Change Your Vibration

     Last month I discovered a community meditation studio in Orlando, FL called the Community Center 729.  Every Sunday they host a non-denominational crystal bowl meditation.  The session usually begins with some pre-recorded meditation music playing quietly to set the mood as people settle themselves into a semi-circle around the bowls.  Dave, a thin reddish haired man with an English accent, enters and lights incense as he begins guiding everyone through a few breathing exercises. 

     As everyone begins to calm their energy, Josh, Dave’s musical counterpart, begins to gently tap the bowls with a mallet, each one of the seven producing a clear crystal tone attuned to a specific chakra.  After Dave completes the guided part of the meditation, his voice drops off and is replaced by the sound of a slowly crescendoing hum, created by the mallet being stroked around the edges of the bowls.  The sound is reminiscent of a wet finger circling the lip of a crystal wine glass, but more deep and intense.  The sound fills the small space of the meditation studio, driving out all other sounds in the room.  It even seems to drive all stray thoughts out of my mind.  The sounds seem to have a circular shape as they pulse against one eardrum and then the other.  I imagine I am inside one of the bowls, experiencing 360 degrees of sound as the mallet is dragged across the outer surface.

     Eventually the vibrations die down and Dave begins to speak again, gently instructing everyone on how to bring their consciousness back into their bodies.  It takes a few minutes before I truly feel awake.  The bowls have a tendency to put me in a trance-like state that feels very similar to dreaming.

     I have tried some other forms of meditation, but often I find it hard to quiet my chaotic mind, especially at times when I most need it.  The penetrating sound of the bowls frees up all the mental space I usually fill with worry, and opens me up to a different experience.  It allows me to reset my vibration to something more in tune with nature, rather than the unnatural hustle bustle of modern life.  After one of these sessions, my foremost desire is to sit under a tree in the sun, feeling at one with the planet.

     Since attending weekly crystal bowl meditations, I feel a definite shift in my energy for the first portion of the week, and by the time Sunday rolls around again, I’m anxious to go back and reattune myself for the start of a new week.

     I specifically recommend this type of meditation for people dealing with intrusive thoughts due to PTSD due to the “thought drowning” nature of the sounds that are produced.  When I was going through the initial stages of PTSD, I found that this type of meditation was one of very few things that could stop the intrusive thoughts for a short amount of time.  During a period of constant struggle, that brief reprieve was most welcome and did much in the way of protecting my sanity.

     12SoundSolutions' youtube channel is a great playlist that will give you an idea of what each of the 7 bowls sound like when played separately and the video below demonstrates how the bowls sound when played together. It’s of course, not the same as hearing them in person, but it gives a pretty clear idea of the type of sounds they create.

The List

    

      I obtained the list from my friend Bryan Childs, creator of NineBullets.net, who is also battling Depression.  He had watched his father slowly die from cancer along with watching his marriage crumble.  We bonded over the course of a few weeks this past summer, swapping coping strategies and commiserating about how painfully slow progress can be at times.  He has a list that he found in The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression taped to the mirror of his bathroom so he can see it every day.

  It reads:  

12 Steps to defeating depressive thinking: Avoid depressive thinking-traps. Exercise Eat healthily. Get adequate rest and sleep. Use downtime constructively. Maintain positive relations. Resolve conflicts quickly. Get fresh air and sunshine. Stick to priorities. Each day, do something novel. Make a daily change in routine. Persist.

     I’m putting this list up here first because it really gets to the crux of battling depression.  It’s so easy to get stuck in the mud that just making one small effort each day can be enough to make a huge shift in thinking.  So often, I will be cooped up in my apartment feeling so anxious and unable to concentrate that I forget that simply stepping outside is a cheap and easy way to completely change my mood.  I printed out my own copy of this list and put it on my refrigerator for convenient reference so that when I am having a particularly rough time of it, I can pick just one thing to start with. 

     When followed daily, this list outlines a pretty effective plan for living a depression-free life, or at least one that is manageable.  With future blog posts, I will go into more detail about some of the items on this list as well as adding some simpler, in the moment strategies for shaking free from catastrophic thinking.  The idea is to compile a resource of things that WORK, so that on those inevitable bad days, there will be a myriad of choices.