If you know me, you know that I like to joke around almost all the time and about almost everything. There is just very little in this life that I find that I can take seriously. So much of it seems hilarious to me.
There are three distinct areas of my life I take very seriously.
One area of life is that I care deeply about people. I care about fellow passengers on a bus, I care about those I eat with at the breakfast table, and everybody in between. I basically care deeply about everybody that comes into my awareness. This has been a challenging aspect of being me, but so it is.
Another thing I take with the utmost seriousness is the discovery and embodiment of who I really am. I have been on this journey of introspection for about 40 years or so by now. I started with reading, then with writing, then with long walks and lots of thinking, then finally, with meditations and contemplations. It is a life journey, and I love it.
If you know me, you know what my third topic is. You know it for sure if you have spent any amount of time with me. The third area of life I take deadly seriously, maybe too seriously is music.
It is listening to music, meditating with music, making music. It is sharing music, and taking people on musical journeys. I have been doing this in one form or another since I was about 4 years old; who knows, maybe even earlier than that. It just seems my destiny to be a dedicated sound shaper.
So why have I talked about these 3 areas of seriousness in my life?
It is because all three of them come together for me with the gongs. The meditation, the music, and, at the gong baths, the people! So all of this is why gong baths are a big deal to me.
Here are 10 reasons gong baths may be a big deal to you:
1. A gong bath is a moment just for you.
Today’s world pushes us and pulls us in a million directions. Distractions, obligations, jobs, kids, marriages, school, friends, phones, social media –our outwardly facing demands are endless.
A gong bath is a vacation from all of that.
If nothing else, a gong bath gives you an hour with your own thoughts and your own feelings, with no distractions except the gong sounds. The gong sounds are there as a support for you. They give you something to focus on, that has no meaning, but triggers all the meanings and memories of your life. Thus, you get to experience a deep and revealing journey of your life.
The result is that you get clear on things, you get energy, you find yourself again. You have a reset. A recalibration. What could be better than that?
2. A gong bath requires no skill.
Most all of us have heard about the benefits of meditation. We know that it is a meta-skill that improves every area of our lives that matter us. Health, relationships, peace of mind, even our financial concerns; we have heard that all these areas of life benefit from a regular meditation practice.
But where to start? How to start? A gong bath is an excellent place to start because it meets you exactly where you are and you cannot do it wrong! You can think as much as you want, you can think about specific topics, you can even sleep and you still get the benefits.
It is precious to have something you can do that has such a profound effect on your well-being which requires nothing of you more than making an appointment and showing up.
3. A gong bath is a total body experience.
Gong baths interact with your bones, your fluids, your organs, your muscles, your skin in a way that leaves you better than before.
At every gong bath, it is reported that the vibrations of the gongs massage organs and muscles that are tight, stuck, blocked, creating flow. It does this from the inside out. Our bodies are mostly made of water, and the vibrations activate the fluids in your body, causing them to move into stuck spaces. This activates a powerful healing response.
It doesn’t just work with the fluids in your body. It actually vibrates your bones also. The bone vibrations create a basic listening/feeling response in your mind. It is the clearing of this connection between feeling and hearing that creates a peaceful state.
4. A gong bath clears emotions; empowering you to be fully here and now.
Sounds and vibrations trigger thoughts and emotions. With the gongs there is a whole ocean of different sounds. Some quiet, some sublime and beautiful, some scary, some in your face.
All of this triggers memory responses in you. It is a safe and easy space to integrate all these different emotions and thoughts without doing anything! It just works. How?
Because the memories and emotions being triggered are so numerous and rich, that you cannot create the same old stories and meanings. You just have to let it go, and go on the journey of images, feelings, etc. In this way, these memories are allowed to move freely in your awareness, and thus get completed in the present moment. This just happens by itself. Again, you don’t have to do anything special. The sound takes you on the journey of emotional healing.
5. A gong bath is deeply relaxing.
As a result of clearing body blockages, emotional healing, staying still in a resting position for an hour, giving yourself a break from action and reaction, you end up in a very relaxed state, usually. Sometimes not. Some times, it brings you to something you have to deal with in your life and then, you are clear and with power, but not relaxed, but usually this is not the case. Usually, people tend to float out of the studio when the gong bath is over.
6. You will have the best sleep of your life.
Some people being able to sleep the whole night through, for the first time in years. Others report vivid dreaming. Some sleep lightly the first night after a gong bath, and then deeply thereafter. The value of better sleep is probably obvious to you.
7. A gong bath takes you to stillness.
All the great spiritual teachers seem to agree. The key ingredient to awakening is getting quiet and staying alert. This alert quiet is the dawn of your own wisdom, and it is available to you at every gong bath.
8. A gong bath helps you to appreciate the sounds of a modern life.
Cars, trucks, road construction, bustling streets, busses filled with people and conversations; there are so many different sounds we deal with on a daily basis. How do we deal them? Do we ignore them? Do we put our headphones on and escape from them? Do they bring out emotions like anger or fear? If you are like me, the answer to all these questions is ‘all of the above.’ I have done all of that. The gong baths have changed this. Paradoxically, they have made me more sensitive, but at the same time more tolerant and even appreciative of sounds that used to bother me a lot. This is because a gong bath has so many different kinds of sounds that we start creating new associates with sounds we just called noise previously. It is an underrated benefit of immense value to walk around town and appreciate all the varied sounds, as if they were music.
9. Repeated gong baths create even more valuable results for people.
All the people who come regularly know this. With repeated gong baths, the experience of the bath goes deeper and deeper, beyond all the stories and preferences, beyond our ideas of who we are, into a space of alert receptivity that goes down and further down into a gentle stillness which is nothing but spacious awareness. I will be writing more about this one in the near future.
10. Gong baths help us to be more loving.
Without even trying, just by attending gong baths, and learning to journey through the millions of memories, images, sounds, we nurture a more accepting and loving approach to life. This approach will impact everyone you come in contact with. From strangers to spouses; from colleagues to kids. This is no small thing. It is a huge thing, and the best part about it is that you don’t need to do anything to get it. You just show up and it happens.