Do Schumann Resonance Machines Really Work?

By Ginny Silcox

After spending years as an advanced R&D technician in the field of medical electronics, I thought it would be easy to fabricate a small device that could mimic the earth’s natural electromagnetic environment in a localized area.  A friend asked me to do this because he lives in a city, and he thought filling at least one room in his house with beneficial waveforms might help him improve his health and feel better.  Though doctors are no longer trained in the Hippocratic Oath (“First, do no harm”), the time I’d spent testing the interaction of medical device design with the realities of the hospital setting convinced me that a thorough understanding of naturally occurring Earth signals would be needed before attempting a design.  The more I studied, the more frustrating it became to realize the level of misunderstanding that exists in the general public… and it isn’t being helped by companies that are claiming to sell you magical instruments that bring the sweet songs of Gaia into your home.

Let’s talk about those Gaia songs.  Lots of very smug people are spreading vast quantities of misinformation about the natural electromagnetic environment and its effect on the human body and mind.  Back in the ’60s, people were all excited about negative ion generators that could provide the wonderful feeling you get when you sit by a rushing waterfall.  There is actually some solid science behind those effects, but keep in mind that when you’re sitting by that waterfall, you are probably out in nature; far from power lines and airport radar installations.  But if you’re talking on your cell phone, its negative effects will overwhelm the health-giving effects of the waterfall.  Negative ions actually can change the electrical potentials used by cells to keep out invaders and allow the transport of nutrients through.  Of course, these effects primarily work on your lungs, but negative ion generators in the home use high voltages and the AC grid in the walls to produce those ions.  So the negative effects can counteract the positive ones.  Even those fascinating water mist machines use a focused high frequency sound to turn liquid water into water vapor, and the circuitry involved is exposing you to a sustained high frequency electrical signal.

Thomas Valone, in his book Bioelectromagnetic Healing: A Rationale for Its Use, provides a very complete summary of the reactions of human cells to the presence of wideband electromagnetic signals.  According to Valone, “Much research has been done to show the profound EEG entrainment that the earth’s ‘micropulsations’ (Schumann resonances) cause in the human body, as long as the person is isolated from stronger EMFs.”[1]  The book is fairly technical, but it contains a very comprehensive survey of the existing research and various devices that have been used for at least the last 100 years.  During his experiments on high voltage, high frequency electricity, Tesla found that short-term exposure to the fields produced could be energizing and healing.  When sensitive measuring equipment became available, scientists like Schumann became aware that the large sphere of atmosphere down to the surface of the earth resonates selectively to a composite mix of signals caused by lightning, seismic movements, ice cap changes, ocean currents, air movements, and other electrical phenomena like auroras and atomic bomb blasts.

If you’ve ever played around with sound in a bare room, you’ve probably found that there is one pitch where the whole room vibrates loudly…that’s the resonant frequency of the room.  The earth’s “room” is a sphere with inherent properties that alter the standard harmonic series, but it does resonate at a fundamental frequency of about 7.83 cycles a second (called the Schumann Resonance), with strong responses starting with a “sub-harmonic” at 2 Hz up to around 30 Hz (cycles per second).  The question is:  What sorts of signals are making the spherical cavity “resound?”  Remember, “resonance” is a characteristic of a chamber… it is NOT a particular type of wave, it ISN’T a particular frequency, and it’s NOT a magic remedy for illness.  The “micropulsations” are both electrical and magnetic, but they are NOT sound.  A machine that claims to be able to create “resonance” can do little or nothing to change the native resonance of a room; regardless of whether we’re talking about sound waves or electromagnetic waves like light waves at any frequency.  So what is it that could actually be produced by a “Schumann Resonance” machine?

The composite of electrical fluctuations caused by lightning strikes, tectonic plate movements, and other natural phenomena excite the atmospheric cavity to resonate with electromagnetic pulsations that are found to be nearly simultaneous, and at about the same strength and frequency range everywhere within the chamber.

[2]

The world that humans lived in before the 20^th century was mainly filled with electromagnetic energy from natural sources.  For most of our entire time on earth as a species, our cells have developed and thrived when exposed to this varying energy, so it might be important to understand how it differs from what we’re exposed to now.  One of the most important things about this exposure comes from the random nature of natural electrical signals.  The signals are “wide band,” meaning they contain a large variety of different frequencies, and they are short-term; meaning the exposure is not sustained at one frequency for any length of time.  They are intermittent… sometimes very strong, sometimes very weak, and they contain different pulse shapes depending on the source that created the original signal, and they always have an accompanying magnetic signal along with them.  These signals are called “micropulsations” because they’re very small compared to the AC power fluctuations in your walls, or the output of your cellphone.  If not overwhelmed by artificial sources, the natural signals are subtly exposing every living organism to the natural electrical and magnetic heartbeat of our planet.  It’s a matter of removing artificial interference, and that’s not an easy task.  Because no Schumann Resonance machine can hope to tailor the resonance of your room, it seems safe to say that the manufacturers are actually trying to replicate this beneficial signal.  The output of the machine has to be a faithful reproduction of a very complex, multi-frequency, WEAK signal.  To do anything else is to distort any one of a number of factors that may actually cause the output signal to become harmful.

If you are looking at an alarm light on your car dashboard and somebody pulls up in front of you with their high beams blasting through the windshield, you’ll have trouble seeing that indicator light.  The same is true for the real, though tiny, micropulsations of the natural earth signal.  You can’t possibly benefit from it if it’s being overwhelmed by powerful electrical fields in your house wiring, the fire station radio signal from the next block over, the airport radar a mile away, your cell phone sitting in your pocket, or the smart meter on the apartment next door.  This brings up the subject of those “active cancellation” machines that supposedly detect the harmful EMFs in your space and then generate an equal but opposite field to neutralize the offending energy.  To do this, a machine would have to have very sophisticated spectrum analysis programming and circuitry, and it would also require the ability to generate an equal and opposite extremely complex waveform with power exactly equal to the unwanted EMF noise and precisely 180 degrees out of phase with it.  The cheapest computer-based spectrum analyzers start around $2000, and even then, their accuracy can be compromised by the quality of the sensors they use to pick up the signal.  This technology is still adding electromagnetic energy to your space, and any lack of precision will have the possibility of causing an accidental “alias” signal that could be more harmful than the original EMFs were.

Back to the “Schumann Resonance” machines… the only possible way a little machine could generate a signal powerful enough to benefit you (IF, indeed, it’s capable of emulating the true earth signal), would be to first shield your “Gaia room” from all sources of electrical fields, including being able to turn off or shield the room’s AC circuits.  Those of us who have worked in the field of electromagnetic compliance know how difficult it is to completely eliminate all unwanted signals.  There are several companies selling shielding materials, shielding clothing, and the ridiculous “diodes” you hang around your neck that do nothing to shield or protect anything but the square inch of your neck directly under the pendant.  Some of the shielding materials are really good, but you must be very careful about the seams, and if you go to the expense and trouble of creating an EMF safe space, you really should get someone to come in and survey the room for leaks.  There are several questions remaining about the output of the Schumann Resonance machines.  They can’t produce or alter the electromagnetic resonance of the room, and their output is probably as variable as the wide array of products out there on the market.  How in the world could the average person verify the machine is truly generating the composite, varying natural earth signal?  Before doing anything that would add EMFs to my expensive shielded room, I would want real proof about the output signal.

Any resonant chamber is sensitive to the frequencies entering it.  When we speak of resonance, we generally are referring to the basic fundamental frequency that seems to self-amplify in response to the dimensions of the resonating cavity.  However, that fundamental frequency is really only the beginning of the analysis, because the cavity will also respond to the harmonics of the fundamental… meaning the basic Schumann resonant frequency of 7.83 Hz, also causes relatively strong responses at higher harmonics of the basic frequency.  Electromagnetic energy is light, NOT sound, and though our eyes and ears cannot perceive anything beyond a very narrow frequency range, our entire bodies from the skeleton out, can pick up lower and higher vibrations.  You may not think you’re responding to that ambulance station radio signal down the block, but you might actually have symptoms like an upset stomach, or irritability, or depression, bad dreams, or even ringing in the ears.  We are not trained to go looking for real reasons for influences on our health.  We simply take a pill to make the symptoms go away.  However, whatever is truly causing a set of symptoms may have long-term effects that result in really serious diseases like cancer.  Some people are electromagnetically sensitive.  Their bodies almost seem to develop allergies to the presence of EMFs around them, and people who intentionally develop acute perception of sound or light, like musicians and artists, seem especially vulnerable to certain EMF frequencies.  I have a suspicion that psych wards might have many patients who are actually victims of EMF sensitivity.

In conclusion, unless you are willing to invest in creating an EMF “safe space”, and are willing to truly investigate the output of a supposedly beneficial electromagnetic generator (Schumann Resonance machine), there might be a better solution to getting in touch with that tiny Gaia signal that restores us to balance and health.  Sometimes, when I’m hiking, I develop a powerful need to stop and just lie down.  Most of my hiking places are around rocks with a high iron-content, and I’m wondering if this is my body commanding me to get in touch with the real earth.  No sleeping pad, just a simple prior inspection for anthills or cactus, and down I go for about 15 minutes of being glad nobody is around to see me.  When I get up, I’m refreshed and good to go for another couple of miles.  You can’t do this in very many places in the world anymore, but there are ways of “grounding” if you can get away from the electrical grid and shield your head and body.  How about finding a waterfall in a forest, in a grotto protected by natural rock walls, disembowel the cell phone and night vision headset, light a campfire, look up at the stars, and become very, very quiet?  You owe it to yourself to figure this out.

Notes:

[1] Valone PhD, Thomas (2015-06-29). Bioelectromagnetic Healing: A Rationale for Its Use (Kindle Locations 1652-1654). InstantPublisher.com. Kindle Edition.

[2] Valone PhD, Thomas (2015-06-29). Bioelectromagnetic Healing: A Rationale for Its Use (Kindle Locations 1652-1654). InstantPublisher.com. Kindle Edition.