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Wellness Practitioners Must Recognize and Celebrate the Native Roots of Sound Healing

Dara Laine Murray
7 min readOct 3, 2022

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Sound is a powerful healing force. It has been used to heal the human body and spirit since ancient times, but people often don’t realize that this practice didn’t originate in Western culture.

Sound healing instructors need to be careful about how they talk about their work so that they don’t come across as culturally appropriative or racist. The wellness industry is trying to change its ways, but it’s up to all of us to make sure that it does so in an authentic way.

Wellness Practitioners Must Recognize and Celebrate the Native Roots of Sound Healing

What is sound healing?

Sound healing is a type of alternative medicine that uses the frequencies and sound vibrations made by music and other sounds to help people relax, get better, or grow spiritually. It is based on Eastern practices like yoga, meditation, acupuncture, Tai Chi, Reiki, and Qi Gong. But the history of sound healing goes back further and is much broader than you may have known.

Sound therapy isn’t new.

Sound healing isn’t a new concept. The use of sound has been around for centuries and is an important part of many cultures.

Acoustic therapy has been used in medicine for a long time. The earliest example we know of was found in an Egyptian tomb from 4000 B.C. It’s…

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Dara Laine Murray
Dara Laine Murray

Written by Dara Laine Murray

Multi-passionate sobriety writer on Medium. Day job: Director of Research at a nonprofit. Stories = sober + stats. Editor: https://medium.com/modern-sobriety

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