I am absolutely passionate about what I do now, and I am delighted that so many people seem to be passionate about it too. With my Sacred Vessels Sound Healing practice, I live, breathe, work and play with my orchestra of quartz and alchemy crystal singing bowls. That means that I live, breathe, work and play in their vibrational field of energy, sound and light. Their amazing capacity for emotional, physical and spiritual healing is based on those sublime frequencies resonating through the entire human body. I have a lot to be grateful for.
Vibration - A Tool for Healing
Vibration has been used as a transformational healing tool for thousands of years. Think of the didgeridoo, Tibetan singing bowls, Gregorian chants, Mongolian throat singers, Shamanic drumming and the like. I imagine that just about every ancient culture would have its version of frequency and sound as a gateway to raising consciousness.
Crystal singing bowls are a new twist on an ancient art. They have only been around for about forty years. They were originally developed as quartz boules (chips) to transduce energy in communication tools. But as we know, age can be deceiving.
These multi-purpose instruments are not mere dilettantes. When played with intention, they can facilitate profound and real change.
There is no doubt about it – these crystal singing bowls enthral and fascinate people. And the questions I get asked about them are endless. Here are the most common ones.
What are crystal singing bowls?
Crystal singing bowls are multi-purpose high energy musical instruments for personal and planetary healing. I always chose Crystal Tones bowls because I know they are made 99.99% pure quartz crystal making them incredibly resonant. The tones produced by these bowls are not just heard by the ear – you feel them in your body and they affect your energy centres.
How are crystal bowls made?
Crystal Tones’ singing bowls are made with a unique, patented manufacturing process in a custom-built machine that uses proprietary fusion technology allowing for the highest magma temperatures during production. This creates a highly stable crystalline matrix for every individual bowl. The bowls are both strong and incredibly pure in tone. The quartz (silicon dioxide) is sourced from North Carolina where the deposits are known around the world for their quality.
Why are they called singing bowls?
If you listen carefully to a beautifully made singing bowl being played with intention, you can hear vocal formants in its tone.
Formants are the elements of sound that make vowels sound like they do. The bowl or bell shape gives the sound similar characteristics to the human voice and we humans are naturally attuned to the nuances of vowel sounds made by our species. Think of a mother coo-ing to her baby, or indeed a baby learning to vocalise. Think of AUM. We are coded to respond to formants.
Can you tune crystal bowls?
One of the wondrous things about these bowls is that it is impossible to predetermine their tone. It is not until they are first played that they offer up their secret sound. The bowls are made in a variety of sizes ranging from 6 to 24 inches in diameter. They all emit a powerful, pure resonance but the sound itself remains unidentified until the bowl is tested with digital technology. Larger bowls are more reverberant because of the size and the amount of crystal. They generally sound lower octaves and notes. The bowls may test for any of the tones and semi-tones across the scale and across a range of octaves, and those that sing “true tone” are particularly prized. The bowls cannot be tuned.
Is there a difference between the white bowls and the coloured bowls?
Pure quartz bowls are white. They are lovely to play and they come in either a clear or frosted finish.
Alchemy bowls come in a range of luminous, gorgeous colours. Alchemy bowls combine the quartz with other elements such as precious gems and metals, rare earths and minerals. This gives them a more refined and nuanced vibration and they hold their tone longer.
Alchemy bowls carry the frequency of all of the materials from which they are made – in other words, they carry the healing properties of the gemstones and minerals (including the quartz) themselves. The range of alchemy bowls is dazzling – from gold to celestite to turquoise to everything in between.
Hence the incredibly exciting prospect of two healing modalities in the one beautiful instrument which harnesses both the power of sound and the extraordinary physical, emotional and spiritual properties of the planet’s most precious underground treasures.
Why are crystal bowls so good for meditation and healing?
A crystal sound healing session is a very sensory experience. The body is an excellent conductor of vibration because it is comprised of so much water. Furthermore, because we are crystalline in structure, we entrain to resonate with the frequencies associated with quartz crystal.
In addition to their unique vocal formants, crystal singing bowls make for a powerful energy healing instrument because they generate natural binaural beat tones which entrain the brainwaves to slow down from gamma or beta frequencies towards the delta frequencies associated with deep meditation. Binaural beat tones are said to be excellent for inducing a meditative mental state. They are created in the brain by small changes of frequency within a tone.
Unlike synthesized sounds, the binaural beats created by crystal singing bowls are acoustic which means they are natural, complex and very pleasing to experience.
Each bowl generates several notes – the fundamental one, and the harmonics above and below. These harmonics follow natural musical intervals. The relationship between the seven basic notes is the same as the relationship between the seven colours of the spectrum and the seven major chakras (energy centres) on the body. Interestingly, many people report that their experience with the bowls is very visual, a kaleidoscope of colours and patterns.
Mid-octave bowls work on centering and clearing in the body, with the sharp notes particularly useful for specific endocrine points. High-octave notes work above the body in the auric field. Low-octave bowls are wonderful for grounding and for working on the chakras below the body.
Can anyone play the bowls?
Yes and no. The bowls are played intuitively and spontaneously using a rubber mallet, a wand or a percussive instrument. It is not difficult to get them to sing. No musical knowledge is necessary. What is important however is an appreciation that the purity and clarity of energy contained in a given frequency is affected by the mental, spiritual and emotional state of the player. It is intention that is important.
Toni Whitmont is an accredited crystal sound therapist.
She uses her deep connection to Jewish Mysticism and Kabbalah and her beautiful singing bowls to support both spiritual practice and personal and planetary healing.
Toni has long marvelled at the power of crystal bowls as a therapeutic, energetic healing modality through which can transform our physical, emotional and spiritual experiences. The beautiful bowls "sing" with the purest of tones making each session, individual or group, deeply nourishing and regenerating.
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