Towson University Soul Searchers
Discover Self in 'Singing Bowls'
By Justin Smulison
(U-WIRE) TOWNSON, MD - Discussion of an on-campus workshop that calls for blowing into bowls and making music to achieve inner healing may lead many Towson University students to make bad jokes about marijuana. But Saturday, that was far from the truth.
Led by health care professional and bodywork therapist Benjamin Iobst, the Asian Arts and Culture Center hosted "Singing Bowls of Tibet: A Healing Sound Experience," a workshop that enabled 30 participants to experience this unique form of meditation.
"The participants learn to play out of the bowls and learn the techniques," Iobst said. "Together, as an ensemble, they create a soundscape."
For centuries, Tibetan singing bowls have been used to aid in meditation. When struck, the bowls vibrate with complex harmonic tones that help focus the mind.
When blown into, the vibrations have the ability to create hypnotic, peaceful sounds, while creating Eastern musical harmonies.
Ranging in size from about four to 11 inches in diameter, the bowls Iobst brought to the workshop were hand-crafted and hand-hammered, giving each a unique sound.
"It's a tremendous range of sounds," Iobst said. "Each bowl puts out like five fundamental tones plus overtones. Each bowl is like its own orchestra."
Iobst has been practicing with the Tibetan singing bowls for six years. He spent time with Tibetans in New York who passed some of the information onto him. The rest, he said, was thousands of hours of practice.
Originally, there was only one workshop scheduled Saturday with a holding capacity of 30. But since it sold out so fast, the Asian Arts and Culture Center had to add a second.
"Sound therapy is becoming very popular in the United States right now and there appears to be a need for it," Iobst said.
As a requirement for the workshop, each participant had to bring a blanket and a pillow so for the last 25 minutes everyone could sit or lay on the floor as he performed a live sound meditation."I was feeling a really deep state of inner peace, but being awake at the same time," said GBMC yoga teacher Claudia Simpson. "I feel very refreshed, like I just had an eight-hour sleep."
Dennis Berlin, a member of the Friends of the Arts at Towson, found the "Singing Bowls of Tibet" to be an incredible experience, to say the least.
"You focus on spiritual incentives, which facilitate an intuitive response," Berlin said. "I was actually experiencing a deeply contemplative or intuitive sense of being present with the spirit of god within myself."
Working with the Tibetan bowls is a experience that is interpreted differently by each participant. Iobst said this freedom of individual contemplation aids the search for the self.
"I experience them as a homing device for the true self," Iobst said. "When people hear them, they relate to the creation of sound, even if they haven't heard it before."
MORE INFORMATION
Staff writer Melody Gerberich at U-Wire contributed to this report.
The Towerlight via U-WIRE can be found on their website at: www.uwire.com
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
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