‘Sound Healing’ With Crystal Singing Bowls
/By Madora Pennington, PNN Columnist
It’s 6 in the evening, on day 31 of "Safer at Home" quarantine in Los Angeles.
I am logging into a Zoom call for sound healing. The invite said:
“The great sleeping prophet Edgar Cayce noted "Sound will be the medicine of the future.” Well the future is now.
Share this link with anyone you know that is experiencing physical pain in the body. In about a half an hour that pain will be substantially reduced or eliminated. This works every time.”
The invite is from Jeff Klein, who uses "Crystal Singing Bowls" to make harmonic tones and vibrations. Jeff says his "sound therapy" helps people relax, rejuvenate and feel less pain. You can watch one of his singing bowl concerts below.
I am not in pain, but I am rather stressed out. And curious. Plus, I do love sound. Why not?
I get Zoomed in.
We have trouble getting started as our host, Jackie, isn’t close enough to the microphone and there is a strong background hum. No one can hear what she is saying, various attendees’ blast into their microphones.
Eventually Jackie figures it out and welcomes us. She’s the “surrogate,” the person Jeff will be working on, while about 30 of us watch and listen.
Jackie tells us to, “Sit into energy of gratitude and allow that into our system.”
I am not a spiritual person, but I do my best.
I have newspapers opened on the side of my screen I’d rather be reading. I am a news junkie. But Jackie convinces me to close my eyes and let go for now, and just be grateful.
This probably is a good idea.
“I am grateful,” Jackie says, with authority.
She encourages us to feel our breath, feel the warmth and experience openness.
Okay then, I can do this.
In comes Jeff, a portly man in his 60’s, who does live singing bowl concerts where he lives in Colorado, although not during coronavirus lockdown.
Jeff explains how his sound concert cured a woman’s hearing deficit, and how another man with neck pain had it permanently relieved from sound healing.
I am skeptical, but Jeff is ready to address this.
Jeff says placebos work because the heart and mind connect and healing occurs. Not a theory I had heard of.
“We are here to raise consciousness and vibration,” Jeff tells us. “Physical mental and emotional healing can happen, just like that,” as he snaps his fingers.
He instructs us to sit back, close our eyes, relax and be ready to receive.
Nothing I object to yet, except for his description of placebo effect.
And the sound quality. Zoom is not the best for a sound healing demonstration, with the chronic, scratchy, feedback audio. It’s so abrasive, I have to turn my volume down.
Jeff is fun to watch as he maneuvers the bowl like a master pastry chef. Swirling the rod around the rim to make sound, also swirling the bowl over Jackie’s body. I wish I were her right now. I’ll bet that feels good. At times, Jackie twitches on the table.
But I can multitask. Peeking out from behind my Zoom screen is the world map of coronavirus outbreaks from the New York Times. There’s a relaxation killer.
Jeff gets a bigger bowl, this one of stainless steel. I haven’t seen bowls like this before. Jeff has strong arms. Jackie twitches a lot with this one.
I stop watching. I let the sound play. It’s beautiful, layers of reverberations without a melody or structure. It makes it easy to let go.
I read about the failure of hydroxychloraquine on the side of my screen. Who didn’t see that coming? Then on to other headlines:
Italy’s poorer south suffers under lockdown, and fears a second blow from the virus.
The number facing acute hunger could double this year, the World Food Program says.
A port city in Ecuador has become an epicenter of the outbreak in Latin America.
Yet, I feel relief in my head and body from listening to these bowls, even over dreadful sound quality.
I must hunt down music like this on Sonos. I do a search for “Tibetan Singing Bowl.” Oh good, a playlist exists.
Then I remember: Don’t I own a Tibetan singing bowl myself? Got it in Santa Monica years ago. Oh yes, it’s in my living room. I should bang it daily. Since it has mercury in it (or is it lead?), I don’t like to touch it. It’s made of seven metals, some toxic.
I read all the news during the Zoom sound healing: The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post. Yet, I feel relaxed. I was not in pain, but if I had been, I think I would feel better.
Managing pandemic anxiety has been a challenge. My technique has been to cognitively challenge distorted thoughts. I question what I am thinking and if it is valid, since it’s making me uneasy. At the end of quarantine, I think I will emerge a saner human. But this bowl stuff was really relaxing and requires way less effort.
When it ends, Jeff invites us to share. I want to tell him this was much better than I thought and I might attend again, but I’m not really a joiner.
Other participants chime in. They talk about the mystical (or are they hallucinatory?) experiences they had: tingling sensations, warmth, visions of light. They sound happy and relaxed, like I feel. I didn’t have those phenomena happen, but I wasn’t really trying.
I will definitely add this music to my day. I’m convinced this will help me get through the pandemic, and it has less calories than wine.
I have to think relaxing and letting go probably would help pain, at least temporarily. This is an easy way to do it.
More soothed than I have been in weeks, I’m hungry for the chicken and dumplings a friend made for us. I’ll steam some green beans, too.
Madora Pennington writes about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and life after disability at LessFlexible.com. Her work has also been featured in the Los Angeles Times.
