Open Access

ARTICLE

Efficacy of Singing Bowls in Childhood Asthma—A Pilot and Feasibility Study

by Sukhbir Shahid^*

Shahid Clinic, Mumbai, 400077, India

* Corresponding Author: Sukhbir Shahid. Email:

Sound & Vibration 2022, 56(3), 245-253. https://doi.org/10.32604/sv.2022.016139

Received 10 February 2021; Accepted 10 July 2021; Issue published 10 August 2022

Abstract

The potential use of sound and vibration for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes remains largely under-explored and under-estimated. Sound and vibrational energy has great positive impact on the mind and body. It could be particularly useful for psychosomatic diseases as a complementary therapy. Singing bowls, the spiritual ancient therapy has been claimed to aid in mind relaxation and painful and inflammatory conditions. Childhood asthma is an inflammatory airway disease and a psychosomatic disorder. The psychological management in it is often neglected leading to under-treatment or a relapse. Hence, we hypothesized that sound therapy with singing bowls might be useful as complementary therapy in management of childhood asthma. We aimed to study the effect of singing bowl session on child’s asthma severity and control and on the psychological well-being. Children <18 years of age and suffering from childhood asthma were recruited after informed written consent of parents. At the baseline, demographic and clinical details were noted. Anthropometric parameters, PEFR readings, asthma severity, parental and child’s subjective feeling of well-being, asthma control score, and pediatric symptom checklist score (based on age) were determined. The child was given 15 min of singing bowl session as per the set protocol. The subjective and objective evaluation of asthma control and psychological assessment was repeated at 1 month and 3 months follow-up and compared with the baseline results for clinical significance. Eighteen children formed the study group with a mean age of 9.13 ± 2.15 years (range 2–15.25 years). 4 children had psychological issues on initial screening. There was a significant improvement in asthma severity, subjective feeling of well-being and asthma control score at 3 months (p < 0.05). Singing bowl therapy could be a useful, low-cost complementary therapy in childhood asthmatics.

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