The Healing Power of Sound

I experienced my first sound bath class a couple months ago.  A sound bath is a meditation class that aims to guide you into a deep mediative state while you’re enveloped in ambient sound played by the instructor.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but WOW.   You wear comfortable clothing and lay flat on your back on a yoga mat with a blanket covering you and your eyes closed.   The lights are dimmed and soft yoga music is playing in the background.  The instructor starts with making sounds which are created using crystal bowls, gemstone bowls, cymbals, gongs, bells, rainsticks and turning fork chimes.  These instruments produce a frequency that can be perceived by the ears and brain.   The sound itself guides the meditation and it helps facilitate awareness of the present moment.  Meditation is excellent for managing stress and improving your overall wellbeing to help reduce pain, increase neural connectivity, and improve the quality of life.

David Rabin, MD, PhD, a board-certified psychiatrist and neuroscientist, explains further: “Music and sound impacts us all the time by literally changing the rhythms of our physiology or the organ systems in our bodies, which change naturally without us thinking in response to the rhythms of sound.”  In fact, he says this change typically takes place in less than a minute. “Sound impacts us in these rhythmic ways very, very quickly and usually without us noticing it or being aware that our bodies are changing and our heart rate is changing and our blood pressure’s changing.”

After what felt like 10 minutes, I felt a floating-like sensation and I was able to tune out the excess chatter in my mind and realize a relaxation similar to that of getting a massage, leaving my mind and body filled with gratitude, motivation, calmness, and the strong urge to crawl into bed for a blissful night’s rest.

If you get a chance to attend one of these classes, I highly recommend it.  Maybe it’s something we can do at our All Hands meeting in May (just a thought).