I describe a crystal singing bowl sound healing as something like an internal massage, working at a deep energetic level to deeply relax, so both emotional and physical healing can occur.
I’d like to describe a little bit about what happens for me in a crystal singing bowl session and how I experience the playing out of the process that takes place.
Yesterday I played my bowls for a client who was struggling with a high level of stress. The anxiety that came with the stress was making him feel seriously ungrounded and detached. He said he felt uncomfortable in his body and the simplest decision was beyond his ability to make! His head felt tight and tense. He was unsure even if he could be still enough to lie down and receive the bowls, but was hoping for the best.
For the session he lay down comfortably next to seven of my crystal singing bowls. I have seven bowls that are tuned in to a frequency that resonates with the seven chakras. Chakras are energy centres within the body that relate to specific physical and energetic symptoms and/or experiences.
I sat in the middle of the crystal singing bowls and emptied my mind. Allowing intuition and a certain clairsentience to lead the playing. Clairsentience is ‘knowing’ by feeling. That’s mainly my point of reference for intuition – is how things feel. I often pick up on what’s happening for my client by tuning into to what I feel in relation to the clients experience.
Each time I play the bowls I’m unsure of what will happen or what the person needs. The bowls dictate exactly what to do, I simply set an intention for the highest good of the client and listen in. In this case, before I began playing I had thought that my sixth chakra bowl, the bowl that resonates most strongly at the third eye point, might be the healing bowl for this client, considering the tension in his head and the tightness he described located at his frontal lobe.
As it turned out, that bowl would hardly play – indicating that frequency was too strong for him at this time, and in fact not what he needed at all (wahe guru bowls 🙂 ). Instead, I was drawn to focus on his third chakra – Manipura chakra. This chakra is all about personal power, of feeling strong and focused and sure of who you are, aligned to your true self.
Alongside this, I felt a pull to play the crown chakra bowl and the root chakra bowl together.
- The crown chakra (Sahasraha chakra): when this chakra is balanced, you feel connected to infinite unity and universal oneness.
- The root chakra (Muladhara chakra): when this chakra is balanced you feel grounded, supported, like you belong and are comfortable on this earth. You feel connected to your body.
Within the session I interspersed sounds for the heart chakra (love and unity) and the throat chakra (communication, expression) and the second chakra (sexuality, creativity, flow).
After some time I could feel a shift for him. At first he felt fragile, a little scared and vulnerable. Then heavier, more relaxed. This moved into a feeling of lightness and a space of healing. Some playing sounded more a-tonal (or, disharmonious). I felt that this disharmony in the playing was shifting energy and clearing some blockages in his body, allowing his prana (chi, or energy) to flow, supporting his nervous system to calm down.
Afterwards he seemed a bit like he had a good strong energetic weight in his belly, anchoring him in a more grounded state, more centred and calm. His face relaxed and he described feeling like his senses had all awakened. Like he had just arrived in the day, noticing the sunshine, he felt inspired to walk barefoot on the grass and generally felt present in the moment.
