RESONANCE:
Who is unfamiliar with the beautiful sound of a violin?
Or the wonderful sound of a handpan?
Or the clear and penetrating sound of a xylophone?
Or the richness of an organ?
With all these and countless other instruments, it is the resonance, the echoing in the sound spaces, that amplifies the sound. And not only that: the sound is also enriched by the added overtones and undertones.
RESONANCE, like RESILIENCE, is one of those fascinating properties of nature that are worth reflecting on. They have more to tell us humans than we suspect.
Resonance occurs everywhere: not only in ‘dead’ nature: wood, metal, air, as in the handpan, for example, but also in living nature, in plants, in animals, and thus also in us humans. Just think of our speech and singing.
All these forms of resonance involve spaces, large or small, that have a so-called natural frequency: a specific frequency at which vibration (of the air or something else) is powerfully amplified and enriched.
Resonance is always a kind of interplay; there are always two ‘parties’. We see this with the handpan: the player causes the metal to vibrate and, due to the special shape of the instrument, the air vibrates extra strongly: both are necessary: the tap of the hand and the air in the space that resonates. It is not violence or force but the right attunement that produces the good and broader result. This is essential for resonance.
RESONANCE IN OUR LIVES
The main theme in this blog is NATURAL WISDOM - CREATIVE GAIA: It is about the intelligence, sensitivity, resilience, perseverance, creativity, resonance of everything that nature offers us in such abundance. For much of this, the highlight, though not always the maximum, is how that wealth of wisdom takes shape in us humans. And this time we concentrate on RESONANCE.
What holds for nature around us also applies to us humans: if we tune in carefully, extraordinary things can happen. Then something ‘multiplies’. When we really, carefully respond to each other, the result is more than the sum of the parts. This is also called synergy.
This is a profound concept that we see throughout nature. As an encore, I will show you further on a number of interesting examples of this. But first, let's look at the great significance of resonance for us humans.
THREE MAJOR AREAS OF ATTUNEMENT
* First of all: ATTUNING TO YOURSELF, to your body, your actual health and your physical and psychological needs, to your possibilities and your limitations, to your talents and your weaknesses. That means listening to yourself in all your aspects. Don't force anything, but carefully deal with and go along with your growth, accepting what is possible and what is not. These are all ways of dealing wisely with yourself and your possibilities and limitations. It is precisely this way of doing that is not limiting but often new space is created: time and again, it turns out that more is possible than you initially expected.
This is anything but passive: truly listening requires not only patience, understanding, and trust, but also initiative, creativity, excitement, and challenge, even in times of illness, weakness, and moments of powerlessness. Continuing to search for good attunement/resonance has clear added value: you SEE more: other possibilities, other sides; you HEAR more: a different voice, an unexpected signal, a new appeal; you FEEL more: a different experience or a deeper emotion. Then the secret of the more, the secret of the ‘multiplying’ resonance, is revealed.
* Next, TUNE IN TO YOUR ENVIRONMENT, to your smaller and larger context: family, professional, cultural, economic, social, spiritual, religious. These are the many connections in which you live (together) and in which you not only give but often receive even more—not only when you are old or sick, but also when you are able to participate fully. Even then, you are given a lot.
The decisive factor is the way in which you say yes: attuned, grateful and open, allowing yourself to be addressed - or the opposite: when fear or laziness or indifference cause you to close yourself off. Then the resonance falls silent and flexibility and creativity turn into hardness and rigidity.
* The third area or the third dimension is attuning to/resonating with ‘THE HIGHER’: a reality with which we are essentially connected on the one hand, but which on the other hand completely transcends us and over which we have no control. This can manifest itself in a variety of experiences, such as encounters with nature, moments of existential insight, intense religious feelings or spiritual experiences. Deep physical, psychological, or mental pain can also confront us with this deeper reality, as can the experience of evil in its extreme form. So too can do experiences of the numinous, of near-death experiences, or the experience of selfless love.
These experiences sometimes overlap, they can enrich each other, but they are certainly not always ‘pleasant’. They happen to us, or perhaps we dare even say: they are given to us. You should not seek them out, say mystics, but when they become part of you, you should (try to) be grateful for them.
THROUGH THE WHOLE OF REALITY
That third dimension is about resonance, which in fact carries everything we discussed earlier. The whole of nature and even the whole of reality is fundamentally based on resonance. This insight is supported by quantum physics, which shows that all relationships, down to the smallest particles, have a resonant character. And from that elementary level, what we call ‘higher’ life develops in billions of stages: ever new, richer and complex attunements, which ultimately take the form of love. In this, in my opinion, we can say that nature reaches its highest fertility and destiny.
WORDS OF JESUS
For me, I also hear that resonant power in the words of Jesus: Where two or more are united in my name, I am in their midst. Or in the variant: Where two or more ask for something in my name, they shall receive it. That alignment of will and desire creates precisely the space in which the creative, life-giving Spirit is effective. Where the life force par excellence resonates.
May I call that Spirit the great Resonator?
May I see the whole of creation as the image of loving Resonance?
Yes, in this season of Christmas, of celebrating the incarnation, the becoming human of God in Jesus of Nazareth, may I call this perhaps the ultimate form of resonance between God and us humans?
LOVE as the highest form of resonance - how wonderful!
THE WISDOM OF ALL NATURE
Here are, as promised, a few more examples of the 'multiplying' effect of resonance: in material nature, in the plant world and the life of animals.
The XYLOPHONE: the specific vibrations in the pieces of wood of different lengths are amplified by the adjusted size of the open gourds. Lower tones resonate in larger sound spaces, higher tones in smaller ones. Each space has its own frequency, which is discovered through trial and error.
Another example is the PAN FLUTE. Here, the tones depend on the length of the pipes: each amplifies a certain frequency. This makes the sound stronger and more beautiful than just the player's ‘blowing’.
Similarly, some HOLLOW TREES have their own ‘drone’ when the wind blows in a certain direction or at a certain speed: trees sing, vibrate, or hum : the wind resonates and whistles in the hollows created by rot or insect damage. Hollow trees are sometimes referred to as natural organ pipes.
And what do you think of polyphonic WATERFALLS: cavities in the rocks vary in size and often sound very different.
On a smaller scale, you encounter this in the murmur of a stream: a pleasant collection of tones that have a calming effect. How beautiful!
Another example is KARST CAVES, which have their own organ tones. When you sing in such a cave, you suddenly hear that certain tones are amplified. You get a kind of ‘accompaniment’! And low tones carry further than high tones, so that the ‘rumbling’ can still be heard clearly hundreds of meters away.
* POLLEN EXPLOSION in flowers: Some flowers use sudden mechanical resonance to disperse pollen. When an insect or the wind touches a leaf or anther in just the right way, a specific vibration is created that ‘releases’ pollen. This occurs in special flowering plants, including birches, alders, and hazels (fig.).
*The SAP FLOW in the bark of trees. Sometimes, with good ears or sensitive equipment, you can hear the sap flow in the bark: a low hum caused by the resonance in the vessels and cavities, while the energy of the sap flow itself is (naturally) very low. However, the small spaces amplify the soft sound.
It is interesting that biologists can learn a lot about the health or disease of a tree or part of it from that sound (where it occurs, how it progresses, how strong it is, the time when it mainly occurs, etc.). The ‘beautiful’ appearance of a tree can sometimes be very deceptive.
* The VENUS FLYTRAP is also a good example of resonance. This plant is an example of carnivorous plants that respond selectively to vibrations. Only when a certain vibration occurs does the plant ‘know’ that it must close. Rain does not cause it to close. But when the hairs are touched (e.g. by an insect), resonance occurs in the natural frequency, which says, as it were, ‘close quickly!’.
And indeed, the trapping mechanism is super fast: it is one of the fastest known movements in the plant kingdom, lasting only 100 milliseconds. Incredible!
* WHISTLING BIRDS, such as this mockingbird, are perhaps the most striking forms of resonance in nature: How can such a small creature make such a sound? Not by ‘blowing’ very hard, but by making effective use of various specific resonance chambers, particularly in the bones. This greatly amplifies their typical song and gives it its own unique tone, which birdwatchers recognize immediately. It is the principle of a well-tuned flute and, in fact, of all wind instruments.
* FROGS are also quite skilled at this! They use their throat sac as a resonator, allowing these modest creatures to be heard from a great distance.
This is perhaps even more true for BEETLES and CICADAS, which have special plates that vibrate at a certain frequency, greatly amplifying their sound (sometimes to more than 100 dB). Everyone is familiar with the loud and intriguing sound of crickets in the evening. And the even smaller cicadas are no less impressive than the crickets.
* Then there are birds that seek out NATURAL SOUND SPACES and use them cleverly: they sing in cavities so that the space resonates with their characteristic song, making it sound louder. Examples of these clever birds are the wren and the blackbird.
BATS are famous for their use of resonance. Almost all of them use it. In some species, such as the leaf-nosed bat, the structure of the nose ensures that emitted echolocation sounds in special frequencies (which are inaudible to humans) are amplified by the natural resonance in those bone structures. They use the Doppler effect to measure distances—and they were doing this millions of years before humans discovered this effect and use it for example in radar.
What strikes me is that good singers do not sing ‘loudly’ at all when they produce a high volume: they use the natural cavities in their head for ‘head voice’ and also chest and abdominal space for the ‘warmer’ tones. The relatively low sound of the vocal cords (fig.) is amplified many times over and takes on the specific timbre of that person, which often makes a singer immediately recognizable.
FROM XYLOPHONE TO HUMAN VOICE AND BEYOND...
Ultimately, we return to our starting point: resonance and careful attunement as the secret to good, life-giving relationships—first and foremost with ourselves, then with our fellow human beings, and finally with that which transcends us and, miraculously, sustains everything. The whole of nature, from the very small to the very large, points us in that direction: seek resonance! What wisdom and what an appeal, given to us in creative love !
Johan Muijtjens
Christmas 2025
