The autistic child is often a savant with incredible intellectual skills, especially as pertains to memory. Sadly, we’ve categorized both children and adults with a “defect” or “syndrome,” when those with autism likely only foreshadow a time when everyone will have upgraded DNA, and expanded intellectual abilities. Though non-autistic parents and teachers communicate difficulties in sharing emotion with their autistic children, there are a growing number of ways to assist the intellectually gifted in sharing their emotions in a socially acceptable manner. Music and vibrational therapy is one arena which has offered great success in this endeavor.
If you’ve been reading our blog at Healer’s of the Light, we recently discussed how Williams Syndrome – the “opposite” of autism, results in a genetic sequence in human beings which causes them to “love too much.” However, as we have learned from the latest research into epigenetics, all genetic hardware is simply a blueprint for how a soul will manifest its personality in this life. It is never written in stone, and can be greatly augmented by conscious changes to the DNA structure. The soul can indeed be reprogrammed!
What’s Our Genetic Trajectory?
Environment, diet, attitude, the love and compassion of others, and even light and music therapies can all change our deterministic genes. This is true for those who are gifted with savant-like intellect as well as those who are gifted with the ability to love like the Buddha, or any great saint of the past 50,000-plus years of human history. And everyone in between, as we are all on our own trajectory toward soul evolution and becoming more in alignment with the Creator’s plan for us.
Just a few examples of how music and vibration have recently helped autistic children can be seen in the following examples:
In programs used across the United States, such as Voices Together, sponsored by Duke University, autistic children participated in non-directive music programs to help them learn how to express their emotions. Most students who participated were able to move from one-word speech to being able to communicate in entire sentences. IN just 14 weeks of music treatment autistic children were able to communicate more effectively with their peers and their ability to express difficult emotions skyrocketed.
Is this truly any different than what music and positive vibration does for any of us though? Vibratory changes in our environment, specifically music, gongs, chanting, drumming, and the ancient use of crystal bowls, the human voice and myriad other instruments have already been proven to have a remarkable effect on the human physiology.
To wit, Nurse Journal states that autism helps autistic children by activating both hemispheres of the brain. This is called whole-brain learning, but an integrated use of the right and left hemispheres is also what allows saints and yogis to experience transcendent spiritual states of bliss and ecstatic union with God. Is it any wonder that music therapy would have a positive effect on those with autism, and that, comparatively, many with Williams Syndrome are considered musically gifted?
As if book ends meeting it the middle, each “syndrome” carries an exaggerated use of one hemisphere of the brain, while the other languishes without epigenetic intervention or reprogramming of the DNA, to help along an evolutionary trajectory which was likely put into action very purposefully by the Creator.
How Music and Meditation Affect the Brain
Both music and meditation cause whole brain coherence. John Hagelin PhD, a quantum physicist has talked extensively about the benefits of meditation on the brain’s intelligence and advocates meditation as a method of promoting positive brain benefits from relaxation (which usually results in higher levels of empathy and compassion as well) along with increased creativity.
If an autistic child is unable to meditate, or those who care for an autistic child cannot communicate the concept of meditation, music steps in. It’s been called the “Mozart effect,” but it existed well before Mozart ever penned his first symphony but when we listen to certain harmonious compositions of sound, including popular music, binaural beats, and other sounds created specifically with the intent of healing, hemispheric synchronization happens – the Williams child meets the Autistic child, quite literally, in the brain.
Synapses that were dormant before start to come alive and stay alert. Learning happens more easily, and memory is improved. Emotional maturity – empathy, the ability to relate to others, and to communicate with love are also enhanced.
Though Darwin’s research has been corrupted to support a “survival of the fittest” paradigm, even he eventually allotted for quantum leaps of evolution which he could not account for.
Interestingly, in his 1887 autobiography Darwin was moved to say,
“If I had to live my life again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied could thus have been kept active through use.” (Amen 2005, 158).
We could argue that each of us has parts of our brains that have become atrophied from disuse – some of us love better, some of us think better, but the ability to think and love monumentally is inherent within us all.
As we explore different ways to support our own evolutionary upgrades, we can also learn from those who have stepped forward with special skills. Using the power of vibration and music, the soul reclaims what was already its treasure.