People meditate during a Sound Healing Symphony, organized by Sound Meditation SF at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
People meditate during a Sound Healing Symphony, organized by Sound Meditation SF at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
The Sound Healing Symphony plays at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
The Sound Healing Symphony plays at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Tibetan bowls arranged at a Sound Meditation SF event at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Tibetan bowls arranged at a Sound Meditation SF event at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
People meditate during a Sound Healing Symphony, organized by Sound Meditation SF at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
People meditate during a Sound Healing Symphony, organized by Sound Meditation SF at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
A woman is doused in sage smoke ahead of a Sound Healing Symphony on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
A woman is doused in sage smoke ahead of a Sound Healing Symphony on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
People wait outside Grace Cathedral in San Frnacisco ahead of a Sound Healing Symphony on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
People wait outside Grace Cathedral in San Frnacisco ahead of a Sound Healing Symphony on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
People wait outside Grace Cathedral in San Frnacisco ahead of a Sound Healing Symphony on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
People wait outside Grace Cathedral in San Frnacisco ahead of a Sound Healing Symphony on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
People prepare to meditate during a Sound Healing Symphony, organized by Sound Meditation SF at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
People prepare to meditate during a Sound Healing Symphony, organized by Sound Meditation SF at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Scenes from a Sound Healing Symphony on Oct. 23, 2017 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
Hundreds began lining up in the courtyard of Grace Cathedral as the sun dipped behind the stone spires on a warm San Francisco night in September. The crowd, many dressed in sweatpants or pajamas, were not waiting for a prayer service, nor a pop-up dining experience, nor tickets to "Hamilton." They were waiting to meditate.
The group queued up for the sold-out Sound Healing Symphony, organized by Sound Meditation SF, was diverse and large – about 1,200 people of all ages and subcultures, awaiting a few hours of sound-induced bliss.
An usher, prayer beads draped across her chest, checked the ticket on my smartphone as another usher doused our surroundings in burnt sage. A woman with a pillow tucked between her arms chatted with a friend as they waited to be let inside the cathedral.
"It can induce orgasm," the woman with the pillow said. Her companion nodded, sucking marijuana vapor through a silver contraption.
According to Guy Douglas, founder of Sound Meditation SF and a veteran gong player, the Sound Healing Symphony in San Francisco is the "largest sound bath in the country." Other sound meditation facilitators in California, including Jamie Bechtold of the Soundbath Center in LA, confirmed such claims.
Bigger isn't always better, especially when it comes to an intimate experience like meditation, but thousands of peace-and-love seekers in San Francisco have welcomed Sound Meditation SF into their health-and-wellness arsenals. The company has organized six mass meditations – of 1,200-plus attendees– at Grace Cathedral this year, tickets for which sold out in a matter of hours. A typical sessions costs $25 for a floor space and up to $150 for the VIP meditation experience — a reserved spot at the front, near the instruments. (Note: Sound Meditation SF provided me with a free ticket.)
My curiosity was piqued by sound bath-faithful friends and Facebook events with 6,000 RSVPs, and I decided to set aside my skepticism and attend Sound Meditation SF's September session to try the new meditation craze sweeping up the city in a cloud of incense.
"I don't know where my money is actually going," mused one friend in attendance, who swears by the "magic" of sound healing. "But heck," she said, "it's cheaper than therapy."
The evening was undeniably enjoyable, even for someone like me, who often rolls her eyes at Burning Man-esque endeavors. In the end, it's hard to knock hundreds of people coming together in pursuit of inner peace, by whatever means.
Laying on a yoga mat, surrounded by folks with blankies and sleep masks, I felt like I was attending a giant slumber party, albeit with more gongs and New Age speak. Admittedly, such moments of equanimity were disrupted by some of the less zen among the attendees, who became possessive of their meditation space and growled when I tried to place my mat closer to the gongs.
As the evening progressed, a small orchestra of instruments – a harp, didgeridoo, monochord, vibraphone, Native American flutes, Tibetan bowls, chimes – filled the stone building with waves of complex tones for two blissful hours.
Sometimes I found the bizarre sounds distracting (I'm used to meditating in silence, with limited instruction from a teacher), and my mind filled with chatter as it tried to place which tone was coming from which instrument. Other questions popped into my mind, too, no matter how hard I tried to keep my thoughts – and skepticism – at bay.
***
As a lifelong practitioner of Buddhist meditation I was suspicious of Sound Meditation SF, having spent years attempting to cajole friends into attending meditation sits at my local, donation-based studio in the Mission District to no avail.
What made the company so successful? And how were they enticing some folks to pay $150 for a two-hour-long meditation? I spoke with Douglas and his co-founder Simona Asinovski to find out the magic behind the meditation movement.
Sound Meditation SF began with the gongs. Douglas, also known as "The Gong Guy" in certain communities, has played the instrument for upwards of 10 years throughout the nation. It wasn't until he joined forces with Asinovski, a self-described "little hippie who got into tech," that the massive sound baths truly took off.
Asinovski comes from a tech marketing background – she's already brought the baths to employees at Adobe and Facebook – and she's spearheaded the efforts to bring sound healing to the mainstream in San Francisco.
"I've ended up using a lot of the techniques I learned in tech marketing to promote Sound Meditation," she said, citing Facebook advertising as the primary way she reaches out to prospective meditators.
Ultimately, Asinovski and Douglas chock up their lightning-quick success – Sound Meditation SF was started about a year-and-a-half ago – not to savvy marketing, but community need.
"With the way times are right now, just how this year has been politically, people are feeling a lot of despair and stress," Douglas noted. "People are looking for some sanctuary, some place to go to unplug from the daily madness."
Sound baths, he suggests, are just the place.
When talking with the pair, it's obvious that Douglas is the spiritual brains behind the operation. He speaks in grand proclamations about the power of sound and its manifold healing benefits, some of which would certainly raise an eyebrow among scientists.
"The sounds of sound baths are designed to cancel mind chatter and bring you to that zero point of meditation," he said. "They can make your cells vibrate with the harmonics so that you reach a meditative state faster than with traditional meditation techniques."
The planets, he said, vibrate at a particular frequency, and musicians have "taken that knowledge and put it inside of these gongs."
Douglas went on to cite multiple incidences in which attendees had begun the sound meditation with physical pain and left with none.
"We're not exactly sure what's happening," he said.
Asinovski was quick to bring the conversation back to more concrete terms. She explained that they named the organization "Sound Meditation" in order to relate to more people.
"Healing is something people think you do when you're sick," she said. "We want to encourage the idea that coming home to yourself is something we should do all the time."
***
As is true of many forms of meditation, the scientific research surrounding sound healing is nebulous.
Chris Kyriakakis, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California and director of the Immersive Audio Labratory, studies sound and its manifold effects for a living. He says there are countless scientific studies demonstrating the benefits of music therapy, specifically for those with Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, anxiety, depression and people recovering from acute myocardial infarction. Kyriakakis also concurred that sound can induce meditative state, although not necessarily faster than other forms of meditation.
None of the research he cited, however, relied on sound baths, crystal bowls, resonances or vibrations.
He also debunked Douglas' claims that gongs can be tuned to the frequencies of the planets and that cells vibrate in response to sound.
"[Cells] can vibrate," he said, though only "when exposed to infrared laser light."
But what of orgasms, as my fellow sound bath attendee insisted she had experienced?
"As for inducing orgasm," Douglas said, "the answer is ... sort of. There is quite a bit of published research on the ability of certain music patterns to produce chills or goosebumps. One psychologist has gone as far as to call this a 'skin orgasm.'"
***
In the end, I didn't experience a "flying through space" sensation nor an orgasm at Sound Meditation SF's Sound Healing Symphony. But I'll admit, it felt peaceful to lie down and hear live, beautiful music for a few hours.
When the sounds faded and the musical cleansing was complete, I fluttered my eyes open and quietly rolled up my mat to outpace the slow-moving masses maneuvering towards the door.
That evening, as I carved a path across the darkened streets of San Francisco toward home, I took a moment to check in with my body, and my psyche.
I felt rested, undoubtedly, though hardly enlightened.
Read Michelle Robertson’s latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com.
Read Again http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/I-tried-the-insanely-popular-SF-sound-meditation-12303422.phpBagikan Berita Ini
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