Can Sound Healing Help With Pain, Sleep and Physical Wellbeing?

People often ask me: “How can sound healing help with something so physical, like pain, sleep problems, or even eczema?”

The truth is — there isn’t one single answer. What I can share is how I see it, shaped by both science and my own experience in the clinic. It’s a way of explaining something that is both simple and deeply complex at the same time.

The Mind–Body Connection in Healing

A fundamental assumption I work with is the mind–body connection. The idea is that our thoughts, emotions, and stress are not separate from our physical health – they are woven into it.

Pain and disease don’t appear in isolation. Stress, anxiety, and unprocessed emotions change how our nervous system works, how our immune system responds, even how our muscles hold tension. This doesn’t mean pain is “in your head.” It means the body is constantly responding to the signals of the mind – and those signals can be unlearnt or changed. 

I learnt this first hand when I “cured” myself from 30 years of what I used to call knee migraines. Once I understood this simple (yet so hard to deal with) truth, and started working with it, the pain eased and eventually disappeared. And this was even before I ever stepped into the world of sound healing (but that’s probably a story for another post).

If you’re willing to hold this assumption as true, then you can begin to see how sound might have a very real impact on the physical level. Let’s unpack this:

What Happens in a Sound Healing Session

In a 1-on-1 session, something powerful happens: the body is guided by sound into a deep state of rest – the kind of rest that’s rare in everyday life.

The tones and vibrations are not only pleasant to the ear, they also help slow down brain waves, often moving you into alpha and even theta states – the same states linked with meditation and deep healing. This makes it very easy to slip into a meditative state – similar to the state just before sleep, when the mind drifts and the body feels deeply at ease. This shift acts as a signal to the nervous system that it is safe to let go.

As the sounds wash over you, your muscles soften, your breathing slows, and the nervous system shifts out of “fight or flight” into “rest and repair.” In that state, the body finally has the chance to catch up – to rebalance, recharge, and begin repairing.

I don’t see sound as something “added” to the body like a pill or supplement. I see it as a doorway. The vibrations gently hold you in that state of safety, creating the conditions where healing can take place because your body is no longer blocking itself with stress or resistance.

If we go back to the mind–body connection, this on its own can already explain why the body is able to reduce signals of pain, alertness, or tension once it shifts out of stress mode and feels safe and relaxed. But there’s another layer to the story: how sound itself interacts with matter and the physical world.

How Sound Interacts With the Body

Sound is not only something we hear – it’s vibration, and vibration moves matter. If you’ve ever seen a ping pong ball dance from the strike of a tuning fork (click here to see me demonstrating it), or the patterns of cymatics where sand arranges into shapes on a vibrating plate (like in this video for example), you know how powerful sound really is.

So when we bring sound to the body, it isn’t just “relaxing music.” The vibrations interact with tissues, fluids, and cells. They reorganise and retune. In that sense, sound doesn’t just soothe – it helps bring the body back into harmony on a physical level.

It’s a bit like a guitar that’s out of tune, or an orchestra where one instrument is playing off-key. Everything feels unsettled until you retune, and suddenly the whole soundscape returns to harmony. In the same way, sound can help the body retune itself into balance. 

It’s also worth considering that sound is a language the body naturally understands. Unlike traditional talk-based therapies that work mainly through words and ideas, vibration communicates directly with the body in a way that feels instinctive and effortless. It’s as if your system already knows how to respond – because on some level, it always has. We are vibrational beings, and everything around us is vibration too, so sound resonates with us in a way that feels natural and familiar.

Think of how you already use music intuitively in daily life: to grieve, to focus, to celebrate, or to unwind. You choose music according to your mood, as a tool to support what you’re feeling. Sound healing takes that same natural instinct and applies it more intentionally and more physically. It's like administering sound as a medicine.

What I’ve Witnessed in My Clinic

All of this isn’t just theory. I see it play out in my clinic every week. Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen sound healing shift things that might surprise you:

• Multiple sclerosis symptoms easing

• Frozen shoulders unlocking

• Chronic back pain lifting

• Long-standing sleep problems disappearing

• Even skin conditions like eczema calming down

Not every single client has a dramatic outcome, of course. But I’ve seen enough changes to know this isn’t “just relaxation.” Something deeper is at work.

In my Sound Healing clinic, placing a singing bowl on a client during a private session

Science and the Mystery of Sound

There’s plenty of science to explain parts of this – the nervous system, the relaxation response, the measurable effects of sound waves. But there’s also a side that remains mysterious.

I’ve come to a place where I don’t need to explain everything. I know what I see. I know how people feel when they leave. For me, that’s enough.

My Perspective

So when people ask me, “Can sound healing really help with physical issues?” – my answer is simple: Yes! Because it creates the conditions for the body to heal itself. It calms the mind, soothes the nervous system, and re-tunes the body on a level that words can’t fully capture.

And like a domino effect, that transformation impacts the body on the physical level as well.

In my clinic, I’ve seen it happen again and again.

And if this makes you curious and you want to feel it for yourself, here’s a little something extra for you:

25% off any Private sessions booking made during the next month through the website for the first 10 people to use it!

Just use coupon code FEELIT25 at checkout.*

*T&Cs for the private session booking discount: Offer valid for online bookings only until 30/9/25. Use coupon code FEELIT25 at checkout. Limited to the first 10 bookings. Not valid for any pre-discounted packages. New clients only.