What is a Sound Bath and how does it help us?

​How does sound healing work?
 
Therapeutic healing with “sacred instruments” has been used for thousands of years by many civilizations worldwide, including the Egyptians, the original native cultures of Australia and America and the Celts. Shamans (back to prehistoric times) have used drumming to heal people and in India, Sanskrit chanting has been used for centuries to balance “Chakras” and heighten consciousness. One of the most well-known people to utilise sound instruments as medicine was Pythagoras, (500 BC) and he used a flute and lyre. Gongs have been used to stimulate healing since the bronze age and a more recent addition to the healing instrument repertoire has been crystal singing bowls, (originally a by-product in Silicon Valley, USA). Unlike handmade Tibetan bowls, (which usually have a predominant note, plus many overtones) each crystal singing bowl has a very pure frequency of one note, tuned to a particular hertz.
 
A “gong and sound bath” is a unique type of practice, using therapeutic sounds and vibrations to stimulate healing. The healing can be of a physical, emotional, or spiritual nature. This practice is referred to as a “bath” because participants are “bathed” in meditation sound waves of specific frequencies. The goal of a sound bath is usually relaxation, although it can be also used to release pain and stagnant energy.
 
Sound therapy has long been used to manage a broad range of health conditions. The treatments are based on the understanding that all forms of matter, including our body’s cells, vibrate at different frequencies. Factors such as stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia and disease cause cells and organs within our bodies to vibrate at non-optimal frequencies. Sound healing can help to re-set these vibrations to optimal frequencies, so that the body (and mind) is more balanced and able to heal.
 
Most people who participate in sound baths are lying down on meditation mats, with a pillow and a blanket (but you can also sit).
 You just need to rest in a comfortable position. Various instruments and sound vibrations are played to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system. Once this is triggered and functioning well, it also improves the digestive and immune systems. The auditory stimuli of the instruments help to balance the left/right sides of the brain and cause the brainwaves to change, from an alert Beta state (24-30 Hertz), down to Alpha brainwaves (8-13.9 Hz). Alpha is associated with creativity and feelings of relaxation. In this state, people experience daydreams, creative thinking, and an animated imagination. This state is followed by Theta brainwaves (4-7.9 Hz), which are associated with meditation, hypnosis and REM sleep. Delta is the zone for deep, dreamless sleep (1-3 Hz). The optimal state for healing during a sound bath, is on the Alpha/Theta brainwave border (7-8 Hertz).