Vibration & music form therapy at Virginia Beach practice

VIRGINIA BEACH

Recently, Michelle Leahey’s been feeling the oppressive weight of constant stress.

The graduate student is juggling both school and work, taking care of her 3-year-old and trying to plan her September wedding. Increasingly, she’s been having trouble sleeping.

So when she heard about a new vibroacoustic therapy program being offered in the same building where she works, she thought she would give it a try. The non-medicinal therapy, which links sound therapy with vibration, is supposed to help patients relax and reduce feelings of stress and anxiety.

For 30 minutes, Leahey reclined on a cushioned bed of gently vibrating coils as she listened to harmonious sound waves of varying pitch in her earphones.

The effect was calming, she said.

“When you get on the bed, for the first four minutes my mind was still racing. But for the remainder of the track, it was just an escape from reality.”

Clinical psychologist Ron Jacobson recently added vibroacoustic therapy to the health and wellness programs he offers at Jacobson’s Ladder, his life-coaching practice in Pembroke.

“It’s a nontraditional way of helping people to relax,” said Jacobson, who previously worked as a clinical psychologist with a large medical group for 10 years. “People leave this transformed in some way.”

Some of the people seeking the therapy at Jacobson’s Serenity Lounge are using it to help treat various addictions and chronic pain.

“Those are two groups in particular that I know are getting relief, where they otherwise might not have,” Jacobson said. Preliminary research has also shown the treatment is effective in treating other medical conditions like Parkinson’s disease, he said. Dementia, depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia and cerebral palsy are thought to improve with the treatment, Jacobson said.

Listening to the varying pitch of the sine waves emitted in the headphones triggers a switch in brainwave function, he said.

It’s the difference between the two sounds, Jacobson said, that evokes the change in brainwave activity. The vibration part of the therapy is similar to the effect of having a massage. It allows muscle tissue to loosen and improves blood flow and eases pain, he said.

“It’s for people who are looking for another avenue other than medication.”

Sessions cost $30 for 30 minutes and $50 for 60 minutes.

Since adding the program in February, about 80 people have tried the therapy, Jacobson said. In the coming months, he plans on reaching out to pain management groups, to give them another way to cope with chronic pain.

For Leahey, the proof was immediate.

She knew it worked, she said, when she saw how relaxed her face was following the treatment.

“It was a visible difference. It’s amazing.”