The Vibration Underneath the Music
Guest Feature with Becky Belanger ///
My love for music started young in a house that was, at times, a little too loud.
My dad had a drum set tucked into a corner of our home, and he'd play along to Dire Straits, U2 and other bands from the 80’s & 90’s while the rest of us went about our lives around him. I didn't know it then, but that was the beginning of something. I still remember the first time I heard "Mony Mony" by Billy Idol, I could not stop dancing. Something in me just... moved. And to this day, music still does that. It reaches something in me that words alone never seem to touch.
I've come to believe that's not a coincidence. Music has been used as a healing modality for centuries, long before Billy Idol, long before any of us. If a song has ever given you goosebumps, or stirred a feeling you couldn't quite name, that's not just melody and lyrics working on you. It's something older, ancestral, something ancient.
Every culture, going back thousands of years, developed its own instrument for ceremony and celebration: the didgeridoo in Australia, the singing bowls that originated in Tibet. And it wasn't just a ritual. Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician, is widely credited as one of the first people to prescribe music as medicine, using specific tones and harmonics to treat both body and mind. Long before we had the language of "frequency" and "vibration," people understood on some level that sound does something to us, something cellular. There's research today showing that sound and vibration can actually create measurable coherence in the body. We're only now catching up, scientifically, to what's been known instinctively for a very long time.
How I Found My Way to Singing Bowls
It was 2021, deep in COVID, when I bought my first set of crystal singing bowls.
I'd been to plenty of sound baths before that and I loved how they made me feel. Deeply relaxed and almost altered. Like I could drop beneath the noise of my everyday thinking and actually hear myself, my intuition, my own quiet, peaceful center. So when the world shut down and there was, suddenly, nowhere to be and nothing to do, I thought: what better time to learn?
I got my bowls and started playing for my husband, for myself, for my dogs (who, for the record, are excellent and very patient audience members). I fell in love with it. Slowly, that turned into playing for small groups, then creating full sound bath experiences, and my practice and my love for this work has only kept deepening since.
What's Actually Happening in a Sound Bath
A sound bath is essentially a meditative experience, the different frequencies played from each crystal bowl is designed to give your mind something to focus on so you can reach a deeply relaxed state. Here's the part I find endlessly fascinating: each crystal singing bowl is tuned to a specific note, and that note corresponds to one of the seven major energy centers in the body, the chakras. The vibration is designed to bring that center back into balance. If something is blocked or stagnant, the sound helps move it. If a center is overactive, the vibration helps discharge that excess energy. The goal is for your life force energy and your prana to flow freely and evenly through your body's energy channels, creating balance across the mind, the emotions, and the physical body.
For a lot of people, this is subtle. You might not consciously feel anything shifting during the sound bath itself. And some people get so relaxed they fall asleep entirely, there's almost always one gentle snore somewhere in the room, and I love hearing that. It's a sign the body feels safe enough to fully let go.
Others feel it more directly in sensation, tingling, vibration, a sense of lightness or heaviness, even pain surfacing in parts of the body. None of that is unusual. That's your body's way of moving energy through. Because sound healing works vibrationally, it can bring things to the surface, things your body has been holding, sometimes for years, in the form of tears or emotion and your body is finally ready to release now that it feels safe enough to do so.
If that happens for you, my advice is simple: let yourself feel it, all the way through. Breathe deeply. Don't suppress the tears or the emotion, and don't try to label it as good or bad, right or wrong. Just trust the process, and trust your body's own wisdom to release exactly what it's ready to release.
After the Soundbath
Most people leave feeling lighter. More peaceful. Like they've set down a heavy suitcase they didn't even realize they'd been carrying.
That feeling…that's the whole reason I do this work. If you've never experienced a soundbath and you're looking for a little support, a little space to exhale, I can't recommend it enough.
Come Experience It With Me
This is why soundbaths have become such an integral part of the retreats and experiences I facilitate. They're a powerful way to bring the mind, body, and spirit back into balance, calm the nervous system, and help people return to a peaceful place inside themselves.
If you're curious about experiencing this healing modality in person, we have a few upcoming experiences you might be interested in checking out, including our UNPLUG retreat on September 19th and our Restorative Yoga, Reiki & Sound Bath experience on September 30th.
(Missed these experiences? Check out my website below for other upcoming events!)
And honestly, in a world this demanding and chaotic, pulling us in a dozen directions at once, taking the time for practices like this isn't a luxury, it's necessary. I hope you'll find your way to one.
With love,
Becky
Becky is a wellness facilitator whose background spans Yoga Instruction, Reiki, Sound Healing, and Hypnotherapy, all practices she's woven together to help women stop living in fear so that they can feel joy and peace again.
She's especially passionate about supporting women navigating liminal spaces, through 1:1 mentorship and the Garden of Becoming journey, in-person retreats and experiences, and simple, foundational health support for the body. Becky creates spaces for women to slow down, reconnect, and remember what it feels like to be alive again.
Connect on IG @becky_belanger
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