Sound Healing Foundation Workshop

The Sound Healing Foundation Workshop is a six-day sound healing course at Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, taught in English by Sanj Hall, a traveling gong yogi. It is Part 1 of the Practitioners Program in Sound Healing and Gong Mastery, and suits anyone who wants to learn sound healing as a practice, both for their own well-being and to help others.

What to Expect

The course is offered by TonicSonic Cytoacoustics Institute together with Parmarth Niketan Ashram. It draws on the idea that everything vibrates at its own natural frequency, and that sound matching a person's frequency can support balance, which the organizers call "sonic homeostasis." The teaching joins ancient yogic understanding and the Vedas with psychoacoustics, bioacoustics and the vibroacoustic work that clinical researchers have added in recent years.

The Foundation Course brings together a range of instruments: gongs, bowls, shamanic drums, conch, other wind and string instruments, and the inner voice. Extensive practice sessions are built in so that you develop real proficiency, and continued personal practice afterwards is encouraged. You learn how to choose the right instrument, or mix of instruments, for a client's particular needs. Themes include stress, the pace of modern life, circadian rhythm and chakra balance.

The days follow the rhythm of the ashram. Each begins with yoga and yagna / homa for World Healing and Peace. Each ends with the Ganga Aarti on the banks of the Ganga, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Satsang with Pujya Sadhviji and/or darshan with Pujya Swamiji follows when they are at the ashram.

About Sanj Hall

Sanj Hall is a traveling gong yogi who describes his work as a calling to spread the goodness of gongs and their teachings around the world. He travels widely through Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America, teaching at medical conferences and music festivals as well as in ashrams and monasteries in India, Nepal and Bhutan. His approach with TonicSonic work is to take a complex subject and present it in a well-integrated, simplified program that still reaches several levels of understanding.

The Setting

Parmarth Niketan sits in Swargashram, Rishikesh, on the banks of the Ganga with the Himalayas around it. The workshop runs within the life of the ashram, so the morning practice, the evening aarti and the satsang are part of the experience rather than extras alongside it. The course is hosted by the Parmarth Niketan School of Yoga.

Before You Go

Instruction is in English. The course is a foundation, and the page lists no prior experience requirement. Since this is Part 1 of a longer practitioners program, it works both as a first step into sound healing and as the start of a deeper training in gong mastery. Plan for daily practice sessions as well as the ashram's morning and evening observances.