How Crystal Singing Bowls Can Help You Let Go
Crystal Singing Bowls are beautiful and entrancing instruments with powerful vibrations that can have a profoundly calming effect on the mind, body, and spirit. That, on its own, is therapeutic, but we are only just beginning to understand and scrape the surface of the magnitude of their therapeutic potential. And one of the most beautiful aspects about these healing instruments, is that they can help us let go of difficult emotion. In this article, I go over exactly how this happens, and leave you with an active crystal singing bowl meditation exercise, to get you started on your journey.
The Healing Enchantment of Crystal Singing Bowls
You see, crystal singing bowls are musical instruments; and, in certain pleasing combinations, they can produce beautiful harmonies that can mystify the senses and take us to enchanted inner spaces. And just like other music or art that inspires us with profound calm, they can help us to remember and access lighter feelings. Because they are sounds, and sounds are a “felt sense,” an awareness in the body, they can change the way we feel in a way that words, or our rational mind, cannot. We end up leaving the heaviness of the past behind to surrender to the present moment.
“Presence is not some exotic state that we need to search for or manufacture. In the simplest terms, it is the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience.” - Tara Brach
If you’ve ever tried to rationalize your way out of a strong emotion, you know full well that the emotion is often strongly connected with a thought loop. Thought loops are very difficult to rewire or get rid of, if they continue to trigger the strong emotion. The more we try and fail, the more frustration is added to the mix… and so, the cycle perpetuates itself, and we feel stuck… unable to let go!
Crystal singing bowl tones can help to interrupt that stuck pattern with the beauty and mystical nature of their tones, allowing us to distance ourselves from the stuck emotion as we begin to embody a different sensation — enchantment with the mystical experience of their sound. This enchantment captivates our senses… and before we know it, we have left behind all other emotion and distraction, to be fully immersed in the sensations that their vibrations send through our bodies.
Their long, drawn-out tones can lull us into meditative states, where any conscious resistance most often proves futile to their hypnotic pulsing. They produce immediate sensation within our bodies. This sensation can turn our undivided attention to their sounds and how the sounds feel within our bodies. When performed skillfully, these magical tones can help us embody gentleness, even self-compassion, and trigger our body’s relaxation response.
“To heal is to touch with love, that which we previously touched with fear.” - Stephen Levine
This activates the parasympathetic nervous system, flooding our bodies with neurotransmitters that help us physically let go of tension and allow our bodies to go into a “rest state.” In essence, crystal singing bowls go straight to the heartstrings, and bypass any objecting thoughts all together. It’s like when you receive a soothing massage. No matter your resistance, if someone triggers just the right spots, you immediately become limp and let go.
Crystal Singing Bowls Can Be An Active Or Passive Meditation
A passive meditation performed by an expert sound therapist definitely can allow the body and mind to let go in a deeper way, letting you eventually access states of non-ordinary reality (the world of what Carl Jung refers to as “active imagination”). This world can show you a lot about your inner reality, and can providing insight about the beliefs and emotions that shape your reality. A passive sound bath meditation will also allow your body to go into deep rest that can only happen when your muscles are fully relaxed. The process of receiving the gift of their vibrations can also help foster feelings of self-nurturing.
But that is only one way to experience the transformative effects of crystal singing bowls. And you don’t have to attend a skillfully performed sound bath in order to receive great benefit from their celestial tones. You can also use them yourself, as an active form of mindfulness meditation. To do this, simply involves mindfully sustaining their tone, while turning your attention to how their vibrations feel as they pass into your body.
Here’s an example:
An Active Crystal Singing Bowl Meditation for Letting Go
Begin playing your crystal singing bowl in full circles. Allow each inhale to last two full circles, and each exhale to last three full circles (Depending on your bowl size, this can be a different number. Ultimately, make sure that it feels natural and comfortable to you.)
Once you begin to entrain your rhythm with the movement of full circles around your bowl, allow your eyes to gently close, as you continue.
Envision a white light emanating from your bowl and rising from its center with every full circle.
Direct that light and the bowl’s vibrations to travel up and enter at the crown of your head.
Now allow each inhale to refocus your attention to the sensations entering your body, noticing how the white light and gentle sounds feel as they pass through your entire body,
And allow each exhale to refocus your attention to all heaviness exiting down into the ground below you.
Do this for as long as you need, until you begin to feel lighter.
You Deserve to Experience The Enchantment of Crystal Singing Bowls
I hope that this article inspires you to go and experience more of what crystal singing bowls have to offer. It is only in “rest states,” that our bodies can experience healing. And when stress piles up on us, it eventually manifests in physical ways. Holding on to heavy emotions only creates stress in our bodies and minds. While letting go of the “stuck” emotion can help release that destructive stress, and improve our lives with the lightness of being! Using crystal singing bowls to help you let go of stress and “stuck” emotion can re-enchant your life with a beautiful healing ritual whose effects can be felt even deeper over time.
If you enjoyed this article and are enchanted by crystal singing bowls, you can check out this high-quality singing bowl sound bath Morning Crystal Singing Bowl Meditation on my YouTube channel. I also encourage you to sign up for my Sound Alchemy Newsletter to discover more about sound alchemy and the lightness of being:
Want to learn how to use crystal singing bowls? Train with me.
And of course, if you’re in Sarasota, nothing beats the live in-person sounds of crystal singing bowl resonance. Check out my Events page and sign up to experience my exquisite multiple-practitioner sound offerings!
And as you venture into the world of sound therapy, may you find more and more ways to embrace the lightness of being!
