Love at first sound

New to the practice of meditation, I have been making time in my schedule to go out on day long retreats that support inner reflection and introspection, often sitting in silence for the majority of the time and observing my thoughts.

Being on one of those retreats as I write this, the rolling hills and deep valleys of this place are breathtaking, instantly inspiring a sense of quietude. Where all you are surrounded with are mountains and creeks. A great place for anxiety relief.

Recently, one of the participants in the day-long retreat mentioned something called a, “sound bath.”

While talking more about it, he mentioned it as a great form of meditation for anxiety relief, accentuating the path on the holistic approach to healing from trauma.

I had never heard of this before. Curious, I went online and located a place within driving distance I could visit and check out for myself.

Findings

The experience was immensely healing.

Here was something I could use to help center me and provide relief from the stresses of everyday life. A solid go-to for anxiety relief.

The sound of gongs, singing bowls, bells and didgeridoo provided something that was like discovering a bridge to a higher state of consciousness and being with my surroundings. It felt as though this was a new and precious discovery.

Little did I know, that this was something that has been around for a long time.

If anything, I was likely in the same boat with science; barely coming around to it and finding that there really was growing merit to the effects experienced afterwards. Not just psychologically, but physically as well.

This, was sound therapy, by some referred to as sound healing.

A simple proposition

Imagine a situation where someone afflicted with anxiety or suffering from panic attacks could benefit from sound meditation as a viable and safe alternative to taking the more traditional and pharmaceutical route.  

A means for them to gently undo the stressful threads that bind them. If this sounds like someone you know, or if you happen to fall into this kind of circumstance, I invite you.

Clarity is defined as, "The quality of transparency or purity."

To see things as they are.

Taking smaller and more curious steps towards one’s own mind and its predilections can have lasting benefits, allowing us a ticket to a better quality of life. Sound meditation—whether in the form of gongs, sound therapy or holistic healing—can sooth our predispositions to hysteria and other glitches of the mind.

There has never been a more auspicious moment in history and time to stop and listen.

Distance has never been mandated to us by nature like this before. It has twisted the arm of our world’s governments and brought insight to a substratum of blind spots in our ways and practices.

We are being invited to quiet ourselves and take a sobering look at our lives. To take solace in what we are blessed with behind our closed doors.

Sound can show us the way of the stone, gently floating to the calm and comforting bottom of a raging river.

Seeing yourself as the ocean

You needn’t take my word for it. Not necessarily.

Instead, I invite you to take a look for yourself. The beauty of living during times like these, is that you can easily take your smartphone and check if someone’s claims about a given subject are true.

You could counter with the rise of fake news in recent years, but the answer to that point is that it’s simply a question of how deeply one is willing to go to arrive at real answers. Your own answers.

You have the power to arrive at your own conclusions and as long as there’s an alignment, some symmetry between the map of your mind and the world at large—I would wager you are on the right path. Delamora Transformational Experiences is an endeavor created with the mission of providing useful resources and other tools for those curious, and links to further illustrate what I am talking about.

On the frontiers of science and medicine, you will find there that:

• Science has recently gathered empirical evidence on the positive effects, sound has on living tissue.

• There are data sets and studies on various illnesses reflecting improvements in symptoms and pathology.

• There is scientific basis for sound’s holistic healing properties and benefits on our neuroplasticity, among other areas of physiology.

Thich Nhat Hanh once stated that many of the eastern practices the west has begun adopting into more mainstream spheres in the last few years, have been around for over 2,600 years. Thankfully we now live in a world where this can be brought to our living rooms at the stroke of a few keys. Livestreams can be just as transformative if you happen to be in such a spot where setting foot out your door, might not be at the point of being an option.

If something that ancient has withstood the test of time, it’s worth some amount of attention.

Any number of events or search results can help point the way. There’s no walk of life that isn’t cherished, and turning our suffering into joy is something anyone would agree is a shared goal, without hesitation. After all, the highest and most existential pursuit in life is to be happy. And given the present circumstances of being 1-year into a global pandemic, the one thing we simply cannot forget or afford to ignore, is that we are all in this together, and the only way out is through. And one of my personal goals in this process is to learn and be able to live with my anxiety issues without letting them disrupt my life. And on top of that, to overcome them.

Let’s take a further look into what’s been learned recently.

A closer look at our frontiers

Science, psychology and medicine have begun turning their lenses towards studying the neurological benefits of these ancient practices. Their effects on our minds and bodies now has substantial evidence that’s changing our point of view on many of these methods for training the mind and how effective these techniques really are.

Slowly, over the last few decades our general narrative has evolved, incorporating these traditions and schools of thought with more professionals jumping in and taking the plunge.

The result comes in the form of derived practices and simple breathing exercises, watered down from their obfuscating and sometimes spooky language to make these techniques more accessible to anyone who is interested in transforming their lives.

With a growing body of hard data, meditative states have proven their worth in helping us to slow down into a more mindful way, focus with greater ease and concentration.

Sound meditations have an incredible impact on our wellbeing, bringing us to states of clarity and equity unlike anything else. Hundreds of articles can be found online of published scientific opinion, now weighing and lending credibility on these benefits.

Aboriginal tribes knew this using their didgeridoos over tens of thousands of years ago to achieve the equivalent of what we understand now as flow states, where the brain is in optimal condition to perform and function.

Truly, there’s no question about it: sound is healing.

A more equanimous world

In more recent years, sound baths have become popularized, using quartz singing bowls, Tibetan singing bowls and bells or gongs to guide the listening ear. Accessing a dimension one can feel reverberate through their body; tuning them to a placid frequency where you can discover the magic of the mind.

Music’s ability to reduce stress and improve mental health is now more common fact, as rhythm has shown to ease physical pain. Arguably a meditation for anxiety we have never known we had.

Knowing this and understanding the overlap between what once seemed like separate fields, becomes less of a stretch and more of a deepening insight towards a better outcome in the human condition.

Sound baths can best be thought of as an orchestra of sorts, incorporating different instruments such as gongs, small bells, the didgeridoo, drums, rattles, tingshas, tuning forks, and of course signing bowls, each having a part in the symphony, with the gong or the singing bowl as the protagonist of the composition, having to do with over 90% of the whole piece.

Literally a bath of sound one can dip into with by themselves or with a group of people.

Sonics and tissue

Experienced meditators and those new to it, have both expressed deep states of relaxation they had never experienced before when trying their hand at a sound bath. Consequently, theories have sprouted trying to explain the link between these deeply relaxed states and sonics, more over on the attempts to further refine these practices to acquire lasting effects.

Sound-based treatments have proven their worth in the field of medicine, broadening an understanding of what is possible with today’s advancements. By directly affecting pain in people afflicted with arthritis, postoperative and menstrual pain—even reduce muscle stiffness, improving blood flow and circulation, the positive effects of sound simply cannot be ignored, silenced or wiped off the table.

Instead, their resonance continues showing to be a strong and more holistic approach to patients with fibromyalgia, exhibiting value during low-frequency sound stimulation. This helped improve sleep, decreased pain, and effectively reduced the need for medication in the long run.

Join the movement currently taking place and discover your deeper potential with the plethora of holistic options and sound based treatments out there. Reconnect with yourself and the world around you in a way that you may never have known before.

Wherever you are, whomever you may be—never forget: All is driven and supported by Love.

The first part of above entry had been submitted to us by Vince P. We hope that by sharing it people can be inspired and benefit from his goal to overcome anxiety.