Sound, Somatics and the Body

When most people come to a soundbath for the first time, they’ve already read about chakras. They may ask me, “Which chakra does this note open?” or tell me they feel like one of theirs is “blocked.”

It’s a natural question. The chakra system has become shorthand for modern energy work. But when I sit with people in my sessions, their bodies tell a much richer, more specific story than any chart of coloured wheels ever could.

Where the Chakra System Began and What It Became

The chakra system comes from ancient Indian meditative traditions: a map for inner attention and subtle practice. It wasn’t originally a colour-coded, seven-note, seven-emotion toolkit. Westerners layered that on later, especially through 20th-century New Age teaching, because it’s a tidy way to explain complex inner states. That tidy mapping is useful as metaphor. It is also limiting when people start to mistake metaphor for medicine. Saying “your throat chakra is blocked” can feel validating, but it can also stop a real, biological conversation that actually helps someone change.

Sound healing and the chakra system

Why I Prefer Somatic Language

Somatics is simply paying attention to what the body is doing and speaking plainly about it: breath patterns, muscle tone, nerve reactions, fascial tension, the way temperature and blood flow change. When I describe what’s happening in these terms, my clients lean in. They don’t feel labelled or broken; they feel understood, and that creates agency rather than mystification.

A Story from My Practice

A client came into one of my soundbaths recently and mentioned she’d been working on “moving stagnant energy” and that it was affecting her throat. As soon as I began playing the gong, she started coughing. I could see her trying to hold it in, to suppress the sound, which only made her more uncomfortable.

This is where my way of working always comes in. Fed often tells me he’s fascinated by how much I notice in the room while I’m playing. If you ever watch a video of one of my sessions, you’ll see it. My eyes are constantly scanning, taking in every twitch, breath, or shift in body language. I joke that I look like I’ve got “crazy eyes,” but really it’s me tracking what’s going on. I’m listening with more than my ears.

With this client, the gong was doing what gongs do best: its low-frequency waves were moving through her diaphragm and throat. Not all gongs are wild or chaotic. Some are grounding, others are soothing. But all of them produce deep tones that penetrate the body. In physics, we talk about sonic phonons: packets of vibrational energy that travel through matter. In the body, those phonons move through fascia, bone, and fluids. When they reach areas like the diaphragm or throat, they can shake loose held tension. That’s often when people cough, sigh, or yawn.

I could see that the release was coming, but that she wasn’t ready to let it happen fully. So I adapted. I shifted from the gong to the drum.

The drum works differently. Its steady rhythm doesn’t penetrate the tissue in the same way, but it entrains the body. The pulse guided her breath, soothed her nervous system, and slowly shifted her into alpha, then theta brainwave states. Within minutes her coughing eased, her shoulders softened, and she was visibly more relaxed.

Moments like that remind me why I never deliver a soundbath the same way twice. I don’t just play at people. I respond to them. Sometimes the power of the gong is exactly what’s needed to break through. Other times, rhythm is the gentler medicine.

What Really Happens in a Soundbath

In my sessions, people often:

• Yawn uncontrollably

• Suddenly feel cold or hot

• Cough or need to clear their throat

• Feel tingling or buzzing in arms, legs, or the spine

For years, this was explained as “energy shifting through the chakras.” But biology tells us something more concrete:

• Yawning is one of the clearest signs of the vagus nerve activating. It’s the body shifting back into calm.

• Coughing or throat clearing happens when sound vibrations loosen tension in the fascia around the diaphragm and throat.

• Temperature changes are linked to blood flow and nervous system regulation.

• Tingling comes from mechanoreceptors in fascia responding to vibration and sound waves travelling through tissue.

It’s not magic. It’s your body responding, releasing, and rebalancing.

Fascia: The Body’s Sonic Web

Fascia wraps and links every part of the body. It’s highly innervated (full of sensory receptors) and mechanically continuous, so a vibration in the ankle can transmit up the chain to the neck. Fascia also shows piezoelectric properties. It responds electrically when mechanically stressed, which means vibrations can produce both mechanical and bioelectrical effects.

When a soundwave travels through fascia, mechanoreceptors notice changes in stretch and pressure. The nervous system integrates that information and responds, sometimes with a shiver, a tingle, a cough, or a wave of emotion. Those sensations are not mystical; they’re embodied communication.

Rhythm, Entrainment and the Nervous System

Instruments do different things:

• Gongs: produce complex spectra and strong low components. They create deep resonance within tissues and can catalyse sudden physical responses such as coughs, yawns, or tremors. They’re powerful for breakthroughs, but sometimes too intense for someone in a guarded state.

• Drums: provide regular, repeating pulses. They entrain brainwaves and breathing. Heartbeat-like patterns encourage the autonomic system to down-regulate. Rhythm is stabilising and invites surrender in a stepwise way.

• Singing bowls, tuning forks, handpans: sit between these. They can soothe and tone without the large penetrating bass of a big gong.

Entrainment explains why. The body naturally synchronises to external rhythms. A steady drum nudges the brain from beta toward alpha and theta, while deep gong waves can bypass that gradual descent and push tissue to release quickly.

Why This Approach Lands with Clients

When I swap metaphors for mechanics, when I say “your diaphragm is tense, the sound shook it and a cough is the release”, people breathe easier. They don’t feel broken. They understand the process. They learn to trust the signals their body gives them.

That trust changes the relationship clients have with their own sensations. They stop waiting for a magic fix and start practicing simple, repeatable tools: slow breath, gentle humming, a grounding rhythm, or a sequence of supportive postures that help the fascia settle.

Closing: Respecting Wisdom, Speaking Science

I respect the chakra map as symbolic medicine. It’s a useful story. But when we pair that story with somatic science, fascia, phonons, entrainment, the autonomic nervous system — we give people practical, embodied explanations they can use.

Sound does something profound. It moves tissue, it resets rhythms, and it teaches the nervous system to trust again. As a practitioner, my job isn’t to prove a dogma; it’s to read the room, adapt the sound, and help people find their own path from tension to surrender.

If you watch my session videos closely you’ll see what Fed sees: the scanning, the small changes in pressure, the momentary “crazy eyes” as I try to read what the room needs. It’s not theatrical. It’s listening.

And listening, more than anything, is where the healing begins.