The voice has a tremendous ability to be an instrument for healing. Pythagoras recognized the considerable therapeutic power of human speech. He treated diseases through the reading of poetry. He taught his students how a skilful, well-modulated voice, with beautiful words and pleasing meter, could restore balance to the body and soul.
The belief in the healing capacity of the human voice is common to many parts of the world. Shamans and holy men of primitive societies would use a spirit language to commune with higher intelligences so as to extract proper remedies.
Confession has been used by many societies and religions as a means of accelerating the healing process. This process aligns itself with many of modern psychology’s psychosomatic remedies. It was used voluntarily by the Apache Indians during times of illness.
According to Ted Andrews, an expert on toning for health, the Apaches recognized that all levels of consciousness and action were intimately connected to the physical. By confessing, the individual faced what had created the illness.
More commonly, the Catholic Church still utilizes confession. However, it has lost the physical healing aspects that once were associated with it. Today it is more focused upon the spiritual and emotional cleansing, and few now acknowledge its intimacy with physical well-being.
Our speech comprises two elements: consonants and vowels. Every letter and combination of letters has significance. The vowel sounds are the most dynamic aspect of spoken sound, for without them the consonants could not be sounded.
Many of the early alphabets excluded the vowels, in the belief that they were too stimulating, causing certain energies to be activated.
The Chaldean alphabet, one of the forerunners of our alphabet, was designed to be a tool for attaining higher wisdom. Their letters, sounds, glyphic forms, and their numerological correspondences provide clues to the more archetypal energies operating and activated through the words.
Mantra Yoga is a technique for human self-realisation through the use of inner sounds or nadas that are awakened through outer toning and chanting. In Tibetan beliefs, the most important musical instrument is the human voice, and the Tibetan shamans are trained in the use of outer sound projection to create inner, esoteric vibrations.
They learn to use the head and chest as resonance chambers for the entire human body. The repeated toning of vowels creates a reverberation so that when the chanting stops, the sounds continue to echo within the mind and within the chambers of the body.
Each vowel opens a particular part of the body. This part of the body should be visualised during the inhalation and also when the vowel is spoken or toned internally. This inner sounding is the key to many metaphysical teachings concerning sound and mantras.
Without the inner sounding occurring before the outer, audible sounding, the effects are minimised. The process of Directed Esoteric Toning involves both aspects. It is simple: as we inhale, we focus our minds on the region of the body associated with the vowel, and we sound it silently. Then as we exhale, we vibrate or tone the sound again audibly.
This method of opening by the vowels can be better understood if we realise that breath penetrates deeply into the region concerned, according to our thoughts. The breath takes the energy of prana and combines it with the vowel tones and together they open specific inner regions of the body or consciousness.