Sound Baths Are Not Silent (and That’s the Point)

Before we start, I want to say why I’m writing this at all, because it didn’t come from some grand theory. It came from two small, ordinary moments. And, sure, from rereading *On the Road* and remembering how alive things feel when you stop trying to polish them.

A few months back I went to a sound bath at a neighborhood studio. Toward the end, just as things were settling, we heard a dog upstairs. Running. Jumping. Nails on wood. This kind of building where life stacks vertically. Someone lives. Someone works. Sound travels. That’s how it goes.

It was noticeable. Unexpected. A little wild. But it was just a dog being a dog.

The practitioner stopped and apologized.

And right there, something shifted. Not because of the dog, but because of the apology. Because suddenly the sound wasn’t just sound anymore. It was a problem. Something wrong. Something that shouldn’t have been there.

The room tightened. You could feel it. Attention snapped outward. The spell didn’t break because of the noise. It broke because we were told something had gone wrong.

Then later, more recently, I started posting regularly online. Walking into the studio on camera, straight off Ravenswood, sidewalk to door, no buffer, no hiding from the street. Just the city walking right in with you.

Someone commented, “Don’t you get street noise?”

And that stuck with me too.

Because both moments come from the same quiet assumption. That sound healing should be protected from sound. That quiet is the goal. That noise means failure. That if life leaks in, something’s been done wrong.

This is a response to that.

A lot of people come to sound baths expecting quiet.

Not calm.

Not rest.

Quiet.

They want the room frozen. No coughing. No shifting. No sighs. No accidents. Sound delivered cleanly, surgically, while everything else disappears. A sacred hush, sealed tight.

And I get why. Wellness culture taught us that healing spaces should feel rarefied. Soft. Untouched. Like the slightest disturbance might crack the whole thing open.

But sound baths were never meant to be silent.

They’re sound spaces.

And sound is messy.

We’re not a sanctuary. We’re a studio.

That difference matters.

A sanctuary shuts the world out. Thick walls. Locked doors. Nothing unexpected allowed in. A place where life is kept at bay.

A studio is different. Studios are working rooms. Places where things happen. Where sound gets tested, adjusted, explored. Where something real is being made.

In a sound studio, you can expect intention. Bowls. Gongs. Chimes. Low rumbles. High shimmer. Sound moving through you unevenly. Beautiful one second, unsettling the next, grounding, disorienting, calming, all of it braided together.

You can also expect everything else.

The city. The building. Pipes knocking. Sirens passing. Floors creaking. Someone clearing their throat. Someone shifting. Someone sighing. Someone laughing softly. Someone crying.

Sometimes it’s you making the noise.

That’s not the space failing. That’s the space working.

There’s this myth floating around modern wellness, this idea that healing needs perfect external silence. Absolute quiet or nothing at all.

What that really creates is pressure.

Pressure to stay still.

Pressure to disappear.

Pressure to not take up space.

People hold their breath so it doesn’t sound wrong. They suppress coughs. They freeze mid-adjustment. They swallow emotion. They manage themselves instead of listening.

That kind of silence isn’t peace.

It’s performance.

It’s the same old habit we bring everywhere. Be controlled. Be contained. Don’t disturb. Don’t be seen too much.

Sound baths aren’t here to train that reflex harder.

When the nervous system actually starts to soften, things happen.

Breath changes. Muscles twitch. The body lets go in small, involuntary ways. Sighs. Yawns. Tears. Shifts. Little sounds escaping without permission.

These aren’t interruptions. They’re signals.

They’re the body saying, finally, I don’t have to hold this anymore.

Trying to suppress that for the sake of “quiet” pulls you right back out of yourself. Keeps the mind on patrol. Monitoring. Correcting. Staying busy.

Letting yourself make human noise is part of the work.

Not chaos. Not carelessness. Just lived-in sound. The sound of a system recalibrating.

Silence isn’t the absence of sound anyway.

The silence people are actually looking for doesn’t live in the room. It lives inside.

Real silence is when the internal commentary drops. When the self-monitoring eases. When the tension stops arguing with itself.

You can sit in a perfectly silent room and still feel wired, restless, braced.

You can sit in a room full of sound and movement and feel deeply settled.

Silence is an internal condition.

Call it stillness. Call it presence. Call it regulation. Call it rest. The name doesn’t matter.

You don’t need language.

You need permission.

Sound works because it doesn’t demand ideal conditions.

It doesn’t need perfection. It doesn’t fall apart when something unexpected happens. It doesn’t scold you for doing it wrong.

Sound interacts with everything. Walls. Floors. Bodies. Breath. Emotion.

A cough folds into the texture.

A sigh rides the vibration.

A siren passes through and fades.

A floorboard creaks and dissolves into resonance.

Trying to erase all outside sound isn’t just unrealistic. It’s unnecessary.

Sound doesn’t create a vacuum. It gives the nervous system something steady enough to land on while life keeps happening.

There’s also something communal here.

When people feel like they have to be silent at all costs, they isolate themselves even in a room full of others. They don’t drop. They retreat.

When people feel allowed to be human, something opens.

They soften faster.

They trust the space.

They go deeper.

A room where someone can cry quietly without embarrassment. A room where a deep breath doesn’t need an apology. A room where movement is allowed when the body asks for it.

That heals faster than perfect acoustics ever will.

We don’t heal by pretending we’re not here.

We heal by being allowed to be here.

And none of this means chaos.

We still care about structure. Flow. Pacing. Sound quality. We still hold the room with intention. We still ask for awareness and respect.

This isn’t about throwing everything out.

It’s about not treating sound baths like fragile museum pieces.

They’re alive.

They’re built for real bodies, real emotion, real environments.

If you’re new to this, here’s the simple truth:

You don’t have to be perfectly still.

You don’t have to be silent.

You don’t have to get it right.

If your body needs to move, move.

If your breath gets loud, let it.

If emotion shows up, it belongs.

Trust the sound.

Trust the room.

Trust that you’re not doing anything wrong.

This isn’t about controlling yourself into calm.

It’s about letting calm arrive when you stop controlling.

The quiet everyone’s chasing on the outside is tempting because it feels manageable. We can build it. Demand it. Enforce it.

Inner quiet doesn’t work like that. It shows up when conditions soften.

Sound, noise, movement, expression, these aren’t obstacles.

For a lot of people, they’re the doorway.

And once you find that quiet inside, the room doesn’t need to be silent anymore.

You are.