Strength in Sound
Using Tibetan bowls to calm, heal
On the night of a new moon, LAURA CHURCH prepares for a group sound healing, arranging each of her eight Tibetan singing bowls onto a yoga mat. She readies the delicate bowls, gently tapping them with a mallet before the impressive sounds begin. Her clients relax in shavasana, or corpse pose, using pillows and blankets for comfort. Soon, unusual tones and sound waves travel through the room, creating vibratory frequencies that are meant to promote healing of the mind, body, and spirit.
For centuries, Church explains, Himalayan people used the bowls for healing and meditation. Today, healing artists employ this practice in various forms. Church learned about sound healing from an opera singer who used her voice as a tool. At a time when Church sought personal healing, she listened to downloaded audio of metal Tibetan singing bowls.
“It just made me cry, it was so profound. I just felt the energy and the spirit wash over,” Church says. “I ended up finding an eighteenth-century bowl that had an F-note that matched the frequency for the high heart chakra. I was intrigued by this bowl, and I knew it was meant to be mine.”
Soon, she also purchased a set of seven bowls, corresponding with the seven chakras and other aura fields. In Hindu traditions, the chakras represent the main energy centers, aligned with the body. Higher chakras, Church explains, can respond to higher pitched notes, and vice versa.
As a licensed massage therapist, she has worked with energy and healing arts for most of her life, though she believes the bowls provide a distinctive experience.
“The vibrations may reach a certain part of your body you feel blocked in. They can reach areas of tension that massage may not,” she says, “I can attempt to explain it all day long, but until you actually feel it, you don’t know.”
Her clients receive sound healing for various reasons from knee problems to heart palpitations to stress and anxiety relief.
“I feel that I’m intuitively guided to use certain bowls. I will go with my inner guidance and play improvisation like a jazz artist. I don’t have a set way of doing it each time – it’s always a complete work of art,” she says. “Everyone’s situation is different. It’s customized from what I’m picking up from them energetically.”
Even during group healings, Church believes different vibrations, notes, and sounds meet each person’s individual needs.
Though she offers private sessions, she often holds group healings during each new moon and full moon of the month at Pomegranate Books or Exhale Yoga and Wellness Studio. Private sessions can take place wherever the client prefers, but Church works regularly at Harmony Yoga.
As Church plays the Tibetan singing bowls, she benefits from sound healing as well.
“The bowls have helped me to clear myself – helped me to balance my own chakras,” she says. “It’s like (the bowls) have been entrusted to me. They’re my tools. My hands are my tools, but the bowls are too. They have my imprint energetically.”
