The first time I heard the gong played was at the tail end of a kundalini yoga class. We had just finished a very difficult set and we were laying on our backs letting our nervous systems recalibrate. My instructor, The Great Ravi Singh, began to play the gong.. from the moment he began to play it I felt the sound vibrations move through and ripple over my whole body. As I surrendered to the waves of sound I entered into a deep meditative state and I felt deliciously bouyant. This gong was some earth shattering stuff and from that moment on I was hooked. Throughout the years I have continued to seek out the gong and have been mesmerized by it’s power to transform and heal.
The existence of the gong dates back to the Bronze Age, around 3500BC. Evidence suggests that the gongs existed at this time in Mesopotamia. Myth has it that sacred gongs included pieces of meteorites that fell from the heavens. Since the time of Buddha in 600BC, all sacred Chinese gongs have been inscribed with the two Mandarin Chinese characters “Tai Loi”, which means “happiness has arrived”. The gong’s ancient use was as an initiation tool for enlightenment, etheric projection and exorcism of negative spirits. It has also been used by Tibetan monks, and the Chinese, for centuries as an aid to meditation.
To enable an understanding of how Sound Healing works, it is useful to realise that everything in creation is actually energy, vibrating at different frequencies. Modern physicists continue to find evidence to support this belief. For instance – dense, apparently inanimate objects like rocks, look like solid matter, but are in fact forms of energy vibrating at certain frequencies. At the other end of the spectrum, light vibrates at a very high frequency. Everything in the universe is vibrating energy. As energy forms, we as human beings are also vibrating energy. Within a certain range of frequencies, the human ear is able to perceive vibrations as what we call •sound•. Sound Healing is the therapeutic application of sound frequencies to the body & mind of a person, with the intent of bringing them into a state of harmony & health. In general, the more harmonious & pleasing this sound is, the more beneficial it is to us for healing purposes. Different areas of the body respond to the sounds made, by locking in or •entraining• to the sound & beginning to vibrate at the same frequencies, thus bringing harmony & healing.
Some interesting studies have been done on water • exposing droplets of water to various different types of sound & music – both harmonious & discordant. The results are too lengthy to go into here, but it is interesting to note that water droplets subjected to heavy metal music produced a weak looking water crystal of irregular shape & structure, whereas droplets subjected to certain classical music, notably Mozart, produced a water crystal of great beauty & wonderfully complex structure. The human body is composed of 60% to 70% water, which makes it a good conductor of sound, so the conclusions which can be drawn from this are obvious.
As Kundalini yoga master, Yogi Bhajan, so eloquently states:
“The gong is very simple. It is an inter-vibratory system. It is the sound of Creativity itself. The gong is nothing more, nothing less. One who plays the gong plays the universe. The gong is not an ordinary thing to play. Out of it came all music, all sounds, and all words. The sound of the gong is the nucleus of the Word”.
To experience the healing sounds of gong meditation click on the video below:
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Have a blissful one !!