“If you want to give sound therapy a try, start with the handiest and most versatile of all instruments: your vocal cords.
The sounds you can make with your own voice can be the most powerful healer of all. Your own voice can massage your own body from within. This is a process called toning, which involves making elongated vowel sounds. The vibrations from the tones can help relax you, ease stress and balance the mind and body.
In his book The Roar of Silence: The Healing Power of Breath, Tone and Music, Don G. Campbell, director of the Institute for Music, Health and Education in Boulder, Colorado, outlines simple exercises that he says can show the relaxing power of toning.
Start by sitting in a comfortable chair. The first thing you have to do, Campbell says, is ask the left, rational side of your brain, the side that controls thought and that may find this exercise new and challenging, permission to experiment with tone. Ask your brain to explore the vowel sounds for ten minutes.
Now close your eyes and focus on listening. Take a deep, easy breath and start humming “a soft and resonant sound,” Campbell says. There is no need to worry whether the sound is high or low or whether it is beautiful. Gradually begin to sense the vibration of the sound in your chest and head.
Campbell suggests that you allow the sound to naturally rise and fall without effort. Place your hands on your cheeks and let them feel the sound. Listen with your hands, not with your ears. Continue toning with your hands, feeling your face and skull for five minutes.
Then relax your hands and tone on just one sound, such as ahhhh, for another five minutes, keeping your eyes closed. When you are finished, just notice the relaxation that has come to your mind, body and breath.”
~ New Choices in Natural Healing