that it is inside the field of the family system, where all genealogical information is contained and connected. That is, the information collected from the history and past evolution of a village or a family system, is contained in a " racial memory" or a "family memory" as Freud explained or Jung's "collective unconscious" or Timothy Leary's "neurogenic circuit." The morphic or systemic resonance or the principle of this collective memory explains that each family has its own collective memory, to which all its members are connected and have access, whether they have it conscious or not. The transmission of information, of intergenerational "inheritance", occurs in this morphic field and is a common memory, shared by all clan members, whether or not they have lived in the same spatiotemporal coordinates.

The systemic proposal has meant a huge theoretical, epistemic, clinical and methodological revolution, This theory holds that it is in the field of the family system, where all genealogical information is contained and connected, that is, information collected from history and past evolution, whether it is a Village, a family system, the same organization, or a group of fans. This is a "racial memory”, a “family memory” as Freud explained, or it is Carl Jung's "collective unconscious" or Timothy Leary's "neurogenic circuit." The morphic or systemic resonance or the principle of this collective memory explains, that each family or group, has its own collective memory, to which all its members are connected and have access, whether they are aware of it or not. The transmission of information occurs within this morphic field and is a common memory, shared by all members of a clan, or admirers of a singer, whether or not they have lived in the same spatiotemporal coordinates. To date the systemic model has gained global prestige and acceptance in the different academic, clinical, pedagogical and social fields, to name just a few.

The Wöhler method, is a methodology from life and health sciences, and integrates all the scientific information and disciplines mentioned above, which allow us to understand how we are internally connected to the "lives" of our country people and family systems, and how our biology "listens" to our emotions and how the body will try through this information, to adapt to the outside, issuing an attempt of solution called symptom or disease, which can be physiological or behavioral and that will be biologically consistent with the unresolved experience, either from the person or his family system, and consistent with the language of the cell, the tissue, the organ involved and the development of the disease. This are the basis for understanding that symptoms and physiological diseases have an emotional and non-psychosomatic origin and at the same time, explains the way of experiencing life and how it is related to our own family system and how is it that from the transgenerational or systemic information present within us, and not necessarily conscious, lead us to approach the perfect situation, either to be in contact with it or solve it, no one begins life from scratch.

This therapeutic method understands that the forms and patterns of behavior, as well as the experiences that the individual goes thru in his life, are attuned to invisible connections within the morphogenetic or systemic field to his groups of belonging, and groups of family and friends, and can affect both the organism and the psyche. The development of the way of life, is the result of both the internal organization of the organism, and the interaction of all the information contained in the morphogenetic or systemic fields, to which the individual belongs; as well as all the codified experiences within him, product of his experiences, both aerial (from birth), and in utero (during intrauterine development), as well as the transgenerational experiences of their family systems.

Every sick organ corresponds to an unsolved experience, lived with a concrete emotion, with drama, in solitude and without a conscious solution to the outside, lived by the individual in his aerial life (starting of their birth), in his uterine life (parents' experiences) or present in the stories and experiences of his family system. The development of health & life sciences, has allowed us to understand that we have a biological intelligence, that listens to life every moment and that will try to adapt to the outside, for the survival of the individual; understands that physiological and/or behavioral symptoms and diseases, are an attempt to adapt to the outside, of something that had no solution.

When it is very hot we sweat to refresh the body; When we walk through mountains or very high peaks where oxygen levels in the air are lower, our body produces more red blood cells to compensate for it and try to adapt to the external that it cannot be modified; In the same way if someone swallows a fishbone, it´s biology will first try to expel it by causing vomiting and if it is not achieved, the stomach will produce more hydrochloric acid to try to dissolve the spine. What's interesting is that our brain doesn't distinguish whether the person swallowed a real thorn or the "idea of a thorn" because he has a son who dies in an accident; our biology hears it as the same and will react in the same way trying to adapt, firing a solution inside the body, called symptom or disease.

When through a Psycho-Bio-Neuro-Therapeutic process, like the one proposed by the Wöhler Method, the difficult experiences are released and what was not satisfied is solved, regardless the moment of the life where they occur, there is an increase of neurotransmitters levels such as serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, etc., and the emotion changes. And so does the molecular information, affecting the chemistry of cells, affecting diseased tissue, while modifying the information of the experience into the family system; making it possible for the person to recover his health and/or resolve the conflict it has been experiencing in his life, to move forward where it is desired.

As human beings, we are connected to experiences, information, talents, skills, abilities and extraordinary powers, collected in the historical experiences of our people, spiritual or working groups as well from our own family systems, which act in each of us, without us being aware of it, giving form and direction to our lives and affecting our choices; when this becomes conscious, it is possible to generate even greater certainty, strength and impulse in one's life, to calmly walk the path of our own Soul, achieving in life what we desire, living our "Project Sense" that is, the project that our soul and spirit have for this life, without leaving aside, that the force that is much greater than all of us, our Creator, is the one that allows the scenarios for this to be possible.

A natural and intrinsic emergency protocol to the human being and deeply therapeutic, in an unconscious way, is the expression of art, including music, singing and dancing, as they allow us, among other things, to release difficult information captured in our archaic brain and in our body, instantly alleviating the discomfort suffered, enriching our spirit, while stabilizing our experience and strengthening the psyche, while automatically modifying the emotion heard by our molecules, which in turn modify our cells and the body's internal physiological functioning and emotionality and behavioral attitude of the individual; this is the scientific basis that explains how the expression of art, has the ability to modify health, both physiological and behavioral and not only in human beings, but also in all living beings in this beautiful blue green planet.