The incredible power of sound, resonance, and vibration – with world-leading practitioner, Tensuhi

0:01Dr Sophie Shotter:Hi, I'm Sophie and this is Age Well with Dr Sophie Shotter, a space devoted to all things health, wellness and longevity. Because for me, ageing well is about looking and feeling like the best possible version of ourselves, inside as well as out. So together with my producer Fee, I'll be deep diving into the latest research, sifting fact from fiction. I'll also be talking to all kinds of trusted experts, tapping into their knowledge, along with bringing new conversations from a range of interesting women, and men finding out how they age well. So this is my show. Welcome along. And as always, thank you so much for listening.

0:45Dr Sophie Shotter:Tensui, I'm so glad that our mutual friend Nicola put us in touch. Nic speaks very highly of you, and I understand that you met at an incredible retreat in Egypt. Your background's fascinating. in another life you were a highly successful international DJ and I definitely want to ask you about that. But fast forward to today and you're the founder of Elemental Resonance and you still work with sound, albeit in a slightly different way to club culture. So as a vibrational sound practitioner, your work bridges ancient transitions in sound therapy along with contemporary research on sound and resonance, including its very real therapeutic effects.

1:21Dr Sophie Shotter:Firstly, you've talk to us off air about the body having its own frequency and the living intelligence of sound can you do a quick explainer about that yeah hi Sophie great to be here um yeah it's um it's really interesting because I think we if we start to think about the body as a musical instrument that kind of helps to understand about our own personal frequency so it's like all of us have a fundamental frequency so to speak like having our own bandwidth on a universal radio station. So what's important is that we connect with that fundamental frequency that we have. So instead of trying to be like someone else's frequency or trying to aspire to be like another person, if we can tune into what's relevant for us and what is fundamental for us, it kind of helps us to feel more content with ourselves.

2:13And, you know, in a biological way, it's very much to do with having your own unique voice. So kind of like how there's every snowflake is unique we all have our own blueprint and that's what makes us who we are so if you think of yourself as a living breathing instrument and that your voice is a way of putting that you know your own individual frequency out into the world that kind of helps us to understand a little bit what I'm talking about here so I hope that makes sense.

2:43Dr Sophie Shotter:Oh I love that explanation yeah I had a sand bath for the first time two years ago down here in Somerset, and I had quite low expectations, to be honest. But I had an extraordinary reaction, which I don't know whether you're going to be surprised by this or not. I felt deeply relaxed, which I guess is not the surprising part. But I had a very sexual response. It was like this strange sexual awakening. And my husband and I, we laughed. He did it too. We laughed about it. And then I went back for a second session two months later and I'd almost forgotten about the whole sexual thing. And the same thing happened again.

3:21Dr Sophie Shotter:So first of all, I'd love to know why did this happen? And second, what is happening to us more generally? I mean, forget me, but all of us on a biological or cellular level when we receive sound and vibrational therapy. I mean, you've previously talked about in other interviews shifting brainwave states and emotional regulation. and even how this kind of work could lead to higher states of consciousness. So I guess that's two questions. Can you explain my rather strange, quite nice experience, but also could you explain what is happening on a cellular level when we experience sound? Yeah, absolutely.

3:58I mean, what a great experience for you. So to kind of break it down a little bit, if we think about the human body, so the human body is about 60 to 70 % water. And what that means is we're very, very receptive to sound and vibration. So I don't know whether you've heard of cymatics. So cymatics is like the science of sound in the way that we can see sound through a medium such as like water or sand. So certain frequencies take a certain shape. So when we're exposed to sound during a sound bath or when we're, you know, even just listening to music as well, I'll break that down a little bit because there is a big difference to sound baths or sound experiences and then sound on the radio.

4:41But we are like receiving this information and our body is responding to it because of this 60 to 70 percent water. So if you just look online and type in cymatics, you'll see these fascinating shapes. And the shapes are basically like creating these visual vibrations. They're like geometric patterns. And cymatics kind of helps us to understand how sound kind of organises these, you know, biological systems within the body. so when you go to a sound bath like the one you went to and not all of them are the same actually I must kind of like point that out there are different varying levels of quality in the sound that's that we're exposed to out there in terms of different events that we go to but the nervous system essentially is what we're going for to help us to relax so once we drop into that parasympathetic state we go into this kind of deep relaxation and there's a there's a can be emotional releases.

5:35So and depending on where that resonance is in your physical body depends on where it's released in your body. So let's talk about say the lower part of the body, the root chakra. If there is some energy starting to flow through listening to the sound, this could be energy that might have been suppressed or perhaps disconnected and the sound helps for this to flow again. So it allows this sound to move through the body and then release different energetic points in the body. So your experience could have been that it was just connecting with the root area, the lower, more pelvic area of the body.

6:13But for somebody else, it can be the heart area. So sometimes people have emotional releases. They might start crying. They might suddenly have this revelation about something. Or a sound can take them back to a certain part of their childhood. so this is why sound is so deeply powerful because it really resonates on lots of different levels and in terms of the sounds that we're being exposed to so I'd really like to kind of identify that there's the acoustic sound and digital sound so acoustic sound has a lot more let's say depths of vibration happening within it so you're hearing the acoustic sound directly from the source of the instrument so whether that's a guitar or a chime or a drum or a crystal bowl you're hearing the sound coming directly from the source whereas when we hear a digital sound sound digital sounds I mean I love digital sounds I haven't got anything against them and obviously my background is in digital sound but that is different to hearing an acoustic sound because you're working with something called like interpolation where you have like information at certain parts of the frequency and then the other bit jumps to the next bit and makes up what what it's missing so it's not as pure as when you're having acoustic sound so this is why when we go to the the sound baths I like to call them sound harmonizations um we're having or we're exposed to the source of the sound and then different sounds like a drum will appeal to the more grounded part of the body.

7:49And then string instruments, wood instruments resonate with different other parts of the body. So moving up the body, you'll get more sounds like chimes and bells that are resonating with higher frequencies and appealing more to the mind state, the thinking brain. So it really depends on which sounds you're listening to. I hope that makes sense.

8:12Dr Sophie Shotter:yes it does thank you for people who might have no idea as to what sound therapy and resonance work actually is can you bring it to life by describing what might happen in a typical session so i know you use everything from tuning forks to crystal bowls and even getting your clients to use their own voice i'd especially love you to talk about sound acupuncture as well because this really sounds fascinating oh yes it's um yeah there's lots of things there's sound therapy is one aspect of working with sound. So there's lots of various ways you can approach sound. So there's group sessions and there's one-to-ones.

8:51So the group session is maybe what Fiona was talking about before, where you go to a sound bath, you're in a group setting with lots of people lying down, eyes closed, maybe you have an eye mask on and you are receiving the sound, your whole body is receiving the sound and you're being bathed in sound. So that's kind of like an overall experience that you have and then you will really resonate with certain instruments and other ones not so and that's interesting because this is information the body is receiving so when you really like something this is kind of like you're in resonance that you're in harmony with it when there's a sound you don't like this is what I like to call dissonant sounds or non-harmonic sounds so usually there that response in the body is usually because there could be some stagnant energy or something stuck in the body and that sound is then irritating it.

9:44So this can be a way to shift that stagnant energy or it can also be the fact that you just don't like that sound and there's a kind of a resistance there. So this is really important information to kind of like highlight in the body. So it's a deep listening experience. When we move into say a one-to-one session. So I use tuning forks on the body there, stainless steel tuning forks. And it's basically, like you say, sound acupuncture. It's like using acupuncture needles. But instead of using the needle, you're using a tuning fork on the acupuncture points of the body. So this is very much working with tuning the body and having the body as a musical instrument.

10:27So I can work with single tuning forks on the fundamental acupuncture points or two forks which make up thirds and fifths. So it depends on whether the person needs activation or whether they need to kind of be like sedating some of that energy. So if I just kind of break it down very briefly in terms of traditional Chinese medicine. So traditional Chinese medicine works on the five elements. So fire, earth, air, water and wood. And the organs in the body are associated with those different elements. So for example, the heart and the small intestine are the fire element, the stomach and the spleen is the earth element, the kidneys and the bladder of the water element and so on and so forth.

11:13So when you're starting to work with the tuning forks on the body using the meridians, it's really giving you the information as to which organs and which elements are like over working so working a little bit harder more dominant in the body and which ones are a little bit weaker and they're kind of being overridden by the dominant elements so the element of harmony comes in now this is where we start to work with the five elements and start to try and create some kind of like balance between them and a bit of flow. So the sound acupuncture is very much about highlighting in that particular person, which organs and which elements are dominant.

11:57And then we can start to work with helping to encourage the more weaker elements, the weaker organs to kind of come through using the sound, using the technology of vibration. And this is where sound becomes like a medicine and we're using sound to help create this balance and this harmony in the body so there's you know there's a really deep um response going on and the biological you know state of the body we are vibrational beings so we're very responsive to sound and if we're listening to the right sounds we can really have a huge big vibrational shift in this and this is where you know the shifting brain brainwave states come in as well we can move very quickly with sound from our everyday beta brainwave state which is about 14 to 30 hertz this is our daily consciousness when we're alert when we're focused and we can shift into our alpha brainwave state which is around 8 to 13 hertz and this is where we're in a much more relaxed state we're in more creative flow state.

13:02You might have heard of flow state. It's much more of an imaginative, you know, it's a great, alpha brainwave state is a great place to be in on a daily basis. And it's really good that we can find these tools that give us this ability to shift from our beta into the alpha quite quickly. So this is why sound is just so powerful. Love that.

13:26Dr Sophie Shotter:Thank you so much. Should we talk a little bit about your background? How did you get into all of this? That's a good question. Well, sound is the common thread in everything I do. So before this, I was a DJ, a producer. I always loved working with sound. I was living, breathing, eating, sleeping music. And I became an international DJ traveling around the world. I just loved DJing. It wasn't that I wanted to be a DJ. I just loved music. And then I kind of had this slight moment when I was DJing in Jakarta. It was on the beach. It was this amazing party. The stars were out. There was fire and, you know, pyrotechnics at the back.

14:12And I was just thinking about, gosh, what would happen if suddenly we all switched the sound off and we couldn't hear with our ears? how would this be how would our bodies be responding to this sound to this frequency and I just thought I need to go a lot deeper into this I need to find out how sound affects us at cellular level and what's happening in the body when we were immersed in sound and then I just went down the rabbit hole and I started studying bioresonance in 2011 and I just started to getting into sound as a therapeutic modality and really learning about what vibration does in the body, what frequency does in the body.

14:55And, you know, I can quote the work of Nikola Tesla here, who says, you know, if you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of sound, frequency and vibration. And that was it, really. I just went in the rabbit hole and I've never come back out of it.

15:14Dr Sophie Shotter:I know your workshops and performances have been hosted worldwide from Bali and Peru to Canada, Australia and the UK. I love that you create these immersive experiences, especially that so many take place in various really beautiful natural world settings. I'm also very interested in the emerging science here. You've hosted several panel discussions and curated conversations between artists and researchers, exploring the intersection of sound, frequency and human potential. What is the latest research telling us here? Oh, there's lots of research, actually. It's been really interesting to watch the development of how people are starting to study sound, how neuroscience is doing a lot of tests at the moment with sound.

15:58What I will say before just jumping into that is, you know, we have so much technology at our fingertips that we're not actually using. And sometimes we don't always have access to that but what we really need to think about in terms of our you know shifting brainwave states and you know the amount of stress that we're under in an everyday in our everyday lives of everything going on and the hyper connectivity that we have one of the things that we really need to kind of like bring it back down to is spending time in nature and this is like a very very simple step that we can take but this is really important to kind of take this time out where we can be with nature.

16:40We can listen to the sounds of the birds. We can listen to the sounds of the trees. This is called biophony and geophony. But just listening to those really helps us to soothe our nervous systems and bring us back into centre, brings us back to that fundamental frequency that I was talking about at the beginning. And there's some amazing apps for those people where we can't get out to nature or we're just super busy with work. We don't live by the sea. We don't live by the park. so we can listen to the apps and and listen to the frequencies that people are putting out there but it is really important to not to replicate nature too much with the digital because it's really like I was saying a little bit earlier on the source sound of what we listen to is very very important the acoustic sound is where we really feel a difference between the digital and the acoustic so there is like a lot of amazing stuff going on out there though in terms of the wearables that we have out there there are the vibroacoustic massage tables and massage chairs I don't know whether you girls have tried any of those there's some really useful apps out there and I like one called nature space which is holographic audio and these guys and girls have been up mountains they've been hanging off trees and recording thunder and lightning and waves and all sorts of amazing nature and it's it's really nice because it's just an app that you can put on and just listen to some things if you want to be immersed in nature if you're not able to access nature or go out to the forest or go down to the sea personally if you can get out into the real source of something, I always recommend that first.

18:28I think that is the biggest kind of response we can get from a full body spectrum listening to sound. But obviously, if you can't, there are other things out there that can help. There are some great vibroacoustic massage tables and chairs. I don't know whether you've ever tried one of those, but they have various technology inside with audio biohaptics that vibrate and you lie there listening immersed in a sound experience. And these are really useful for hospitals, places where people can't get out and can't go to centres and be with other people. And music therapy is seeing a huge change in hospitals and being taken a lot more seriously in places where people are just before having operations, post operations basically using sound as therapeutic technology which is fantastic to see obviously I've been working in this field now for like 15 years in terms of a therapeutic modality so I really really enjoy seeing how things are shifting and changing and people are taking sound much more seriously there's also in terms of again working with the main with the body as a musical instrument, I really recommend that people start to work with generating their field themselves as well.

19:53And what I mean by that is things like Qigong, practices of Qigong, where you are working with those five elements that I mentioned earlier, your fire, earth, air, water, and wood, working with the organs in the body, and really starting to generate what I call the vital life force. It's a little bit like having a bank account that you are completely unaware of and suddenly someone says hey you know you've got a bank account that's sitting here it's full of money and you're not using any of it it's the same with your with your energy with with your chi chi gong stands for chi stands for energy gong stands for mastery so it's about mastering your energy so when you can start to kind of cultivate this it gives you this sense of empowerment and again it helps to reinforce this fundamental frequency that i mentioned at the beginning so it just makes you feel a little bit more alert a little bit more activated a little bit more let's say the word whole um which is which is really great in addition to obviously any of the wearables or the apps or the other research that's out there i think working with yourself and with your own nature is super important off air when we had our little research

21:04Dr Sophie Shotter:call we talked about my resistance to meditation even when encouraged to ignore my monkey brain i I don't seem to have this incredible skill that other people seem to have. But what I found during the sound baths that I've done that I mentioned previously is that the sound enables me to switch off. It seems like it's the perfect solution, therefore, for busy minds and monkey brains because you have something to actually listen to, even though technically, as I think you're saying, you're not really listening to it. You're immersed in this sound. What are your thoughts on this of like kind of type A people that just can't switch off or really hyper alert people?

21:38Dr Sophie Shotter:it seems to be a bit of a missing key. Yeah absolutely this is such a great observation and it's so interesting because I've often seen you know their girlfriends bring in their boyfriends sorry girlfriends bringing in their boyfriends and I see them at the beginning and they're sitting there thinking oh what am I doing here like why am I here and you know they've come from work they they don't don't really want to be there and I see this amazing transition from the beginning of the session to the end of the session because at the beginning everyone's in their own minds they've just come from work they're hungry they want to get home they're tired they're stressed whatever's happened that day we do some breath work we do a little bit of um you know toning together the toning is i i use a japanese toning technique called kototama which is a very ancient toning technique absolutely love it to pieces it's such an important part of my work and we do this because basically it gets everybody to start working with their own vibrational sound.

22:40And again, back to the cymatics, back to the 60 to 70 % water in the body, the sounds that people start doing then start to shift the cellular structure within the body using these keys, using these tones that we're using. So we'll do a bit of breath work, we'll do a bit of toning, then I'll ask everyone to lie down. Then, like you say, they're immersed in the sounds. The sounds are literally going through their bodies. The mind is not able to stop that. It's not about going through the analytical monkey mind. It's about resonance in the body on a deep cellular level. And again, if we're talking about working with different sounds, we're talking about multiple levels of sounds, working from the bottom up, so from the feet, all the way up to the top of the head.

23:26So what happens at the end of the session is people come around and they're just like, oh, I feel completely different. and those guys that come along against their will, they look completely different. They say they feel calmer, they look different, they're not so stressed and they're just like, wow. And I see this so much, this transition. And this is what I love to see because I know that people will leave differently to when they've arrived. There is no way that they can't because this is the power of sound and specifically acoustic sounds working at that vibrational level within the body.

24:03So this is where we can go beyond the monkey mind and those thoughts that you talked about that just don't switch off.

24:12Dr Sophie Shotter:Another interesting part of your work is how you tend to work seasonally. Can you explain what this means in terms of not just weather, but the cycles of the moon? I'm also wondering if certain environments or times of the day or night will change how you approach a session? Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of seasonally, it's working with autumn, winter, spring, summer. So again in traditional Chinese medicine these seasons resonate with different parts of the body. So obviously the summer is fire, that's heart, small intestine. Winter is cooler, that's water, that's more bladder and kidneys. So I tend to like to work with those organs within those seasons because I feel it's a little bit like eating seasonally you know when you get the box of veg from you know whichever company that you might like to work with it's again working seasoning with the body it allows us to be more in tune with the seasons on a physiological level um so i think that's really important and in terms of the moons when i do my monthly inner vision meditations we get together and we we do an energetic weather report at the beginning so it's just kind of like informing everybody what's going on with the moon are we in a full moon cycle are we in a new moon cycle is there an eclipse going on.

25:30Just it's kind of like being aware if you're going to go out today and it's going to rain, it's probably a good idea to take an umbrella with you or, you know, a rain jacket, that kind of thing. That's how I'm working.

25:41Dr Sophie Shotter:Yeah, makes sense. More generally, what's your approach to health and wellness and longevity? I mean, what would be a typical good morning for you, a good morning routine from what you eat or maybe any supplements that you take, any apps or wearables or biohacky stuff anything at all do you have some protocols that you stick to we're just curious yeah so obviously in the morning it's really good for me to do some qigong that just wakes up my body it gets my meridians flowing i do like a five element meridian warm-up it takes about 20 minutes do some toning as well kototama just to get the get the body activated get my cells working and then you know like anyone if i can if there's time i like to spend a bit of time nature before getting on with my work but in terms of like I love my ancient and brave coffee with collagen in the morning or the ancient and brave matcha and collagen I absolutely love those in the morning so I kind of alternate between the two and I take you know my supplements like most people my magnesiums vitamin c's all sorts of things but essentially I think what's really important in terms of health and wellness and longevity is to really find the things that work for you and for me you know the qigong is a big part of my everyday working with the vibrational instrument of the body um and just making sure that before i get stuck into my computer that i've used part of the day to really activate my physical system my vibrational instrument because if i'm in tune that affects my whole day you know all my interactions with my clients my friends my family so I think that's the best thing we can do is really think of yourself as an instrument and do the things that tune you each morning because that will have a vibrational effect and it's just kind of better for everyone in the end so that's my kind of go-to tuning morning tuning let's move on to our quick fire questions uh tensui what's your perfect bedtime ritual whether bath oils and candles or pajamas and apps oh yeah absolutely bath with candles listening to podcasts or reading my book um definitely with some like magnesium salts in there and then fresh clean sheets and i just love going to read in bed so yeah that's my perfect night oh that sounds good okay window or aisle seat ah brilliant question window every time i love looking out the window.

28:09I just love, I get really inspired looking at the clouds and I just, yeah, definitely the window. It's just, it's an inspirational moment for me. So if I can get near the window every time. What's your current TV and or podcast obsession or both? Oh, I'm absolutely loving the Emerald podcast. I don't know whether you've heard of it with Josh Shry or Josh Shree. I think, oh, he's just amazing. And for me, that's like medicine listening to him. It's so rich and nourishing. I'm like a huge fan.

28:40Dr Sophie Shotter:I've heard such good things as well. So that's a great answer. Next one. Do you have a secret talent? I don't know whether, do I have a secret talent? I think I'm pretty good at the swan effect. Have you guys heard of the swan effect? I don't know whether it's a good thing. It's basically the art of like serene swanning on the top of the water and underneath there's like a lot going on. I don't know whether it's a secret talent. It's definitely something I do. I've learned to do over the years. What's your signature fragrance? Oh, that is a good one. You know, I really love the diptyques. I like the fig one, which is Philosicos.

29:22It's just very fresh and woody and oh, yes, delicious. I love that one.

29:27Dr Sophie Shotter:I love figgy fragrances as well. What's the most adventurous thing you've ever done? I was talking about this the other day actually the most adventurous thing I've ever done is swimming with sharks in the Bahamas it was a two tank dive it was the most scary, exhilarating like just incredible thing first time you go down to just Was this the tiger shark dive in the Bahamas? In the Bahamas, yeah have you done it? No, I'm a diver as well though but if it's the tiger shark one it's quite a famous one and a bit of an experience isn't it? Oh my gosh, yeah. It was really, I was so nervous. I was not.

30:05The first time you go down is just to get used to seeing them swimming around. You're not anywhere necessarily near them, you just see them in the distance. Then the second tank, you go down, they put you in a spot and then the guy comes along. You can't move, you can't move your hands. And then he comes along in chain mail with like swarming sharks behind him because he has a cage that has blood coming out of it. at all the sharks and then they just sit in front of you and you just can't move and you just watch and it's kind of obviously a bit weird and surreal and some people were getting bashed in the head with the the shark's tails but as long as you don't move you're okay and it was really I mean it was quite an incredible experience I don't think I'll ever do it again but I did find it I like that the rush once they'd all left once the guy in the chain rail had swum off then there's this feeling of just like wow this is nature just at the pure raw edge you know

30:59Dr Sophie Shotter:yeah diving full stop's an incredible experience I've I've dived with other sharks but not not tiger sharks it's um it's one of those that if I if I ever do I hope I do it on a on a controlled dive and don't just bump into one at random that might be hungry yeah I hope so too