HEALTH BENEFITS
(Including NIH Study)
Over the past few years, mainstream medicine has increasingly recognized that thoughts and feelings affect our health. Emotions seem to play a key factor. Anxiety, a sense of alienation and helplessness, as well as love, serenity and optimism are not simply feelings, but physiological states that fundamentally affect our health, just as does high blood pressure or physical exercise. Furthermore, the great majority of doctor visits involve stress-related complaints.
Harvard Magazine (Nov./Dec., 2010) reports that chronic pain, for example, involves the mind and emotions more than sudden acute pain does, and has more to do with chemical disturbances in the spinal cord and brain. Neuropeptides called endorphins and enkephalins are the body’s own pain killers – natural opiates – and work in much the same way morphine does. Research at Harvard Medical School, and other centers studying chronic pain, has shown that regular deep relaxation practice (similar to regular physical exercise) increases significant levels of endorphins and enkaphalins into the blood stream.
The mind’s power to heal is increasingly gaining validation by the medical research community. Mounting evidence suggests that any number of peaceful emotional experiences can significantly contribute to the improvement of one’s overall health. Genuinely calming the mind allows us to better cope with daily stresses from road rage to performance anxiety.
The sancTorum experience maximizes this profound calming effect through the unique combination of carefully selected musical sounds experienced through “vibro-acoustics,” in combination with exquisite natural aroma blends, set within an ambient, idyllic context. The word sanctorum is Latin for “whole,” as in holy, healing, health. As a sanctuary is a place set apart to experience the holy, so also, the sancTorum experience fosters a sense of wholeness, and a calming connection one’s self and to nature. From a medical perspective, the sancTorum experience releases ample supplies of endorphins resulting in an almost immediate sense of deep peacefulness, and profound relaxation.
The concept of vibro-acoustic therapy, was first developed in the late 1980s, by Norwegian educator and therapist, Olav Skille PhD. In his book, The Manual of Vibroacoustics, (1991), Skille reported that vibroacoustics was beneficial for a variety of medical conditions and symptoms, including asthma, autism, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, constipation, insomnia, pain and Parkinson’s Disease (www.academia.edu/4508866/Philosophy-of-Vibroacoustic-Therapy).
In a 1997 U.S. study (cited in T. Wigram and C. Dileo’s (eds.) book: Music Vibration and Health, researchers T. and C. Butler studied patients undergoing open heart surgery, and found that the post-operative use of vibro-acoustic therapy significantly reduced the time over which patients required respiration on a ventilator in the Coronary Care Unit. The overall length of the hospital stay was decreased from nine to five days.
In a related study at the National Institute of Health NIH, 1999) Dr. George Patrick, isolated results of vibroacoustic therapy on 267 hospital patients in a single session. The results of this special study were extraordinary, with reduction of the following symptoms: pain: 53%, depression: 49%, nausea (resulting from chemo therapy): 54%, severe headache: 60%, tension and anxiety: 54%, and blood pressure: 56%.(www.theisonmethod.com/pdf/NIHstudytranscript.pdf)
FYI, the technology developed for sancTorum significantly exceeds the product quality utilized in any of the above studies. Whereas these studies utilized products constructed of either wood or steel, sancTorum’s exclusive SerenityChair™, is a single mold, Corbusier-type recliner composed of a special composite “membrane” which conducts far superior sound-resonance quality into the body and its nerve center.
The sancTorum effect, particularly when utilized regularly, results in personal centering, “grounding,” a more balanced sense of self and relations with others.
Experiencing sancTorum fosters increased energy, and, not surprisingly, enhances a higher degree of creativity and productivity. Professor Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School, also known as the “father” of the “relaxation effect” has demonstrated how through the practice of meditation, the left and right side of the brain work in tandem to create a sense of balance and wholeness. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, already after a single sancTorum Serenity Sound Journey, a change in brainwave activity occurs between the logical left and the rhythmic right brain, resulting in a “harmonious” sense of self, a deep sense of connectedness, which in turn allows for enhancement in creative thinking and being.
Potential Contraindications in the use of sancTorum: Persons wishing to partake of the sancTorum experience, who have been diagnosed with the following conditions, are advised first to check with their physicians: psychosis, acute inflammation, pregnancy, hemorrhaging, epilepsy, implanted pacemaker, and, with the additional use of the INADA Dreamwave Massage Chair: thrombosis and varicose veins.