Leela Ting - The Sound Bath

 

 

So, the other night, my mom comes home. Her eyes are low and she has this soft smile. The first thing I'm thinking is, when did my mom start smoking weed? [audience laughter] What else would a woman going on 50 be doing at 11:00 PM on a Friday night? [audience laughter] So, I'm going to ease into this. “Hey, mom, where were you?” “Oh, you know, I was at a sound bath,” as if I'm supposed to know what a sound bath is. [audience laughter] “Mom, what is a sound bath?” [audience laughter]  “Oh, a sound bath is when you bathe in sound, okay? Leela, I'm going to another one next month. You want to come?” “Sure.” The month leading up to it, not really thinking about it, dealing with other stuff, nothing harder than being a 15-year-old girl. 

 

The week leading up to it dealing with a lot of anxiety. And if you deal with anxiety, you know it quickly becomes physical. Your chest tightens, your throat has a ball you could cry at any second. And she calls me. “It's a Friday. I had the worst week. I just want to go home and sleep.” She goes, “After school, take the train to Bushwick. It's time for the sound bath.” [audience laughter] No offense to preface this. I have this preconceived notion that the sound bath is just a bunch of millennials talking about Hillary Clinton, mustaches tattooed on their fingers. They identify as young creatives. [audience laughter]

 

And so, after school, I take the train to Bushwick. And of course, my mom thought it would be a good idea to bring my 10-year-old sister with raging ADHD to this sound bath. [audience laughter] We enter the studio. It's bathes in soft, deep orange light and there are harpsichords and Tibetan bells and gongs engraved with Japanese characters. It's beautiful. And we lay down, and I'm like, “Okay, I can roll with this. Okay.” And we start. The harpsichord rings through the room, and my sister says, “I farted.” [audience laughter]

 

Perfect. This is perfect. My mom's laughing. Yeah, thank you for that. But slowly, I'm overcome by the beauty of the sound that surrounds me. There's nothing quite like it. Has anyone in here been to a sound bath? [audience laughter] Yeah. Okay. Like, two people. I recommend after this you all go to one. It's strong. It's vibrational. It's things I've never heard before. And it takes over my mind. Slowly, my chest opens, and I feel less anxiety than I have in three and a half, four years. No, that's an exaggeration. You know those Apple TV nature slideshows? Yeah, that’s happening in my head, and I'm like, now I get why my mom looked high.” 

 

Male Audience: [00:14:47] Perfect representation. 

 

Leela: [00:14:49] Yeah, exactly. Eventually, my sister and I fall asleep for the last 30 minutes. We wake up, and we look at each other. Between the ADHD and the anxiety, we've never been this calm before. My mom's pretty happy. She's like, “Finally, they're quiet. They're not crying. They're not on the floor screaming.” So, we get home. My mom and I decide to eat all of the pantry. It's like spiritual munchies, something like phantom. [audience laughter]

 

As you can tell by my Buddha necklace, since then, I've really grown into my Buddhism and my spirituality. My anxiety is definitely not healed. Right now, I'm really freaking out, but it helps. My dad walks in, and he goes, “Where were you? It's 11:00 PM on a Friday night.” And we say, “We were at a sound bath.” Thank you.