I have always struggled with multiple sounds at once. When my mother asks me questions while I’m binge watching the latest season of Bridgerton, Lady Whistledown’s dialogues and my mother’s asks start melting into one chaotic scene in my head. If I’m trying to write an email while my colleagues discuss the latest trend, I get agitated. My anxiety getting worse on an odd day is directly proportional to the festival procession I faintly hear from far away starting to make their way closer to my building. My body reacts before my brain can process it all.
For someone easily overstimulated, sound has never been a friend. Nights and early mornings are, mostly because the world finally lowers its volume.
So when I got the opportunity to try sound bathing therapy at Sohum Wellness Sanctuary, I was sceptical. Sound bathing or sound healing is a centuries-old guided meditation wellness practice that uses metal bowls, gongs, chimes, tuning forks and sometimes even high pitched singing, to create vibrations intended to relax the body and settle the nervous system. It made no sense to me.
But, my shoulders dropped almost as soon as I entered the retreat. Turning off Sheikh Zayed Road into a path studded with shrubbery, leading up to a small manmade pond with an intricate Buddha sculpture sat in its middle, the colours warm and muted, it feels serene enough to forget that you are in a high-speed city full of skyscrapers.
The place smelled like how it looked, scents of earth mixed with essential oils. Still anxious about what my ears would be put through, I was introduced to the sound therapist Ana Radojkovic. She sat in a room without any architectural lighting, a range of tools including metal gongs and bronze bowls in all sizes lined up in front of a Himalayan salt brick wall. It felt like I was watching the last few minutes of a sunset on a breezy day.
Radojkovic and I spoke for a while about me being a sceptic, how I experience anxiety from time to time. She let me know that everyone comes out of the session with a different experience: some people feel emotional, some people feel energised. That reminded me: a colleague had mentioned earlier that some people even cry at the end of these sessions.
I sent up a prayer to all the Gods I have heard of: Do not let me cry in front of a kind stranger. Radojkovic asked me to lie down in a comfortable position on a mat. She covered my eyes with a mask and my body with a soft blanket. It began with softer sounds spaced a few seconds apart and gradually became more intense, with all the sounds overlapping at times, sometimes forming a kind of melody. Some resembled a bell at temples, some wind chimes on a higher volume. There was a brief moment where the therapist was swaying the ocean drum, a round frame with metal beads inside, I could actually feel like I was laying down on a beach, listening to the waves crashing against the shore.
