What happens in a corporate sound bath?

Before we talk about bowls, we ask about your people. Why are you bringing this in now? What is the team carrying? And what do you need from it, as the person whose name is on the booking?

Then we choose the theme together. Some teams need rest, and the session is built around relaxation. Others want a subject to work with, like creativity. Sometimes we poll the team first. It depends on who is in the room.

We help with the practical side too. Which room works best and how to set it up: chairs, which is how most of our sessions run, or mats on the floor. We will tell you the best time of day for it. Straight after lunch is harder, so we help you find a slot that works with your schedule rather than against it.

We greet people at the door. We open with a short talk on the science behind sound and why it works, so nobody is left wondering what they have walked into. We introduce the theme, then teach a few simple meditation and visualization techniques your team can use again on their own.

Only then does the sound come in, crystal bowls first, with tuning forks, gongs and chimes, and it carries the rest of the session.

Less is more. Over Zoom, thirty minutes is the sweet spot: long enough to settle into it, short enough that nobody has to block out an afternoon. In person, anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. On a conference stage we have run it in twenty, in and out.

We put meditation coaching and live sound together in one session. Between us we have thirty years in corporate: Jennifer was a VP at The Body Shop, and Steve was in management at Sony Music, with a degree in Psychology from McMaster University and an MBA from the Schulich School of Business. Jennifer holds a sound healing certification from Shanti Sounds Costa Rica, and Steve an Adler coaching certification.

We also lead retreats. We come from the world your team works in, and we know how to read a room like theirs. And when you book Pause + Expand, you get the two of us, every time, not a facilitator from a roster.

When the sound stops we bring the room back gently. If it helps, we open a short conversation so people can put words to what they felt.

Then we stay. People often want a quiet word with one of us afterwards, sometimes about something that came up for them, and we make time for that.

Making people comfortable is our job, and it is what we are best at. Shy teams are fine; we are used to rooms that give nothing away at first. Over Zoom we ask people to turn their cameras off, so nobody feels watched. We work with the mood and pace of whatever room we walk into.

A sound bath is a meditation where you listen rather than follow instructions. Long, sustained tones fill the room and surround you, which is where the name comes from. You do not play anything or do anything. You lie or sit still and let the sound move around you.

By mid-afternoon most teams have been alert and thinking hard since nine, and nothing in an ordinary day brings anyone back down. A sustained tone gives the whole room somewhere lower to go, at the same time.

In a 2017 study of 62 adults, published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine, people reported significantly less tension, anger and fatigue after a single sound meditation. The biggest drop in tension came from people who had never tried it before.

In your office, we bring everything and you need a room. Over Zoom, everyone listens in stereo on their own headphones, wherever they are. Both are live, and both are run by the two of us.