Ever come away from a Himalayan singing bowl sound bath feeling like your whole body's been gently reset, and wondered if there's any real evidence behind that feeling?

In this episode, recorded down by the river in Glossop, Clare digs into a major new systematic review covering nineteen clinical studies from eight countries and sixteen years of research on Himalayan singing bowls.

She unpacks what the therapy actually looks like in practice, from vibroacoustic sessions where the bowl is placed directly on the body, to sound meditation where the bowls move around the room, and what the evidence says about anxiety, depression, sleep quality, cognitive function and brain wave activity across patient groups including Parkinson's, autism, chronic pain and cancer care.

But Clare is honest about where the research still falls short, and shares a personal reflection on who she isn't yet reaching with her own practice. Expect a diva bowl or two, a mobile-home joke, and a reminder that sound can be felt as much as heard.

You can read the full write-up, with links to the research, on Clare's blog: https://www.feelingsound.co/blog/what-science-is-starting-to-tell-us-about-himalayan-singing-bowls

Presented by Clare Savory, produced by ASFB Productions. For more about what we do, and to listen to free guided meditations and sound baths visit FeelingSound.co

Feeling Sound — Episode 10

Go Bowls: What 16 Years of Research Reveals About Himalayan Singing Bowls

Hello, I'm out on the gravel today, so bear with me if I switch hands and my headphones keep slipping - it's definitely essential to have decent headphones when you're recording a podcast. I've come back down towards the river, and it looks completely different to how it did last time. I think it was episode seven when I sat here to talk about silence, and since then everything's grown up - all those empty pockets are filled with weeds, flowers and ivy. There's no way I'll get back down to the spot I sat before, so I've got a very patient dog for company instead.

Today I wanted to dig into a bit of new research on one of the instruments in my sound therapy toolkit - the Himalayan singing bowls. A lot of people talk to me about them. "Oh yeah, I went to a yoga retreat and they had these bowls at the end." They're usually the bronze, round-looking bowls, not the white crystal ones, and they're metal - though don't ask me to tell you exactly what kind. There's a bit of a rumour that the ancient Himalayan singing bowls are made of seven metals, though that's been wildly disputed and I still can't tell you for certain what most of them are made from. I'll come back to that one day - I'm here for the science, not the metallurgy.

As someone who's been a musician for many years, singing bowls were genuinely the hardest instrument for me to crack. They are so hard to master. If you're going to a sound bath practitioner who's great with Himalayan bowls, lean in and appreciate it, because they can be scratchy and stubborn. They don't ring on command - I swear they can hear my thoughts if I'm nervous or stressed. Until I calm down, they simply won't play. They're divas, and it drives me absolutely crazy.

I'm fascinated by the different techniques - it's worth a quick search online to see the different ways people play them. You can dong them with a beater, run a wand around the rim, bring the bowl to your mouth and use it as a resonant cave, even play them with a violin bow. They come in all shapes and sizes, and you can put water in one and make some genuinely strange sounds. I've talked before, back in episode three, about the therapeutic benefit of different sound bath instruments, and singing bowls are often associated with a gentler, softer experience of sound. In my toolkit, when people are working through grief, difficult emotions or feeling stuck, they help people move through that in a softer way than, say, a gong would.

So, that's the context. Now, onto the research - a global study that came out last year and somehow slipped past me until now.

I wanted to know who was actually part of these studies. The conditions covered included anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, chronic pain, cancer care, Parkinson's, autism and surgical recovery - not exactly fringe concerns. These are the conditions people come to my sessions and tell me they're living with.

I also wanted to know how the therapy was delivered. A lot of it was something called vibroacoustic therapy - placing the vibration of the bowls directly on the body, using different sized bowls for different frequencies. That's more common in one-to-one sessions than in a group sound bath. You'll place a bowl on the chest or abdomen and feel the vibration through the body - I'd love to say I've had great success trying that on myself at home, but mostly I just end up hitting myself, which isn't very relaxing, so it helps to have someone else do it for you. In other studies, the bowls were played around participants rather than placed on them, as a form of sound meditation, with sessions ranging from single visits to repeated sessions over several weeks.

There's a great quote from the oncologist Dr Mitchell Gaynor: there's no organ system in the body that isn't affected by sound, music and vibration. These bowls vibrate our muscles, bones and nerves, and they stimulate our brain waves too - go bowls, that's a decent hit on all fronts. This also lines up with earlier research showing that singing bowls influence the prefrontal cortex, which is connected to our stress response and decision-making - I feel like if I don't mention the prefrontal cortex at least once an episode, you'll be disappointed by now.

So what did the findings actually show? The sixteen-year review found measurable potential to reduce anxiety and depression through Himalayan singing bowl sound baths, and to improve sleep quality and cognitive function - consistent across patient groups from Parkinson's to autism to chronic pain, cancer care, sleep disorders, anxiety and depression. There were also positive changes in brain wave activity, tracked using EEG sensors, showing that people felt calmer and slept better - and this wasn't self-reported, tick-a-box data. This was measurable activity in the brain while people went through the sessions, which is where the technology and the research get really interesting.

There are limitations, though. If you live in, say, Surrey, and go to a Himalayan singing bowl sound bath there, versus coming to one of mine in Glossop or Whaley Bridge, you're getting a different experience. Different practitioners use different instruments, different frequencies, different styles - no two sound baths are the same, and your mood and how you slept the night before both play a part. That's genuinely hard to measure consistently. I also think the study didn't quite capture the mechanisms of the different techniques, and how something that helps one person might not help someone else. When I bring a bowl to my mouth for what's called the "wah-wah" effect, letting the sound reflect back using my mouth as a resonant cave, some people find the higher frequency screechy and piercing, while others say they feel the stress releasing like steam from their ears. I've even had someone describe feeling bubbles being released from their heart after working through grief. That's difficult to capture in a survey. Even so, this is still an emerging evidence base, and after sixteen years demonstrating these benefits, there's still a call for more robust trials - which, fine, bring it on. But when you've got this many people saying "this does the job," why not keep going?

What this has really shown me is that I'm not always great at reaching out to the people who could benefit most. It's shone a spotlight on who my potential people actually are, and pushed me to think beyond my usual audience - I've got a toolkit here that could genuinely help people living with Parkinson's, and I've never worked with anyone with Parkinson's before. It's opened up a whole new way of thinking about who else I could help.

Sound therapy isn't magic, and it isn't a cure - that's not what any of this is saying. But it's reassuring that the evidence is building, and that this does something real to the human nervous system. Sometimes we want to find the words to explain everything, when really some of this doesn't need intellectualising - the nervous system goes far deeper than our thinking mind can always make sense of. I think it's worth acknowledging that singing bowls have been doing this work for thousands of years, and it's only now that the science is catching up to explain why. That feels like a good partnership - one that helps this work reach more people, and reminds us that sound baths were never only about the full moon or the summer solstice. I consider it part of my duty to make this accessible to people who might need help with stress, anxiety, depression, sleep or cognitive function, but who wouldn't necessarily go looking for a moon-focused sound healing session.

I've written this episode up as a blog too, called "The Same As This," over at FeelingSound.co, with links to the research if you want to read further. Keeping what I do as a practitioner relevant, safe, trauma-informed and genuinely up to date is something I take seriously - the science moves fast, and it doesn't matter whether I got my qualification yesterday or five years ago, ongoing professional development means I keep learning and stay open-minded. That feels like part of my duty too - to protect and inform the people who come to my sessions.

If you haven't been to a Himalayan singing bowl sound bath, it's worth getting on it. I've featured recordings of the bowls in my library on the website - they're quieter and gentler than some of the other instruments, especially at the lower frequencies, so if you have any hearing difficulties, it's worth sitting a little closer. Remember, too, that sound can be felt as much as heard - it does its work in our bones and muscles, whether or not our ears pick it up. So, go Himalayan singing bowls.

If you want a bit of a giggle, search online for people standing inside the largest Himalayan singing bowls in the world and watch someone play them - imagine your whole body vibrating like that. That's some serious vibroacoustic benefit, though I'm not sure it would fit in my car - I've got enough kit crammed in there as it is; I practically need a mobile home to do this job.

Anyway, enough of me rabbiting on. Go and enjoy a bit of singing bowl chillness, and I'll be back soon with some more knowledge. Take care.