I first experienced a gong bath as part of a kundalini yoga session. I had signed up for a week of yoga in an ashram in the foothills of the French Alps. This was a powerful and transformative experience that set me on the path to becoming a kundalini yoga instructor and the journey into discovering who I think I am and who I really am. More so, it began my passage to re-defining myself, finding my own true purpose and connecting with my higher self and consciousness. During one of the sessions the yogi Karta Singh, a student of Yogi Bhajan, outlined a re-birthing process involving the sounds produced by a gong. I was quite skeptical of this and the whole week as the lifestyle choices made by the ashram community were very different to those, I felt comfortable with. Nevertheless, I opened myself to the whole experience of the yoga, particularly the thought of a re-birthing process with the gong.

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I had no idea what to expect. As the gong sounds built, I began to feel my whole body. It felt like every one of my cells were shaking with the sounds. I became fearful and anxious and felt huge pressure on top of my chest, an uncomfortable crushing feeling. The sounds became stronger and louder and they washed over me like waves of energy, from toe to head. It really felt like a powerful force, a sonic boom, washing away my whole being. Indeed, it was probably one of the scariest physical experiences I have had. At points I thought my chest and head were going to explode as the sound waves crashed through my body. Even so, I let myself fall into the sounds and allowed the waves to ride over me. At times I felt I was dying, that everything was going. The more the waves came the more I wanted them. Louder stronger and the more powerful they were, the better. I could feel my chest rising and falling with each wave. I felt I was being pulled into the ground, deeper and deeper to the point I did not think I was ever coming back.  At the end of the experience I sensed my whole being had been squashed, spat out and there was nothing left but a new shell to fill and inhabit. I was completely exhausted, yet felt energetic, calm and clear. I so wanted more.

It was one of the most bizarre, energizing experiences of my life.

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I didn’t know then that I would follow a path of connecting with gongs and developing my own way of sharing the effects of gong sounds and vibrations with others. But, so is the journey I find myself on.

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Amidst a worldwide viral pandemic, I see myself anxious for my own day-to-day survival, for my loved ones and everyone else in the world’s existence, fretful of the demise of world order and society. Yet, I anticipate with joy and positive energy my weekends of gong playing with like-minded souls, in a safe and supportive space, a place to explore and connect with the gongs, the universe, myself and you.

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In the same way I am on a journey with gongs I can see how others begin or continue their own journeys and how the gongs help them move on. Gong sessions are emotionally charged, spiritually powerful and physically impact.

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I have been humbled by the feelings of gratitude some of my students have felt, even after one gong session. The depth of healing they are prepared to face has been joyful and heart-warming to watch. Several have cried their way through the sessions, others have described moving in an out of their bodies and others have shared how the gongs take them back through their life journeys to times and places they had not thought of for a very long time.

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I have been surprised by the transformation playing a gong for others and myself has brought about. Gongs and their healing powers are shifting not only me, but also others to a point of no return. That point is not known may well be pointless and never ending!  The gongs support me to accept it is the journey we are meant to take. The gongs bring the people to me who are meant to come to me. They create the sounds that are meant to vibrate out into the vastness of time of space.

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In the words of Yogi Bhajan:

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“This is the first and last instrument for the human mind; the human mind has no power before it. This is the only thing that supersedes the human mind, because this is the creative sound. Mind was created out of it; it’s like the father and mother together.”

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 “You have no resistance against this sound. It is the master sound, the adi naad. Everything you think becomes zero, the gong prevails”

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I look forward to welcoming you to the gong space in 2022.

 

Sat Nam

Dylan