Cymatics is the study of sound made visible. It is a visual depiction of energy, a waveform crystallised into patterns. Beautiful, swirling, mysterious… Kerry Needs discusses.
‘Sound will be the medicine of the future’ – Edgar Cayce
With an outstanding 15 million views on the Nigel Stanford cymatics video, the ancient science of ‘sound affecting matter’ has been propelled back into the mainstream consciousness.
The term Cymatics comes from the Greek: κῦμα, meaning “wave” and is a subset of modal vibrational phenomena.
Cymatics can be demonstrated using Chladni plates. Chladni plates are a metal plate that uses sand, which is then tuned to a particular sound frequency.
Jeff Volk, the founder of Cymatic Source (the web’s largest resource on Cymatics), says:
‘The first time you see particles of sand, or powder, or iron filings, dancing to the rhythm of a song – or view water pulsing a visual pattern in response to the sound you’re hearing – you become enthralled, or like the previously inert matter you’re watching, entrained.
And the more you learn about this fascinating science, the more you come to recognize that sound and vibration permeate absolutely everything! Pulsation is fundamental to all matter, and to the propagation of energy – in the physical world and beyond.’
This ‘pulsation’ that we feel when we dance in ecstatic motion to electronic beats, may very well be the pulsation of life force energy coursing through our veins.
When we look at Cymatic patterns, we see that the geometric shapes it forms echoes that of nature – of ripples in water, patterns of a leaf or a flower, or the lines of of an oak tree. It is nature evolving and moving into form.
Sound has an incredible power to transform us energetically in ways we are only just rediscovering. And just like the metal Chladni plate and the sand, maybe the dancefloor can be the fundamental ground for our vibrational tuning.
This article was written by Kerry Needs. Find out more about Kerry at http://www.kerryneeds.com