How Sound Baths Are Morphing Into Place-Specific Tonal Journeys

Anzan Atitlán

It’s a funny feeling, not really being able to comprehend the sound around you. I’m laying on a mat in a candlelit room with Lake Atitlán just outside the window. I’m surrounded by about twenty people, most wrapped in blankets and stretched out in various positions. A few dogs are roaming peacefully among us and the occasional bird is chirping somewhere off in the distance. As night sets on the lake, I’m trying to navigate the audio landscape I’m experiencing: Is that a synthesizer? A human voice? Where in the room is it coming from?

This sound experience is part of the programming at a wellness retreat in Guatemala, co-hosted by Secular Sabbath, a Los Angeles-based, self-described alternative educational institution and intentional community, and Anzan Atitlán, a boutique hotel in Guatemala and frequent retreat destination. Secular Sabbath hosts a series of events in LA and beyond, focusing on yogic breathing, meditation, and sound healing. The wordless singing I’m hearing belongs to Mike Milosh, the man behind the popular musical project Rhye and the partner of Secular Sabbath’s founder, Genevieve Medow-Jenkins. Milosh walks around the space singing live, as his teammates amplify, loop and blend his voice and other sounds.

It’s clear, from the elaborate setup alone (Milosh had brought several bags of equipment and instruments to the lake, including electronic instruments, a looping device, metal sound waves and a harmonic generator) that this isn't your run-of-the-mill sound bath. Missing are the usual sound bath accouterments: the array of singing bowls, chimes, and gongs. What I’m experiencing–personal, intricate, layered–is something else entirely.

“It's a much more musical experience than traditional sound baths, but never crossing over into the realm of an actual performance,” says Milosh. “It's important for us to provide sounds that create a backdrop that allows participants to go inward and explore their own physiological or emotional state.” He adds that the origin of the sound being created is intentionally blurred, which results in a three-dimensional experience, or, rather, the feeling that the sound is filling every corner of the room.

Medow-Jenkins, whose mother is a long-time instructor at the Esalen Institute, was also in the room. She views the Secular Sabbath sound healing experience as a “bridge” between ancient practices and modern music. For me, the sound offering I'm experiencing feels both personal and communal, with noticeable attention to musical craftsmanship; the way Milosh combines pre-recorded sounds, technical effects, and live music is like nothing I’ve heard before. While some technical aspects of sound healing, namely, frequency therapy, have been grabbing headlines recently, this attunement to the more intimate possibilities of sound–the personalized stamp of an artist, or the cultural and environmental aspects of a certain setting–is becoming increasingly popular. Sound baths, it seems, are evolving into complex tonal journeys that feel place and time specific.

One way of achieving a unique sound experience is by incorporating instruments and tools that carry meaning for local communities and tap into their traditions and rituals. This may mean: a sound healing session led by a local harpist and held in the Roman baths at the two-year-old Six Senses Rome; a Rainforest Ceremony at the brand new Asaya Spa by Guerlain at Rosewood São Paulo, inspired by Amazonian shamanic rituals and utilizing an ancient Rain Stick; or a sound healing experience at Jumeirah Bali that channels relaxation through the pleasant tones of Rindik, a Balinese bamboo instrument used in religious ceremonies and communal gatherings. At Sensai Lanai, the newly introduced spa program includes a Cocoon Sound Meditation that incorporates Indigenous percussion as participants are suspended in aerial yoga hammocks. “When we think of sound, we think of what we can hear,” says Wellness Supervisor Caroline Joseph, “but it’s what you feel that helps heal on a deeper level.”

In other cases the sounds are deeply evocative of specific geographical location. Take, for example, an immersive experience featuring the sounds and visuals of the nearby Pacific Ocean at the newly reopened Sanctuary Beach Resort in Monterey, California. Or perhaps an upcoming retreat at the new SCP Corcovado Wilderness Lodge in Costa Rica, featuring PlantWave, a recently-developed technology that creates ambient soundscapes by placing electrodes on native plants and transforming their bio-data into rhythms played through digital instruments. And how about a sound bath delivered by the hum of live bees, just a screen away, at the Carneros Resort and Spa in Napa, California? It takes place in a special bee cottage on the property.

Meanwhile, Secular Sabbath has announced its return to Anzan Atitlán this upcoming summer and the hotel’s owner Dita Zakova is working on adding a recording studio to the property, with the goal of connecting visiting musicians with local artists for collaborative and educational opportunities. As for my inaugural sound journey with Secular Sabbath, as purposefully disorienting as the sound experience I had was, by the end of it I felt kinship with fellow attendees. Lost in the sound, we had found a moment of connection that can’t be replicated.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler