Sound Bath Case Study
Edge Esmeralda 2026: Science & Sound Healing
This June I returned to Edge Esmeralda with a handful of roles that all shared one common thread: helping people feel healthy, connected, supported, and rooted in a sense of belonging.
For those unfamiliar, Edge City is a month-long pop-up city that (lovingly) infiltrates an existing city. Scientists, founders, engineers, researchers, artists, wellness practitioners, and curious humans gather from around the world to live together, collaborate, and explore ideas for building a brighter future.
This year I served as the Wellness Lead, Connection Lead, and Community Care Lead. On paper, that meant programming the wellness schedule, teaching yoga, breathwork, meditation, and sound healing, facilitating connection experiences, and supporting the emotional well-being of the community.
In practice it meant becoming part nervous system, part host, part listener, part facilitator. Most days I felt like the emotional fascia of the village - helping transmit care, coherence, and connection and electricity 😉throughout the community. Other days I was simply the person people sought out because they needed someone to listen. I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity.
Coming Full Circle
Many people know me today through sound healing, yoga, meditation, breathwork and energy work. What many people don’t know is that I originally came from a research background. I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences with minors in Biology and Sociology (with a theme in death and dying), began graduate work studying Human Consciousness, and later managed a subtle energy research laboratory in San Diego.
My path wasn’t linear, in fact it was very wavy and spirally; sometimes taking steps back before jumping forward; I became severely ill while studying and learning the physiology and function of the body. Unfortunately, conventional medicine created the problem, and that experience opened the door to holistic, alternative and integrative approaches that ultimately changed my life.
The deeper I explored, the less interested I became in choosing between science or spirituality. I became fascinated by the possibility that they might simply be asking different questions about the same human experience. That curiosity has shaped my work ever since.
A Small Sound Bath Case Study
Because Edge attracts such an interdisciplinary community, I had the opportunity to run a small observational case study during one of my sound baths. Participants completed questionnaires immediately before and after the session. Only participants who completed both surveys were included in the analysis (14 matched participants).
The results were encouraging: participants reported notable improvements in:
Stress
Relaxation
Racing thoughts
Physical tension
Sense of peace
Feeling grounded
Feeling present
Anxiety
Emotional overwhelm
Emotional balance
Participants also reported:
Increased mental clarity
Reduced physical discomfort
Reduced fatigue
Greater happiness
Increased connection to themselves
Increased feelings of connection to something larger than themselves
The only measure that did not improve was energy level; but immediately after a deeply relaxing meditation, this isn’t particularly surprising, as many people reported feeling deeply calm, peaceful, or sleepy rather than energized.
Preliminary Findings
Among the matched participants, the largest average improvements included:
Stress: −3.1 points
Racing thoughts: −3.0 points
Physical tension: −2.6 points
Relaxation: +3.0 points
Peace: +2.3 points
Groundedness: +2.2 points
Emotional balance: +1.9 points
Perhaps the finding I found most exciting was that 13 of the 14 participants reported both lower stress and greater bodily relaxation immediately following the sound bath.
This is, of course, a small observational case study but I love that it begins to quantify experiences that many people have described to me for years.
A Glimpse Into the Brain
One of my favorite moments happened almost by accident: my friend Adam happened to wear an EEG/fNIRS headset during one of the sound baths.
The recording captured nearly twenty minutes of physiological data throughout the experience; and the data showed progressive increases in cortical oxygenation during the session, with a noticeable shift approximately eleven minutes into the sound bath. The EEG also demonstrated stable alpha activity (individual alpha peak: 10.2 Hz) and moderate theta activity (patterns commonly associated with relaxed wakefulness and internally focused attention.)
Even though a single recording does not prove that sound healing caused these changes, nor can one participant represent everyone… What it does offer is a fascinating physiological observation that mirrors what many participants reported subjectively.
Around the same time the brain activity appeared to shift, the participant later reflected:
“Thanks for the sound bath! I had an EEG headset on that also captures blood oxygenation. Around 11 minutes in, it looks like my hemispheres began behaving differently - perhaps a shift in focus, attention, or when you invited us to visualize ourselves smiling at different moments throughout life. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but it was fascinating to see.”
Where Science and Spirit Meet
The older I get, the less interested I am in proving that one worldview is correct. I no longer see science and spirituality as opposing forces.Science gives us tools for measuring and spirituality gives us language for meaning. One explores how and the other explores why.
Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.
~ Arthur C. Clarke
For me, sound healing has never been about replacing medicine or asking people to believe extraordinary claims; It’s about creating the conditions for the nervous system to soften, for the body to rest, and for people to reconnect with themselves.
I don’t know if everything can be measured and a lot of times things can only be felt: Both matter.
This little study reminded me why I fell in love with research in the first place:
I remain endlessly curious about what it means to be human.
Biofield Tuning
We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the cosmos. We are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.
Biofield Tuning
I started my journey with Biofield Tuning in 2014 after meeting the creator, Eileen Day McKusick, at a conference at the California Institute for Human Science. We were both presenting and were equally enthralled by each other’s presentation. We became fast friends and due to my vast experience in the medical/health and research field + my many years teaching alternative therapies + teaching energy healing classes already, Eileen personally asked me to become one of the first Biofield Tuning Teachers, and soon after I was promoted to the International Lead Teacher, Research Assistant and Nonprofit Outreach until 2021.
Biofield Tuning is a sound healing modality that helps to relieve mental, emotional and physical stress, it is a targeted therapeutic system that uses tuning forks to help restore balance via the nervous system.
Physical matter is music solidified ~ Pythagoras
We are electrical beings: the energy that powers our brain, heart, muscles, fascia, and bone is electricity. Anything that is electrical produces a magnetic field perpendicular to it, which is measurable and has been studied in detail by the HeartMath Institute; they have measured the field of the brain and heart up to several feet away from the body.
What this means is that anything that is alive (electrical) produces a magnetic field (or bio-field) around itself. Both are measurable and scientifically proven.
Tuning forks produce coherent waveforms which are able to locate dissonance in the bio-field around the body. The coherent waveform from the tuning fork will find dissonance in the field and then recalibrate that dissonance back into harmony.
Dr. Bruce Lipton and I in India - post BT session
What does this mean?
By slowly working through the field using physics (resonance to find and entrainment to harmonize) the body will come back to equilibrium and homeostasis and thus, health. An easy way to understand this is - if you have a guitar that is in tune and mine is out of tune, if you keep playing an ‘A’ I will listen to your ‘A’ (resonance) and eventually I can tune my guitar to match your ‘A’ (entrainment).
This physics-based medicine allows the body's nervous system to move away from the sympathetic fight or flight response and relax into a parasympathetic rest and digest response; this is where healing can occur most efficiently. What we have found through thousands and thousands of clients is that the dissonance the tuning forks can find in the field can be directly linked to memories and emotions.
Simply put, Biofield Tuning is a way to use sound medicinally.
In our view, the biofield is the blueprint that the body follows, this contradicts what we were taught when we were younger, but withhold disbelief for an moment - this is entirely possible since to this day science has been unable to locate where memories are stored in the brain. So what if?
Time and time again, we have found that circumstances in life cause an emotional response and these are recorded in the biofield - you can think of them as a disturbance in the force, these areas have mass and a different density from the air, and because of this the practitioner and the client can hear the change in tone, pitch, timber and sometimes even volume. This takes the subjectivity out of the session as you are an active participant.
I like to think of this process as you coming home to yourself: I wrote a blog called Returning your Sparkle, Your Childlike Essence that you can refer to for a greater description of this process.
It’s a pretty simple concept when you think about it.
Remember third grade science class when we were told everything in the universe vibrates? We do, tables do, the air around us does… By treating the body (a vibrating particle) for an illness, disease or other issue (a vibrational imbalance) with coherent vibration (harmony), the body is able to recalibrate itself.
What’s the coolest thing about this? A state change is noticeable to the client regardless if they are in-person or if the session is done over a distance.
I trained under the creator of Biofield Tuning herself, Eileen Day McKusick, who was not only my mentor but my very best friend. Under her guidance I became an Advanced Certified Practitioner and then she personally asked me to become one of her first Biofield Tuning Teachers due to my extensive background in energy healing, vast knowledge of the health/medical field, prior years of teaching alternative therapies to medical professionals, and teaching energy healing classes across the US.
Eileen and I have traveled all over the world teaching together and speaking at conferences including Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine (AIHM) several years in a row, The Science of Consciousness Conference in San Diego in 2017, The Science and Nonduality Conference (SANDS) in San Jose in 2019, the Sound Healing Conference in Malvern, England in 2019 and the Advanced Medicine Conference in South Dakota in 2021.
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything. ~ Plato
Because of my deep and insatiable love for travelling the world and visiting sacred spaces, I was able to expand Biofield Tuning globally and was promoted to the International Class Coordinator and Lead International Teacher. I was the Lead Team for Tuners without Borders, which was Biofield Tuning’s non-profit side to help those less fortunate. I have been on several missions to Jamaica and during Covid I began my virtual outreach to the Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation to support them with Biofield Tuning during Covid-time. I have a recorded session available on my video page.
Eileen and I in Jamaica
It was my greatest pleasure teaching alongside Eileen for many years and teaching Biofield Tuning around the world to hundreds of students. It was an honor expanding and growing Biofield Tuning to all corners of the world, and touching the lives of so many different people in so many different places.
In 2021 I started to focus on my Masterclass on Illumination: The Wildish Wolfish Way. I have tuned hundreds of people trying to get unstuck, find their path, heal and return to themselves. I have hosted events and performed remote sessions all over the world - literally - and now serve the San Francisco / Bay Area where I continue to tune and host large sound healing events.
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I have known and been good friends with Jess since meeting her in 2014 at the Subtle Energy Conference in San Diego, and I have had the good fortune to travel, work and teach alongside her all around the world. Jess has a very comprehensive understanding of the biofield and of Biofield Tuning, and provides brilliant and insightful feedback as a practitioner. She has a vast background in performing and teaching about a variety of alternative therapies and healing modalities. I have given and received many tune ups with and from her and I would highly recommend Jess as a practitioner. ~ Eileen Day McKusick
I would love to tune you and bring you back into balance with yourself and your environment! Please let me know how I can support you on your healing journey <3
Contact me by clicking here
Xoxo
Anechoic Chamber Experiments at Hathaway Research Laboratory
Eileen McKusick, myself & another colleague traveled to Hathaway Labs located in Toronto, Canada in May of 2019 in order to conduct some research in an anechoic chamber. An Anechoic chamber, simply put, means "anti-echo" or a room designed to completely absorb reflections of sound or electromagnetic waves. This room designed by George Hathaway was designed to also not allow EM (electromagnetic) waves from entering the chamber from the outside. The chamber is also grounded; meaning any excess electricity is safely directed to the ground outside.
We had planned to meet up with a Toronto-based recording studio but they no-called no-showed, so we made due with a zoom recorder, oscilliscope, spectral analyzer and good old-fashioned note taking. Despite the recording studio not showing up we were still able to make some incredible observations with the help of George Hathaway and his quick inventions he was able to create to support us in our research & observations (i.e. the boom).
We were observing what we noticed as the 1. Tuning Practitioner 2. the session Receiver and 3. the Witness. We had a copper grounding wire that we took turns grounding ourselves to see what we noticed. We also tried putting the tuning fork in a boom and moving the boom around (like an arm) to see the effect of human vs machine as Tuning fork operator.
The following observations were noticed:
- We loved the opportunity to freely create experiments in an anechoic chamber that was able to completely isolate the sounds from the tuning forks
- Grounding (at least) one of us during the session was necessary: the tone brightened immediatley with one of us being grounded. With no one being grounded we all felt clausterphobic and had difficulty breathing.
- The session went without issue when the Tuning Practitioner (TP) or Receiver (R) was grounded. This makes obvious sense to us and is why breathing and grounding is paramount in the beginning of one's session. Having only the Witness grounded still created feelings of unease in the TP & R.
- None of us felt well when the fork was in the boom; we experienced difficulty breathing, and felt dissassociated. However, the moment one of us touched the boom to complete the circuit we all noticed a huge improvement in our feelings sense.
- We noticed that when the fork was in the boom we were able to hear the fundamental tone but not many high/low tones. When it was in our hand we were able to differentiate the variation between the high/mid/ and low tones. This variation is important as the difference in tones allows us to discover patterns and "hear" emotions.
Next steps:
- We'd like to conduct further research in an Anechoic Chamber
- We want to do a Spectrograph analysis in real time
- We want our recording studio people to show up in order professionally record the sound :p
Sources:
www.eileenmckusick.com
www.biofieldtuning.com
www.hathawayresearch.com/