Anyone with half an ear knows that music has a hotline direct to our emotions. It can be soothing, uplifting, inspiring or relaxing. It can also - just think of the sounds coming from bands like Joy Division and The Smiths - leave you feeling so blue you're almost suicidal.

Given the power of music to touch something deep inside, it's not surprising to find it being used as a form of therapy.

What is surprising about the music of Indian guru Professor Arun Apte is its sheer power. Even in a recording, the effect of the extraordinary resonance his singing sets up is as though you're being massaged from the inside. The sound, as his voice slides from one quarter note to another, is thrillingly eastern and exotic - and deeply relaxing.

The professor, director of the PK Salve Academy of Fine Arts and Music at Vaitarna in Maharashtra, India, will perform in York tomorrow as part of a UK tour to introduce local audiences to the sound of his traditional Indian and Marathi songs. He believes music can help restore mental balance and equilibrium.

"It is an established fact that some human maladies, especially the psychosomatic ones, can be soothed and healed by music therapy," he says.

"A sick mind can make a healthy body sick. This is an ancient wisdom. Indian classical music and the mind are inseparably interlinked."

His singing - developed, he says, over years of research - aims to 'gently work on the body's subtle system, helping to cleanse it and achieve a greater sense of inner harmony and well-being.'

The professor combines his music with elements of Yoga to help release the 'kundalini' energy - the mother energy that according to Indian tradition is dormant in us all.

This energy, the theory goes, passes up a channel that runs up the centre of our body. As it goes, it stimulates seven 'centres' which connect with our vital organs, cleansing, nourishing, strengthening and bringing them into balance.

Eventually, when it rises above the seventh centre, we enter a state of true meditation - or 'thoughtless awareness'.

So it's really music as meditation. "We are using harmonious sound to bring the human system, every cell in the body of the singer and listener, into balance," he said.

Alasdair Jamieson, director of music at Bootham School, where Professor Apte gave a demonstration last year and where he will be appearing again on Wednesday, said: "I found his music fascinating. He's a very, very good performer and he links his music to the curative side of things in a way that I found very convincing."

Professor Apte's performance begins at the De Grey Rooms at 7.30pm tomorrow. Tickets £5 on the door. York-based violin teacher and follower of Sahaja Yoga Werner Kremlicka, who helped promote Professor Arun's tour, will be holding a series of five free weekly meditation classes at Friends Meeting House, Friargate, beginning at 7.30pm on May 24.