ediblesf.com | 29 in my bones I’m 116 miles from home. Needles, twigs, cones, and seeds scatter under my feet. This forest detritus is called duff. I shed my bags inside a green teepee that will be home for the next two nights. A 200-acre “home” that was once a Boy Scout camp. Images on my phone labeled September 2018: Me aiming a bow and arrow at a hay bale with a bullseye. Me sitting in class learning to make kombucha. A woman with a baby owl on her shoulder. Friends walk precariously over a log on a stream. Batik handkerchiefs sway on ropes strung tree to tree. While writing this I listen to a 20-minute sound bath on YouTube. Brass bowls rubbed with a wooden beater sing through my speaker. In another, a white-haired woman strikes a soft mallet across several golden gongs at once. Their radiating vibrations seep into my bones. I’m at Camp Navarro for the weekend. A busy calendar of activities inspires. I pick “forest sound bath” at 2pm. My legs take me along paths carved slowly over 100 years since its inception as a lumber camp. A dozen of us mill around the clearing. Ancient oaks and redwoods encircle us. We float blankets in the air. To the Earth. And lie down. There’s talk. Murmurs of conversation. Caress of air. Instructions. Eyes closed. Sound baths use sonic frequencies to soothe our central nervous systems. Steady the breath. Quiet the mind. When awake our brains are active in beta waves. Probably overactive. We long for peace, which sound baths facilitate by ushering our brains to calmer states such as theta and alpha. Stress biomarkers reduce. Anxiety clears. Energy field balances. A practitioner walks slowly in circles around us. Sounds of instruments surround and enter my body. I hear but don’t see them. A mystery of tones with no corresponding visual. Later I learn some names: Tibetan sound bowls, xylophone, Koshi chimes, rain stick, water rattle. Sometimes my limbs jolt. Natural spasms of stored emotional energy. A wave drum with a thousand metal balls rolling together makes my brain tingle. Reverberations course through my bones. The joy that fills me is immeasurable. Eventually it quiets. All I can hear are the trees. My eyelids flutter. I rouse from stillness. Stand. Stretch. Absorb. And walk back along those same established paths a different person.
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