What is a Sound Bath?
Sound baths (also known as sound healing), which has been around for thousands of years, are sometimes described as “effortless meditation”. It is a deep meditative practice that allows the participant to surrender to the frequencies of instruments such as Tibetan singing bowls, gongs, tuning forks and percussion instruments. Some sound healers also incorporate vocals into their sessions. Sound healing has been said to help with issues such as insomnia, anxiety, stress, PTSD, depression and pain management.
If this is your first time experiencing sound healing, welcome – we are delighted to be guiding you on this wonderful meditative journey.
Several cultures across the world have used sound as a way of healing and rebalancing the mind and body: the Hindis have long used powerful mantras, the Indigenous peoples from the Americas have used medicine melodies, and Ancient Greece’s Pythagoras musical intervals and frequencies which he prescribed as medicine. Sound helps induce a relaxed state and also has a way of moving through energetic blockages which can be located in our physical bodies, where we experience pain and discomfort, or emotional bodies, and sometimes both.
Our emotional body (or energetic body) is where our life force, also known as Chi, Qi or Prana, exists. It is said that our emotional body accumulates our life experiences in the same way that a tree develops rings which extend outwards as it grows. As the emotional body stores imbalances and traumas that may eventually manifest in our physical bodies, the frequencies played during sound healing sessions can therefore help shift these energies and promote healing throughout the nervous system. Sound healing can work as an energetic purification system, moving trapped energy through the different chakras, unblocking our physical and emotional bodies and help recycle and turn the trapped energy (anything that does not serve you) into positive energy that nourishes your Chi.
Sound baths aim to help us reach a state similar to the one experienced meditators achieve but with much less practice required, it is both a passive and participatory experience as all that is required from the practitioner is simply to relax and keep an open mind. Slowing down your breath will help you be more receptive to the sound frequencies; practicing from a place of stillness will help you reap the full benefits of this wonderful practice. You may see colours, people, animals and places (familiar and unfamiliar), and some practitioners experience past life regressions during their sound healing journeys.
We suggest that you set an intention before commencing your sound meditation and anchor your practice to it – this way, you will be able to bring your awareness back to the meditation should your mind wander off (which it very well may at times but please remember to remain patient with yourself). You can focus your intention on a particular chakra that may feel blocked or something else you would like to open and release. Keep it simple! The more streamlined your intention is, the easier it will be for you to remember your it as you reach a state of lucid dreaming. Please write it down before you start the sound journey and do journal your experiences afterwards: by doing this before and after every practice you will be able to keep track of your progress and truly take note of how you have started to unblock your physical and emotional bodies.
Throughout this practice, do continue be kind and gentle with yourself. It can feel frustrating at times but please try to remember that this is due to energetic blockages leaving your body and you will eventually begin to feel a wonderful release. We recommend that you work on one intention at a time - once you have experienced your desired release, you can use your conscious awareness to explore what blockage you would like to open and let go of next