Silent Mind Blog

Next, think about how you play. It’s not just about that aforementioned tension; playing a singing bowl, even a small one, requires the participation of a lot of your upper body. Your arms, shoulders, and core are part of the song. Strike the bowl and proceed to seed the sound by running the striker along the rim. Note what your arms are doing, and aim for consistency as you play.

Now you know: crystal singing bowls are not better than metal singing bowls, they’re just a bit different. It’s not apples and oranges, exactly, but time and experience set them apart. A metal singing bowl is trustworthy, ancient, and provokes deep, gradual change on many levels. It's cousin, the crystal singing bowl, is ethereal, simple, and cuts right to the heart of the matter.

In a regular yoga practice, you don’t even need to be standing outside or meeting the actual ground. Just locate the points of contact (feet, hands, sitting bones) and exert enough pressure to make you feel really rooted into the floor as if you are pushing it away while it pushes back. 

“Inducing the body’s relaxation response allows us to go into a natural healing mode.  Often called “rest and digest”, it comes into play when the parasympathetic nervous system is activated...Vibrations from the Tibetan singing bowl are used to stimulate specific brain wave states that initiate the relaxation response. The specific states these frequencies induce are known to bring peace and harmony to the mind and body. “