Although in ancient Greece, similarly to ancient India, the Far East and Africa, sound healing was widely used as a way to treat a variety of mental and physical ills, celebrate communal traditions and honour deities, this art and science was cast aside throughout the millennia that passed. However, over the last decade, as Greeks began to earnestly embrace alternative forms of wellness such as yoga, meditation, alternative remedies and healthy diets such as vegan and macrobiotic cuisine, sound healing has begun to make an impressive comeback.
It’s appeal does not only lie in the fact that it can be mind-expanding and deeply relaxing, soul-soothing and restorative, but that it has physical benefits too. A 60-minute session of sound meditation has been found to lessen feelings of stress, anger, fatigue, anxiety, and depression, while concurrently boosting a sense of spiritual well-being, according to a study published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine. A great deal of ongoing empirical research reveals what the ancients already knew: sound waves can have a direct, powerful and profound income on the human body and mind.
Today, there are a small handful of soundhealing experts and therapists with top-level training and significant experience practising in Greece, offering sessions privately and to groups and creating a new scene that has already garnered many followers. Spiritual therapist and sound healer Nikolaos Unalome is one of these and offers uniquely crafted sessions.
Based in Athens, Unalome is constantly introducing sound healing to new people, both Greek and from around the world. Especially during summer, he organises and participates in sound healing retreats or experiences, often accompanied by a yoga teacher offering a class, usually in locations that are breathtakingly scenic. Year-round he also offers clients sound therapy sessions in their private space or preferably in his own, where he has a fascinating, continuously growing variety of instruments. These include tuning forks, Tibetan bowls, chimes, ocean drums, singing bells, gongs, and many more, used either individually or in combination, to help produce therapeutic Alpha and Theta waves in the brain.
Clients can enjoy sound healing alone, or indulge in the combination of a deep, healing massage with essential oils and personalised sound therapy, directed at easing or healing their own issues and needs. He offers fourk key types of experience, decided upon by the client either ahead of the session or after a pre-session conversation during which Unalome can assess what would be most impactful.
Raved about in the October issue of Vogue magazine, Unalome was also recently described as “the best sound healer in Athens” by Forbes magazine, which wrote: “While there are numerous spa treatments at hotels and resorts when you travel, there are rarely opportunities to have a life-changing experience with a healer.”
Although he has been working with sound healing for numerous years, after completely changing professional paths in his life, it is in these recent post-lockdown years that his star has risen. He has featured in TV interviews and reports, and in a show of progressive thinking, the Greek state even planned for him to offer a sound session at a school.
Aimed especially at people in urgent need to rebalance and recover, to come together in magical locations and celebrate life, practice yoga, heal, or to travel to Greece to enjoy not only the sea and landscapes, but possibly impactful personal healing, Unalome’s treatments aim to make their experiences all the more meaningful. “My therapy helps people reconnect with their inner soul, bringing them back to their core, and alleviating negative emotions. This allows them to once again feel and experience the light within themselves and in the world around them,” Unalome says.
“Sound Healing is the medicine of the future that starts now because everything vibrates in a certain frequency,” he adds. “My tradition follows the ancient art of healing by using the energetic power of sounds & overtoning, therapeutic grade essential oils & high frequency holy temple oils, words & crystals. It creates a resonating composition, which guides you back into balance and harmonises your entire being.”
The way the ancient Greeks understood it, music wasn’t just about melody and rhythm – it was a kind of cosmic balm, a means to heal the fractured soul. Plato once penned in ‘Timaeus’ that harmony was a gift from the Muses, meant to be our ally when our inner world goes out of tune, to bring us back to a state of balance and peace. Aristotle positioned that the flute, with its haunting tones, could stir the passions, kindling pity, fear, and even a sense of exaltation in those with the ears to hear. For those susceptible to its charms, such music could be a salve for the soul, a source of catharsis blended with the sweetest pleasure.
“My greatest focus was how I could create an experience that is accessible to everyone, because everyone deserves to try it – from the elderly people to children. It’s not something that’s aimed at people who are already into spiritual or healing practices. And it can be experienced everywhere – from an art gallery to a baptism or dinner party, at schools, corporate environments, nature,” says Unalome. Over the last few years, he’s put that concept into action, offering sound healing at most of the above, including a wedding party and an official dinner among other places. Being more well known abroad, sound healing is slowly but surely becoming a more normal part of vacations in Greece thanks to therapists like Unalome, as foreign visitors actively seek it out or jump at the opportunity to experience it while they visit. Unalome has performed over the years at innumerable stunning island locations, often in combination with a yoga class, but even atop one of the gargantuan soaring rocks of Meteora.
Experiencing the ‘Blessing Healing Oil Treatment’
Considering that Unalome can use his therapeutic sessions to help clients with serious and chronic conditions like Parkinson’s, insomnia and anxiety disorders, I was confident that our time together would leave me feeling relaxed and renewed. But I had no idea just how much. I am not new to sound healing, having had my first session with a sound healer over a decade ago, and having tried several similar experiences, including gong baths, since. I have always found profound comfort, relief, mind-expansion, stress-relief and physical relaxation through sound therapy, and believe, like Unalome, that it can be beneficial to anyone, as long as one is open to receving it.
Following a conversation around my current physical and mental state, so that he could better assess my needs, the therapist led me to his massage bed, where he offered me a deep tissue and therapeutic massage, using a blend of essential oils and with an astoundingly intuitive healing touch. In certain instances of the massage treatment, he played the instruments he has in the space; some placed a little further away from me and others brought closer to reverberate their vibrations close to the body, or the head. In combination with the massage, which turned my muscles into putty and ‘opened‘ me up, the sound had the effect of creating vivid esoteric images in my imagination, as well as helping me feel and let go of certain emotions that came up.
I definitely felt that I was being unblocked, and that gave me a sense of lightness and calm. The human body tends to gather stagnant accumulated energy created from daily stresses and strains, suppressed feelings and more, that often resides in deep places that our own awareness can barely acknowledge, let alone reach. The cemented tension on my shoulders and neck, built up from daily hours at my computer, melted away, – which is near-miraculous considering how many massage therapists have worked on that particular area with little or no results – and weeks later is still significantly lessened.
“When I play musical instruments, I feel as though I engage in a charged interaction, experiencing a transformation in which I become an instrument myself,” says Unalome. “It is in that moment that the magic of sound therapy begins. The changes within me unfold in harmony with my outer world, and it is a blessing to have discovered what the Sanskrit call my Dharma – my purpose – in offering healing to my fellow humans through sound,” Unalome says. Indeed, during our session I too felt so weightless in certain moments that I felt I was at one with the sound waves, a feeling of which I can still enjoy the memory of, as a reminder of how a receptive body and soul can keep discovering, healing and unfolding thanks to sound healing. Clearly, the ancients were on to something great, and fortunately individuals like Unalome are reintroducing it to our societies.
Follow Nikolaos Unalome on Instagram.
