The Gong Show

Or rather, The Gong Bath.



I'm going for a Gong Bath tonight. I have no idea what's going to happen but I'm going to open myself up to receive anything, and I think keeping an open mind and spirit is how a person should go into trying something experimental and new.

I'm really excited about this. Not that I feel like I 'need' physical healing for anything. In fact, it kind of feels like I'm cheating by going. I'm not 'asking' for anything, I'm not expecting anything more than two hours of peace and some interesting inner feelings, but I'm staying open to the idea that something awesome could happen.

Here's the blurb about the event:
Richard Rudis is back with an unforgettable event to soothe, inspire and awaken your spirit. Richard Rudis (Sonam Dorje) creates transformation healing waves of sound bathing each participant with rising and falling rhythms, tonalities, and vibrations of huge Earth Gong tuned to the sound of the primordial AUM, the "Universal Chord"; the vibrational signature of our mother earth (Ghia) as it dances with our Sun (Sol). Anticipate healings, awakenings, and miracles.

Here's a snippet of an interview I found online:
Reverb: Are these events you do, the Gong Baths, traditional Tibetan rituals?

Richard: Oh no. The name Gong Bath came about sort of as a kitschy thing. The term doesn’t truly reflect what is going on. One of my sponsors of these events said it sounded “sexy” and so it has stuck. And in a sense, you are “bathed” in sound during it.

The Gong Bath is very much a Western culture thing. Nothing needs to be learned, the participants lie on their backs, head towards the gong in the center of the room, and basically say, “Do it to me.” They allow it to be experiential.

That’s not to say they don’t experience healing results from a Gong Bath. I recall once, a woman came to a Gong Bath with her husband, a doctor, merely because they wanted something odd to talk about at their next cocktail party. There was no intent there, other than have something to chat about. But she called me the next morning, and said she wasn’t feeling well. She was dizzy and nauseous and wanted to know what I did to her. I explained that it was a detox process, toxins were leaving her cells and to flush them out. She did and the next day, she called again. She said for the first time in 20 years she was without pain in any of her joints without taking pain medicine. Now she comes to all the Gong Baths she can.

I do workshops around the country where I teach people how to work with the bowls and gongs. A workshop requires more participation and understanding of the participants.

Reverb: Perhaps you can explain simply, why the woman had such a healing and detox reaction.

Please don’t hear this as ego talking, but you see, I don’t play the gong like a musical instrument. I play it as an instrument of transcendence.

Her reactions and others like it are an affirmation of what sound healing is in the Buddhist tradition. What I mean by that is, it’s based on the premise that Enlightenment or Buddha Mind cannot be found, because you can’t find that which you have never lost.

Buddhists see this essence of you, this self, as a virtual diamond. You can take a diamond, throw it in a bunch of manure, and then take it out a million years later, and the diamond will still be bright. It doesn’t change. It is the same thing with our inner self, although I want to be clear the self I am speaking of doesn’t really equate with the “soul.” It is the self that is beyond dualistic nature.

So we are physical beings incarnate, and if we are physically mirroring that clear state, we are in healthy state. There is a sound signature of that blissful state of being, even at a cellular level. The cell is in a state of bliss naturally, but as other things alter it, it changes. However, the ground state of the cell, the diamond state, is always the same.

For example, a healthy heart cell is singing in a blissful way, but alter it, it is no longer singing blissfully, it is now uneasy or diseased, however there is still a cellular signature, a diamond self within it. So what I do with the instruments is not actually heal the individual, but remind the individual of that whole, blissful state, or the cell, or the molecules. The instruments nudge them, and bring the natural ability for the body to heal into activation, and because it deals on a full level, not that just one cell of the body, it deals with a full spectrum and a healing event occurs.

The Eastern healing model is holistic. What a lot of people do, they ask me, “What note fixes heart or the spleen? I want a singing bowl for just that.” And I tell them that level is the basis of the crystal bowls. The crystal bowls are made of pure silicon, and there is a lot of silicon in our bodies and so there is a sympathetic vibration to begin with, and because they are manufacturing these things in a very two dimensional way, they can tune it right to that organ… which is a very useful tool, but it reflects the Western model.

Have any of you heard of a Gong Bath? This is the first I've heard of it, and I think for people who've never tried yoga, it must seem really whacky, but in yoga, it's all about the opening up and feeling things for yourself, so why not check out something new? It'll be interesting, to say the very least, and right now, I'll probably get a whole hell of a lot more out of it than fighting crowds at the mall... so...

Do it to me, Mighty Gong Master!