How Sound Baths Are Revolutionizing Healing + How To Try One For Yourself

When you settle in for your sound bath, Auster notes, you lay down, perhaps get cozy with a blanket and an eye mask, and allow stillness to wash over you. “You feel completely off duty—as if getting ready for sleep,” she explains, adding, “Your body has permission to slow down and rest, to receive without the need to respond or react.”

From there, the sounds begin to provide a stable frequency for fluctuating brain waves to latch onto, in a process known as entrainment.

“By using rhythm and frequency,” sound therapy practitioner Nate Martinez previously wrote for mbg, “we can entrain our brainwaves and it then becomes possible to down-shift our normal beta state (normal waking consciousness) to alpha (relaxed consciousness), and even reach theta (meditative state) and delta (sleep; where internal healing can occur).”

“As sound slows the heart and respiratory rate,” Auster adds, “it can also create a therapeutic and restorative effect on the mind and body.”