Sound Medicine: the Complete Guide to Healing with the Human Voice

Ever since I enjoyed the multi-phonic chants of the Tibetan monks of the Drepung Loseling monastery, I was not aware of any Westerner equally talented in vocal complexities. That was until I had the opportunity to meet and hear the remarkable Wayne Perry. As a key note speaker and workshop leader at the 2004 American Board of Hypnotherapy convention, Mr. Perry awed the audience with his unusual presentation skills and enthralled us with his unique views concerning the use of the human voice as a tool for mental and physical healing.

Wayne Perry is an unparalleled speaker, workshop leader, and healer. Having availed myself of the opportunity of having a private session with the master and as I cross paths with him usually once or twice a year, I have learned to appreciate his many skills. For those of you who have not had this opportunity, I highly recommend that your purchase and read his latest book: Sound Medicine: The Complete Guide to Healing with the Human Voice. This comprehensive how-to-manual not only explains the intriguing world of sound healing, but gives you a great autobiographical picture of the person who is the living embodiment of this innovative theory.

Sound Medicine is a very thoughtful and well-researched explanation of the rationale and methodology of using vocal skills to heal the mind and body. Although Perry touts his ideas as an intuitive, right-brain approach, I found his book to be logically organized. He easily progresses from theory to application in a way the gives the reader a strong sense of the validity and reasoning involved. He gives substantial references regarding historical and contemporary thought. Then, through the use of carefully explained exercises, he provides the reader with easy to understand and apply overtoning techniques. The skills that I had previously regarded as the out of reach mystical abilities of Wayne Perry are provided to the reader in easy to follow layman's terms.

Is sound medicine valid? Frankly with my background in subtle energies and energy medicine and energy psychology, I feel that his description of sound, which is also energy, as a healing modality makes a tremendous amount of sense. In fact, I think that the most ardent energy practitioner will readily accept the wisdom of this book. By carefully describing the role of entrainment and energy flows and balances, he makes the case for energy healing better than most authors to which I have been previously exposed.

As my first paragraphs certainly imply, I must admit that I have more than a little partiality to the skills and talents of Mr. Wayne Perry. Having previously experienced him as a trainer, my personal one-on-one session left me as a believer. During his assessment of my vocal profile, he was able to detect missing frequencies that led him to suggest physical health weakness which I had never revealed to him. These issues had previously been detected and treated by allopathic medical doctors. Furthermore, he stunned me by asking me about two dates in my life. The first was 1973, which was one the most traumatic periods of my teenage years. And, if that was not enough, he said the somehow the date 1330 kept on coming up. (Of course, I normally tell my friends (such as past life guru Richard Sutphen) that 1330 was the year that I became an ardent cynic regarding the existence of previous lives.) Also, several good and some painfully not-so-nice-but-true observations about my personality made me wonder if he was psychic or a healer – or possibly both. So, having experienced Wayne Perry, I must confess that my faith in his abilities started way before I was asked to review this book.

On the other hand, I want to make it clear to the potential reader what this book is and what it is not. It is a wonderfully organized and presented explanation of a field of healing that just may give the most conservative allopathic medical scientist a preview of where their "science" might evolve. It is also a testimonial about the life work of a person who has taken sound healing from where it was to its present state. However, as Wayne would admit, this is not a "left-brain" scientific book. Even though it is full of quotes from and references to other writers and covers the underlying philosophy and spirituality of sound healing, it lacks the scientific citations that are expected if these theories are to ever worm their way into medical school textbooks. Regardless, as sound and music therapies together are clearly second place in the volume of mainstream published CAM research (second only to hypnosis), his theories could be easily adapted to the AMA or APA required format with citations of peer reviewed research. What Wayne Perry's book and life work give us is an opportunity to vision a future where healing through energy will eventually become as common as pills and surgery. As soon as the Food and Drug Administration figures out how to regulate the human voice and as soon as the pharmaceutical industry finds how to profit from our self-healing use of overtoned vowels, then no doubt that Wayne Perry's ideas will be come as common as mom and apple pie. So, while you are waiting for these momentous changes, do yourself a favor and "get the book." If you are a hypnotist, hypnotherapist, psychologist, psychotherapist, or any other profession which uses their voice as a healing tool, your self and other healing skills will be quickly enhanced by the understanding and application of Wayne Perry's methods of using the human voice.