Vol 5: Discord in the Ethers; Hippie Wigs, Metatron & Metal
Those of you that think the wellness world is all love and light might be shocked to hear that this week a spat broke out in one of the sound therapy forums on Facebook. Someone promoted a couple of their events which promised to summon the archangel Metatron and to transport participants to Atlantis using gongs and homemade drinks. Cue instant derision from other gong players which led to threats of legal action, and mallets being hurled out of prams. The aforementioned sound therapist took the hump and left the group; his ascended masters directing him to start his own private “light-filled” social media group.
Now the sound therapy world is an interesting thing to be part of. It is peppered with eccentric characters, more so than any other part of the wellness industry I have come across. When I first started playing, gong players were mostly ageing hippies or musicians. It was such a refreshing group of people after the more controlled world of yoga. One of the first big gong events I went to was led by someone who’d played gong at Woodstock. We watched him down a large glass of wine with lunch and then lead us through an afternoon of gong vibes. That would have been unheard of in any other wellness field. He was one of the kindest, most open people I’ve ever encountered. The real deal, I would hasten to add. Other people we came across had played with Frank Zappa, or with heavy metal bands. It was such a laid-back, eclectic mix of people, and I felt genuinely proud to be a part of it.
There’s a scene in the film Withnail and I towards the end where Danny, the dealer, declares “They're selling hippie wigs in Woolworth's, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over.” I think of that line often as I watch the gong world change.
Now I’m not opposed to progress, nor am I one to sit around nostalgic for the good old days. But I am a little sad at the changes that have befallen the gong world. Of course it’s a victim of its own success. Over the last few years the popularity of sound baths has, quite rightly, sky rocketed. Their ability to reduce stress, induce meditative states and aid recovery are well documented. For a culture that wants unusual and quick fixes that require little effort, gong baths tick all the boxes.
Of course demand requires supply, and there have been more than enough people ready to step up and bang metal. And who can blame them, it’s a great way to make a living. But in the sound gold rush, things have been lost and paths carved out that perhaps nobody needed to tread. Of course, a lot of great people have been drawn into the industry (we’ve trained a few of them) and I’m aware that I’m making vast generalisations, but there have been a lot of new gong players hellbent on steering things away from Hippy Highway and down WooWoo Way instead.
Whereas the old school players call themselves gongsters, musicians or percussionists, perhaps at their most exotic, explorers of consciousness, a lot of the new influx refer to themselves as shamans, healers, channelers, or angel summoners (or sky scratchers as my husband calls them). For one group, gongs and singing bowls are bits of metal that make amazing noises that have awesome effects on humans. For the other group, gongs are the mouths of angels, singing bowls portals to other worlds, a sound bath an event that can manifest all of your desires. It’s a meeting of two distinct tribes, and reconciliation anytime soon seems unlikely.
In many ways this is indicative of a wider split in the wellness industry. When I first came to yoga 30 years ago it was born out of a curiosity to explore life, consciousness, what the hell it’s all about. After studying philosophy at university, I became fascinated by Eastern paths to knowledge, Internal inquiry through meditation and ingesting the odd psychedelic to see things differently. As I started out I always figured that this would be a long path of exploration and discovery, a life-long learning. I aimed for mastery but realised I might never get there.
I think a lot of people who came to yoga before it became really popular felt like this. It was a niche path that required a lot of work, with no quick routes to enlightenment. Furthermore, it was a small act of rebellion – a new understanding, a way of seeing through social conditioning. I always thought if everyone practised it faithfully, it could change the world. But times have changed. Nobody has ever come to me for yoga or sound therapy to explore states of consciousness. They come to manage stress, to stretch out their hamstrings, or to heal. Yoga and other therapies have been absorbed by society – no longer an act of awareness, rebellion or free thinking, yoga and meditation now are used to maintain the status quo; helping people to work long hours at a desk, to manage information overload, to maintain good health.
The gong world is slightly behind yoga and is going through that transition now. What has been hitherto niche, and on the fringe is now mainstream and making people a lot of money. The old guard who have been playing and learning for years, who have traveled to the ends of the earth to see how these instruments are made, who have spent years exploring sound and its effect on the body and mind are facing a new crowd, poles apart. The new more often than not want to turn a fast buck, they are clued-up on advertising and marketing, not averse to bold claims and don’t much care, by and large, for authenticity.
And there’s a market for this – the sound practitioner at the centre of the spat on Facebook, perhaps aided by Metatron, has recently been hired by one of the big London yoga studios. The old guard never made it there, they wouldn’t fit. Perhaps it is that people don’t want to think too much, preferring fast results & entertainment, to be given things to believe in, shown ways to manifest what they desire, and to dissociate from the horrors of this world. Enlightenment is not high on anyone’s totem pole anymore; who has the time for it? It certainly isn’t going to pay the bills.
Ironically it is the new wave of gong players who call themselves masters, the actual masters wouldn’t dream of using the word. But all too often these new “masters” are also products of a system that promotes spiritual bypassing; where yoga and other practices become no more than ways to avoid our issues and tendencies. Rather than do the inner work on themselves, they call in external forces like angels or crystals and invoke laws of attraction. Consequently they have fragile egos, are anti science, and are not against stealing ideas and cutting corners to get ahead.
Ultimately perhaps none of this matters. More people get gonged, more people get to relax. I can’t help feeling though that in the commercialisation of everything we lose something special. We lose the essence, the authenticity. As someone in the industry, the laid-back vibe has long been replaced by backstabbing, competition, and phoniness. Gongs touted as the mouthpiece of angels or sacred instruments have become something ludicrous, or frivolous. Those practitioners who choose to see gongs and bowls as bits of metal that happen to have really cool effects on people, then have to work that much harder for validation. Rather than something truly transformational, yoga, sound, meditation are reduced to no more than a band-aid, a fashion accessory or distraction from the real ills of society. They have become the hippie wigs in Woolworths.