August 2004 | Living Healthy: Practitioner Profile
Uncommon Healer
by Suzanne Saucy
Awakening to a resonant Burmese brass gong at 4:30 am is a deep, lingering memory of my first 10-day silent meditation retreat in Dharmma Giri, India, 24 years ago: a pure and penetrating sound as the person in charge of waking the spiritual community made her rounds.
In every cosmology and mythology, sound is the major link, the carrier wave, between the world of spirit and the human realm.
Harmonic sound vibrations are said to promote healing at a deep cellular level. The sound waves travel along energy pathways, affecting human physiology and reaching places not easily accessed by traditional medicine. Harmonic toning is a natural adjunct to acupuncture; both work on the subtle energy systems of the body.
In Berkeley, Katie Mink makes her rounds in her acupuncture clinic with a set of precision-calibrated tuning forks. She treats her patients by applying the vibrating forks to specific acupunture and trigger points on the body, sending sound waves to access the meridian and chakra systems.
Mink studied at the San Francisco College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and in Nanjing, China. Her studies continued through four different hospitals before she set up her own practice in 1987. She has also studied The Acutonics Healing System, a harmonic approach to health developed by Donna Carey and Marjorie De Muynck.
Steeped in Chinese herbology and acupuncture, Mink incorporates the science of harmonic sound vibration with the use of needles to treat a variety of physical and emotional ailments including shingles, tendonitis, infertility, female hormonal imbalance, and the challenges of aging. Tuning forks are an integral part of her healing practice.
“Sound vibration,” she says “helps me work on a very deep emotional level without having to process verbally. Everyone understands the language of sound, although not always cognitively. With a new patient or those who are nervous, I begin the treatment with a foundation tone to help the patient feel grounded and safe. The toning opens a space where I can then facilitate healing at whatever level the patient is seeking.”
From my personal experience with tendonitis, Mink’s toning helped to clear my mind of mental chatter, deepening the connection between psyche and body.
“I work with people to recognize the signals the body is giving,” says Mink who believes that her integrative healing approach can raise awareness and help people listen to their body’s warning signals — the ‘flashing yellow light’ or the ‘yellow canary’ that tells you ‘do not pass this’.... Part of the body’s self-healing mechanism is that it will speak to you in its own language. If people learn to identify the ‘canary singing,’ they can start to prevent more serious health consequences.”
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