Not that long ago someone handed us a singing bowl to experiment with for a weekend. We have a deep dislike for mixing therapy and new age concepts and will gladly spare you from chakra massages and the esoteric meaning of different frequencies. Instead we want to look at small exercises that can support mindfulness, grounding, regulation and inner work with parts.

For these exercises you need a singing bowl. An app with the sound will not do. There is no need for a huge bowl though, something that fits your palm is enough.

Simple listening

A lot of traumatized people struggle with mindfulness exercises. The silence and stillness offers too much room for memories to come up. Listening exercises are among the easiest mindfulness practices for trauma patients because we already listen for sounds of danger all the time. When we focus our attention on the sounds of the singing bowl instead of our surroundings we can let go of listening for danger for a moment and listen to a single calm and clear sound instead.

Place your singing bowl in front of you and tap it to create sound. Notice how loud it is and how the sound develops over time. When you can’t hear it anymore, wait a moment, notice, and then ring it again. Repeat and notice. Tapping the bowl differently will create a slightly different sound each time, a different development. Follow the sound with your awareness and breathe.

The passing of everything

As you listen you can meditate on how the sound moves through different phases, changes over time and passes. It is like that with all things in life. Emotions might show up strong at first but their energy changes over time and they pass. Memories come up but with every flashback there is a phase of re-orientation and it too will pass. All the uncomfortable experiences will move through change and eventually their sound fades.

If you have parts inside who are not aware of the concept of time, they can join you in listening. As you notice the quality of the sound at first, after a while, when it fades, you can explain how time passes, always moving forward, and how things change with time. Maybe you can imagine how many times a bowl would have rung between the present moment and back when bad things happened. And every time you tap the bowl and listen to the sound fading, time brings you farther away from those troubling events of your life. Let that understanding sink in.

The multitude of sounds

When you listen carefully you will notice that a singing bowl doesn’t make a single sound. There are layers of different frequencies. When you first ring the bowl one might be dominant. But over time it fades and other frequencies can be heard more clearly. Some others show up later and last longest. It is all one bowl and one action of ringing it, but it sings in many voices. All of them are part of the nature of this specific bowl and none of them is more or less important than the other. There are just layers of sound that show at different times.

Reflect on how this is similar to the voices inside and being part of a whole.

Living vibrations

For this exercise you place the singing bowl in your hand. It is less about the sound and more about sensing the vibrations of the bowl while it rings. Tap it gently and try to sense what it feels like on your palm. Notice anything that you can feel in your hand and repeat the sound as often as you like. Maybe you can notice that your own hand has a rhythm too and how your heart beat meets the vibrations of the bowl. You are a living, breathing person with your own vibrations that can meet the vibrations of the word around you. It is one thing to know that in your head and a very different thing to feel it in your hand.

Body awareness

This exercise is a bit more difficult and if you chronically dissociate your body awareness it might be helpful but it also might be a bit too big for you yet. So please be careful and don’t do anything that causes too much dysregulation or panic. (More)

You can use the vibrations of the bowl to increase your awareness of different body parts. For that, you put the bowl on that part of your body, ring it and try to feel the vibrations it causes in that location. Sensing the vibrations of the bowl can feel less threatening than feeling actual touch. It is just a bowl. There is no need to remove clothes, it can be tangible even through them if they are thin enough. Start with arms or legs, not your belly. Move slowly and only as far as you comfortably can. A lot of traditional singing bowl meditations place the bowl on the belly right away and that can be a pretty overwhelming experience. Yes, it looks and feels a bit weird, but nobody is watching and you can experiment and put the bowl anywhere you like, even your cheek or forehead or the soles of your feet. Sometimes the vibrations help to loosen muscles that are tight.

Sounding

Making humming sounds or vocalizations is common practice to reduce stress and allow yourself to have a voice. It can be an important part of trauma processing to be able to do that. But often it is not possible because there is too much fear of being heard. The memory of punishment for that sits deep. When we work with a singing bowl we use it as a guide and imitate it. It can make a sound and nobody can even see it, the bowl never moves out of its place. But it does make a sound. Maybe this is specific to my own trauma and maybe it means something to you too. No movement is needed to be heard. Even if we can’t overcome the fear of moving yet, we can already make sounds.

Sit with the bowl, listen to its ability to make sound. Then try to join in. It is showing you how to do it. You probably won’t be able to match the sound perfectly, there are too many layers, but you can try. That way you can experiment with modulating your own voice. It is possible to draw courage from hearing the singing bowl. If a bowl can do it safely, you can too. This might be especially helpful for silent parts who are too scared to speak in the presence of another person.

Finding Quiet

Some days it is just loud inside. When the front person tries to find some quiet it just encourages everyone else to talk even louder because it seems like there is finally a chance of being heard. The intrusions can get severe and rob us of any kind of rest.

When we listen, we don’t speak. So when we get all of the parts to listen to the singing bowl, we get a few moments of quiet inside. Maybe there is even a sense of awe. It is not like listening to the ocean waves, something that causes quiet awe in our system every time, but it is regularly available outside of vacations. If it works, it can give us a break from intrusions for a while. Tired hosts will understand.

Transitional object

I have had a number of transitional objects over the past 13 years but hardly anything worked as well as a singing bowl. At first it seems like a strange choice, it isn’t soft or fluffy and a piece of metal doesn’t feel very warm. But it does make a sound, which makes it unlike any other transitional object. Being able to create a sound that we have heard in therapy before and that is therefore connected to the image of the therapist comes very close to creating a comforting voice for ourselves. When things get difficult we can sit and listen and it feels like someone is actually there and communicating with us. I was a bit stunned about how well this works and how calming it is even when things are exceptionally rough. When a therapist is using a singing bowl regularly to frame mindfulness exercises, guided imagery or relaxation it can become a strong positive connection.

Conditioning for calmness

For any of these exercises and whenever a singing bowl is used in therapy regularly we can see a conditioning effect. When we always ring the bowl before practicing relaxation, after a while our body will start to relax automatically when it hears the sound. The same can be true for any kind of grounding or sense of inner connection that we practice with the bowl. Over time just hearing the sound will give us a headstart and help us enter the desired state more easily. All it needs is the regular use of the singing bowl when we do these exercises and the conditioning will happen automatically. On rough days it can be extra hard to find calm when we are so stressed and with the help of a conditioned response it is made significantly easier.

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These are the things we learned through experiments. I hope some of it makes you curious to do some on your own. Everything we described needs an actual experience to fully understand and sense what it is about. Knowing what it is supposed to do is not enough. You will have to try it for yourself.

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