As sound therapist and meditation teacher Sara Auster explains to mbg, sound baths provide an immersive, full-body listening experience “that can bring balance, relaxation, and a sense of calm to your whole being.” Unlike certain meditations or breathwork practices, sound baths don’t involve much guidance. Instead, they call on the audience to be present and listen. You can either attend an in-person sound bath (usually in a group setting) or listen to audio at home. You can create a sound bath experience using many different instruments. Auster, for example, plays “singing bowls, tuning forks, gongs, and other overtone-emitting instruments to stimulate the alpha and theta brain waves,” Auster explains. From there, the sounds begin to provide a stable frequency for fluctuating brain waves to latch on to, in a process known as entrainment1. “By using rhythm and frequency,” sound therapy practitioner Nate Martinez previously wrote for mbg, “we can entrain our brainwaves, and it then becomes possible to down-shift our normal beta state (normal waking consciousness) to alpha (relaxed consciousness), and even reach theta (meditative state) and delta (sleep; where internal healing can occur).” “As sound slows the heart and respiratory rate,” Auster adds, “it can also create a therapeutic and restorative effect on the mind and body.” By accessing brain waves like alpha and theta, we’re able to reach states similar to those achieved in meditation. They provide a chance to “power down your phone, get quiet, and listen without the need to consciously respond or react,” she adds. Lastly, you can consider getting your own instruments to experiment with different sound therapies yourself, whether you invest in a singing bowl, chimes, or gongs.
