From Tibetan monasteries to Western living rooms
In the East Asian region - China, Japan and Burma - standing bells , half-hollow bronze balls that were rung with a wooden club, were ringing thousands of years ago. These clocks developed over 5000 years ago, e.g. temple bells that resembled the current church bells. The sound bowls we know today developed in different regions from these standing bells and temple bells. The use of sound bowls to promote well-being has become more common in the Western world, but it is still a new thing compared to the Eastern world.
There are varying opinions about the purpose of use of sound bowls and their preforms. They are still used, for example, in Tibetan monasteries in religious ceremonies as a very private means of spiritual practice and spiritual growth, opening channels to other planets and spirits. Sound allows monks to travel without moving their physical bodies. Sound bowls arrived in the Western world with traveling hippies looking for spiritual growth and world peace, when East and West met in the 1960s in India and the mountains of Nepal.
The use of sound bowls has since been studied in Europe and the Western world. The German Peter Hess, who has researched and developed a method called sound bowl massage since 1984, can be considered a pioneer of European sound bowl work. Nowadays, in Western countries, several different sound bowl treatment methods are applied to different target groups. Sound bowls can be used e.g. in meditation, relaxation, overcoming sleep difficulties, sound pedagogy aimed at children, young people and adults, counseling and therapy work or medical purposes. In sound cup treatments, sound vibrations can be conducted with cups placed on the body or from outside the body as sound waves, which can affect e.g. to the vibrational frequencies of the brain waves. Sound bowl therapy is a comprehensive treatment, where the vibration of the sound bowls treats the person as a whole - mind, body and the spiritual part of the person.
Properties and effects of sound bowls
Tibetan sound bowls are traditionally made of bronze, which contains about 70% copper and the rest tin. Mixtures of either seven or twelve metals have typically been used for current therapy bowls. The metals of the traditionally used mixture of seven metals (gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin and lead) represent the seven human energy centers, chakras and seven planets of different heavenly powers.
The vibration level of sound bowls is affected by their size, shape, thickness of the metal walls, composition of the metal alloy and age. The bowls do not purely correspond to the western tonal system, but each bowl has both upper and lower notes. The notes of the bowls do not necessarily sound from the same octave range, but the bowls of the lowest octave range are used to treat the lower chakras or the lower body, and the higher ones are used to treat the upper body. When choosing bowls, it is good to consider the weight of the bowl. Body bowls of 1-2kg resonate with the lower chakras, 600-800g bowls with the heart chakra and lighter ones with the upper chakras. Low sounds heal physically, higher sounds heal mentally.
Bowls can be played in two ways, by hitting them lightly or firmly with various mallets, or by rubbing them with either a wooden or leather-covered stick called for puja . The same bowl can sound at different pitches, depending on the instrument or the way it is played. In large-sized, high-quality sound bowls, two clearly distinguishable sound levels usually play, a lower base tone and a higher tone. In addition to these, there are rich sets of upper notes based on the base note, up to four octaves from the base note. To an ear accustomed to Western tonality, the sound of the sound bowls sounds different and interesting.
Source & links to previous studies: Alatalo Kaisa 2020, Experiences on the use of Tibetan sound bowls as a relaxation method in a work management context. ( Bachelor's thesis Kaisa Alatalo spring 2020 corrected (jyu.fi) )