Conversation with Wayne Perry

A sound healer gives us a view of how you can transform your life by using the healing power naturally inherent in your own voice.
Each human being is literally a walking symphony of sound, and those sounds and frequencies can be measured and identified.

The Monthly Aspectarian: Wayne, I usually like to start out by asking people to briefly tell their story . . . how they got from where they were to where they are now.

Wayne Perry: I got into this unusual field by accident. My background is not as a medical professional or scientist or anything like that. I was a singer of various genres of music for a number of years in Chicago, where I was born and raised. I went to Los Angeles a number of years ago in search of the proverbial record deal and found I didn't much like the record business, so I went into radio and hosted a number of different radio music shows and became a music and film critic on KCLA. The fifth show I produced and hosted was called Heart Touch, which I still do on cable television - but at that time I was doing it on radio. It was designed to interview healers, shamans, mystics, anyone working on the cutting edge of consciousness. Of all the people I covered over the first year or so of the program, those who fascinated me the most were in the field of sound therapy, which I had previously never heard of.

I was impressed by the research I did -- the published papers I read, the videos I looked at, and found that people were actually cured of incurable illnesses, seemingly with sound. Cancers, tumors, emphysema, various conditions seemed to be turned around with sound. Researching this led me into being in the first bioacoustic and signature sound training in Los Angeles, using tone generators. Bioacoustics is the study of the frequencies that emanate from living organisms. My initial training was kind of a left brain, technological approach that was a lot to wrap my mind around at first . . . learning the frequencies of various minerals and chemicals, and that everything was frequency and vibrated at a particular rate. Eventually I learned to do diagnostic work on human beings to find out what their individual frequency or signature vibration was and then treat them, initially, with sound generators. Subsequently, I moved into using other things, particularly the human voice, as a healing tool and assisted in training people to use their own voice in a non-musical but therapeutic healing methodology.

TMA: Science tells us, and of course metaphysics has always known, that everything is made up of vibration. So of course all things are affected by sound, since they themselves are vibration.

WP: That's right. We learned in elementary school that we're 30% solid and 70% water - but that doesn't tell us the whole truth. In fact it's a mistruth because, as you say, now we know that there is no such thing as "solid." The seemingly solid matter in our body, the bones and teeth, for instance, are simply energy sound vibration vibrating at very low, very slow vibratory frequencies so there is more density. And that the skin, muscles, connective tissue are simply sounds of frequencies and energy vibrating at a higher or faster rate of frequency so there's less density. And then that so-called water or fluids that flood the body are simply energy and frequency vibrating at much faster and much higher rates of frequency so there's less density still.

We're literally walking symphonies of sound, each human being, and those sounds and frequencies can be measured and identified. In fact, if you carry that analogy a little further, our thoughts and feelings are things. A lot of research is being done right now to measure those. Our thoughts and feelings are vibrating at very, very high, or fast, rates of frequency. It's an exciting time that we're living in and I feel very privileged to be involved in this work. It's been very insightful and healing in my own life.

TMA: Are you saying that specific illnesses, specific diseases, are an imbalance of frequency? That there are specific tones for specific ailments?

WP: Yes. Basically, every disease, every illness or pain, can be traced down to either too little or too much frequency. If an organ, for instance, is not in tune, is dissonant, it is not vibrating at the proper frequency for the energy that is that particular organ's function. Identifying which frequencies are imbalanced in the body - in other words, that are weak or missing or are vibrating too fast, at too high a rate of frequency - so that they don't correspond to the proper frequency of that particular organ or body system, that's the indication of imbalance in the body.

The way we measure that, oddly enough to some and logically enough to others, is through the human voice. The voice is not just a speaking and singing tool, it's also a sound tool that very accurately and simply reflects the frequencies present in the brainwaves. If there's a frequency that's present in the body, it's present in our brainwave pattern because the brain is like the home office. So when a frequency is resonating in our brainwave pattern, it in turn is resonating in our voice. If one understands how to read the voice and understands the frequencies and notes naturally inherent in the voice, one can tell in a pretty short period of time - in 20, 30, 40 minutes -- exactly where the imbalances are in the body. I can determine when a person is weak, where they're weak physically, emotionally, vibrationally - whether it's a past issue or a present one -- and then assist them in bringing the body into vibrational and harmonic balance. Balance is synonymous with good health. Vibrational balance is just another term for good health.

TMA: When you say raise or lower the frequency, that would raise or lower the note, right?

WP: Right.

TMA: How many notes are there in your scale?

WP: In the even-tempered chromatic musical scale that we use in this country, there are 12 musical notes. Now keep in mind that this isn't music therapy, although it might sound like it; also keep in mind that while there are other musical scales that could be used - the lydian, the pentatonic musical scales that could have more or less than 12 notes -- our body doesn't consist of simply 12 notes. It consists of thousands of frequencies. But we have to use something as kind of what you could call a grid, and we have to identify what those frequencies are in the body. Since, at least in the West, in this country, we have this preexisting scale that is fairly popularly understood as the chromatic scale, we use this 12-note scale to call these frequencies something in order to identify them. Rather than call them Barbara, Carol, John and Bill, we call them C-sharp, E, B, B-flat. All the frequencies that are in between the named notes -- for instance, an F and an F-sharp or a B and a B-flat -- can be influenced by the notes or frequencies around them.

In my training and experience, it isn't necessary to understand and identity thousands of frequencies in the body. What's important is to have some kind of grid or system to focus in on that identifies the different frequencies in the preexisting 12-note scale with the various octaves. This gives us enough of a barometer or grid to look at and understand where to focus the attention and the energy. It's using the musical scale in a kind of non-musical way. There are other methodologies using information from other cultures: using specific vowel sounds to focus on particular chakra points which in Western medicine we don't so much use, the ayurvedic . . . the new sound therapy research combined with what we know in a more traditional sense. In essence, that's what sound therapy is. As we mentioned before, the essence of it is first identifying where there is too much or too little frequency and then using some of these various methodologies to bring the body into harmonic balance.

TMA: You also work with what is known as overtone chanting. When the Drepung monks were in Chicago I had the opportunity to get together with those who were performing. I spoke to some of the younger monks who either didn't know or didn't seem to want to talk about health benefits from the chanting. I wonder - were they only using it for spiritual matters or do they use it for health as well?

WP: Not being a Buddhist monk, I can't say for sure. However, I have observed and learned over the years that there are various forms of overtone chanting or overtone singing. In the Buddhist monks' experience, I think it's more of a devotional technique. In what I do, I don't particularly refer to overtone as overtone chanting. I refer to it as overtoning to keep it a little more general. In the Himalayas, in Tibet, tuva [GUY: SPELLING??] is a form of throat singing that is traditionally referred to there as humie [GUY: SPELLING??] singing. It can be dangerous for the voice to do if you don't know what you're doing. That's the first reason I don't teach it. I know how to do it, but if you're not familiar with the particulars of the technique, you can damage your vocal cords. Secondly, it's been my experience in observing the cultures that use this that it's not particularly used as a healing technique but more as a devotional one, and, perhaps, to alter the state of consciousness or to use as a musical tool. If you go to the concerts of the singers of tuva, you'll agree that they're are amazing in what they can do with their voice. It's also my experience and with what research I've done, that the Buddhist monks seem to have learned this technique thousands of years ago from the Tuvans. No one seems to know precisely who started this and developed it. As best as I can surmise, when the Buddhist monks were prosylitizing the Buddhist faith throughout the areas in Tibet and Mongolia, southern Russia, Siberia, they ran across the Tuvans that use to do this humie singing in the fields and among themselves and, some say, even toning their animals. They were fascinated with this technique and they learned it and then it became a part of the Buddhist culture. They get most of the credit for it, but from what I can research, it seems the Tuvans started it. However, we don't know if they were first because there aren't records.

The Tuvans and the Buddhists seem to use about three techniques of throat singing and there are various other techniques that you can use to bring out the harmonics and the overtones of the voice - which is what I teach: the regenerative capacity of the human voice to use overtones and harmonics in a therapeutic, regenerative method. I've created more than 20 techniques.

TMA: I found in playing around with it - and I had a good time doing this - that it's not that hard to get a second note. You more or less just divert half the air through the nasal passages. And then I found that there were other more subtle passages in the skull to reach a third, sometimes a fourth note, even getting that high pitch that you hear when the Tibetans do it. It's as if the skull becomes a whistle.

WP: Yes, it's something like that. There are various chambers in the body, particularly in the head, throat, sinus cavities that can resonate sounds. In my workshops and private sessions, I assist people in how to resonate the vocal chamber and the nature of the overtones and harmonics that are available through resonating it. And then there's other overtones and harmonics that can be generated from the throat area and still others from the upper nasal passages. When you combine some of these techniques, as you said, you can get two tones by closing off the throat passage, getting one tone through the nose like humming and one tone through the mouth. As you perfect the technique, you can start to resonate some of these other areas and get up to three and four tones. If you don't have some general knowledge of sound therapy and universal healing principles, it's an amusement but it's not necessarily very healing. I couple the teaching of that with some of the bioacoustic techniques.

As I mentioned early on, bioacoutics is the study of the frequencies that emanate from living organisms. Once you can identify what frequencies are strong or weak or overabundant in the body and then combine that information with some breathing and toning exercises, vowel sounds, there's a lot that can be done to strengthen the human body. Then you can move into the overtones and harmonics with some real intention to use it to regenerate the body.

I qualify and clarify sound in three categories that I call the three R's. The first type is relaxing sounds. The purpose of relaxing sounds is to calm and soothe the body. A lot of people think relaxing sound is healing sound, but it's not. Relaxing music or environmental nature sounds aren't particularly healing, they just set up the environment, perhaps, for healing. It's more for calming and soothing.

A second type of sound is what I call release sounds. Release sounds have a different purpose. They cleanse the body. We use release sounds every day when we cough and sneeze, when we moan, groan, laugh, cry - all these different sounds that we don't necessarily qualify or categorize. Just by their nature they have more volume, more specificity, as compared to relaxing sounds. They're for the purpose of cleansing, for clearing energy. If we repressed those sounds that we naturally make every day, we would be filled with so much tension and stress in the body . . . which we know leads to disease. We have this intuitive way of knowing to make release sounds. If we use it consciously, we can go so much further in releasing blockages within the human body.

The third and final category is the regenerative sounds. These are probably the least understood and the most powerfully healing. They literally rebuild and regenerate the body system. The most powerful and effective regenerative sounds are overtones and harmonics, particularly if they're created by the human voice.

TMA: What a time to be alive!

WP: Yes, we're in an exciting new time and we're taking more responsibility . . . we're taking our power back. While I'm a sound therapist and can do vibrational alignments and healing treatments on people and kind of jumpstart them, I like to point out that the technique is a self-healing and self-empowering one.

The essence of my work is about educating people and teaching them how to use the amazing healing power naturally inherent in the human voice. I encourage people to explore sounds, to use their own voice and not be dependent on others. There's no singing or music experience necessary. People get intimidated when they think they need a lot of singing technique or musical knowledge, and I think it's important to point out that anybody can do it. If you learn some of these basic principles and techniques, you can transform your life.

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