A participant in an online Sound as Medicine workshop led by Phyllicia Victoria through the Omega Institute described the experience as deeply calming. The individual had been navigating what they called the hardest period of their adult life over the previous 18 months. That time included multiple cross-country trips to support a father undergoing brain cancer treatment, homeschooling their oldest son, adapting to changes in their industry, and coping with estrangement from a close loved one.
The participant said life had felt heavy, overwhelming, and relentless. They had relied on self-care routines such as walking in nature and reading in the bath to maintain balance. After the workshop, they said sound baths should become a regular part of that routine.
Phyllicia Victoria is an artist, yoga teacher, reiki practitioner, and sound healer. According to her website, she grew up feeling broken, lonely, and unworthy, with trust issues. The participant said they felt an immediate connection because they could relate. Victoria began facilitating sound baths after finding that sound helped settle her thoughts and quiet mental chatter.
The workshop produced a similar effect for the participant. The combination of Victoria’s soothing voice, uplifting words, and resonant, hypnotic sounds created what they called a transcendent experience. After the practice, Victoria led gentle movements and stretches and invited participants to journal about what came up during meditation. The participant wrote down words such as: release, peace, spaciousness, ease, clarity, calmness, and gratitude.
They added that they felt a deep sense of relief from stressful thoughts that had been gripping them earlier. The sound, they wrote, transported them in a way words alone could not. The vibrations felt deep within the body, as if cleansing the noise of the mind and creating space to just be without judgment. When other sounds occurred — from Victoria’s environment or from the participant’s own surroundings, such as a father moving around and turning on a faucet — the participant reminded themselves to simply hear them mixed with the calming sounds of singing bowls and chimes and release them without thinking they should not have been part of the experience.
The participant reflected that this practice could apply to life: often people hear more dissonance than harmony, but sometimes the opposite is true. Training the mind to hear dissonance without getting lost in its story, they said, is a gift that allows people to shift focus back to what is beautiful and healing.
After the Journaling
The participant chose not to listen to the workshop’s question-and-answer session afterward in order to remain in the space they had created. They noted that they had read that sound baths can calm the nervous system, reduce stress, relieve tension, and ease physical pain. After the session, they felt deeply relaxed both physically and mentally, and better equipped to handle whatever came next in the day.
The participant said they were grateful for their recent partnership with Omega Institute and appreciated that the institute put together a page of free resources for the Tiny Buddha community. They also mentioned several upcoming workshops that caught their interest, including Get Healthy with Sound: Tuning Forks & Voice for Vibrant Health, The Journey Inward: Frequency, Neuroscience & Longevity, and Holotropic Breathwork: Sacred Geometry & the Healing Nature of Mandalas. They reshared previous recommendations for emotional resilience workshops and nervous system regulation workshops offered by Omega.
The participant noted a picture of the Omega campus and said that if they could attend an in-person workshop at that time in their life, they would go immediately, as they considered it a sanctuary for meaningful connection and deep healing. They encouraged others who felt the same way to explore the free resources and share their own experiences.