Pivotal points in life. We recognize them much later as at the time they may appear just as some surprising event or discovery. One day I will brave it to write about the moment I jumped into a rabbit hole of the sound healing not even knowing what it was that I was searching for and where it would lead me.
My interest was sparked just before the pandemic and I was very lucky to get a place on one of the workshops by College of Sound Healing here in England, as I was not a member or a student or a practitioner.
The workshop was run by Simon Heather, college head, and it was meant for sound practitioners helping them to run a Sound Bath. I was completely taken with the Sound Bath Simon gave to the participants and my first experience of the gong sound. Simon played it very quietly, but it felt amazing as the sound seems to travel to the end of the room where I was, creating an incredible effect. I felt as every cell of my body was alive and vibrating with the sound. I knew I would have to get a gong!
I got my first small gong during the pandemic, when it was impossible to travel to choose it live. I have opted for Paiste Symphonic gong. My choice to go with Paiste was purely because they were the first professional orchestral instrument makers, who responded to the idea of the mysterious properties of sound. Particularly the idea of the overtones building up from the fundamental tone in the Secret Geometry proportions. Sheila Whittaker talks about Symphonic gongs in her “in the Heart of a Gong Space” book: “Symphonic gongs… embody the fifth element: the Ether. The Ether element represents spiritual energy…that gives rise to the other elements- Water, Fire, Earth and Air. So the symphonic gongs, could be said, to encompass the five elements.”
As I was not able to try any gong I had to choose something that seems to be right for me and even the history of the Paiste family somehow resonated with my family history too, as my great grandfather came from the same neck of the woods as their founder, both moving to pre-revolutionary Russia roughly the same time. With a little difference that it took my family to move back to the West a little longer.
I love my first gong. It has great fullness of tone one would not expect from a smaller gong as well as lots of beautiful layers of overtones. It complements his bigger brothers, which came to the family later, beautifully. Somehow, its base tone is reminding me of the Big Ben chime, thus giving an extra meaning to its beautiful sound by bringing a concept of time into a concept of space which my two planetary gongs are creating.
More about Paiste , our gongs and gongs in general in my next post.