Quartz Crystal Singing Bowls
New Age Medicine
by Lorrie Elian

Vibrational Healing, Sound Therapy, Crystal Energy, Chakra Balancing… there are a lot of buzz words out there when it comes to alternative therapies these days. They can be referring to one specific one, or in fact it can mean many. Whatever the case may be, it certainly is of growing interest and it is amazing how many we have not heard of before.

A large number of you may have heard of Quartz Crystal Singing Bowls but even more may not have. They are part of a new age in alternative therapies, but they come from ancient healing practices.

Although the bowls appear to be fairly new on the alternative therapy scene, they have actually been around for awhile and had their start in a few different industries. They have been used in the pharmaceutical industry for some 50 years and more recently in the computer industry. And perhaps in 1761, Benjamin Franklin was the first to be inspired to design and manufacture the first prototype of a Glass Armonica or Harmonica that is in production today. In his day, Benjamin Franklin served as a delegate for colonial America and spent a great deal of time travelling to London and Paris. During this time period, a popular form of entertainment was for amateur musicians to play sets of singing or musical glasses. The musician would apply wet fingers to the edge of water-filled wine glasses. After experiencing one of these performances, Franklin set to work applying the principles of wet fingers on glass to his own musical creation. In his day, 5,000 of them were made. Mozart and Beethoven played and wrote music for them and yet by 1820 they were pretty much unheard of. Controversial events that occurred during performances caused it to be banned in several places. Some thought the bowls were cursed. Franklin’s wife Deborah called it the music of the angels. Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer, the father of modern hypnosis, from whose name the word mesmerize was derived, used the Armonica extensively to relax his patients and induce a state of mind conducive to hypnosis.

Of all the inventions Franklin gave to his fellow man, he never made money from patents on any of them. He thought everyone should share in the benefits. Until his last days, he was known to have said he enjoyed the Armonica the most. I can only imagine the response of people in his day to the practice of meditation! What they may have been experiencing were the pure healing frequencies that are emitted by the crystals, but superstitious fear-based teachings wouldn’t allow them to see the beauty.

The ancients knew well the healing benefits of sound and vibration. For millenia, indigenous people have used gongs, drums, whistles, bells, and voices. Their practitioners and medical practices use vibrational modalities because they are experiencing results and there is a growing body of scientific research supporting the validity of their benefits.

The Quartz Crystal Singing bowls that you see today are manufactured in China. Many companies are selling them but they all originate from China. They are composed of silica quartz in the form of sand. The sand is fired to 4,000 degrees centigrade where it melts. The frosted-style bowls are formed in molds and finished off by hand, including tuning it to a musical note. The clear bowls are formed by heating tubes of silica quartz that are then formed into the bowl shapes and also then finished with tuning to a musical note. Each bowl can be considered a work of art as no two are ever the same.

So how do they work? A very simplistic answer to this is through resonance and vibration. An example of how resonance works is the opera singer hitting that note that shatters the crystal glass. Or the ultrasound waves that blast or shatter kidney stones. The frequency that the bowls emit works the same way. You don’t need to hear the sound of the bowls to receive the benefit, in fact the vibrations have been measured to travel at least a quarter mile. The ancients of Atlantis were said to use frequency and crystals to heal, the theory being that when there was dis-ease in the body, a frequency band was misaligned or missing, so they would realign or replace that frequency by applying sound through different methods. Further to this, they determined that the condition existed in the aura long before it manifested in the physical. So they would also treat the emotional condition psychosomatically or the disease would reoccur.

The speed of sound converts to light frequency and the rate at which each of the chakras oscillates further translates into colour. That is why each chakra has a specific colour but also why colour is also so powerful in our lives. The bowls I work with are Chakra Bowls based on the seven chakras. You will receive benefits using any of the bowls but may possibly resonate with one more than others. The psychosomatic work with clients that I do helps them to realize their life’s purpose by recognizing the lessons being taught through what their body is telling them.

In my psychosomatic practice, I use the bowls to demonstrate energy. They help people to understand the body-mind connection. In meditations, they deepen the experience and are one of the best teachers for demonstrating the power of intention. Once you have this experience, the process of awareness becomes very acute. As they say, “There’s no going back!” This is exactly true when you start working with the bowls. The power they yield teaches us about our own power and how we should strive to use it for our greater higher good. They are truly a gift to humanity as we move into this spectacular time in our evolution!

Lorrie Elian has her Masters as a Psychosomatic Practitioner. Along with Larry Elian, her business and life partner, they are the creators and founders of Crystal Singing Bowls of Canada, the first privately-owned Canadian company to import direct from the manufacturer. They have travelled through Indonesia, Asia, and North America to experience different cultures and Sacred Energy. Their greatest pleasure is living in Saskatchewan with its well-grounded, salt-of-the-earth people, and developing their certified organic land east of Saskatoon where they will eventually live a sustainable lifestyle creating and producing Saskatchewan-made products. Contact information: email: crystalsingingbowlsofcanada@gmail.com. Also see the display ad on page 39 of the 17.2 July/August issue of the WHOLifE Journal.