Music as a Path to Wisdom: Yuval Ron on Sound, Spirit & Healing

What if music could be more than entertainment — what if it were a doorway into wisdom, healing, and the unseen world of Spirit? In this episode of Beyond Names, Dr. Habīb sits down with award-winning composer and world music artist Yuval Ron to explore the intersection of sound and spirituality.

Yuval shares his multi-path journey through Kabbalah, Sufism, Buddhism, yoga, and psychoacoustics, and how each deepened his understanding of music as a universal language of the heart. From mystical encounters in Boston to producing Sufi Qawwali albums, from Hebrew prayers set at 40hz for brain health to Buddhist-inspired compositions, Yuval shows us how vibration and sound can transform both body and soul.

If you’ve ever felt the mystery in music — the way it unites, heals, and carries us beyond words — this conversation is for you.

Transcript

Beyond Names: Spirituality for Anyone and Everyone

YouTube Channel: Beyond Names with Dr. Habib Boerger

YouTube handle: @BeyondNamesPodcast

Episode: 13

Host: Dr. Habib Boerger

Conversation Partner: Yuval Ron

Title: Music as a Path to Wisdom: Yuval Ron on Sound, Spirit & Healing

Description: 

What if music could be more than entertainment — what if it were a doorway into wisdom, healing, and the unseen world of Spirit? In this episode of Beyond Names, Dr. Habīb sits down with award-winning composer and world music artist Yuval Ron to explore the intersection of sound and spirituality.

Yuval shares his multi-path journey through Kabbalah, Sufism, Buddhism, yoga, and psychoacoustics, and how each deepened his understanding of music as a universal language of the heart. From mystical encounters in Boston to producing Sufi Qawwali albums, from Hebrew prayers set at 40hz for brain health to Buddhist-inspired compositions, Yuval shows us how vibration and sound can transform both body and soul.

If you’ve ever felt the mystery in music — the way it unites, heals, and carries us beyond words — this conversation is for you.

Transcript:

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Welcome to Beyond Names. I'm Dr. Habib.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: This is a space for spiritual seekers and soulful misfits, for the curious and the committed, for those grounded in a tradition, and for those who are not sure what they believe.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Whether you call the Divine Yahweh, Allah, Elohim, Brahman, Great Spirit, Higher Power, or you're still searching for language that fits, you are welcome here.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Together, we'll explore the intersection of spirituality and daily life, the wisdom of many traditions, and the ways we return to our true selves, to our source, to the light that each of us carry within.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I'm so glad you're here. Let's begin with introduction of our conversation partner for this episode. Yuval Ron is an award-winning composer and world music artist.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yuval and the Yuval Ron Ensemble, are an internationally renowned ethnic music and dance group that create unique original film scores, music for contemporary dance, for theater, museums, new media, as well as for medical and healing modalities.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yuval and the ensemble also do concerts, tours, and recordings.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yuval is the author of Divine Attunement: Music as a Path to Wisdom.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yuval has a recent album, Heal Me at 40hz, which is choral music with biblical Hebrew prayers for brain health.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yuval also is offering two in-person retreats coming up in 2026. To learn more about Yuval and his work, please visit https://yuvalronmusic.com/.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, just to give you… A preview of that, Y-U-V-A-L-R-O-N, music, M-U-S-I-C dot com.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you, Yuval, for being here.

Yuval Ron: Thank you, Dr. Habib. Thank you for having me. This is a very special, program. I love your focus and your special kind of approach to spirituality, the inclusivity, and I feel very much at home.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you, I'm glad… I'm glad to hear that, and it's echoed, just looking at your website and seeing that you have… I'll bring this point up later, but you'll see Abrahamic faith, you see Qigong, you see yoga, I love that, too.… 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: But before we get into all that, why don't you, as a way of introducing yourself and letting us learn about who you are -- would you just share a bit of your spiritual story with us?

Yuval Ron: Yes.

Yuval Ron: I grew up to a secular family, and I didn't have anything spiritual that I remember from my childhood.

Yuval Ron: But the first thing, the first encounter with spirituality that was memorable and connected to where I am now was when I was 19.

Yuval Ron: Yeah, I studied composition privately with a teacher who was one of the great professors in the Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Yuval Ron: And I was a private student, I studied music, composition with him, how to compose music.

Yuval Ron: And he had several private students. He was a famous teacher.

Yuval Ron: And he became, at a certain point, he started to become more and more religious, and he became an Orthodox Jew, and he joined, a sect of Judaism that has a lot of Kabbalistic and mystical teaching.

Yuval Ron: And one day, he told me at the end of the music lesson, he said that he puts together, is going to put together a group of students that will come once a week to his house and study spirituality, mysticism, Kabbalah.

Yuval Ron: And he said, but there's no pay. You pay me for the music classes, but no pay for the Kabbalah class.

Yuval Ron: And you can just come whenever you want, and it's just open to you. And then I came, I was curious, I didn't know anything about it. I was curious. I was 19, I knew nothing about spirituality.

Yuval Ron: And I started studying with him, and it grabbed me, you know? It was really, really, fascinating, and that was the first time that I was exposed or opened the door to one kind of a mystical tradition.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And then I went to Boston to study music in Berklee College of Music.

Yuval Ron: So I came and I was studying, film scoring, how to compose music for films, and I was studying jazz.

Yuval Ron: And I, one day in the street, I bumped into a rabbi who is from the same lineage as my music teacher in Israel, who opened the door to me, and I…. It was half a year after I arrived. It was a magical, mystical meeting, because I was walking in the street in Boston, in a big avenue.

Yuval Ron: And I didn't know anybody. I was just alone in a foreign city, in a foreign country, being a foreign student. I just came a few months before; I didn't have friends yet.

Yuval Ron: And I looked up, and I saw Hebrew letters on a building, and the Hebrew letters attracted my eye, and I walked towards that building, and I felt like power pulled me there, and when I reached to the stairs, there were stairs leading to the door.

Yuval Ron: And when I walked up the stairs, suddenly the door opened as if, you know, somebody was just timing it.

Yuval Ron: And this young rabbi was standing there, and asked me if I would like to come in. It was, like, as if it was orchestrated, you know? 

Yuval Ron: And it turned out that he was from the same lineage, same as my one teacher from Israel, so I started studying with him Kabbalah. He was my second Kabbalah teacher.

Yuval Ron: And at the same… and then, in college, while majoring in music, we had to take, also, academic studies ... as electives, and I chose psychology.

Yuval Ron: And I started studying psychology with a teacher who was a very, it turned out that he was a mystic student and a meditation… he was a meditator, he was a Zen Buddhist, but not…. Nobody knew, you know, he didn't present it, but he was teaching psychology, and he was teaching Zen Buddhism, and he was teaching Jungian psychology. 

Yuval Ron: Actually, I started with Jungian psychology, so I took a class in Jungian psychology, and I never heard about Jung before, Gustav Jung, and I studied that, and that led me to study a course in Buddhism, in Zen Buddhism, with the same teacher.

Yuval Ron: And then, I just fell in love with those teachings, so any course that he taught about any Asian psychology -- his major was Asian religion and philosophy. So I studied in college Taoism, Zen Buddhism, meditation.

Yuval Ron: And, I continued to study Kabbalah, and then just one day in Boston, I was told that there's a Pakistani singer who Peter Gabriel brought to seeing in the climax scene in The Passion of the Christ, The Last Temptation of Christ. There was a movie in the 1980s called The Last Temptation of Christ, and Peter Gabriel, who I admired back in the 80s, is a great rock singer and composer, he did the music, and he was into world music, and in the crucifixion scene, or the, you know, the walk with the cross to the crucifixion. 

Yuval Ron: That scene, it's a very difficult scene of suffering and pain, there was an incredible chant of a voice, and that was the voice of a great Sufi master from, the greatest Sufi singer of Pakistan named Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Yuval Ron: And Peter Gabriel hired Nusat to sing that incredible voice performance for that scene.

Yuval Ron: And I'll never forget that, and I, when I heard that this singer who sang that on that soundtrack, because I was studying film music, so I knew everything about film music, because that was my profession. I was starting to be a film composer, and that's what I ended up being, you know, that's why I'm in Los Angeles.

Yuval Ron: I've done a lot of work for film and TV, so I knew who sang what, in which movie, in each soundtrack, so I got a ticket for that concert.

Yuval Ron: And I never heard about Sufism before; I never heard anything about Sufism.

Yuval Ron: And I went to the concert, it was in Symphony Hall, Nusrat was a huge man. He came with a group of musicians, they sat on the floor, and it was the first time ever that I heard… I heard Qawwali music, Sufi Qawwali music, which is a very extraordinary vocal chanting Sufi style, and I was a student of jazz, I was a jazz musician, I was a film composer, and when I heard Nusrat chant that Sufi Qawwali style, I thought that it was the most amazing, ecstatic vocal jazz I ever heard.

Yuval Ron: It was beyond any jazz vocals that I ever heard.

Yuval Ron: And I read in the program that this is a Sufi tradition, and I said, Sufi? What is Sufi? I want to know anything about… any… anything about this tradition that led to this incredible vocal chanting. 

Yuval Ron: So I start studying Sufism, and any… anything Sufi, anything that I could find about Sufism anywhere, and… I ended up working with a great Sufi Turkish master named Omer Faruk Tekbilek from Turkey, and I've ended up producing his album called One Truth, and I produced another album that I composed called One. And I spent the last, you know, 30, 35 years with him, and from him, I went on to study with a Pakistani master named Sukhawat Ali Khan, who relates… there's a connection with Nazakat Ali Khan. And so, in my ensemble, there's a Qawwali singer named Sukhawat Ali Khan. 

Yuval Ron: It's one of my artists that is in my ensemble, so I… and I continued to collaborate with Sufi masters from around the world over the years, and I became one of the major presenters of Sufi music in North America and in the world through my concert programs and recordings.

Yuval Ron: At the same time, I continued my studies in Kabbalah and Hebrew mysticism, and in the last 15 years, I mean, I've been doing yoga for 25 years now. I've been a yogi for 25 years, and in the last 15 years, I really got deep into the medical and philosophical side of yoga, which has to do with Ayurvedic medicine, and I got into Chinese medicine and Qigong, and I've been studying and working with the doctors from those traditions, and so this is… for me, this is all spirituality, it's all different wisdom traditions, spiritual, medical, energetic medical system traditions that I, I found fascinating. 

Yuval Ron: So, I've been a student and a teacher in about five different spiritual traditions that, for me, all complement each other.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: So that, that has been my complex and complicated path. It's multi-path, path.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It is what?

Yuval Ron: It's a multi-path path. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, yeah, multi-path path, yes, and I love it. I love that, I love that you have fully embraced the multipath aspect of your path, and I think that it's so important in our time that we're living in -- to be open to where we are led, you know, like the… the experience when you felt as if you were drawn to the Hebrew letters on the building, and you were drawn up the… it's so important to trust our own hearts.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And to trust what is put in our hearts, and so, yeah, thank you for thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that very much, and it's one of the things that I really noticed -- I mentioned this earlier when I saw your website, I was like, oh my goodness, you know, here's Abrahamic faiths mentioned, and here's Qigong mentioned, and here's Ayurveda mentioned, and here he's talking about the brain health, so it's like, it's the intersection of spirituality and the body, and physical health, but also wisdom, you called, you use the word wisdom traditions. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And so, anyway, I just want to appreciate what you're bringing to the table. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, given all of that and given this diversity of your own experience, and your own study, but also your own work, can you tell me a little bit about maybe some of your favorite projects, past projects that you've… you've done as a composer, teacher, student, musician, performer, artist?

Yuval Ron: Yes.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: There's so many projects. I mean, there's a recent project that I've done called Heal Me at 40hz, which is....

Yuval Ron: There's a certain brain sound therapy called 40hz, and this is really, really cutting-edge, newest, newest thing. Actually, I'm starting to teach a four-part course on September 24th called Change Your Brain with Sound, and this has to do with that.

Yuval Ron: 40hz sound therapy was discovered in MIT and developed in MIT in recent years, and they used a tone, which is called 40hz. It's 40 cycles a second. It's like 40 pulsation a second. That's what 40hz is. Just 40 pulsations a second. It's very fast, and you can imagine, in one second, 40 pulses, 40 knocks, you know, like you knock on a door, but 40 times a second. You don't hear it like knocks on the door, you hear it like one tone, because our brain cannot hear such a fast pulsation. We just hear a tone, and it's a low tone.

Yuval Ron: And it's called 40hz. Now, the researchers just used the tone in order to clear the pathways from plaque and improve memory.

Yuval Ron: And it improves recovery from brain trauma, because it increases blood flow in the brain, and it helps focus on concentration.

Yuval Ron: Now, the people that are testing it and developing it and using it now, in limited places, they just used a tone, and there's two doctors named, Dr. Richard Gold and Dr. Sanjay Manchanta, who approached me and said, if we could find music that delivers that tone, people would enjoy more listening to it an hour a day, and we'll have more compliance. And I said, what means compliance? And he said, oh, compliance is very important in medicine, because you can give people the medicine, but they don't take it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes.

Yuval Ron: So what's good in having the medicine? If it's, if people forget to take it, if people, if it's difficult for people to take it, if it's complicated for people to take it, they may not take it, and the fact that you have the medicine, or the remedy, it's good for nothing if people don't take it.

Yuval Ron: That's compliance. And they said if you can deliver 40hz tone with beautiful music and relax the listener, which are going to promote more healing, that would be wonderful. 

Yuval Ron: And so I've been engaged to create the first catalog in human history of music in 40hz, in different styles. Jazz in 40hz, classical music in 40hz, guitar music in 40hz, world music in 40hz, Indian music, Persian music, all in 40hz, and…

Yuval Ron: One of my favorite albums in 40hz is the acapella choir. So they asked me to write an acapella choir music, and I thought, okay, it's for healing, and I need to find words for the choir, so I looked in the Hebrew Bible for any prayer, any words in the Hebrew Bible that has to do with healing, asking for healing, praying for healing, anything that has to do with the word healing in Hebrew, which means refuah, or Raphael, the angel Raphael, that's the word for healing in Hebrew. 

Yuval Ron: The angel Raphael is the healing agent, angel. He's the healing angel, because in Hebrew, the word refuah, which means medicine comes for the word rapha, Raphael.

Yuval Ron: So I looked, and I found few, few prayers in the Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew, and I composed music to those Hebrew biblical healing prayers in the key of 40hz, so it delivers the tone of 40hz within the music.

Yuval Ron: And, this piece, this album came out as Heal Me at 40hz, and it's just so beautiful to hear this choir from Brigham Young University. It's one of the best choirs in the country to sing contemporary music. They are incredible.

Yuval Ron: They're out of Utah, Brigham Young University Singers. They are a professional singing group, they record albums, they tour.

Yuval Ron: And they were so devotional. The students, you know, when I talked to them, I went up there, and I talked to them about the meaning of the words and really stand behind each word to express it with their hearts, and they really listened. They really wanted to give it all.

Yuval Ron: And they were so good professionally, but also they are young, and they are eager, you know?

Yuval Ron: I thought, I told the producers, this is better than any of the most professional singer groups that I can hire, you know, singers for hire, the people who sing for Disney, and for DreamWorks, and all the greatest singers in Los Angeles that I work with for movies.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: If I would hire 40 of them, and bring them in, and have them sing it, it's going to be perfectly, perfect, technically, perfectly.

Yuval Ron: But it would not have the heart that students at Brigham Young University put it into the music. So that's one of my favorite albums. There's another album called Four Divine States of Mind, which is based on Buddhism, on four teaching of Buddhism that are called the four states, divine states of mind, higher virtue. So it's loving-kindness, compassion, vicarious joy, and equanimity.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Yuval Ron: And I was hired to compose music that invoked each one of those four higher virtues. Buddhist monks meditate on it. Their job is to sit and meditate, and with their mind, to reach those states of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity in their mind.

Yuval Ron: And I received a commission to invoke this through music.

Yuval Ron: So people that may not be able to sit and meditate like a Tibetan monk, this monk could feel that and have this vibration and that energy invoked in them through the music, and that was a creative project and challenging, especially when it came to equanimity. How do you… how do you invoke equanimity through music? Equanimity is the sense that all things are equal. All things in the creation are equal. Everything is equal.

Yuval Ron: Your best day and your worst day are equal.

Yuval Ron: Day and night are equal.

Yuval Ron: Men, women, feminine energy, masculine energy, you know, tall person, short person. It doesn't mean that they are all the same. Each one is different, but they're all equal from the point of view of creation, from the divine creation, all things are equal.

Yuval Ron: And so, how do you invoke this in music?

Yuval Ron: It was a very difficult challenge. I can invoke joy with music very easily. I can invoke compassion in music, I can invoke loving kindness in music, but equanimity was very difficult for me.

Yuval Ron: It was very difficult, and I find a way to invoke it musically, and this is a beautiful album, it's one of my most favorite albums, and it's called Four Divine States of Mind.

Yuval Ron: You can find it anywhere.

Yuval Ron: So these are two… two from many, many, many projects that are close to my heart.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, would you… I would love to hear, and I'm sure that the audience for the podcast, would love to hear.

Yuval Ron: Do you want me to play a few minutes from the sound? 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Please do.

Yuval Ron: Four Divine States of Mind album trailer

Yuval Ron: And let's see… that's four minutes long, and let's present the album. I'm going to… could you see the screen?

[Audio shared by Yuval Ron]

Yuval Ron: So, as you can see, this was a very ambitious project with many top-notch master musicians from around the whole world.

Yuval Ron: It was a very, four different lead female singers. One of them, Estrella Morente, is the number one flamenco gypsy singer in the world, from Granada, Spain, and Deva Primal, the premier Kirtan singer recorded from Australia. It was recorded in India, it was recorded in Los Angeles, all over the world.

Yuval Ron: And, you got a sense for the variety of sounds, also. So, if I may, I'll share just a little bit about the choir, the Heal Me at 40hz. Let me find…

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Please do. I was going to ask you to do that next.

Yuval Ron: Yeah, okay, so let me…

Dr. Habīb Boerger: You spoke so highly of the choir.

Yuval Ron: Yeah, I would love you to get a sense for that. This is a different kind of a video. It shows the behind the scenes, the behind the scenes, so I think it's, let's see….

Yuval Ron: Heal Me at 40hz Yuval Ron album trailer

Yuval Ron: So, Okay, I think this is the release party.... 

Yuval Ron: So, this is six minutes long. I'll just show you the first 2 or 3 minutes, if I may, okay?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Please.

[Audio shared by Yuval Ron]: My name is Yuval Ron. I'm a composer visiting here at Brigham Young University for recording a world premiere piece that I composed to work with sound therapy called 40hz. And that tone, that vibration of 40hz has been shown to improve cognition in the brain, to clear the memory pathways from plaque. And improving concentration, and healing from brain trauma, all kinds of health benefits. Oh, man, this was so beautiful. This is the first time I ever heard it. My friends, I must tell you, this is a very moving moment for me. This is the very first time that I heard anybody sing this. This is the world premiere moment for me to hear it. And just the first chord, when you just, the first measure, when you start singing, I felt my heart was just vibrating, and the way you sang it, all the dynamics and the feeling, it was just the way I envisioned it.

Yuval Ron: I'll stop here, because the rest, showing more of the rehearsal process, and kind of a master class, but you got the feeling for this work.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I got a taste of it. It's beautiful.

Yuval Ron: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Oh, thank you so much for sharing.

Yuval Ron: Yeah, my pleasure.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, I wondered if you would talk a bit about, given your book, Divine Attunement, and it's, the title, Music as a Path to Wisdom, or subtitle, I should say, Music as a Path to Wisdom, in your experience of these many different traditions, could you just talk to that idea of music as a path, as a spiritual path, and as a spiritual practice, the intersection of spirituality and music and….

Yuval Ron: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: I found myself walking on this path, where all I wanted to be is a musician.

Yuval Ron: And I wasn't aware of any spirituality. And I wasn't aware that music is spirituality. I wasn't aware that improvising music, playing jazz, is a spiritual practice. I wasn't aware of it. I thought about it just as a technique when I was young.

Yuval Ron: It's about technique, it's about knowledge and technique. Then through doing it, I discovered that composing music, improvising music, making music from the heart is not, it's impossible to do all the time the same.

Yuval Ron: If it was only technique and knowledge, you could do it on the same level any day, any time.

Yuval Ron: Because you have the knowledge, and you have the technique.

Yuval Ron: But I found out that it's a lot more sneaky and tricky than that, and there's a mysterious element to it. And sometimes it's graceful, and sometimes it's blessed, and sometimes it's not.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: And then I realized that there's a sacred and spiritual, mysterious element of channeling, and channeling that energy that is another kind of art, another kind of wisdom practice of becoming an instrument, where you are, the musician is the instrument for a higher voice, for a mysterious voice.

Yuval Ron: And we can call it in all kinds of names.

Yuval Ron: And I found that other master musicians, many, many great musicians, from John Coltrane to many of the masters from India and from the Middle East, and Asia, and, Carlos Santana is one example. There's, many musicians who discovered that.

Yuval Ron: Like myself, they discovered that there's another element, that there's something behind all things, and they've reached spirituality through music, and they start searching for answers, searching for the truth, searching for wisdom. So that's why the subtitle of my book is Music as a Path to Wisdom, because it's music and making music that led me and led many others to that place of exploring spirituality, exploring spirit, exploring the hidden, unseen energy, that is involved.

Yuval Ron: And, studying and learning different wisdom traditions from around the world. That has been my case.

Yuval Ron: So that's… that's what I'm talking about.

Yuval Ron: It's my experience.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: The terms that stood out to me from what you just said was -- you mentioned, composing from the heart, or playing from the heart, so the, obviously, the heart aspect of it, the mystery aspect of it.

Yuval Ron: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Then this energy that it's, there's some aspect of being a, in a flow for -- you used the term energy. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: One of the things that I've found in the past that I find especially intriguing is I have a friend who's not -- I think she might call herself spiritual but not religious, or maybe…

Yuval Ron: Sure, I heard that phrase before.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, she definitely is not in a particular tradition.

Yuval Ron: Sure.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And she's very, engaged in awareness of light, and sound, and vibrational energy. And I said, you know, you may not be engaged in a tradition, but why do you think Muslims and Sufis chant? 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: It's because we believe that the recitation we're doing is not just words with meaning, it's that there is a light, and a sound, and a vibrational energy that accompanies that sound.

Yuval Ron: Right. Right.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, I find this music as a great unifier.

Yuval Ron: Yes.

Yuval Ron: Yeah, yeah, music is a great unifier, and I'm lucky that I'm a musician, because I know how, and I've seen how music can unify and bring people together because it's non-verbal and because it's vibration, it's an energy that goes through the air, and work not on the intellectual path, but it works on the emotional path. 

Yuval Ron: And there's a lot, a lot, a lot in there, you know, there's a lot of scientific information about how music works and why our brains react a certain way to music. One of the things that I studied in Berklee College of Music is a field called psychoacoustics, which is the psychology of sound -- why we all consider certain sounds as scary, or pleasing, or soothing, or… and that's how film music works, and that's how healing music works, is through that phenomena of psychoacoustic, that particular sounds, combinations, trigger certain things in the human brain beyond cultural divides.

Yuval Ron: So you could have things that are in a certain culture, certain music is, certain music in the Middle East is considered good music for weddings, and it's romantic music, and in the West, that music is considered sad music, melancholic music.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: That's a cultural, that's a cultural boundary. That's a cultural use of music.

Yuval Ron: So there's things that are culturally different, and there's things that are universal in music.

Yuval Ron: There's certain sounds that all people, regardless of cultures, react in the same way to those.

Yuval Ron: And those are the things that are important to use when you write film music, when you use music for healing. Because when you write music for a film, you don't know if the film's going to be shown in Turkey, or in Chechnya, or in Japan, or in Bulgaria, or in Germany. It has to, the music has to work, the movie has to work.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: You can't say, oh, you know, only audience in Europe cried in that scene, but in Asia, they didn't cry in that scene. What's wrong with the music? Why did the music didn't make the audience in Asia cry?

Yuval Ron: You know, you cannot afford to get to that. You have to have music that would work on all human beings. Same thing with sound healing. You cannot say, oh, this sound healing practice will work only in Asia, but it’s not going to work in Europe or in Africa. No, it has to work everywhere.

Yuval Ron: So there's certain things in psychoacoustics that are universal, and there's certain things that are cultural.

Yuval Ron: When it comes to sound healing and film music, we're interested mostly in the things that are beyond cultures, that are universal.

Yuval Ron: And, and so this is part of, the magic of music as a universal language. There is a big part of, a big part, not absolute situation, but there are a lot of musical elements that are universally understood the same.

Yuval Ron: Like a smile, for example. There's a certain body language that all over the planet, a smile is unarming in any culture on this earth.

Yuval Ron: But there is certain movement in your hands, that in one culture would be offending and in another culture on this earth would be disarming.

Yuval Ron: So, you need to know.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yes.

Yuval Ron: You need to know. There's some body language that would be misunderstood in one culture versus another culture, but there's certain things that are universal, like a smile.

Yuval Ron: Same thing with music. There's certain things in music that are universal, and those are the things that are studied in the psychoacoustic field, the psychology of sound.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: Yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, you've studied psychoacoustics, you've studied, you mentioned psychology early, but you started out studying composition. You've also studied Buddhism, Kabbalah, so mysticism in the Jewish tradition, Sufism.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, given all of that, could you tell us if you were going to say, what does spirituality mean to you? Given your vast experience and knowledge, education, exposure to so many different cultures, what does spirituality mean to you?

Yuval Ron: It's a exploration of energies that are not seen.

Yuval Ron: That you cannot see.

Yuval Ron: So it's a whole world.

Yuval Ron: So, a whole matrix of energies and vibrations that we cannot see, but it's affecting us and the whole cosmos. And studying it, describing it, working with it, dancing with it, feeling it, searching for it, utilizing it, you know, co-creating with it, co-improvising with it is the practice of spirituality for me.

Yuval Ron: And there's, of course, many, many, many, many, many, many, many ways to do that. There's not one spirituality, but all the spiritual paths, are trying to do the same thing through different modalities.

Yuval Ron: So you can dance with the Spirit, and you can play with the Spirit, and you can cook with the Spirit, and you can garden with the Spirit, and you can make love with the Spirit, you know, like, in conjunction with, or in collaboration with, or in whatever you would call it. 

Yuval Ron: It’s like sailing. You never sail alone. You sail with the wind. You work with the wind. You work… so that's one example. You don't see the wind, but you feel the wind, and if you go sailing and you ignore the wind, you're doomed.

Yuval Ron: And so you have to work with the wind. You need to kind of give and take… give and, you know, give and take and negotiate. You need to negotiate with the wind, and you need to compromise with the wind in order to get back to the port. So, you know, you just, if the wind blowing this way from the port, and you want to go back home to the port, you just can't do that. You have to do a zigzag.

Yuval Ron: Because the wind is pushing this way, and you need to go this way, like, away from the port, and then this way. You need to do a zigzag in order to work your way with that wind in order to get to where you want. So you need to work with that certain ways. 

Yuval Ron: And the same thing is in all the spiritual paths. It's just that the wind the mysterious element, it's not as obvious as a wind on the ocean when it comes to spirituality, the great mystery, the quote-unquote wind, or the element we don't see is even more mysterious than the wind. 

Yuval Ron: So, there's a saying by Jalaluddin Rumi, the great Sufi master, which I always tell my students, Rumi said, There are four powers that we know -- earth, air, wind, fire and water. But Rumi says, these are the slaves. Who's the master?

Yuval Ron: So, look in other words, look beyond the elements.

Yuval Ron: If you, and that's the difference, you know, if you, it's different between certain kind of spirituality, spirituality paths. There's some spirituality paths that see the elements in nature as the end, meaning the deepest thing. The deepest thing, that is, the god of, the god of the earth, and the god of the wind, and the god of the water, and the goddess of the fire, and it's all a play between those goddesses.

Yuval Ron: The Abrahamic traditions introduced, you know, Judaism in the first monotheistic religion, introduced the thought, the idea that Abraham introduced.

Yuval Ron: That's why it's called the Abrahamic faith. Abraham introduced another way to look at it. Abraham suspected there's something behind the moon and the sun. There's a beautiful story about that. There's a Sufi story and there's a Jewish story, both about the same experience, that Abraham thought that the source of life is from the sun, and then he thought that the source of light and life is from the moon.

Yuval Ron: But he realized that the sun goes down at night to the ocean, to the sea. There's no sun, so how can it be the source of life? But then he saw the moon rising, and he thought, oh, the source of light is the moon, but at the end of the night, he was worshipping the moon all night, and at the end of the night, the moon disappeared.

Yuval Ron: And the sun came in, and then he realized that the source of light is not outside of him. The source of light is on the inside.

Yuval Ron: What we see, the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, the earth, the air, the wind, what we can feel, what we can touch and see, the things we can grab with our five senses and with our thoughts are just the exterior manifestation of something deeper and more mysterious and more hidden that is beyond our five senses and beyond our thoughts and words.

Yuval Ron: He sensed that.

Yuval Ron: And that was the beginning of the Abrahamic traditions.

Yuval Ron: And so, Jalaluddin Rumi, in the 13th century, referred to that. He said, you know, Who, who's behind fire, water, earth, and wind. Who's behind it?

Yuval Ron: So, in spirituality, we're studying the relationship with the five elements, with, you know, the four elements plus ether. Many of the wisdom traditions that I teach and that I studied deal with balancing and invoking those five energies.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Hmm.

Yuval Ron: So you work with that in spirituality, you work with that, but there's still another realm that is beyond the senses, beyond our senses. And that is the greatest mystery.

Yuval Ron: That is even harder to work with.

Yuval Ron: And because it's more mysterious, it's more hidden. And so it's very difficult, because we don't have the tools, we don't have the words to describe it, we don't have the thoughts to form a theory, or a description, or a mode of operation.

Yuval Ron: You know, if you really, if you get to the depth of it, you really, have to agree with the greatest, greatest mystics, the greatest, the greatest of all, have immediately, from the get-go, tell you if you can describe it, it's not it. If you can, any human description, you missed… you already missed before you started.

Yuval Ron: So, don't even try. Don't even try to describe it or to form anything. So, I subscribe to this school. I subscribe to this school of spirituality that it's beyond our thoughts, but I say to my students, yes, it's beyond our thoughts, it's beyond our words.

Yuval Ron: But we can feel it. 

Yuval Ron: Not with our five senses.

Yuval Ron: But we can feel it with other senses, like intuitive, like with intuition, with, it's kind of etheric, like, feeling ether.

Yuval Ron: Yeah. It's not like feeling fire. It's not like feeling water. It's not like feeling wind and earth. It's like feeling ether.

Yuval Ron: You can sense there's ether in the room. You can sense it. You can't grab it; you can't see it.

Yuval Ron: But you can sense that, you know, if you're really, really, really, really sensitive, and so that is the only path that I see is to try to feel it, to intuit it, to move with it based on intuition, based on this hidden sense, like a sixth sense.

Yuval Ron: And music and movement, I find, are one of the best ways to do it, because of the quality of flow, and the quality that's non-verbal, and it's not dogmatic.

Yuval Ron: So, it's appropriate form, formats, movement and sound. So that's what I teach. I teach sound healing, and sacred sound, and with a little bit of sacred movement ... in order to try to fill the flow, and to synchronize with that flow, with that mysterious element.

Yuval Ron: The first chapter in my book is called The Golden Thread.

Yuval Ron: The Golden Thread, that's the first chapter in the book.

Yuval Ron: And that refers to the golden thread, you know, that name, it's a mystical name to, when you synchronize with the great mystery, and it flows through you, that thing that goes through you.

Yuval Ron: You can call it an inner voice, you can call it an inspiration, you can call it the muse, you can call it divine inspiration, you can call it whatever.

Yuval Ron: But one of the names for it is Golden Thread.

Yuval Ron: Golden Thread.

Yuval Ron: It goes through you, you know? And so, I dedicated the first chapter of the book to that concept.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: So, for someone -- this is a two-part question, or request -- for someone who is not necessarily in the tradition, or doesn't identify with the tradition, what would you recommend for someone who wants to listen to music as a way to experience, or begin, or open to experience, or even experiment -- 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: When I first started with, what I first heard of the word spirituality, I was like, well, what is it, I’m just going to approach this like an experiment. So, for somebody who's going to experiment with the experience of spirituality and music, but they don't, they're not grounded in a tradition, what might you recommend that they do as a first step?

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And then…

Yuval Ron: Well, I, yeah....

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And for someone who is immersed in a tradition, but not necessarily coming through the door of music, what might you recommend they do? 

Yuval Ron: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: Well, I would recommend several different paths, and people could choose what they gravitate to.

Yuval Ron: One is to learn to play an instrument, or to learn to sing, or to sing in a choir, to sing in a community choir, to play in a community band, to play, to play music. This is the first, the first step, if you can, and if you are drawn to playing music, singing, even if you're not a singer, to sing in a community orchestra.

Yuval Ron: This is one doorway to reach and to sense the spirit, or to go into a spiritual path, is to make music. That's number one.

Yuval Ron: Same thing with movement, to make movement, to learn to dance, to dance, any form of dance, and slowly to go from learning a form of dance, or learning a form of music, to get to be able to improvise, or to dance freestyle, or to improvise freestyle, because when you go freestyle, you are more vulnerable.

Yuval Ron: Not protected by the format that already you practice a million times and do the same thing. When you go to a freestyle improvisation, you're more vulnerable and you're more dependent on intuition and listening to the flow, the golden thread. You have more opportunity to feel it.

Yuval Ron: So those are two paths. Another path is yoga. That's another kind of movement, and it has a spiritual to it, you know, to study yoga with a teacher who is not teaching it, like, in aerobics, or as condition, or, you know, it's, it has to be a teacher who is spiritual.

Yuval Ron: The teacher who expands on the stretching. So, yoga is not just stretching. Yoga is a spiritual path.

Yuval Ron: You don't have to be a Hindu, you don't need to believe in Hinduism, you don't need to subscribe to anything, but you can study yoga with a teacher who's sensitive and spiritual, and that will give you an experience.

Yuval Ron: To learn to meditate. To take a meditation class, that's another entry style. Joining, joining a drum circle, a community drum circle, a drum circle that every Sunday afternoon plays on the beach.

Yuval Ron: Just grab a drum.

Yuval Ron: And go there, and just sit in the back, and just bang your drum, even if you don't know anything. Just try to be in, try to be together, try to join the community through sound, without thinking, without talking. And after a while, it's going to affect you.

Yuval Ron: Those are the, those are, those are the paths that I know. Notice that none of them included reading books or going to lectures. And I love books.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah. 

Yuval Ron: I love books. But Rumi said, this is the opening of my book, the first page of my book, it's, there's a quote from Rumi, and he says, before you go into the library, before you enter, a library, go and learn a music instrument. Jalal ad-Din Rumi said that in the 13th century.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Beautiful.

Yuval Ron: So, some people can enter spirituality through the intellect, it's possible.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: You could enter spirituality through reading books, but the experiential, on-your-body, embodied experience, non-verbal experience, I found to be a lot deeper and more direct.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: After that, as Rumi said, after that, you can read about it.

Yuval Ron: Read what other people wrote about it. That can be enriching and interesting.

Yuval Ron: But it's not the path.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: It's impressions of other people's paths.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: I mentioned earlier the experiment when I first was exposed to the idea of spirituality, and I didn't even know what the term meant, and I was exposed to Sufism, I thought, well, I'm going to try this chant, and I didn't want to know what I was saying. I did not know want to know a translation, I just was like, okay, give me your best guess of how this is supposed to sound, and I'm going to try, and I just want to feel what I feel.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And what I, what I found was that chanting and the sound of the voice, that there was a resonance that I experienced in my body, and I experienced that the sound affected, what I was doing with my voice, affected my heart.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And that just… and so since then, I've always been one to encourage other people to use their voice, however works for them in their tradition or no tradition...

Yuval Ron: Right, right, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: And to listen for the great mystery in their own voice.

Yuval Ron: Yes, indeed.

Yuval Ron: This is beautiful, you know, and that's what I offer, you know, through the University of Sufism and other universities that I teach in, is I have a curriculum, I have a course for Sacred Healing Sounds, which is a curriculum for people who are not musicians and people who are not singers.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: Of course, there's professional musicians and singers that come to my courses, but they are not the majority. 

Yuval Ron: The majority of the people are non-musicians, and the course is designed for people who are not musicians to discover that what you discover, that through the use of your voice you can connect to a great mystery, and you can heal many things within yourself with your voice, and you can learn how to use it with others. So it's a great, it's a great portal, because anybody can do it. 

Yuval Ron: Anybody who has breath. Anybody who could breathe can do this curriculum, and it's wonderful. And there's always musicians in my students. There's always, you know, 10% of the people are musicians, because they're very interested in it, but 90% of the people are not musicians, and it's designed for them, and it's effective for them. The musicians are flying, you know, and they ask me all kinds of questions, you know, and I give them that extra stuff for musicians only, but it's designed for regular people.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Well, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for a great conversation about the intersection of spirituality and sound, the intersection of spirituality and brain health, and so much more. So, for people, you mentioned that you're having two retreats coming up in 2026. For people who want to reach out to you, to learn more about your retreats, they can visit your website, which is https://yuvalronmusic.com/.

Yuval Ron: Right.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Yeah.

Yuval Ron: Yes, there's one retreat in the Sivananda Ashram in the Bahamas in April, focusing on the wisdom traditions of Ayurveda and Nada yoga, the yoga of sound and the doshas of Ayurvedic medicine and chanting. That's in April.

Yuval Ron: And in October 2026, there's a five-day retreat on the three Abrahamic faiths, the sacred healing chants of Sufism, Kabbalah, and plain chant of Christianity.

Yuval Ron: And it's going to be in the Basque country, on the border between Spain and France, in the Pyrenees Mountain. It's a beautiful farmland, very, very peaceful and beautiful, great food, and we're going to be chanting all day and all night, and doing some sacred movement. It's going to be a dream. That's October 2026, and the information is on my website, https://yuvalronmusic.com/.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Sounds beautiful. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you, thank you. 

Yuval Ron: Thank you. Great to talk to you.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Thank you all for joining us on Beyond Names. Before we go, briefly, just take one breath and reflect for just a moment on anything that might stay with you from this conversation with Yuval Ron.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: May something you heard today help you reconnect with the light in your own heart. May you grow in compassion, clarity, and courage. May you find your way, again and again, back home to yourself, back home to the divine, however you name it.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: If today's conversation spoke to you, please like, share, and comment.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: To make an appointment with me, please visit https://www.habibboerger.com/. 

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Until next time, may you be light, may you carry light, may you consciously participate in growing your light, and may you share your light.

Dr. Habīb Boerger: Peace be with you.

“All religions, all this singing, is one song.” -Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, 

One Song, translated by Coleman Barks in The Illuminated Prayer