Inside Alchemic Sonic Environment: Music As Medicine

Forbes

3 days ago

If you've ever been transported through space and time by a song, either back to a memory or another world, you understand music has a power to transform unlike any other art. You know the feeling, you hear a familiar song, you close your eyes and you're years younger, back with a loved one from your past so vivid you feel you can touch them.
As an artist and composer Satya Hinduja has felt that power numerous times. And she has felt the transcendent effects of music so strongly she began to study why and how that happened by examining the science of music through frequencies.
The result of those years of research is ASE (Alchemic Sonic Environment) a revolutionary program that ties music in with science to harness the healing power of music. The first time I experienced it with a friend in New York City, we put on eye masks in Satya's Dumbo studio, surrounded by a 6.2 speaker array and were lost in the music for 20 minutes. So, we each had our own experiences, but when the experience ended and masks were removed, we were both moved to tears and shared how we each had been moved to other worlds.
As Hinduja explains, this is well beyond sound baths or meditation, because it is using science to treat music as medicine. I spoke with her about it.
Steve Baltin: How did you discover the power of music in terms of healing?
Satya Hinduja: It's funny because everybody loves music, but there aren't that many people who understand the medicinal value and the effect it has. One has to really understand it to experience its effect. I think for me, it was very unique because I was born in a traditional Indian spiritual environment, which was already a starting point for me, subconsciously understanding that sound is part of the universe before I could even have an intellectual understanding of it. In Hindu culture, we're constantly engaged with prayers and rituals and mantras, and it's just present all around you. Whether it's a celebration of a birth or letting go of someone who's passed on, it's part of our life experience. In a way, it's part of our DNA. I was naturally musical since I was a kid, I was already singing on radio as a five-year-old. And then life kept unfolding… I was performing on stage, acting in a Mahatma Gandhi play and I was naturally called by subjects that are philosophical and transformational. In the process of following music from vocals I got into playing classical guitar, and from classical guitar I got into this desire to make music, not just play an instrument. Like, a little bit more of a story. So, I started to study film scoring. And in the journey of working in film scoring, I started to understand the psychology of music, because really, when you're composing for a picture, you're writing for stories and emotions.
Baltin: What is Alchemic Sonic Environment?
Hinduja: Alchemic Sonic Environment is basically an ecosystem that lives at the intersection of sound, music, health and technology. We create immersive experiences where people can directly engage with the transformational potential of sound. And now, we're also building a framework so they can take that experience home with the help of technology. And in the process of developing this one composition—which I call Essence, because it really is the essence of Alchemic Sonic Environment, based on the frequency of 136.1 hertz, I started to realize that there's a whole methodology behind it. We call it the ASE Method. We've actually been able to reverse-engineer this method to create more compositions, and even invite other artists to contribute and create their own, in this same framework. And of course, now we're also using AI—and even agentic AI—not to make the music, because I'm not interested in AI-generated music per se, but to help us build the mathematical frameworks of what I call Alchemic Electronica. That's the genre of music that powers ASE experiences. We're also using it to deliver those experiences in a way that's really personalized and relevant to the user, because our goal is to support a lifestyle that's centered around health and longevity. So really, ASE is more than just a music platform. It's an ecosystem that connects three different worlds. One is the experience itself—sound and music that you actually feel and go through. Then, there are the products—tools that help people create their own Alchemic Sonic Environments, from something as simple as the right eye mask for meditation to more advanced tech that uses light frequencies. And then there are the services—the way this connects out into the world. I've been traveling with this work to different conferences across the brain health, mental health and music space, and the idea is to connect all these ecosystems. So that when someone goes through their ASE journey, they're not left feeling isolated or alone. It's meant to be a safe, sustainable, and personalized space for healing. And the bigger vision is that it doesn't just stay as a personal wellness tool. It also moves out into the world of brain capital and the brain economy which is something even the World Economic Forum is highlighting now: how important brain health systems are for the future of work and human development.
Baltin: What is brain economy?
Hinduja: There are these emerging systems in brain capital and the brain economy that are focusing on the importance of merging economics with neuroscience—really looking at the role of mental and brain health in society, in the workplace, and in how we solve problems and stay creative. It's fascinating to hear institutions like the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the brain capital community talk about this. It just shows there's a real need for this conversation—because no matter where you look, mental health systems are broken. Even in the most developed countries, they function at a third-world level.
So, brain capital feels like the next frontier, this emerging space that's really about rethinking the foundations of human potential. And I feel like ASE fits beautifully into that ecosphere. Because we're not just making sound and music to shift brain states, we're also trying to build a larger ecosystem that connects the dots between digital mental health, brain health, and all genres of music. So whether we decide to go B2B or B2C first, at its core, it's always going to be a B2C experience. Because it's personal. It's a deep listening journey. It's transformational—whether we're bringing it to a workplace or to someone in their home. That's also why we're building a nonprofit, the Universal Sound Foundation, to help advance research in frequency-based healing and music-making from that perspective. And then, on the business side we're working to create a platform that isn't just building a music app, but actually an entire ecosystem that bridges all of these pieces of the puzzle together, because right now, everything is fragmented. Music sits over here. Mental health is over there. Brain health is its own silo. It's all kind of separated, but the topic is the same. And the impact of music on the brain is well studied, there are enough books, research papers and a lot of science but nobody's really looking at it from a sound first, frequency first perspective. That's what we want to build: a platform that starts with sound, starts with frequency, and then connects the systems that already exist—from the inside out, and the outside in.
Baltin: You say no one's doing it to this point. But I've seen some things that show this correlation between music and mental health is something that people are becoming more aware of.
Hinduja: One hundred percent. It's growing, it's evolving, it's emerging and yet, I'd still say it's not fully integrated. Our goal is to create a platform that feels like an extremely safe space for users for individuals to not just step into this world of knowledge, education, and experience, but also to connect it to systems that already exist out there in the world. Systems that are evidence-based, research-backed, and grounded in real mental health work, people who are actually on the ground, doing the work. One of the biggest conversations that came up at the brain capital conference was around language. There's still such a disconnect. Most people, when they hear "mental health," immediately think of stigma. And when you say "brain health," they think of brain conditions. But now there's this new language emerging. People are talking about human flourishing, about brain flourishing. And the idea is, no matter where you're starting from, it's still a growth journey. A transformational path of healing, revealing, and resetting your neuronal pathways, your cognitive processes, your ability to regenerate the hippocampus. We actually have two hippocampi in the brain and they're linked to music, memory, spatial awareness and learning... All of it is deeply connected to sound and music. But right now, it's all fragmented. There are bits and pieces happening in different places, but there's no single hub where it all comes together. And that's really my life's ambitious vision. And I think it's such an exciting space to be building into.
Baltin: You mentioned practices such as yoga, meditation and sound baths. But what you're doing is obviously much more rooted in science.
Hinduja: Exactly, because it's more connected than people realize. Even with sound baths and meditation, they're using instruments that actually impact the neuronal pathways of the listener. So, yeah, it is scientific, but it's just not structured yet in a way that's consistently entering scientific environments or clinical studies. Right now, it starts and stops in the yoga studio. Some people have managed to bridge it into healthcare settings, and in those environments that are open, they are using it. But it's still not fully in flow. There are bits happening in different places. And that's why I feel music is so important. Because music is a universal language. Some people say, 'Oh, I'm not into yoga,' or 'I don't go to sound baths,' or 'That stuff's too woo woo for me.' Others are like, 'Oh my God, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me.' But music cuts through all of that. It removes those layers. Because everybody can just sit, open up, and listen to music. And from there, they can start to take that journey into sound. Through the transformational power of deep listening.
Baltin: How do you see music impacting the brain?
Hinduja: I genuinely feel that the more genres of music a person listens to in their lifetime, the more their brain changes. And that's why it's actually amazing to be your own DJ. You should be your own DJ and explore, discover and listen to musical genres from all cultures. Because there's so much meaning beyond words in those harmonic series that you get to listen to in different genres of music.
This is a very important point that I'd like to talk about because I think one of the challenges we face in society is that some people don't know how to listen. And when they might say, 'I don't like music or I don't really listen to music,' I often feel like they've just never been taught how to listen. They've never really had an opportunity to open up. Most people go to concerts and they're dancing their whole body off, and others stand there, arms crossed, a bit closed and they're like, 'Ah, this is weird.' There's a judgment. There's resistance. We do find environments that teach listening, like music schools, leadership trainings, certain mindful spaces, but we're not taught in school how to listen. Just the basics. And I think that's a big missing piece. Because listening is always happening. We're doing it when we're awake, when we're asleep... but active, intentional listening? That's something else. I learned how to listen in a few places, at Berklee College of Music, in my Indian classical vocal lessons as a kid, and also just through healing explorations. But what's beautiful is that, in ancient Indian scriptures, there's actually a whole school of thought called Nada Yoga, the yoga of deep listening. They've built structures for how to listen. Like, really listen. Things like listening to your body, tuning into the space around you, isolating instruments between the song, or focusing only on the vocals. So, the access point of shifting your attention and actually focusing and changing your focus on how to listen becomes a kind of training. And I believe this kind of listening cultivates empathy and compassion. I honestly think that over time, a lot of human suffering can dissolve, if we just learn how to listen without judgment, without having instantaneous reactions. Because when you're taught how to listen, your reactions slow down. You become more present. And that presence is so deeply connected to well-being, to health. The truth is, this isn't new. It already exists. These ancient Indian systems, like Nada Yoga they've been around for 5,000 years and they can be easily applied. And that's exactly what we're doing through Alchemic Sonic Environments, taking those ancient listening systems and reimagining them in a modern, accessible way.