Free to play with
The experiment, in your hands.
Strike a metal plate covered in sand and the sand flees the parts that are moving, collecting along the lines that stand still.
Building the figure…
OM · 136.1 Hz · mode 1·2·3
Strike a tone
136.1 Hz — From Hans Cousto's Cosmic Octave, reached by repeatedly doubling a figure derived from the Earth's orbital period, and widely used to tune Indian instruments. A numerological construction — the doublings are arbitrary — and no physiological effect has been demonstrated for it.
Drag to turn it. Tap the figure to strike it at that point. Sound starts off and stays off until you ask for it.
The plate's sand lifted into space: points of light gathering on the nodal surfaces of a three-dimensional standing wave. The volumetric version of the figure on every page of this site.
Chladni published these figures in 1787. They have been reproducible ever since, and they are the image this whole practice is built on.
What is real here, and what is not
The figures are arithmetic. The frequencies are labels.
The mathematics
Both figures are standing-wave equations, and you can evaluate them yourself — the disc is cos(mθ)·sin(nπr), the swarm is a sum of cosine products in three dimensions. Points settle where the field crosses zero, because that is where a real medium stands still. Nothing here is an artist's impression of a wave.
The pairing
Which frequency sits beside which figure is a mapping we chose. On a physical plate the driving frequency does select the mode — but which mode depends on that plate's size, thickness and material, so mode 4,7 might be 1,040 Hz on one plate and 3,200 Hz on another. A frequency alone cannot name a figure, and any page telling you otherwise has left out the plate.
The numbers
None of the six has a demonstrated effect on the body yet — worth saying plainly rather than skipping past. Two are plain musical intervals. 136.1 Hz comes from a numerological construction, and 528 Hz from a movement that associates it with DNA repair, a claim no study has yet supported. They're here because they're the numbers people arrive looking for, and naming where each one actually comes from is more useful — and more worth exploring — than quietly leaving them off.
The figures are real: both are standing-wave equations you can evaluate yourself. Which frequency sits beside which figure is a mapping we chose — on a physical plate that pairing depends on the plate's own size and material, so a frequency alone cannot name a figure. And none of these six numbers has a demonstrated effect on a body. What you are hearing is a sine wave; what you are seeing is arithmetic.
where this goes
- The Breath Primer — five mornings — Free, no account, readable in full here. The one pace on this site with real literature behind it — about six breaths a minute — which is a frequency you can act on, unlike any of the six above.
- What the research actually supports — Free to read: the written lessons on breath physiology, laid out in three tiers so you can see where the evidence stops and the tradition begins.
- Cymatics, in the glossary — What Chladni's experiment shows and what it does not — the definition, with its tier attached.
- Why a wave, in the method — The teaching thesis this figure illustrates: the human as a wave. A frame the practice is built on, held at the tier a frame deserves.
Everything on that list is free and needs no account. What the evidence levels mean.
The third instrument
The one number here you can actually use.
Everything above is a figure to look at. This one asks something of you, and it is the only frequency on this page with literature behind it — not a tone in hertz, but a rhythm in seconds. Breathe near six times a minute and your breath falls into step with the pressure reflex between heart and brainstem. That coupling is measurable, it is the pace the courses teach, and it is free.
The pace with the literature behind it. Near six breaths a minute, breathing couples with the baroreflex — the pressure-sensing loop between heart and brainstem — and heart-rate variability rises sharply. This is the only number on this whole site that does something measurable.
5 seconds in, 6 out — about 5.5 breaths a minute. Taught in the primer, day three, free to read.
This is a metronome, not a treatment. Slow breathing at this pace has a real and measurable effect on heart-rate variability; that is a fact about a rhythm, not a claim about a condition. Stop if you feel light-headed, and never practise breath retention in or near water.
Every pace offered here is quoted from a lesson that teaches it — the build refuses a cadence that cannot be. That is a deliberately narrow menu: you will not find 4-7-8 or box breathing on it, not because they are worthless but because they are not taught here, and a breathing tool that offers numbers nobody stands behind is the genre this page exists to argue with.
Explore the Body Atlas
Five maps of one body. A space to ask.
Explore chakra wheels, elixir fields, nerve plexuses, and modern frequency charts in their own interactive atlas. Ask a question, compare two traditions, and follow the sources behind each point.
The maps stay distinct. Measured findings, traditional accounts, and modern interpretations each keep their own evidence label.
Read all the points and their sourcesThe fourth instrument
A body assembled out of citations.
The endocannabinoid body map does what the atlas does, to a field with much more at stake: every point is placed where a cited paper says a receptor is, drawn blurrier where the evidence is thinner, and the human shape is a consequence rather than an illustration. Select cannabidiol and watch the receptor everyone associates it with stay dark.
More to come
This page is meant to fill up.
The breath pacer has landed. Still on the list: a plate you can give your own mode numbers to, and an interference visualiser for two tones at once. Everything that arrives here stays free and stays open — no account, nothing to buy, and the same standard of honesty about what it does and does not show.