Before the first note, there is a blanket, a pillow, and a teacher's voice asking you to lie down, cover your eyes, and let the room go quiet. Anna Sohana, who has lived in Bali since 2010, opens a crystal tone sound healing session by naming her instruments one by one: crystal balls she describes as "99.9% crystal," a harp, chimes, a xylophone, a koshi, recordings of the ocean and a river, and a strange, newer instrument she calls crystal tone. This article looks at that session the way a musician would look at a recording: what the instruments are, where the crystal tone sound comes from according to the teacher, how the breath and listening instructions shape the experience, and what the 12-minute video actually contains. It is a guided session, not a lecture, and the most useful thing to understand about it is that the teacher treats the listener's attention as the main instrument.
Most of the set Sohana lays out will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in a sound healing room. Chimes and a harp give the textures of bright, rippling attack. A xylophone adds a percussive edge. A koshi, the hollow-bodied instrument that is rolled or tapped to produce a swelling, washing tone, sits alongside field recordings of moving water, which blend into the playing. Crystal balls are struck or rubbed to produce a clear, glassy pitch. Each of these has a lineage in the broader world of resonant instruments.
Crystal tone is different, and Sohana takes care to say so. In the recording, she sets it apart from the rest of the set before she describes it:
"So, uh, little bit about the history. This is not ancient. It's quite modern instrument. It comes with technology."
— Anna Sohana, in the class recording published by The Yoga Barn (about 2:05)
That framing matters. Most of the instruments she names carry a long human history of hands, materials, and craft traditions. Crystal tone, by her account, has a more recent and more improbable origin. It is an instrument with a backstory that begins in a factory rather than a temple, and the way she tells it is part of what makes the session feel like something new.
The origin story Sohana gives is short, and it is worth reading closely because it is the spine of the whole session. She says that people were manufacturing crystal microchips for a specific machine, and that curious people then noticed the microchip produced a sound. In her words:
"Some people was creating crystal uh, microchip for specific machine. And then curious people realized that this uh, microchip make a sound. Beautiful sound. Then we discover how to make this incredible instrument."
— Anna Sohana, class recording, The Yoga Barn (about 2:15)
It is a striking claim: an instrument born from an industrial component, found by people who were paying attention to something other than music. The recording does not document the details of that discovery, the names of who made it, or how the crystal components were adapted into an instrument. What it offers is the teacher's own account of how the sound was found and then shaped into a playable form. For a listener, that account is the reason the instrument is worth attention. It turns a bowl or a chime into a story about curiosity, noticing, and craft that happens in the present tense.
The story also explains why Sohana describes the music in such physical, almost tactile terms. The sound, in her telling, is "really light, gentle and delicate, like ether." She reaches for a second image as well: "It's like a touch of butterfly which come to your shoulder. You don't feel it heaviness, but you feel some emotions and sensations." Whatever the physics of the instrument, the intent is clear. The sound is not supposed to press on the listener. It is supposed to brush against them.
Once the instruments are named, the session shifts from introduction to practice, and the first practice is the breath. Sohana gives three deliberate breaths, each with a clear cue: a deep inhale through the nose, then an exhale through the mouth. The recording captures small audible sighs on the exhales, which give the opening a grounded, human sound before any crystal enters the room.
She does not spend long explaining why. The recording never spells out a physiological reason for the breath pattern, and it would be inaccurate to add one. What it does show is the function of the breath as a transition. The listener moves from speaking and listening to a plain bodily action, and from there into the music. For anyone new to guided sound practice, this three-breath opening is a useful template: a deliberate start that tells the nervous system, and the attention, that the session has begun.
The breath also sets up the one instruction Sohana repeats throughout the spoken portion. Before the music begins, she says the only thing the listener really needs to do is to be open and focus on the sound.
This is the most transferable idea in the recording, and it applies well beyond crystal instruments. Sohana tells listeners that as they focus on the music, they will travel more deeply with her. She is candid about what gets in the way:
"Every time you going to think about something about your past, what you going to do later, about uh beloved people, about something else, catch yourself and bring yourself back to this space, to this magic which I'm going to create for you."
— Anna Sohana, class recording, The Yoga Barn (about 4:15)
Notice what she does not ask. She does not ask the listener to empty the mind, to achieve silence, or to hold a perfect state. She expects thoughts about the past, the future, and people you love to arrive, and she names them in advance. The practice is the noticing and the returning. Each time a memory or plan pulls attention away, the listener catches it and comes back to the sound. In practical terms, this is a loop that happens dozens of times in a session, and each return is treated as the work rather than a failure.
That framing is valuable for anyone who has tried sound meditation and felt frustrated by a busy mind. The instruction reframes distraction as an ordinary, expected part of listening, not a sign that something has gone wrong.
Sohana gives the listener a specific place to direct the experience. She says the instrument "work very well with your heart center, your heart chakra," and that the sound moves upward during the journey "towards to the divine." She names what she hopes listeners will feel: "gentleness, softness, uh, self-love, um, understanding that everything will happen with you it's perfect for you." She also says the session can "open your visions" and that "you can start travel during this session."
These are the teacher's stated intentions, and it is important to read them as that: descriptions of what she hopes the session offers, delivered in the language of her own spiritual practice. Sohana describes her path as beginning in 2005 as a yoga teacher, meditation teacher, and breath work facilitator, and says her profession later shifted toward sound healing. The heart-centered, upward-moving language reflects that background. A listener does not have to share the framework to take the practical part, which is simple: lie still, let the sound come, and keep returning to it.
The phrase she repeats that may matter most is also the simplest: "it's all created specially for you." Whether a listener hears that as a metaphor or as a literal promise, it changes the posture of the session. The sound is not performed at an audience. It is offered to one person lying on a mat.
The video runs about 12 minutes and 29 seconds. The spoken guidance fills roughly the first five minutes, covering the introduction, the instrument lineup, the origin story, the breath, and the focus instruction. Sohana then asks the listener to find a comfortable position and close their eyes, and the spoken voice gives way to music. The transcript's music markers begin around 7:05, a bell sounds near 7:45, and the recording closes around 12:28 with a soft closing sound.
A note on the listing: the video's description refers to Full Moon Tibetan singing bowls, while the teacher's own introduction names a set of crystal instruments and identifies crystal tone as the newer addition. For a reader trying to understand what is on the recording, the spoken introduction is the more direct record. It is also the source for everything in this article about instruments and origins.
The recording is also an unusual kind of document. It captures a guided sound session that was made for a viewer who is lying down somewhere, not for a concert hall. The lack of visible performance, the closeness of the spoken cues, and the gaps of quiet between instruments all shape what it asks of the listener. It is closer to a meditation with a score than to a album.
If the crystal tone session has caught your attention, the most direct next step is to listen to a full session rather than a single excerpt. The video's description points to The Yoga Barn Online platform, where Sohana's Sound Alchemy Journey Series is offered as a longer course: https://www.yogabarnonline.com/course/sound-alchemy-healing-journey. The description also links a 90-day programme focused on yoga practice, for those who want to build a steadier daily routine around listening and breath.
For a first session at home, the recording suggests a simple approach. Lie down somewhere you will not be disturbed. Take the three breaths Sohana gives. Then let the sound do the work, and each time your mind drifts toward the past, the future, or the people you love, notice it and come back. That loop, not any particular instrument, is the practice the teacher is actually teaching.
