Nervous System Regulation: Sound Baths, The High Desert, and Breathwork
Discover more from Nervous System with Ryan Williams
Nervous System Regulation: Sound Baths, The High Desert, and Breathwork
Sound baths can help regulate your nervous system
When I started this newsletter, it was to help bring Breathwork to as many people as possible. My initial 22 minute Breathwork practice podcast has been streamed thousands of times. I am so happy that it is resonating.
I’ve heard from people who are medical doctors, yoga teachers, therapists, and coaches. All types of people have practiced Breathwork with Ryan.
You can listen to that Breathwork class right here via Substack. You can also follow the Breathwork with Ryan podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
If you live in Southern California, you’re invited to the next Breathwork with Ryan full Moon outdoor class on March 7th! We are doing it on every full moon. (Sliding scale)
RSVP to Full Moon Breathwork here on March 7th (Tuesday) at 6:30 pm in West LA!
What is the Nervous System?
I am excited to share that I am evolving this newsletter.
I’ll be writing on nervous system regulation and the gaps in our society in covering this topic. This includes, but is not limited to Breathwork, sound baths, and meditation.
The Cleveland Clinic defined the nervous system as “your body’s command center.” “Originating from your brain, it controls your movements, thoughts and automatic responses to the world around you.”
The same article also suggests that to keep a nervous system healthy, you must “see your doctor regularly, eat a healthy diet, avoid drugs, and only drink alcohol in moderation.”
That is an extremely limited viewpoint of how we can regulate our nervous system.
I’m excited to write more on this topic. The goal is to be as expansive as possible on the topic of nervous system regulation. I am at my best when I speak truth to power and I won’t be holding back.
I’ll be covering topics about everything involving the nervous system relating to parenting to the news media to tech to politics to whatever is the news of the day.
We live in a society where many of us grew-up in patriarchal families, where fear-based parents ruled over us. Nervous system disregulation is something many of us experienced in our childhood homes.
Nervous system disregulation is also deeply entrenched in our media. From Fox News to Facebook to the NY Times - nervous system disregulation can be good for business in capitalism. Scaring people with gnarley, fearful headlines can totally disregulate us. I want to help people not let the news hijack our nervous systems.
Looking forward to those articles soon!
In today’s newsletter I’m focusing on sound baths, and how they have impacted me. This article is an excerpt from a blog post that I wrote about last year, on my original healing website.
Have you ever tired a sound healing bath?
A sound bath is a healing meditation where people lie on their backs listening to the humming sound of crystal quartz bowls performed by a practitioner. It’s often a relaxing and therapeutic experience.
I love sound baths, they are a regular part of my routine. I wanted to share a story about the most fascinating place where I got a sound bath, in the high desert of California. They are helpful if you’d like to relax your nervous system to find more calm in your life.
This is a story that takes place around Joshua Tree, Landers, and Mojave, CA. the unsettled and stolen land of the Serrano, Chemehuevi, Mojave, and Cahuilla people.
What is the Integratron?
The Integratron is a four story white dome that resembles an Italian renaissance church structure.
Except this dome is not built to be a house of worship. It originally was intended to be a time machine.
In 1953, a former high-ranking inspector at Howard Hughes’ aircraft company, George Van Tassel became inspired to build an all wood dome.
According to Van Tassel, he encountered an alien from Venus named Solgonda who gave him the plan to build this structure. The goal was to help humans rejuvenate themselves in addition to traveling in time. (You can watch a fascinating local news clip with Van Tassle, describing it all in 1964)
The Integratron is a mystical UFO temple in the middle of the high desert of Southern California.
While intended to be a time machine in the 1950’s and 60’s, the modern day Integratron hosts regular sound baths. Three white sisters from New York took it over in the early 2000’s and began to use it to host sound meditations.
The Integratron is like a shrine to Van Tassel, UFOs, and sound.
Driving up to the structure I have a few questions.
Did Van Tassel see aliens? Am I about to see aliens?
The property surrounding the land is wide open desert. The Integratron leases the land from the United States Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau owns the miles of vacant land surrounding it.
To be clear, this is stolen land, from the Serrano, Chemehuevi, Mojave, and Cahuilla people.
Knowing full well about the UFO history of the land, I have high expectations for the sound bath experience.
After checking into the property, looking at crystals in the gift shop, and filling my water bottle up with well water from an aqueduct that runs down from Mount Shasta, one of the caretakers of the Integratron announces that it’s go time.
Entering the Integratron
Around forty of us enter the white dome structure through a wooden door.
I have a sense of wonderment and awe as I prepare for this unknown experience.
One of the caretaker sisters, who appears to be in her sixties, gives us an introductory pep talk about the history of the Integratron.
She tells us that the land has electromagnetic energy that is beyond normal. Pre-colonialism, Native Americans inhabited the land and saw the neighboring Giant Rock as sacred land.
Van Tassel first encountered the aliens at Giant Rock, who inspired him to build The Integratron.
We are standing on Native American sacred land, in a time machine, and about to walk upstairs to take a sound bath. I am tripped out.
Next, all forty of us wait one by one to walk up a steep set of wooden stairs to the top floor. It’s a cool desert night, people are wearing hats, scarves, and jackets to keep warm. COVID-19 is still a problem in the U.S., and everyone is required to wear a mask.
It feels like we are walking up towards a scary attic in my grandma’s old house.
How Does a Sound Bath Feel?
On the second floor of the Integratron, the room is nearly dark. The sun is down and the windows are bringing in the dark sky.
There is a bald man who appears to be in his thirties sitting down on one side of the room surrounded by microphones and seven singing bowls. He is the son of the caretaker, it’s a family affair. Two generations of the caretaking family run the Integratron.
We meet the son of another caretaker sister. This guy has has a black pony tail. He is in charge of the audio. He comes upstairs to check on the microphones around the singing bowls.
There is a crowd of thirty people assembled outside the Integratron. These people will be hearing the singing bowl performance projected outside the space.
Our group lays down our backs on mini sleeper soft pull out chairs. Each pull out has a clean white sheet as an extra COVID-19 precaution.
My head faces towards the singing bowls, while my feet face the cylinder wall.
Before the sound bath, the man asks us to focus on love, gratitude, and forgiveness.
He conducts a sound bath. Humming noises come through these bowls. Some make me feel like I’m hearing nails on a chalkboard. While others make me feel calm like the waves of the ocean. It feels like nature, like I am connecting to the core of myself.
I feel tension rise and fall throughout my body for the next thirty-five minutes.
I feel a mix of physical stress and tension, and then I relax. It is a mystical experience.
I define a mystical experience as a natural, mystical, unexplainable feeling that comes over someone as in meditation, psychedelic medicine, or a spiritual moment. It is a healing experience yet may feel loving, moving, intense, scary, and even unbelievable.
I remind myself to stay on Earth. I do not want to get too wrapped up in the alien mythology, and would rather focus on my own healing journey.
As I remain grounded, a final thought comes to mind. It is part intention, part affirmation.
I am at my best when I speak truth to power. Speaking my truth is what is important. That is when I’m reclaiming my power that I have given away.
I am in a state of deep relaxation.
We lay down after the sound bath ends, listening to ten minutes of soothing music coming through the speakers. This is called integration.
The goal with integration is to try and apply what we experienced to our life. Later that night I go and journal my thoughts to help integrate them and make sense of the experience. Some of those words are in this article.
After feeling the Integratron, a friend and I go out for pizza to a local spot in Landers. It looks like a restaurant full of local artists. We listen to a woman singing over an electronic music instrument, while we sit outside in the cool desert air. We eat a pizza and a salad, as I sip a beer.
I am relaxed. I am calm. I am peaceful.
Places to visit around Joshua Tree:
Giant Rock – a sacred seven story boulder in the Mojave Desert known as a spiritual land to the Serrano, Chemehuevi, Mojave, and Cahuilla people.
Giant Rock Meeting Room – a pizza place, bar, and music venue located in Flamingo, CA.
The Integratron – a spiritual site in Landers, CA. that hosts sound bath meditations.
Joshua Tree National Park -800,000 acres of desert plants, wildlife, and habitation. Originally inhabited by the Serrano, the Cahuilla, and the Chemehuevi peoples.
La Copine – Chef Nikki Hill and her wife Claire Wadsworth run a restaurant with delicious deviled egg salads to potatoes to fried chicken.
Coming to you from unsettled and stolen Tonga land.
All for now!
Much love,
Ryan