Soundwaves: The Invisible Force That Can Heal, Hurt, and Reshape the World

May 9

Maybe I’ve been spiraling down the rabbit hole a little too much today, but I started thinking about sound and all the ways it effects us without us even realizing. And yes, in case you were wondering, this blog post is brought to you by a PTSD episode set off by a loud sound outside I wasn’t expecting.

But, it did make me start thinking about how before there was light, and before there was breath, there was vibration. And from vibration came sound.

It has no shape or color and couldn’t be touched, but it touches everything. Sound travels through air, through bone, through time, and slips into us.

We tend to think of it as background: music, noise, words in the air.

But sound is so much more than communication, it’s manipulation and healing, destruction and creation, memory, movement and magic.

This is a story about soundwaves and what they are and do, and why they might be the oldest language the universe knows.

What Is a Soundwave, Really?

At its most basic a soundwave is a mechanical vibration that travels through a medium (air, water, solid objects) as a wave of pressure.

But that doesn’t do it justice and is an oversimplification, sound is truly invisible architecture.
It moves molecules and sculpts air, and can even levitate objects when tuned just right.

Each soundwave has frequency (how fast it vibrates, measured in Hz), amplitude (how strong it is), and wavelength (the distance between wave crests).

High frequencies = higher pitch (like birdsong).
Low frequencies = deeper sounds (like thunder or a cello’s hum).

But sound is more than just pretty math that always adds up just right.

It’s the reason you get chills during a certain part of a song, why some voices calm you…and others unsettle you.
It’s how babies find their mother in a room full of strangers and even only after hours of being born. Sound is emotion that moves.

The Human Ear

Before we could speak, we could hear. Before we were even out of our mothers’ bellies, we could hear.

And hearing didn’t evolve from nothing, it started as vibration detection in some of our fish-like ancestors. (Just what you wanted to learn about today, your great times a billion grandfather fish.)
Somewhere around 400 million years ago, early vertebrates developed specialized hair cells to detect shifts in water. Obviously, this was a huge advantage. If these fish could sense other fish coming, they could swim and hide when the big ones who want to eat them are headed their way.

These tiny sensors eventually moved inward, and when animals moved to land (I know I’m making this sound really easy and oversimplifying it, but you get the idea), those water-sensing structures adapted to pick up pressure changes in air instead.

From that, the ear was born where the outer ear funnels sound, the middle ear translates vibration into mechanical movement, and the inner ear turns movement into neural impulses that the brain can start to actually understand.

But here’s the secret that might make you think about sound differently in the future: your ear still detects vibration first. Hearing is feeling before it’s understanding.

Again, if I’m getting too philosophical on you, please forgive me, it’s been a long few days of bad PTSD episodes and my mind is a little swirly.

Sound As Medicine

One of the most mysterious and beautiful aspects of sound is its ability to heal. From Tibetan singing bowls to modern frequency therapy, sound has long been used to reduce stress, alleviate pain, regulate nervous system imbalance, enhance sleep, and even to promote emotional releases.

Personally, I drag my husband to a sound bath in Philly once a month around the time of the full moon. The Tibetan bowls are beyond relaxing and help my nervous system relax when nothing else can calm me down. It’s a reset I’d highly recommend.

Scientific studies also now confirm that specific frequencies can reduce inflammation and even assist in cellular repair. One study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that 40 Hz gamma stimulation (delivered through sound) can improve cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients. Which sounds pretty near magical in all honesty.

Another fascinating method is by using binaural beats…when two slightly different frequencies are played in each ear, creating a perceived “third” tone in the brain that can enhance focus, induce meditative states, and support trauma processing. I’m not sure if you’ve seen those ads on Instagram yet that are like “hold your phone sideways and let your mind relax”, and it’s binaural beats playing.

If you want to try this at home, I recommend using a headphone set that supports clear low-frequency tones, as cheaper ones tend to distort the delicate audio separation that makes binaural therapy work.

Sound As Weapon

But sound isn’t always gentle, as I know better than most.

Certain frequencies are used in military and crowd control devices…think LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices). These machines emit piercing, focused beams of sound to disperse people or incapacitate them with pain.

And at certain levels, infrasound (below 20 Hz) can trigger nausea, dizziness, anxiety, or even an unexplained sense of dread.

In fact, some researchers believe infrasound could explain haunted house phenomena…people feeling watched, cold, or unsettled in the presence of imperceptible low-frequency vibrations.

Even nature uses sound offensively when tiger roars contain infrasonic components that paralyze prey, or shrimp create underwater sonic booms to kill or stun small fish.

Sound can be a scalpel or a sledgehammer.

Here’s where it gets even weirder, so hang in there with me. (As if it wasn’t weird enough).

Soundwaves, when focused just right, can move solid objects…levitate them, suspend them midair, or shape them into patterns. This isn’t pseudoscience, it’s a real phenomenon called acoustic levitation. You can watch a YouTube video of it.

Even stranger, when sound interacts with loose particles (like sand or salt on a plate), it forms visual patterns…mandalas, waves, geometric symmetry, based on the frequency used. You can also see videos of this on all your social media platforms. This is cymatics.

It’s as if sound reveals its own hidden architecture in shape, not just in feeling. There are videos of this online that will break your brain and send you down the hole of reality in a bad way. And it all happens because of vibration; tiny, invisible ripples shifting particles into form.

You Are Built for Sound

Your body isn’t just passively hearing, you’re a living soundboard.

Your bones conduct low-frequency vibration, your skin has tiny receptors that detect air pressure, even your heart rate syncs to music and your brainwaves change based on what you hear.

Even your voice box is a frequency tool converting breath into tone into communication, which is part of why music hits so hard, it’s not just pleasant, it’s actually participatory.

Your body is singing back.

Ever wonder why a song can bring back an entire year from your past? The auditory cortex is tightly connected to the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, so sound acts as a trigger, a carrier wave that unzips long-buried memories.

This is why sound-based therapy is often times used in trauma recovery, especially for those whose memories are fragmented or buried in the body.

Sound and the Soul (Across Cultures)

Every culture has stories of sound as sacred:

Om in Hinduism…the primal vibration of creation, Gregorian chants, known for inducing trance and peace, shamanic drumming, used to induce healing states, and even the trumpet in Revelation, signaling the end of days.

Sound is not just function, it can be spiritual architecture.

It’s prayer and warning, and a reminder that language may be human, but vibration is universal.

Hospitals use ultrasound (a high-frequency sound) for imaging, but also to break apart kidney stones or deliver drugs precisely to cells. Sonogenetics is an emerging field where soundwaves are used to activate neurons non-invasively. Sound signatures are used in forensics, submarines, architecture, and even password authentication.

We’re just beginning to tap into what sound can do, not as entertainment, but as engineering.

Some theorists (and a few fringe physicists) believe sound may even play a role in morphogenesis, the shaping of living organisms. Embryonic development may be influenced not just by genes, but by vibrational patterns.

It’s unproven, but tantalizing and fun to think about.

A Sound You’ll Never Hear

Here’s a haunting thought while I’m thinking more deeply about sound than anyone ever should, space is silent.
Sound can’t travel in a vacuum. But according to the interwebs, that doesn’t mean sound doesn’t happen there.

Stars collapse and galaxies collide while magnetars flare, and yet, the silence is deafening.

NASA has "sonified" data from telescopes, turning light and radiation from space into audible sound. You can listen to a black hole singing, or a nebula whispering across millions of miles if you want to.

It’s not what they really “sound” like, but maybe it’s close enough for wonder.

Your heart has a rhythm, breath has cadence, and your voice is uniquely tuned. You are sound, made solid.

And the world is vibrating all around you offering healing, destruction, memory, and prayer.

Sound is not a background, it’s a foreground we forgot to pay attention to.

Listen to it, and I mean really listen.

To quote Nikola Tesla, "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration".