The sound of rest
A sound bath helps one achieve a meditative state, somewhere between rest and sleep, writes Syida Lizta Amirul Ihsan
ASK any mother what she needs most at any given time and she would most likely say rest or sleep over anything else. I know women have it hard once they become mothers, but until I became one last year, I didn’t know just how hard.
We are expected to be educated, independent and diligent, also nurturing, motherly and loving towards our children. There are so many boxes to tick, so much information to process and so many decisions to make with just two hands and one brain.
Read any interview with a high-achieving woman and the standard question asked is, how do you balance work and family. Somehow, that same question alluded male industry captains.
Now back to rest. Pre-marriage, I used to enjoy eight hours of sleep. Waking up feeling fresh is just a matter of time management. Post-baby, I can’t go over three hours without my son crying, asking to be comforted, fed, until he dozes off again.
It has been like that for the last 16 months and although mothers say things get better as a child gets older, I believe the challenges will just be different.
GETTING SOME REST
Sound bath or sleep yoga classes are made for people who need to rest or sleep but can’t seem to find their way to it, for one reason or another. Most of the time, we just cannot quiet our minds even if we have time to rest.
But I am not one who believes in rest in a setting ― why do you need an instructor to teach you how to rest or how to fall asleep? Is rest really that difficult?
Turns out, while rest is not difficult, having someone, in my case, Jojo Struys, who now owns a yoga place called OhanaJo Studio, push you into the right direction is all you need to get rest, fast.
We are all at Enderong Resort in Janda Baik one late afternoon, courtesy of Levi’s who just launched its #IShapeMyWorld campaign. The brand took a busload of writers and social media personalities away from the city, to a place where even phone reception is not dependable, for them to rest and sleep.
The session starts with a 15-minute meditation which combines visualisation and breathing. Deep breathing is scientifically proven to help lower blood pressure and anxiety, a practice that yoga has done for centuries. As Jojo guides the class through the breathing sequence, I feel relaxed, but at the end of that 15-minute segment, I am still not convinced that this is an effective resting method.
LYING DOWN
Then Jojo asks us to lie down in corpse pose or shavasana ― which is the final pose in any yoga sequence. After yoga’s bending and stretching poses, shavasana is when you rest, or even sleep, with the lights dimmed.
The instructor will help you visualise and imagine things associated with calming yourself down and finding your resting point. My eyes are shut throughout and as I listen to her calming voice, I hear the reverberating sound from the instruments used for sound healing. They sound like gongs to me. Jojo says some people get irked by the sound that they would instantly feel agitated. “It could be overpowering to some people,” she says.
To me, the sound is calming and as the hammer hits the bowl, I feel like a ripple in the water that begins in the middle and then dissipates as it moves outwards. It is very hard to describe in words how the experience makes me feel but I feel like I am floating yet grounded, sleeping yet able to hear her faint voice in the background.
Jojo says before the class that we should “receive what we are meant to receive”. We should let go of all preconceptions and troubles, and just enjoy and absorb the moment. It works for me, I feel calm, light and happy.
The experience is so calming that between breathing and listening to Jojo’s voice and the crystal bowls she hit during the ritual, I didn’t realise an hour has passed. When she asks us to sit down to stretch with more breathing exercises, some remain asleep.
My life didn’t change post-sound bath, but somehow, my shoulders don’t feel that heavy. I went home that evening, picked my son up from his babysitter and nursed him to bed as usual.
I slept for four hours straight that night, which means my son did too. But the amazing thing happened the next day. At noon, my babysitter texted me to say that Murshid has been sleeping for three hours. “Is that normal?,” she asked.
My son is a light sleeper during the day and he has never slept for three hours straight since he was born. Could it be that he was rested because his mother was? I cannot think of any other reason.