We tend to think we're avoiding our feelings.

But maybe most of the time we're simply outrunning our awareness of them.

Eventually life catches us.

Eventually we sit still long enough.

And then there they are.

Waiting.

Jung once wrote that symptoms are often not enemies but messages from parts of ourselves we have not yet learned to hear. We tend to experience them as disruptions because they arrive uninvited. But from another perspective, they may simply be attempts by the psyche to restore balance.

We often assume love means helping someone move toward happiness, stability, success, healing, clarity. But all of those ideas are shaped by our own experience, values, fears, and desires. One person’s healing is another person’s collapse. One person’s freedom is another person’s instability. One person’s truth is another person’s disaster.

The older I get, the more I realize that most people are not looking for someone to solve their lives for them. And honestly, most of us don’t want to be told what to do anyway, especially when we’re vulnerable, uncertain, or hurting.

What people often need is something much quieter. Not answers, but presence.

Someone who can sit with them without immediately trying to fix the experience.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live a frantic life where entire weeks disappear because I’m too busy to feel them.

Too busy to eat a slow lunch.

Too busy to sit still.

Too busy to actually experience my own life while I’m living it.

I came across something recently about how the brain works. The same parts of the brain that are active when we see are also active when we imagine. Not similar parts. The same. Which makes the line between what is happening and what we experience feel less fixed than it first appears.

It starts to feel like life isn’t just something we observe. It’s something we participate in.

I was driving on Lakeshore Drive, listening to a track by East Forest. There’s a voice over the music, calm, steady, almost distant.

And I kept hearing:

“I am loving the wind.”

Over and over.

I was moving through traffic, one of those drives where everything just flows, and somewhere in the middle of it, something opened.

I started laughing. Then crying. Then both at the same time.

Every so often, someone comes up to me after a session and says some version of this:

“I don’t think I’m doing it right.”

“Nothing really happened for me.”

“I don’t see or feel what other people are describing.”

If you’ve ever felt that way, this is for you.

This week I’ve been reflecting on something I hear often at the end of a sound bath. People will say, “My mind was so active today,” or “I couldn’t turn it off.” There’s something quiet underneath those words, a sense that something didn’t go as it should have, that the practice didn’t quite work. But I’m not so sure that’s true.

There is a quiet assumption that most musicians carry with them, often without realizing it. Sound is expected to move. Harmony is expected to resolve. Time is expected to carry the listener somewhere.

This assumption is so deeply embedded in Western musical training that when musicians first encounter crystal singing bowls, something feels disorienting. The tools they have relied on for years do not disappear, but they begin to lose their central authority.

I have been asked many times about how to approach bowls as a musician, and more recently, how I am composing my upcoming evening-length work, Before the First Peace, a piece built not just with crystal bowls, but with a full spectrum of resonant instruments designed to create an immersive sound field. The question underneath all of these conversations is the same:

How do you compose when the instrument resists progression?

If you come from a background in guitar, piano, or composition, crystal singing bowls can feel unexpectedly disorienting. On the surface, they appear simple. They are labeled with familiar note names such as C, D, or A. But very quickly, questions arise:

• Why do most bowls sound higher than expected?

• Where are the lower octaves I am used to working with?

• Why do different brands feel inconsistent?

• And perhaps most importantly, how does musical theory actually apply here?

Last week I had two experiences that could not have been more different.

One reminded me what it feels like to be fully present with another human being.
The other reminded me what it feels like to lose yourself entirely.

The contrast between them revealed something important about the long path of becoming yourself.

Most people live lives shaped largely by inheritance. Not genetic inheritance, but cultural and relational inheritance—ideas about success, stability, responsibility, and what a meaningful life is supposed to look like. These ideas come from parents, schools, social structures, and the quiet pressure to fit into a recognizable path.

At a recent class, we added a simple gesture.
A single rose placed at each mat, paired with a short meditation printed on a small card.

Before movement began, students were invited to read quietly as they settled in. The reflection was not about effort or improvement, but about the nature of the rose itself — whole, complete, and untroubled by the need to become anything else.

The practice that followed carried the same intention. Not trying to fix or achieve, but letting go of what isn’t necessary so something more honest can emerge.

After class, twine was available for those who wished to take their rose home. A small reminder that the work doesn’t end when class does — and that presence, like the rose, doesn’t require effort to exist.

Sound baths are not silent spaces. They are sound spaces. That means city noise, shifting bodies, breath, sighs, even the occasional snore. The silence people are looking for isn’t outside the room. It’s inside themselves.

The body doesn’t only age from time. It ages from accumulation. Every day we pick up things that do not belong to us. Expectations. Stories. Judgments. Imagined obligations. Attitudes that drift in from the world and attach themselves to us. We gather emotional residue the way dust collects on a shelf. It layers. It settles. And if we never clear it out, we start to feel older than we are.

When you spend years pushing, striving, and performing while always looking outward for direction, you can lose the ability to listen inward. You can get so used to chasing goals that you never stop to ask who chose those goals in the first place. Were they yours, or were they handed to you by parents, teachers, peers, culture, or the constant pressure of external desire?

If you’re interested in attending a sound bath in Chicago (or hosting one), here are some criteria to help you discern quality:

• Facilitator training & experience: Do they have a clear line of training? How many sessions have they facilitated? Which instruments do they use?

• Trauma-informed or nervous system-aware approach: Are they aware of contraindications (e.g., epilepsy, pacemakers, recent surgery, pregnancy)? Have they offered a safe container for emotional release? academyofsoundhealing.com+1

• Clear instructions for attendees: Is there a briefing? Are you told how to prepare (mat, blanket, earplugs if needed, water)? Is there integration time afterwards?

• Sound level & instrumentation: Deep gongs and metal bowls can deliver very strong vibrations—when used without care, they may overstimulate.

• Testimonials + personalized touch: Beyond great marketing copy, look for honest reviews, how the facilitator deals with emotional or physical reactions during the bath.

• Ethical transparency: Is the facilitator clear about what a sound bath is and what it isn’t (not a standalone cure for trauma, not medical treatment)?

Leading a sound journey is more than playing beautiful instruments—it’s about guiding people through a profound energetic experience. When done skillfully, a sound bath can create deep rest, emotional release, and subtle transformation. When not, it can overwhelm, unground, or even re-traumatize participants.

A safe and powerful sound journey balances art, awareness, and ethics.
Here’s how to create an experience that feels both deeply healing and responsibly held.