The Gong –
A Powerful Tool When Used Consciously
The Gong means different things to different people as it has many applications. It is believed that this amazing sound instrument has been in existence for several thousand years, originating in China and spreading into Southeast Asia – and is still an important part of those ancient cultures today. The sound of a gong is unmistakable from any other type of sound because of its range of frequencies. It’s penetrating vibrations compel one’s immediate attention.
There is a rapidly growing gong-mastery community whose focus is the pure love and enjoyment of its beautiful sound, for entertainment and relaxation. There are many different types of gongs, different types of mallets, different strokes, and ways of playing many gongs simultaneously that a gong master understands. These skills are commonly presented in informal public ‘gong sound baths’ and gong performances, and are becoming popular worldwide as more people discover the wonderful sound-experience of the gong. These forms of presenting the gong commonly combine other instrumentation with the gong sounds because they blend in such a beautiful way, when played artfully. The musical combinations are endless though most popular are singing bowls, percussion instruments and the voice.
Gong sound healing is a different art-form and discipline from gong mastery, involving different training, knowledge and approach – though of course having sensitivity to playing the gong well and in a certain way is necessary.
The length of time of a gong session is significant to therapeutic application. The right type of gong is also important.
Gong Mastery training is helpful for gong sound healing. Understanding how to regulate sound through different strokes and mallets is essential.
Jain Wells
There is an important distinction between gong healing for public groups and clinical gong sound healing. In the public group form one gong or many gongs can be utilized in order to deliver a gentle healing gong tone for one or many people. Therapeutic gong healing involves knowing how to gong for specific types of health issues whether emotional / psychological or physical. There are countless gong sound healing schools that offer training in Gong Mastery that involve using a myriad of gong strokes with several different types of mallets however there are no sound healing schools that teach authentic gong sound training because it can’t be taught.
One’s consciousness affects the field through which the vibrational gong field interacts – whether it is being played for self-gonging, one-to-one client work or for a group. The gong practitioner affects the overall tonal quality of energy output which has an impact on results. In addition, someone who has no formal healing training will not know or understand how to apply the sound waves for specific types of health conditions. What may be effective and important for one individual may be adverse for another.
Gong making and sound technology in general is quite sophisticated. The leading German handcrafted gong making process that is specific to nickel silver gongs – involving a manual heating and hammering procedure to create sound nuance – isn’t being passed along fast enough to meet the current supply demand. This is an arduous procedure that needs to allow for a certain amount of time to create one single gong by hand, along with a refined listening skill for fine tuning. For this reason, lower quality gongs are being produced en masse and very often with non-alloy metals ie. a pure metal unblended. One tone unmodulated can only be endured for shorter periods of time without adverse effect. One exception is gong maker Barry Mason who works with pure titanium though uses a very low heating process along with his uniquely developed procedure for creating a multi-layered sound effect – which is highly skillful.
There aren’t many currently existing gong makers who have the ability to make the highest-quality gongs and thus there is a shortage. I have come to appreciate this level of quality with regard to healing with sound frequencies. When I hear that a person wanting to sincerely heal has purchased a gong that is not suited for the job I understand that there is little educational information available on the subject – and that is why I initiated through my writing and videos my own personal research on this topic as a clinical gong sound healing psychotherapist – and which has been plagiarized extensively without experiential knowing. This is creating a negative ripple through the sound healing community which is very much in its infancy.
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