I currently own four Raven Sounds tuned gongs, along with gongs from Paiste, Grotta Sonora, and Meinl. I use them as both a musician and a sound practitioner, in private sessions, group sound baths, and my own musical exploration.

Each maker has a distinct sonic identity. This is not an attempt to determine which brand is best. It is an account of how the Raven Sounds gongs behave musically and where they fit within a broader collection.

The breakthrough didn’t happen because I finally perfected those old ideas.

It happened because I stopped insisting they remain the point of the painting.

I knew changing my body somehow changed my thinking.

But looking back, I realize I interpreted that relationship backwards.

I thought I was finding tricks to improve my mind.

I never stopped to consider that my mind wasn’t operating independently in the first place.

I’ve started wondering whether speed changes more than movement.

Perhaps it changes perception itself.

When I’m unhurried, I notice things.

The way the wind moves through the trees.

The conversation happening at the next table.

The expression on someone’s face when they think no one is watching.

People become wonderfully complicated.

The seven chakras happen to touch nearly every major dimension of being human. Safety. Relationships. Identity. Love. Communication. Insight. Meaning. Whether these categories originate from an ancient energetic system or simply reflect universal human experience matters less to me than the fact that they invite honest reflection.

People regularly ask me why one sound bath felt profound while another felt distracting.

Why one week they experienced deep relaxation and another week they couldn't stop thinking.

Years ago I tried to answer those questions.

Maybe it was the sequence of the crystal bowls.

Maybe it was the gong.

Maybe it was the guided meditation.

Maybe I had simply played differently that evening.

One of my favorite parts of guiding sound baths is hearing what people experienced afterward.

Sometimes two people lying just a few feet apart describe completely different journeys.

One feels peaceful.

Another feels emotional.

One person falls asleep almost immediately.

Another says their mind wandered the entire time.

One of the reasons yoga has remained such a consistent part of my life is that it quietly tells me how I’m doing.

Not how flexible I am.

How I’m doing.

The more I guide sound baths, the more I believe transformation rarely comes from one dramatic thing.

It's usually the accumulation of many small things.

The lighting.

The warmth of a blanket.

The first deep breath.

The resonance of a crystal bowl.

The bloom of a gong.

A cup of tea after class.

A subtle fragrance that you hardly notice until you realize you're breathing more slowly than when you arrived.

None of those things, by themselves, create the experience.

Together, they do.

Looking back, I don't remember much daydreaming during some of the most anxious years of my life.

My attention always seemed to have a job.

There was always something to solve.

Something to anticipate.

Something to manage.

An anxious mind rarely wanders.

It scans.

Monitors.

Protects.

It keeps watch.

As those conversations grew, Fulton Market felt like the natural place for us to expand.

The location allows us to better serve both individual practitioners and the growing number of organizations looking to incorporate meditation, mindful listening, and sound-based experiences into their wellness initiatives.

In many ways, Fulton Market has become the corporate wellness home of Yoga Sound Bath.

I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately.

Not time in the abstract. Not the philosophical mystery of whether it moves in a straight line or whether the past ever truly disappears.

My time.

The actual hours and days that make up my life.

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.

People often ask how many crystal bowls they need. It is an understandable question, especially when they are beginning to build a collection. There is always another note, another octave, another size, or another bowl that seems capable of completing what they already have.

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.

Many wellness spaces strive to create a perfectly controlled environment.

We don’t.

Our studios are part of a living city. Depending on the day, you may hear a train, a siren, footsteps in the hallway, or the subtle sounds of the building itself.

Rather than treating these sounds as distractions, we invite you to include them in your practice.

We believe peace isn’t something that appears only when everything is quiet. It’s something we learn to access even while life continues unfolding around us.

In that sense, our goal isn’t silence from the outside in.

It’s silence from the inside out.

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.