What is a Sound Bath?
Sound as medicine has been used for healing and therapeutic purposes throughout time
Ancient cultures employed voice and sound instruments to impact people’s bodies and minds in a healing fashion
The overarching goal of sound therapy, sound healing, and sound bathing as it is widely referred to nowadays, is to employ audible vibrations expressed as sound, coupled with the practitioner’s as well as recipients’ intention, to assist the body in returning to homeostasis, its intrinsic state of balance, health and harmony. Sound has long been associated with alleviating emotional, physical, and mental discord.
The drone like sounds generated by the didgeridoos of the indigenous people of Australia for instance have been used as a healing method for more than 40,000 years ago. In addition, aboriginal tribes knew that using their didgeridoos can facilitate the equivalent of what we understand now as flow states, where the brain is in optimal condition to perform and function.
Sound was often used by ancient Greeks and Egyptians as a tool to help people overcome illnesses
Many ancient sites had sound chambers that served for sound based rituals and ceremonies. These ancient practices are used in modern times in similar ways for healing whether that’s through an ‘om’ at the end of a yoga session or in the form of a sound bath. The latter is an immersive experience of about 30 - 60 minutes that typically features singing bowls, crystal bowls, bells, chimes, gongs and other instruments.
Sound meditations have an incredible impact on our wellbeing, bringing us to states of clarity and equity unlike anything else. Hundreds of scientific articles have been published, lending credibility on these benefits. Two entries, The Power of Sound and Sound Therapy and the Vagus Nerve's influence on the Relaxation response, illustrate these benefits.
These sections provide information related to sound bathing, vibration, emotions, thought and the process of positive personal transformation
Cymatics
Vibration
Awareness
Beliefs
Heart
Stress
Cancer
Chakras
Instruments
“The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe”
- Hazrat Inayat Kahn (1882-1927)
“Emotions of any kind can be evoked by melody and rhythm; therefore music has the power to form character.”
- Aristotle (384-322 BC)
“The prime objective of all Initiatory music in the Temples of Antiquity was to bring about physical purification and renewal, mental stimulation and alertness, spiritual exhilaration and Illumination.”
- St. Ambrose (c. 339-397)
Any form of healing is self-healing, and sound bathing can support the process
Our bodies are their own resourceful pharmacies. Disease is a form of disharmony. If you allow yourself to go on with stress, depression, pessimism, anger and frustration every day, eventually it is going to manifest in some form in your mind and body.
Harmony in your life, your body and in your reality begins by uncovering and discovering your inner state of harmony, or homeostasis. The outer is a direct reflection of the inner. When you begin to understand and integrate the axiom: “Where thought goes, energy flows…”, and when you learn to consciously direct it, your whole life begins to transform. Change your inner world, and you change your outer world. Essentially, prolonged states of harmony is how all of us were meant to live our lives in the first place, as is beautifully explained in ‘Music School of Life‘.
In more recent years, sound baths have become popularized
Sound bathing practitioners use a variety of said instruments to guide the listening ear. Accessing an ethereal dimension, one can feel the vibrations and sound reverberate through the body. A skilled practitioner tunes the generated sounds into a harmonic and rhythmically pleasing and placid sound healing frequency. This allows listeners to tune out and detach from discursive thinking while entering serene and deep states of relaxation.
Our sound baths can best be thought of as an orchestra of sorts, incorporating different instruments including large gongs, small bells, the didgeridoo, drums, flutes, rattles, tingshas, tuning forks, and of course signing bowls, each having a part in the symphony, with the gong or the singing bowl as the protagonist of the composition, having to do with over 90% of the whole piece.
Experienced meditators and those new to it, have both expressed deep states of relaxation they had never experienced before when trying their hand at a sound bath. Sound-based treatments have proven their worth in the field of medicine, broadening an understanding of what is possible with today’s advancements.
By directly affecting pain in people afflicted with arthritis, postoperative and menstrual pain—even reduce muscle stiffness, improving blood flow and circulation, the positive effects of sound simply cannot be ignored, silenced or wiped off the table. The regular application of sound baths has also been found to be beneficial in losing weight.
Instead, their resonance continues showing to be a strong and more holistic approach to patients with fibromyalgia, exhibiting value during low-frequency sound stimulation. This helped improve sleep, decreased pain, and effectively reduced the need for medication in the long run.
Join the movement and discover your deeper potential with the plethora of holistic options and sound based treatments available. And if you are looking for a ‘sound bath near me’ you may have just found it. We offer sound bath meditations as person sound bathing experiences as well as monthly memberships for virtual sound baths. Use these opportunities to reconnect with yourself and the world around you in a way that you may never have known before.
The medicine of the future will be music and sound
— Edgar Cayce (1877 - 1945)