I’m Edwina Forshaw-Gumbrill, a certified Bio-Tuning® Practitioner based in Newcastle upon Tyne in the North East of England.
My route into sound therapy probably isn’t the most conventional. My background is actually in International Business Studies, finance and analytical work, including working as a Police Analyst. I’ve always had quite an analytical side, but I also grew up with an awareness of holistic approaches to health, so I’ve always been interested in where those two worlds meet.
My own sound journey began after becoming a mum to three girls. Like many people, I found myself functioning on very little sleep while juggling family life, work and a huge amount of responsibility. I was interested in exploring different approaches to wellbeing that I could fit in to my life. Being a private person, I wasn’t interested in talking therapy, I wanted something relaxing, measurable and holistic.
It was through that exploration that I came across the work of Dr Jeffrey Thompson and the Center for Neuroacoustic Research. What immediately interested me was that this wasn’t simply about listening to relaxing music. There was measurement, technology, frequency and an attempt to understand what was happening physiologically.
That combination of sound, science and technology really appealed to me.
I subsequently trained and became a certified Bio-Tuning® Practitioner, and founded Sound Therapy North East. My work now focuses on personalised sound and nervous-system support, using real-time HRV monitoring, bespoke frequencies, brainwave entrainment and vibroacoustic technology.
I’m particularly interested in the space between traditional sound therapy and emerging technology - and in exploring how we can use sound in a much more individualised and measurable way.
Bio-Tuning® is a personalised form of neuroacoustic and vibroacoustic sound therapy.
The thing that makes it different from many other approaches to sound therapy is that we don’t start with a generic recording and assume that the same sound will be appropriate for everyone.
Using real-time Heart Rate Variability monitoring, we look at how someone’s autonomic nervous system is responding and identify their individual fundamental frequency. That frequency then becomes the basis for creating their personalised soundtracks.
The technology is essentially allowing us to take something that can feel quite subjective - our response to sound - and introduce a physiological measurement into the process.
During an in-person session, the personalised frequencies can be delivered through a NeuroWave® chair or table, which combines sound and physical vibration, alongside headphones. We can monitor the HRV response in real time, so you can actually see changes occurring in the person’s physiological state.
The personalised soundtracks can be taken home and listened to regularly. So rather than relying on the practitioner to create the experience every time, the person has something they can use as part of their own routine.
Bio-Tuning® also incorporates brainwave entrainment and binaural beats. The principle behind entrainment is that the brain can respond to rhythmic auditory stimulation and that sound can therefore be used to encourage particular brainwave states.
There are 22 different brainwave states within the Bio-Tuning® system. Some are very well established areas of research, while others are still developing. I’m very interested in the science, but I’m equally conscious of not overstating what we know.
For me, that’s what makes Bio-Tuning® particularly interesting: it sits at the intersection of sound, physiology and technology. It gives us another way of exploring how an individual’s nervous system responds to sound, rather than treating sound as a one-size-fits-all experience.
Connect with Edwina here-
