Sound Baths
Sound Baths, or sound healing, is a meditative practice that exposes clients to specific sounds and tones that promote relaxation and healing.
Sound has a way of moving us. Whether it be listening to an energizing playlist during a workout, or the sounds of rain to help you fall asleep. Sound baths help create a serene soundscape that can aid in meditation.
In this resource guide we’ll talk about:
- What a sound bath is
- The efficacy of sound baths
- How sound baths work
- What sound baths treat
- Sound baths at Sequoia Behavioral Health
What Is a Sound Bath?
Sound baths are a kind of meditation that uses the vibrations and sounds from various instruments to create a therapeutic mind-body experience. This experience promotes relaxation, mindfulness, wellbeing, and healing.
The sounds created during a sound bath are intended to create a serene environment in which people can meditate and clear their minds. When saturated with the frequencies of a sound bath, the body harmonizes with the frequencies and harmony and relaxation is achieved.
Related Articles: Mindfulness Movement Exercises, Mindfulness Breathing Exercises
History of Sound Baths
The exact origin of sound baths, or sound healing, isn’t exactly known. That’s because many ancient civilizations recognized the transformative power of sound. Ancient Egypt, Greece, India, and other societies used sound to heal in some form or another for thousands of years.
The modernization of sound healing can be attributed to Swiss philosopher and scientist Hans Jenny who dedicated his time studying cymatics. By using sand, plates, and electronic sounds, he observed that specific frequencies create different patterns using the sand.
What was shown is that when specific frequencies hit physical matter, that matter harmonizes and creates a structure or a pattern. The applied idea is that when matter harmonizes it relaxes and moves.
Tools Used For Sound Baths
Sound bath practitioners use specialized instruments to create their harmonious and relaxing environments. Every guide will use a mixture of instruments and some might use their voice. The instruments they use will depend on which instruments they’d prefer to use. These are some of the instruments used in sound baths:
- Gongs
- Chimes
- Bells
- Shruti boxes
- Nature sounds
- Tuning forks
- Metal bowls
- Himalayan, crystal, and Tibetan singing bowls
All of these can be used to create beautiful soundscapes that help relax patients.
What Does a Sound Bath Look Like?
Sound baths can happen in almost any environment as long as it’s quiet. Usually the practitioner sits in a central location with their instruments laid out around them. People who are attending can sit or lay down. Although, most people will lay down.
Sound bath sessions usually last between 60 to 90 minutes, and during that time attendants are encouraged to breathe slowly and let their body harmonize with the frequencies around them.
Thanks to the internet, sound baths can be conducted online. However, being in the physical space will have a greater effect as the frequencies wash over and through the body.
Efficacy of Sound Baths
It may be hard to believe that sound can carry healing properties, but the positive effects of sound healing have been proven over time. In one study that recorded the anxiety levels in patients awaiting urologic surgery, it was found that tibetan music was a useful strategy for preoperative anxiety management.
Another study measured the effects sound baths had on general wellbeing. That study found significant benefits across several markers of wellbeing. These benefits have been documented, but there isn’t a full understanding of just how beneficial this therapy is.
How Do Sound Baths Work?
Hearing that sounds can soothe physical pain, improve blood pressure, and create extreme levels of relaxation sounds strange. However, sound baths improve wellbeing by bringing harmony through the body's parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).
The relaxing environment sound baths create help people ground themselves in the moment and reach a deeply meditative state.
Related Articles: What Does it Mean to be Grounded?
Entrainment And Resonance
Entrainment is an important process for sound baths. In short, entertainment is the convergence of two things into one pattern, rhythm, or frequency. Resonance is what occurs when those two things have been entrained. It means they’re on the same frequency.
A good example of this is concert timpani—those big drums often used in classical music. Each drum is tuned to a specific note or frequency. If you hum into the drum head of a timpani while tapping you’ll hear discordant tones. However, if your humming matches the frequency of the timpani, it will sing back at you. The timpani and your voice have been entrained and are now resonating with each other.
This concept is also applied to sound baths and brain waves. Overtime, brain waves synchronize with the frequencies created during the sound bath. This creates a sense of calm as the body is deeply connected to the environment and the entire body is within resonance.
Connection of Sounds and Emotions
Think of every part of your body as having a frequency or rhythm. If those rhythms and frequencies aren’t in harmony with each other you should expect chaos. A symphony of musicians with no conductor.
A body that is asynchronous is bound to have issues, whether they be physical or emotional discomfort.
Sound is powerful enough to stir memories, emotions, and feelings. Sound bathing helps bring the body and emotions into harmony with one another.
What Do Sound Baths Treat?
The healing qualities of sound baths are not only available for specific conditions or kinds of ailments. There are several conditions and issues that can be aided with sound baths.
It’s important to note that sound baths on their own are not enough to fully treat any one condition. Sound bathing is most effective when paired with other proven therapeutic methods. That’s why Sequoia Behavioral Health offers sound baths as part of our residential treatment facility.
Anxiety
The calming properties of sound baths extend into calming and treating anxiety. Anxiety occurs when neurotransmitters and hormones within the brain are imbalanced. While experiencing a sound bath your body releases endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and other chemicals that help balance the brain and bring about calm.
Stress
Stress can cause major issues if not dealt with. Health issues like high blood pressure are common in people who experience chronic stress, and burnout from stress can cause major mental distress.
Taking an hour or more to engage with a sound bath will bring your body to a great sense of calm.
Emotional Tension and Trauma
Sometimes, people experience fairly general emotional tension. These feelings can create physical tension, and are confusing to experience. This can be the result of trauma or just a life experience. Trauma can get stuck throughout the body, and sound baths can help release it.
Releasing tension and trauma is a benefit of sound baths. While patients are engaged with sound healing, they’ll feel the tensions in their body release over time.
Depression
Sound baths bring people to a deeper sense of mindfulness. People with depression may find that sound baths help them bring their mood back to a typical state of elevation.
These effects can last for a while, but are most effective when coupled with other forms of therapy.
Mood
People who experience issues with their mood will benefit from sound bathing. That’s because of the calming nature of the soundscapes.
Sound Baths At Sequoia Behavioral Health
Sequoia Behavioral Health offers sound baths as a part of a holistic therapy program.
While attending Sequoia behavioral Health, you’ll be attending individual therapies, group therapies, and experiential therapies all designed to treat the symptoms and root cause of what you’re going through. Sound baths are just a part of our holistic and individualized programs.
Interested in learning if Sequoia Behavioral Health is the right choice for your healing, contact us. We’re more than happy to answer any questions you may have.