Let the noise wash over you and relieve anxiety and boost wellness

I’ve been trying to get myself to a gong bath for quite a while now but it seemed that every time I managed to get one in the diary, something else would crop up. When the planets finally did align so that I was actually free to attend a gong bath and duly handed over my credit card details, I received an email less than five minutes later telling me it had been cancelled. A message from the universe, perhaps? And then came Covid-19…

Gong baths, for the uninitiated, do not involve a bath in the traditional sense. You don’t get wet. You get bathed in sound. A gong practitioner plays a gong or singing bowls while bathers practise slow yoga moves or just hang out on a yoga mat under a blanket and let the noise wash over them. It’s an ancient form of sound therapy that’s become increasingly popular with modern wellness seekers, promising as it does relief from stress, pain and anxiety, and a boost to the immune system as the gong’s vibrations are echoed in the body.

But the idea of other people’s bare feet, yoga mats and communal blankets seems far from relaxing now. It’s hard to imagine a time in the foreseeable future when I wouldn’t rather lick the handrails on a Northern line Tube carriage than risk that sort of exposure again. So is a gong bath something you can do at home?

Searching the Internet for a suitable recording to start with, I happened upon Sheila Whittaker. Whittaker is a former professional violinist, with 40 years’ experience as a music teacher. She has been using music in a healing capacity for the past two decades. She also runs a gong practitioner course.

Explaining the way a gong bath works on the body, Whittaker writes: “The gongs spread their vibrations both here on the physical plane, and also in other finer dimensions, where their higher and lower sounds are beyond our human hearing. The gongs work on all aspects of our being: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. The rich layers of sound which emanate from the well-played gong affect every part of us… It is said that dis-ease begins in the subtle energy body, and only migrates to the physical after some time. Therefore if we can remove blockages, imbalances and stagnant energy in the energy body before it manifests in the physical, we can prevent illness and keep ourselves healthy.”

Who doesn’t want some help with staying healthy right now? Whittaker goes on to explain that the sounds produced by the gongs can also shift blockages on an emotional level and enhance creativity by concentrating our focus in the right side of the brain, which is traditionally believed to be the more creative side. I’ve said in this column before that I’m sceptical the “right-brain creative / left-brain logical” thing is really that simple, but the potential benefits of a gong bath seemed compelling. I couldn’t find any discussion of negative side effects, except that gongs can get quite loud. Fortunately, at home you’re in charge of the volume.

I got in touch with Whittaker to ask whether listening to a gong bath online would be a decent substitute for the real thing. She responded: “Obviously it’s better to be physically present at a gong bath to get the maximum effect from the gong sounds. However, recorded sounds can also be very effective, especially if the recipient lies down in a darkened room wearing headphones, with no interruptions. Also, if the recipient has attended a live gong bath, and subsequently listened to a recorded one in this way, their body/mind will recall the sounds and the event, and take them back into the experience of the live session. So a recorded or online live session, or a gong CD can indeed have very beneficial relaxing and calming effects and as we’re self-isolating at the moment, with no live gong bath sessions happening, that’s clearly the way to go at present.”

I followed Whittaker’s instructions for making the online experience as effective as possible. I drew the curtains and plugged in my headphones, still wondering as I did so whether listening to the sounds of a gong would be any more effective than the pan pipe music that has me wanting to run screaming from the average beauty salon?

The sounds that Whittaker can get from her gongs are astonishing. Moving between them with enviable grace and serenity, she doesn’t just bang them with a mallet (of which she has many in different sizes), occasionally she plays smaller gongs with a bow. Played by Whittaker, a single large gong can make a number of sounds at once. At times, it's as though the gong speaks with some ancient alien voice. At other times, the noise is remarkably mammalian, like whale song. Or else it hums like a choir of hooded monks warming up for a Gregorian chant, while in the background you can almost hear distant cathedral bells. Or distant sirens. Even listening to a YouTube recording through headphones, I get the sensation that the noises are coming from all around.

The sound of a gong bath is weird and wonderful but how about the way it works on the body? While listening, I do feel at times as though I am vibrating. Curious images pop into my mind. Is this the right brain waking up? I feel half-asleep yet in many ways totally alert. As the gong bath ends and I sit up again, I wonder how much more intense the effect might have been if I were in the room with a real gong a few steps away.

Which of us hasn’t experienced quickly cycling mood swings in this extraordinary time? Going through four emotional seasons in one day is not unusual any more. But two hours after listening to one of Whittaker’s recordings, having negotiated a long queue to get into the supermarket only to find that they didn’t have any of the things I needed, I still felt remarkably calm.

At the beginning of the lockdown, I made myself a star chart, in the manner of those behaviour charts you see pinned to the fridges in homes where there are under-10s. I knew that even for someone who has worked from home for years, it would be hard to keep a sense of normality while the outside world was in so much flux. I draw a star on the chart every time I hit my daily word count, every time I haul my ass to the yoga mat, every time I practice the Italian I very much hope to be able to use in Italy before the year is out. Now a bit of ancient healing in the form of seven minutes listening to one of Sheila Whittaker’s gong baths is also part of my daily routine.

I don’t think many of us will look back on this time and say it was the best time of our lives, but as an opportunity to experiment and explore, it’s priceless. It’s hard to find silver linings in lockdown, but I’m grateful for the slowdown that allowed me to experience a gong bath in my own living room