Singing Bowl For Beginners – Experience Shared By One Of The Users

Experience shared by one of our clients.

I am a religious person; I am sure at the bottom of my sureness, you have a little bit of my character.

When I saw a singing bowl the first time in my life, it looked like a piece of decoration object, or you can say an old object, or you can say an antique, which was looking for a space in a living room, but it did not look like a sound-producing object or like an object that would become a part of the people, especially to those people, who are suffering from mental problems, or who have health issues.

Both my aunt and I watched the singing bowl and listened to its sound without speaking a word at the beginning of our visit that day, it was only after some time, I realized that I had come out of the hangover, the hangover of the sound. You can have this kind of hangover if you are a beginner hearing the sound of a singing bowl.

Like a drunken man who tells a nice story the next day when he becomes refreshed, I started using a sensory word like dami (good) to describe the sound of a singing bowl. The sound deserved to be compared with something valuable, which my ear loved so much. I mean the first sound of a singing bowl I heard that day. I would like to say this as my first experience of hearing the sound of a singing bowl.  Singing bowl for beginners can be a completely different experience.

My aunt, who is tight at spending, even did not put the inquiry sort of question like how much does it cost but made me move from there as if we both were bound to do some sort of 9 to 5 job? What was the year, I forget, but that was the 90s, it was the time, the rock band Pantera played a new kind of riffs on their guitar? But do you want to know when did I buy a singing bowl, it was only after the millennium?

Singing Bowl For Beginners

The singing bowl that I came across became the topic of my talk for some time, and from that day, I realized it would never become a new thing to me because when you know the meaning of a singing bowl and the sound of a singing bowl, you already know everything about it. Even if you know this much about the singing bowl as a beginner, then you are in a position to tell a story for the people.  Those elders and older, who listened to my talk seemed to have disbelief and refusal minds, which I noticed, but my friends took it as something, the newest thing, ever heard.

At that time (the 90s), there was no such thing called a glass singing bowl or a crystal singing bowl. There was only a metal singing bowl. And I could not figure out the metal used on the first singing bowl I saw in my life, I guessed either brass or copper; my teen-aged mind was confused at the color of a singing bowl which was stained and semi-black, it was lying on the table of a street shop, it seemed to me either the shopkeeper would sell it, or it would be displayed there for many years.

A singing bowl is like the statue of God to me. Not only a singing bowl, but all the bowls of the kitchen because we keep food in these bowls, and we all know food is God whether we are Hindus, Christians, or something else.

From the stage of teenhood to manhood, I was healthier, but a chronic disease called myasthenia gravis gripped me in my mid-30s, and the doctor said it would remain with me forever. It is a disease of the neuro-muscular junction. When your mind is occupied by the word forever, you are desperate 24/7, 12 months, and 365 days. I wanted to free my mind from it like a slave who wanted to free his chains.

I know myasthenia gravis is incurable, and I also know I have to take 3 types of different medicines regularly throughout my life. And I also know at one point of the day, I will become extremely weak. And it was during this weakness, my mind and hands started looking for an alternative approach for myasthenia gravis, and the best way to do that was to search on Google and YouTube.

One of my friends’ wives suggested me going to a therapist. What kind of therapy, I really did not know? So I typed therapy on Google, and I came across a list of therapies, and there was sound therapy under it. The reason why I clicked it is I love the sound, the sound of the music.

I wanted to remove the word forever from my mind, which had occupied me, disturbed me, and ruined me. I shared what sound therapy as a singing bowl can do to my health with my wife, and I said to myself I wanted to give it a try, I wanted to experience the sound of a singing bowl, but my wife put me a question where should we buy it? That wasn’t a big problem for me.

When you have myasthenia gravis, I realized you look older than your real age. One of my friends said so. So, I always have a feeling what I think in my brain; I show that (myasthenia gravis) in my face. The thought of incurable dominated my mind. So, I wanted to cure my brain first where myasthenia gravis has created full of fears, like fear of walking, like fear of working outdoors, in front of people. My confidence level, which I can measure, was going down to zero.

It is always my wife whom I let drive a scooter so that I can sit back. We did the same as we went to Thamel to buy a singing bowl. There, we saw different types of singing bowls, and I was thinking of buying a singing bowl that was as big as my helmet. But what matters most is the sound of a singing bowl? Even a small singing bowl will cure my stress, anxieties, and free my mind from worries heaped by myasthenia gravis. I knew this based on my core thought and feeling, so we went for a whole package: a small singing bowl, a wooden striker with felt yarn on its top, and a small cushion. My small singing bowl is bigger than the area of the palm of my hand; I really didn’t go for the smallest.

Why a small cushion because I want to keep a singing bowl on top of it because it is difficult for the patient with myasthenia gravis to lift the weight of one kg. If you are a beginner if you have myasthenia gravis, you should go for a medium-sized singing bowl.

How to use a Singing Bowl

I gently strike a singing bowl which I have kept on the top of a cushion above the carpet; I close my eyes, and I can hear and feel the sound of a singing bowl ringing in my ear whose volume goes up and down, or whose volume seems to reflect from a certain thing I cannot explain or I cannot name. I feel the sound of a singing bowl entering into my ear and going deep inside my body; I don’t know from where it exits. Should I say it disappears inside my body? I can feel the vibrations at the outer layer of my heart as well as around my torso. This is how I use a singing bowl, or you can say I have shared my experience of using a singing bowl without exaggeration to you from my heart.

Closing my eyes and going along with vibration is like going somewhere where you don’t miss anything in your life. This vibration has enabled me to relax my mind; I feel the vibration spreading all over my brain. I don’t have to focus on vibration; it automatically gets traced to my brain. This is a wonder.

When a vibration like this does amazing work in my brain, I feel being far away from myasthenia gravis that has named itself as an incurable disease in the books of a medical doctor. I feel I am in a peaceful environment, and I am in this stage for a long time.

During meditation, I sit on a carpet with folded legs like a yogi. You have seen it, haven’t you?

My brain reaches the next level with the sound of a singing bowl; my brain gets immersed in the sound of a singing bowl, and it makes my brain free from worries, and how it does this, I really don’t know? It is abstract, and it is purely magical. It is just like you cannot explain the existence of God. These are the moments of truth. The next level and the immersion are indescribable things I want to put these under the list of “My experience of using a singing bowl.”

The sound of a singing bowl has put a new life in my face and the way I think as the patient of myasthenia gravis, but I would like to remind you I am not a doctor and a singing bowl is not a replacement for the medicines of myasthenia gravis like pyridostigmine bromide, steroid, and azathioprine, but it definitely calms your mind which has worries brought on by myasthenia gravis, and when I look at a singing bowl, I always feel there is connection between this bowl and Buddhism. In Hindu society, I don’t see people using a singing bowl, and I am saying this to all of you, according to my experience. That’s why; a singing bowl is also called a Tibetan bowl by some people. As a beginner, you should know another name for a singing bowl as well.