It sounds like the name of an indie band. Sound Bath. Ambient trip-hop best listened to while swaying barefoot on warm grass and mushrooms under an avid sun.
The sound bath, however, is rooted in ancient civilisations and is claimed to short-circuit the nervous system to short-circuiting us from chaosinto a deep meditative state. Good vibrations curated, stirred, remixed and remastered on an iPod by Sophie Correia, who traded in a law career to lead the healing practice. I am here for it. The meditation. The warmth in a private infrared sauna for 45 minutes. The escape from life in a city I have an uneasy relationship with at times. Like an unreliable lover, it gives but it takes, relentlessly. Balance and satisfaction are not always easily found there.
I had been invited to a group sound bathing session at Auckland’s Basecamp Yoga, which I couldn’t make, so they suggested a solo experience, at the neighbouring Hana Spa.
From the ancient to the here and now. Google “Sound Bath therapy” and headlines like this will pop up: “Sound baths: From the metaphysical to the mainstream”, or, “What’s the buzz on sound baths?”
What indeed. We might rightly be sceptical about much in the wellness industry. Lofty promises, lofty profits. Science says sound baths calm the nervous system, but that positive health effects are mostly anecdotal. Sound bath practitioners claim that sound bathing allows the brainwave state to be altered from a normal waking state (beta) to relaxed state (alpha), a dreamlike state and the ultimate goal - a restorative state: as we relax, the heart rate and blood pressure decrease.
Māori have traditionally used sound therapy - taonga pūoro - as a healing method for generational trauma. Tibetans and the ancient Greeks and Egyptians used musical incantations to help ease mental disturbance and digestion, and to shepherd the harried and the over-thinker to the great planet Sleep. Sound therapy was used by the indigenous people of Australia. In modern practice, it’s often done in groups, on yoga mats, but also, in a fully private infrared sauna where no one can hear you scream - or snore.
I find my portal to a less cluttered mind by heading past Mitre 10, Farro Fresh and up the hill to Hana Spa, in the suburb of Grey Lynn. The music of the spheres is in sync, and I find a carpark right outside. Basecamp and Hana are flanked by bougie neighbours: an industrial-cool cafe and a furniture shop selling ottomans and sofas in the colour spectrum “latte”. I take the corridor, past the yoga studios and into a sanctuary with a diffuser gently hissing a mist of vetiver. The immediate impact is sensory and seductive.
I’m guided into the sauna, where fluffy towels hang on hooks like vertical clouds. There is a shower for two, with high-end, eco-friendly body washes and potions. On an elegant rectangular platter scattered with small candles, there are little bowls with cleanser, a mask and a moisturiser. It is a cocoon for the ravaged soul. The infrared sauna casts an eerie light and I could be at a festival. Take your time, she says, gently shutting the door. Somewhat counterintuitively, I take a selfie.
The infrared sauna casts an eerie light and I could be at a festival. Photo / Sarah Daniell
I strip off and lie down in the sauna on another fluffy towel. So many towels. I close my eyes and it starts - gently at first - with chimes, a tinkly soundtrack to an otherworld. Crystals, bowls, chimes, a gong. Then it escalates to something like the band The Stranglers said: an aural sculpture. It takes shape in my mind; more forceful, penetrative, massaging my brainwaves. And then I don’t know what happened because I think I fell asleep. Or was I just resting in a way I am unaccustomed to? I do know that when the sound bath stopped, and I opened my eyes, I was hot. But not in the clawing, claustrophobic way of traditional saunas. Rather than heating the whole room, the infrared sauna gradually, gently warms you from the inside.
I lie there for a while, considering the receptionist’s offer to choose my own playlist and just, you know, hang in the heat. But I rise, turn the shower to cold, and eventually float back out. You will sleep well tonight, she says.
And I walk out the door into the winter light and the world feels new. And I feel new in it.
