My Journey into Sound Baths

I’m often asked after a gathering about how I got into facilitating sound baths.  It’s a question that has quite a lengthy answer and which I don’t usually have time to fully expand on in the moment.

But I thought it might be worth writing a bit more about my journey to this point, and why the sessions I run matter so much to me.

Firstly, I think it’s important to start by saying that much of my waking life is occupied with a question:

What is it mine to do?

This isn’t to be confused with what am I good at, or what pays the bills.  Instead, it’s a feeling of what is it mine to bring to the world, in service to life, at this particular moment. I’ve wrestled with this question for a while now and sound baths have become part of my answer to that. But the route was long and, as is often the way when we take a sideways step, not particularly straight.

As many of you will already know, I’m a musician.  I have been since I was 4 years old and I suppose it’s in this capacity that I fundamentally identify. Music and sound is, and always has been, as necessary as breathing for me.

From as far back as I can remember, there was always a piano and organ at home which I obsessively played, and this in turn led to the traditional path of studying at one of the UK’s leading conservatoires, followed by years of performing, accompanying and teaching.  I loved it.  In many ways I still do and I have always had a natural affinity for it.  For most of my life it felt like the right path.

However, looking back, I suppose the first real crack in my outlook appeared in my mid twenties, during regular visits to Turkey.  At this time I became aware of the Whirling Dervishes (Sufis and followers of the poet and mystic, Rumi) and began to get ever more curious about who they were and what they did.  The music was intoxicating and their movements so incredibly graceful and devoted. I was hooked and wanted to learn more.

It was here that I discovered the poetry of Rumi, which stopped me dead.  The beauty, the mysticism, the profound depth - I had never read anything like it.  This was a tradition entirely built around the dissolution of the self.. The idea that the ego is not the point; that surrender is not weakness but a destination.  I found these ideas compelling.

And yet, building a career as a performer, as I was, put me in a dilemma.  A career choice that is, by its nature, entirely organised around the self - putting oneself in front of people to be seen, to be heard, to be judged.  The ego was the driver of that ambition, but yet felt entirely at odds with Rumi’s perspective of the world - the one that I found completely absorbing.

The dilemma didn’t resolve quickly, and it’s probably still resolving now.  However, it did begin to gradually send me in a different direction.  Firstly in how I approached performance of music. More focus on the space between the notes. More silence and less emphasis on honing a perfect technique.

Gradually, as my perspective continued to shift, I was moved towards ambient and electronic music; the idea of using sound as an environment rather than purely as performance and spectacle.  

I suppose I was beginning to question what music can do when it’s not trying to impress or perform.

Sound bath work is perhaps the closest I’ve come to finding some sort of an answer.  I’m physically and mentally present in the room, but I’m not the focus.  The sound does the work and I am just a vessel for whatever wants to emerge.  

People arrive carrying whatever they carry and gradually something shifts.  Not because of what I’ve performed, but because of what is brought to the session by each individual, and therefore what is being held by the group.  

The deeper motivation though is this: I profoundly believe that the times we are in are urgent.  I believe we are in a moment that asks something of each of us.  Questions surrounding what a community can be, how people can genuinely meet each other, and how we can support each other through difficulty.

At this moment, these feel like the real questions, and sound baths are perhaps one place where I can work on them.

For me, it is the building of something that is more about connection and less about consumption.  Less about ‘I’ and more about what happens when people allow themselves to gather in a room together and let themselves be still.

That’s the direction anyway.  I’m still navigating it, and with a lifetime of learning ahead.