Sound Bath Meditation: What you can expect
The sound bath is a transforming full body experience that enables the listener to shift into deep meditative and relaxed dreamlike states. It is a guided journey that lets you bathe in the waves of sounds and vibrations produced by instruments like gongs, singing bowls, koshis, sansula and more.
What is a Sound Bath
Viewed from the outside, one could say that this is a passive practice with people laying down on a mat with a pillow, a blanket, an eye mask, getting really cozy. The experience usually starts with a guided meditation to open the collective space, to support people to fully arrive within themselves and the present moment and to change from Fight or Flight to Rest and Digest. The journey then flows into a merging of different sounds and vibrations that requires deep listening - not just with the ears but with the whole being.
The sounds make it possible to shift from an active thinking mind to a relaxed mind where the sounds kind of become our thoughts. Listening with deep
awareness can be like a shortcut into meditation. I’ve had people telling me that they’ve been struggling, getting into meditation and finding it easier to let go of the monkey mind during the sound bath. It is a safe space where very often people allow themselves for the first time to fully surrender and dive into what emerges when floating in this relaxed state, where the power of our subconscious is activated and becomes the pilot of our system. No sound bath is like another, depending on the energy, intention and people in the room. Every person attending has a different experience ranging from relaxation, inspiration, connection and transformation to epiphanies and visions.
Benefits of Sound Bathing
The overall aim in a sound bath is to hold the space for the listeners so they can enter into states of harmony, calm and groundedness. It is an invitation to let go of everything happening in our daily lifes and turn inward. Kind of like a short retreat we treat ourselves with. When we shift from external to internal awareness, letting the different frequencies of the instruments wash over our being, we can experience a shift in our brainwave patterns, usually going from Beta (logical mind, concentration, alertness) to Alpha (relaxed focus, flow, creativity) to Theta (relaxation, meditation, REM) - sometimes even
Delta (deep, dreamless sleep, healing and regeneration). The Theta state is what we call trance - an altered state of consciousness between being fully awake and sleeping. Very often our inner critic gets more silent here and we get to explore our deeper self and a feeling of interconnectedness. There is nothing more to do; simply being. With the downshift of the nervous system it’s also possible that our heart rate slows down and stress hormones and our blood pressure lowers. We can connect to a stream of creativity and inspiration and experience increased clarity and focus.
How and where to experience a Sound Bath
You have different possibilities to experience the magic of a sound bath - attending one in person in a group or one-on-one setting or you can listen to one online by downloading your free Soundbath above, which allows you to do it anytime and any place you prefer. Of course the in person experience differs from those online but still you will be able to reap the benefits of listening to the different sounds and frequencies when doing it online.
