Healing Horses With Sound

Pie and Magneto enjoying ToneStream by Solu

Listening to specific auditory frequencies tuned to 432Hz (Healing Frequencies) promotes relaxation. Much like mindfulness and meditation, these sound therapies can encourage brainwaves to shift into calmer alpha and theta patterns.
They also affect the autonomic nervous system by lowering sympathetic dominance and encouraging a parasympathetic state. Both effects on the brainwave entrainment and the autonomic nervous system lower heart rate, slow breathing, and improve heart rate variability.

Additionally, they can reduce stress hormones such as cortisol while promoting the release of relaxing neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. Just like with meditation, the longer one makes a practice of listening to them, the more long-term effects they will have on one's overall wellness.

The wonderful thing for horse owners to know is that listening to these same healing frequencies tuned to 432Hz, which can help you to be more relaxed, is also beneficial to horses. Horses and humans have a great deal of overlap in their hearing ranges. Humans hear a range from .02kHz to 20kHz and horses from .055kHz to 33.5kHz. Horses hear higher frequencies than humans can, and humans can hear about one octave lower than horses, although horses can pick up low-frequency vibrations in their hooves, teeth and jawbone.

Listening to healing frequencies with your horse can relax not only you but also your horse. Because brain anatomy and sensory processing are similar across mammals, both humans and horses exhibit frequency-following responses to rhythmic auditory inputs in the same way.

This means that you and your horse will both be soaking up the same good vibrations together. Also, horses often match our nervous system regulation pattern because they co-regulate with us, meaning that when we are nervous, we can make them nervous too, and when we relax, they often can as well. Since listening to the healing tones will calm your nervous system, this will be an added benefit for them, as they will also be picking up on your regulated nervous system state.

A daily practice of sound therapy with your horse may help improve any dysregulation issues he may have, such as ulcers, digestion issues, sleep deprivation, aggressive tendencies, and stereotypical behaviors like weaving and cribbing. Spending more time in the parasympathetic part of his nervous system can also relax a horse’s fascia. Listening to healing tones together can also just be a nice way to relax and connect to one another.

I like listening to the Solu ToneStream, which is a live-streamed, pure harmonic tone generator, with my horses. They love it. I listen with them for about 15 minuets at least a couple times a week. The above photo and the video below show my horses and mules in deep relaxation while listening to ToneStream by Solu with me. I play it off a cell phone app and run it through a little Bluetooth speaker.