Sound Baths: Healing Vibrations
In a predominantly western music culture, we, as listeners, often seek specific combinations of sounds that we have been taught are “musical.” This determined the kinds of music we liked growing up and continues to shape our preferences when we turn on the radio or stream music from our devices. There are common chord progressions, cadences, and melodic harmonies in our music that we expect to be present even if we don’t realize that we’re listening for them.
Sound baths, which originate from eastern meditation traditions, are not songs or pieces, planned or written, and not the sort of “music” you’d be likely to choose for your morning drive.
Sound baths are simply soundscapes, often created with instruments less familiar to western listeners. Sound baths are even more simply a space to experience vibrations. And these vibrations are able to evoke emotions and sensations in the resting body.
Most of us have experienced songs that make us feel deep emotion, songs that go beyond their lyrics and move us because of the music that reaches deep into our bodies and souls and says, “I see you. I feel you. You are here.” Music acknowledges us. It reminds us that we are alive. Our bodies recognize and react to the vibrations of sound waves. Sound can affect our hormones, our breathing, our heart rate. We are atoms that shiver and shift in response to the sounds all around us.
During a sound bath, one might hear the rolling shimmer of a gently shaking gong, or the hollow, rippling ring of a singing bowl or two. There may be tinkling chimes or the patter of a rain stick, or a heavy, dark wave followed by a shattering crash of the gong again.
It may be pleasant at times. It may be uncomfortable. Sounds will overlap that we are unaccustomed to hearing or that we are not expecting.
While we rest, the vibrations of all of these sounds wash through us, and the body may react with small twitches, with tension, with a shortening of breath. This is why sound baths create an incredible environment for meditation. We are asked to return to the breath, to let these physical sensations wash through us—in addition to whatever emotional sensations might arise.
It is often a peaceful, relaxing experience—a time to give oneself over to sound and sensation. The vibrations move through our bodies, and may or may not catch on “issues we’ve trapped in our tissues” throughout our lives, sometimes helping to release emotions we didn’t know we still held within us. It can be a healing experience, allowing sound to wash through us on the atomic level, subtly remaking us.
Every sound bath is different, and every person who experiences a sound bath will have their own, restful journey through sound and sensation.
—Gabbie Gordon
