The Experiment and the Toning Group Grew and Grew

Knouse started teaching his toning practice to large groups.  Simply put, the breath practice he taught involved sipping in breath during inhale, followed by the LONG SiGH® and making a vowel sound on the exhale while focusing attention on the sensations of the breath.  Toning, Knouse told me in several interviews in 2021, was the equivalent of tuning up your inside while becoming more present. “In this moment of focused attention, there is no past, no future, only awareness of the infinite present moment,” he said. Without intention, it is just sound, but he added that the focused intention turned it into vibrational healing energy.

What Knouse was doing is not exactly new in spiritual circles, but he added BioFeedback.  For thousands of years, Yogis and other spiritual seekers used patterns of sound or resonance to calm the mind and heal the body.  Polyphonic overtone singing has long been associated with the mystical traditions of the world’s religions–from European medieval monk chants to Tuvan throat singing in Tibet.  Unlike these ancient practices, Knouse’s “toning”  did not require singing, harmonizing, or chanting skills.  He pointed out that the only requirement was “intensely focused attention while making any tone.”

In the three years leading up to our inteview, Knouse had developed a following of more than 1400 citizen scientists who joined the Facebook group, the HeartMath & Mindful Science Toning.  Of those members, 530 were using the Inner Balance, and more than 150 of them had contributed coherence data in their 28-day toning experimental groups. Knouse said he had been carefully collecting the coherence data using the HeartMath HeartCloud for both personal and publication purposes. Below is a graph of one of his toner’s typical results.

Toning seems to work for many of the participants

Jason Berger, a 2021 member who had been facing a serious illness, told me he had been toning daily for 1 year, for 5 minutes silent and 5 minutes with sound.  He said while he does not necessarily feel differently during the session, his blood tests were telling a different story.

“I did a blood test to measure my cortisol levels and was literally off the charts, high! I began the HeartMath along with toning and repeated the same blood test and my levels were back in the normal range. I’m going to continue with my daily practice, even though I physically do not feel anything, my blood tells a different story and that’s what really counts!”  Jason Berger

Other participants also shared their success stories:

“In the past, I have tried meditation. It was difficult. It was hard. Simply put… it wasn’t fun. Why do something that’s not fun? I would last one minute, maybe two, and lose interest. I could not see any gains. With HeartMath’s (Inner Balance), it’s fun. I can visually see the results. But more than that, I can feel the results. I feel calmer… dare I say, more spiritual. More compassion. I am staying in the present moment more often. And for a person who runs on anxiety and adrenaline, this is a major shift.”  Christine Griffiths

“Introducing and practicing the method of Toning, through Mindful Science (HeartMath biofeedback) and studying our ancient ancestors in addition to many of today’s mindful practices, I awake each day to the intuitive guidance within me, which has been the shift that changed my life around.” Lori Herdegen Pascoe

Sound Experimentation

Knouse, who was not a scientist, did in fact, have a few hypotheses that he was testing during his experiments. (He did tell me that he did not carefully control all of the variables, however, one of his results was quite profound.) The following hypothesis was born out by the results.

Hypothesis: If one breaths asymmetrically making a sound on the exhale, then Heart rate Coherence scores will increase more than if breathing symmetrically with no sound.

The results of the study did bear this out as exhibited by the graph below.  The purple line is one typical example of the aggregate toning coherence scores over time, while the green line represents data from silent symmetrical breathing coherence scores. One interesting note is that the pattern of the lines seems to become more synchronized as the subject’s practice. A possible explanation for this is that the improvement during toning had a carry-over effect to sessions without toning.