Clisonics Wellness: Musopathy
Clinical Sonic Solutions (Clisonics) specializes in Musopathy based Tonal and Aural Solutions for Health and Wellness. Musopathy is the study of the fundamental mechanics behind musical impact on human, animal, plant, microbial and cellular level in a culture and region neutral manner. This is in marked contrast to the field of Music Therapy which studies the use of culture based music to alleviate certain health issues or improve wellness, which works mostly only on select populations.
Musopathy is a fast emerging field since it aims to come up with scientific and precise healthy solutions applicable to global populations a la allopathy.
WHY MUSOPATHY
Musopathy as a field was proposed in the 1990s by Indian Musician-Composer, Chitravina N Ravikiran. His rationale was that Music Therapy's culture and/or region specific approach was quasi-scientific and also limited in scope as it was more likely to provide relief for people associated with either or both. He also argued that the results published were too broad and simplistic to be scientifically acceptable and mass-applicable.
Fundamental Flaw of Music Therapy: The practice of often taking music meant for entertainment for clinical studies is fundamentally wrong. Very few studies - if any - try to evaluate the impact of the same music rendered in a completely different manner in terms of instrumentation, voices or tempo etc OR expand the studies to alter the tunes or the words to come up with globally usable health solutions. Music for Clinical Studies must be specially created in a very sound but simple manner so that factors can be varied and studied to isolate and tabulate exponentially more accurate results.
Minimal Reliability: Music Therapy studies tend to get culture and region centric and tend to indirectly portray observations as solutions. In reality, such results raise more questions than answers. For instance, research using Western Classical, Jazz, Rock, Chinese or Persian music is less likely to impact someone not attunded to these styles of music. Similarly, results claiming therapeutic benefits to humans, animals or plants using Indian Ragas or Hymns can offer only very, very broad findings which may either work with many similar tunes or not work at all, if the texture, tonality, speed and other factors are varied.
Minimal Sophistication: Even in cases where Music Therapy studies have been formulated well from a scientific standpoint, they scarcely take into account the innumerable musical factors and complexities embedded even in a short segment of music, making it impossible to isolate the factors responsible for a claimed benefit. For example, a 50 second orchestral composition of Mozart would have so many instruments playing simultaneously and how could any broad study ever assess which of these (violins/oboes/trumpets etc) were responsible for what part of the results and to what extent? Secondly, what about similar music composed by say Beethoven or Bach? The same goes for sophisticated melodic segments seen in Indian Classical Music, where benefits are claimed based on one artist's rendition from a particular concert or recording. The same composition or similar improvisation can be rendered by numerous artists or the same artist may render the same piece of music in subtly or substantially different ways on different occasions. Can all these ever be studied even over 10 years to come to sophisticated results?
Minimal Specificity: Similarly studies involving music with lyrics fail to address whether it is the tune, the type of rhythm, the tempo or texture of the singer's voice or the lyrics which cause improvements in one's health. For instance, what would happen if the same music was played in very high or very low volume in studies involving patients with anxiety or hypertension?
This is not to deny that the highest quality of Music can transcend cultural or regional boundaries and can offer several broad benefits to listeners. But unless the mechanics behind sound vibrations are studied, one cannot get global results.
MUSOPATHY - BASIC APPROACH
Musopathy addresses all the above issues by breaking down music from any part of the world into its fundamental universal aspects. The fundamental aspects common to most major systems of music that use 12 tones per octave in the world are:
Combination of frequencies which can be successive or simultaneous which can sound consonant, dissonant (or neutral) to most ears
Tempo or the pace of music
Decibel levels and dynamics: Basic volume levels of any audible sound
Tonalities and Texture: Broadly shrill, bass but in reality are as varied as a colour palette in a sophisticated visual software
Beat effect: when two sources of identical music are exactly aligned or minutely not aligned
INCREDIBLE SCOPE
Musopathy aims to conduct sophisticated studies on different parts of the brain or body of humans, animals, plants and micro entities by varying, separating or combining such parameters in clinical music that is created - or very carefully chosen even if from existing works. Musopathy re-engineers the arena of Music Therapy with its de-regionalised and de-culturalised creations of Clinical Music for more precise studies and is therefore an exciting area with huge therapeutic as well as commercial potential.
Musopathy can be of 2 types:
(i) Passive or Basic Musopathy: Participants or patients are aurally exposed to Clinical Music Created for them and the impact it has on them when the fundamental factors of the same music (such as volume and tempo) are varied.
(ii) Active Musopathy: Participants or patients are themselves taught simple Tonation Breathing Techniques (TBT) which they will practice for 5-6 minutes about 3-4 times per day during the study/treatment period and as their various parameters evaluated.
Tonation Breathing Techniques (TBT) such as and have been uniquely developed by Musopathy Foundation and Clisonics. They involve non-strenuous and just organic inhalation but controlled exhalation using self generated tones by the participant through only the nose with closed lips (Nasal Tonation) or through very minutely opened lips (Pursed Lips Tonation). There are other variants to these for specific conditions.
TBT does not require training in Music, Breathing Exercises, Yoga etc but provides the combined benefits of all these plus the benefits of mindfulness and other practices. It can be practiced along with any other breathing or physical training program or yoga.
CLINICAL TRIALS & OTHER OBSERVATIONS
Charusat University in Gujarat, India studied over 30 patients from 2019 and proved that Musopathy TBT reduced Blood Pressure by over 7 points and also increased the production of FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormones).
TBT also benefited over 300 Covid and other patients with diverse issues, especially during the pandemic and helped their recovery in several ways:
Breath control improvement of 30-250% (500% in some cases) within 10-15 mts.
Relief from chest congestion and clearing of phlegm.
Improved Spirometry results within 2-3 days.
SPO2 levels increase by 10% within 10 mts.
High pulse rates brought down to near normal (130 to 80).
Reduction in anxiety and depression.
Release of muscular tension of neck, shoulder etc.
Increased focus, clarity of thought and relaxed mindset among other benefits, especially those facing work stress and physical strain (including in the Corporate world).
Increased energy and decrease in fatigue, especially for those in leadership roles.
Enhanced overall wellness.
Mayo Clinic, USA is studying TBT's potential to ease aromatase-inhibitor-induced Joint and/or muscle pain for Breast cancer patients and MetroHealth Medical Centre in Cleveland, USA is studying TBT with Phonation Therapy to improve symptoms and lung physiology in patients referred for pulmonary rehabilitation.
AVAILABLE BENEFITS OF MUSOPATHY & TBT
Several Musopathy TBT instructional videos are available for download at most nominal costs, which almost anyone can benefit from by playing them several times as they practice the various techniques explained there. Though these may appear simple, they still need to be followed precisely. The duration of each video has been intentionally kept short to enable participants to stay focused and grasp the technique easily and do it themselves thereafter. One can choose to first understand and practice various TBT techniques (such as Nasal/Buzz Tonation) before applying suggested ones for specific conditions listed below. Alternatively, one can first check out the videos for one's condition and then access the specific videos that elaborate on the best techniques for the same.
There are TBT videos for the following:
Covid, COPD, Common Cold and other similar conditions
Muscular Tension
Sinus or stress related Headaches
Sleep Disorders
Pain Management
Anxiety, Panic & Phobia
Depression, Aggression & Anger
Other Behavioral Issues
Stress and Hypertension Management
Sore Throat and Basic Voice Issues
Other Applications of Musopathy & TBT
Enhanced Wellness: Certain techniques like Nasal Tonation and Pursed Lips Tonation have a wider range of applications including increased energy, stamina, focus, clarity, calmness and an overall sense of enhanced wellness. enhanced wellness. It can be a strong component of Lifestyle Management.
Complementary: Most importantly, Musopathy can be a complimentary or even viable option for some of the above listed conditions as it offers viable options with lesser side effects to a number of people who may be seriously allergic to certain medications.
Viable Alternative: Musopathy can potentially help alleviate the symptoms of neuro-psychiatric disorders including Parkinson's and autism where most pharmacological interventions have by and large not succeeded till date.
Preventive: High quality studies are needed to explore if Musopathy can help in the prevention of illnesses such as cognitive degeneration even before some of them could be detected clinically.
ANTIDOTE TO TOXIC TONALITIES
Musopathy is the most viable option to counter the invisible but severe impact of Toxic Tonalities that batter our aural-neural systems almost every day in most urban settings but are taken for granted by us. Let us examine this minimally known concept a bit further. Toxic Tonalities (TT) may be defined as consciously or subconsciously grating tonal textures.
In other words, it is not only the volume levels of what one hears but the textures of sounds that impact us. This not only includes noise that immediately affects us like a crashing metal or screeching wheels. It includes thousands of everyday sounds like fans running, air conditioners or refrigerators humming, vehicular traffic sounds including those made by our own cars on the road, doors closing or even some types of music.
Rigorous research could well prove that Toxic Tonalities are perhaps the greatest source of stress related ailments in the last few decades. The key is to study the impact of various TT on the human aural and neural systems and then further study combinations of various TTs and assess the cumulative impact of those over a few weeks/months.
TTs were much less prior to the Industrial Revolution and are relatively lower in some countries and in certain regions within countries but maximum in urban settings.
This is one of the reasons why millions of people are gravitating towards natural sounds such as ocean waves, falling rain etc on YouTube and other platforms. But more precise Musopathy solutions can exponentially improve the overall quality of life of everyone.
THE MUSOPATHY NADA YOGA SOLUTION
In parallel Musopathy techniques can counter the impact of these either by enabling those affected to listen to purer tonalities or learning to produce them by themselves. Nada Yoga (pronouced as naada yoga) is the pursuit of pure tonalities either through one's voice or through an instrument. Musopathists can run exposure or education sessions everyday to enable people to combat the impact of TT and also prevent further health complications.
MUSOPATHY MS & PhD COURSES
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, India has launched MS by Research and PhD courses on Music and Musopathy since August 2024. More information about this can be found in the links below.
https://iksmha.iitmandi.ac.in/musopathy.php
Studies planned include exploring the impact of Active and/or Passive Musopathy on Sugar Levels, Pain Management, Hypertension, Depression, Muscular Strain, Cancer Cell Research and animal/plant wellbeing, to name a few.
A few other institutions are planning to initiate similar courses in the near future.
MUSOPATHY AND MIND ENGINEERING & MANAGEMENT:
TBT is also an integral part of the Clisonics Mind Engineering and Management (MEM) excellence and leadership programs which have benefited a number of individuals across the world. Individuals or organizations can schedule live or online appointments with TBT experts for MEM or Health and Wellness by emailing wellness@clisonics.com.
DISCLAIMERS: TBT is not a substitute for clinical care. It is only a supplement. It does not claim to cure your illness. It only aims to help you manage and/or prevent several conditions. Do not stop ANY medications without consulting your doctors.