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CHA therapy in W.S. heals holistically with sound, aroma, massage
By Amy K.D. Tobik | March 17, 2010
The lights were low and the room was silent. Gently, the therapist struck the hand-hammered Tibetan Singing Bowl and let it resonate. The haunting sounds of the vibrating metal bowl drifted throughout the space, creating a sense of tranquility. As the aromatic candles flickered, a comfortable Shiatsu Chair massaged the neck, arms, shoulders, calves and feet, reducing stress. The mood was peaceful.
"How are you feeling?" asked director and certified CHA therapist Rosemarie Jenau as she tapped a second bowl, creating another comforting tone. "Are you feeling relaxed?"
Rosemarie and husband, Hans, opened the CHA (Continuous Health Advancement) Therapy and Wellness Center six months ago after studying the powers of holistic healing.
As owners of the Canada Rx Shop in Winter Springs for eight years, the couple has long had an interest in finding first-rate and cost-effective treatments for their customers. The couple runs CHA Therapy at their Winter Springs location.
Rosemarie said she was intrigued as she investigated alternative, less expensive, healing techniques. Quite often, holistic treatments complement traditional medicine, she said.
After extensive research, Rosemarie created a new therapy combining ancient treatments such as meditation with more modern technology, such as a high-tech massage chair. She created a 30-minute treatment to help relieve stress through aroma, light vibration, visual treatments and shiatsu massage, plus pain relief through sound healing.
The CHA treatment is recognized by the American Health Association as a complementary alternative medicine. It is not meant to replace or alter medical treatments, Rosemarie said; rather, it is intended to enhance healing.
Using personal information gained through a brief interview and questionnaire, Rosemarie customizes therapy sessions to meet the needs of her clients. "Based on these questions, we find out what is not working or is which one of their energy centers is underactive in their body," Rosemarie said.
The touchless massage concept, achieved through a Shiatsu Chair, is believed to restore flexibility, relieve tired and aching muscles, and reduce tension. The chair scans the spine, Rosemarie explained, and analyzes body shape, height and physics to determine treatment.
The therapist then chooses the appropriate massage form, intensity and endurance to ensure the treatment is soothing and restorative.
"What you do with medication is treating the symptoms, and you need to let your body treat the cause by healing itself if the Chakras are open," Hans said. The Chakra signifies one of seven energy centers that run from the base of the spine out the top, or crown, of the head. "I personally always have believed that the body is capable of healing itself," Hans said.
"When you bring everything in harmony and things are working the way they should be, your body should be healing itself," Rosemarie said. "And that is what we believe; we open up those blockages."
Hans added that Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, oncologist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at Cornell University in New York, believes vibration and sound therapy can help reduce stress and bring the body back into balance, particularly in the case of cancer patients.
Certified as a hypnotherapist 20 years ago, Rosemarie said she understands neuro-linguistic programming and how the mind affects the mind, body and soul.
"That coupled with the other techniques brings everything into sync in your body," she said. "You may have a pain in your left knee and it could be in your spinal column.
"Everything originates from the mind and works its way down."
Natural healing is not a new concept. For more than 3,000 years, Tibetan Monks have believed in the healing powers of sound, vibration and meditation to clear blocked energy systems.
They believe each method helps activate the body's ability to heal, often increasing overall health.
Scientific studies have shown that sound can produce changes in immune, autonomic, endocrine and neuropeptide systems.
Hans said scientists were skeptical whether the bowls were effective until an experiment was conducted several years ago.
"A group of scientists went to Tibet to a monastery and took the bowls away for six months.
Fifty percent of these monks had high blood sugar, diabetes, high cholesterol and heart problems within six months.
They gave the monks the bowls back, and four months later, they were all back to normal health," Hans said. The results were significant enough, he said, to convince the scientists there was a connection.
Treatment sessions take one hour at a cost of $120.00 and include all six healing modalities.
"People spend hundreds of dollars until they find a treatment the body accepts. That is how we are different than anyone else," Hans said. "We are combining all the treatments in one session.
"You don't have to search to find what will help you. It's all here."
What's the Buzz? Sound Therapy
Published in New York Times on November, 24 2005
One person held her feet. Another touched her head. Someone placed a hand on her shoulder. Ms. Harada, 40, then stated that her intention was to release the dull pain in her left shoulder.
"The physical touch was important, to remind me I was safe and directly connected to people doing healing work on my behalf," she wrote in an e-mail describing her experience last spring.
Then, using their voices and acoustic instruments - bowls made from crystals, an Australian didgeridoo, bells and drums - the participants gently bathed Ms. Harada in sound.
When the sonic massage ended several minutes later, Ms. Harada's eyes fluttered open. She felt grateful, peaceful and when she stood up, found that the range of motion in her shoulder had increased.
"It's like meditation was 20 years ago and yoga was 10 to 15 years ago," said Amrita Cottrell, the founder and director of the Healing Music Organization in Santa Cruz, Calif., and the leader of the class that Ms. Harada attended.
While many people are only just discovering it, sound healing is actually a return to ancient cultural practices that used chants and singing bowls to restore health and relieve pain. It is often introduced at mind-body or wellness festivals. Thousands of healers from almost every state and many countries have created Web sites about sound healing.
People who have tried sound healing say they like it, because it is noninvasive and relaxing. And lying on a cushion, exercising only the ears, is decidedly easier than stretching into the downward dog pose.
But can chanting "om lam hu" or blowing into a didgeridoo really loosen a stiff neck?
No controlled clinical trials have been done to show that Sound Healing works, said Dr. Vijay B. Vad a sports medicine specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan and a doctor for the P.G.A. Tour. But those who try sound healing may feel their pain diminish, because pain is notoriously subjective, Dr. Vad said. Some 35% of people with back pain find relief from a placebo, he noted.
Sound healing, like other mind-body treatments, he said, could act as a placebo, or it may distract the mind, breaking a stress cycle. "Even if it breaks your cycle for 15 minutes, that's sometimes enough to have a therapeutic effect," Dr. Vad said.
Sylvia Pelcz-Larsen of
"I got a 10-minute session, and my back was about 80 percent better," she said. "It changed my life." Ms. Pelcz-Larsen now teaches classes through the Kairos Institute of Sound Healing, which is based in New Mexico but offers classes throughout the world, and has incorporated tuning forks into her acupuncture practice, along with Tibetan singing bowls, planetary gongs and chimes.
Using forks and bowls for anything other than dinner may seem to some people like New Age nonsense. But healers, sometimes called sounders, argue that sound can have physiological effects because its vibrations are not merely heard but also felt. And vibrations, they say, can lower heart rate variability, relax brain wave patterns and reduce respiratory rates.
When the heart rate is relatively steady, and breathing is deep and slow, stress hormones decrease, said Dr. Mitchell L. Gaynor, an oncologist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in
Ms. Cottrell pointed out that ultrasound, which employs vibrations in frequencies above the range of human hearing, has been used therapeutically. "When the body is sick - it could be a cold, a broken bone, an ulcer, a tumor, or an emotional or mental illness - it's all a matter of the frequencies of the body being out of tune, off balance, out of synch," she said. "Vibration can help bring that back into balance."
Sound healing works like the cry you make when you stub your toe, said Jonathan Goldman, the director of the Sound Healers Association in Boulder, and the author of "Healing Sounds: The Power of Harmonics." "Have you ever been able to stub your toe and not make a sound?" he asked. "It hurts a lot more."
The cry, he suggested, may stimulate endorphins or create resonance with the part of the body that is in pain and lessen it. Or, he said, the cry you emit may simply distract you from the pain.
Dr. Gaynor distinguishes between curing and healing. To "cure" means physically to fix something, whereas "healing" refers to wholeness, a union of the mind, body and spirit, he said. Dr. Gaynor, who has an oncology practice in
He leads free biweekly support groups for his patients that involve chanting and playing Tibetan Singing Bowls. The bowls are made of several kinds of metal; when struck gently on the rim with a wood baton, they vibrate at different frequencies, making sounds not unlike church bells.
When Marisa Harris of Manhattan first saw Dr. Gaynor with one of his Tibetan bowls she thought he was going to prepare pasta. But when he began to play them, she said, it was the first time since she had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer that she could hear something other than the words "you're going to die."
"It was as if all of a sudden there was room for possibility," she said. The sound, Ms. Harris said, penetrated her body and made her feel as if it were not only her thoughts about death that were breaking up, "but these poisonous cells, these cancer cells, were breaking up and I experienced something very healing."
More than seven years later she plays her own singing bowls every day, often chanting the names of her three children, her husband and other loved ones. The bowls, she said, helped her express feelings she had bottled up inside. Sometimes, she said, she talks to the bowls about her fears. "The sound would take them away," she said, "out of my being, out of my existence."
Mr. Goldman draws an analogy between sound healing and prayer. Many cultures, he said, believe that vocalizing a prayer amplifies it. By the same token, he said, expressing what you want a sound to accomplish (Ms. Harada's wish to release the pain in her left shoulder; for example), can help you heal yourself - or someone else.
Dr. Gaynor likens sound healing to music therapy. In "The Healing Power of Sound" he cites studies indicating that music can lower blood pressure, reduce cardiac complications among patients who have recently suffered heart attacks, reduce stress hormones during medical testing and boost natural opiates.
But not everyone who partakes in sound healing is in need of medical treatment. Ms. Harada's husband, Greg Bergere, attended the sound healing classes in Emeryville even though he had no physical ailments. They left him feeling refreshed. "It felt like I just had a really relaxing night's sleep," he said.For some people, that alone may be worth the price of a singing bowl.
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