Sound Bites

I’ve had many an unusual therapy in my life but this morning took the biscuit – gluten free of course.

I am in the process of setting up a podcast. With the help of some extraordinary people and my family, a podcast is being shaped and organised. Part of the podcast will be introducing the nation to unusual practices. Alternative lifestyles, cranky individuals who – whether Prof. Brian Cox and Stephen Fry like it or not – are making waves and assisting folk in this thing we call life.

So I have a roster of willing practitioners, healers of various persuasions who I will talk with. From Massooses to Colourists from Mystics to See-ers, all of whom will explain just how they are helping humanity.

One of my guests will be a sound therapist. So I investigated local practitioners and was invited by ANGELA MASON a GONG & SOUND THERAPIST to a session with her in the middle of the countryside. My Sat-Nav said I lived 21 minutes away, so with an empty stomach I set off on my journey. Down Bunny Lane, past Frant, through Wadhurst and before Ticehurst, the windows down and the heater blowing hot air over my frozen toes I arrived at a farm gate in Wallcrouch. I pressed the third button and finally the wooden gate opened. Down a track and into rolling Sussex fields, a pond, clear air, and a farm yard where I asked a three part family and their dog where the Gong woman lived.

“Go as far as you can, beware of the sleeping policemen, and when you get to the gate you’ve gone too far.”

So I turned right and bounced over three slumbering coppers. Got to the gate – yep I went too far – backed up and there was Ms Mason, looking for all the world like a delicious character from ‘Mad Men.’

You know how first impressions are either dead right or dead wrong, well mine was bang on the money. Angela was welcoming and warm exactly as you would want a person who bangs a gong to be.

We sat opposite each other in her little waiting room, and talked. A rare creature who listens and gives something back. A rare woman with a life of experience and a warmth that you’d want from somebody who bangs a gong, although Angela said they don’t bang gongs they stroke ’em. Since I prefer stroking to banging it was with a healthy anticipation that we entered her treatment room.

I literally gasped as shiny gongs of all sizes hung around us. From Nepal, from China but mostly from Northern Germany/ Switzerland, where they make Paiste cymbals. Huge golden discs surrounding the little room. I lay down on the warm couch, Angela put socks on my frozen toes, covered me in a soft downy, brown blanket and offered me an eye mask. I closed my eyes and she guided me through a visualisation.

The first gong accompanied me to Mongolia. I was galloping across the Manchurian grasslands, then I turned into a flint arrow and was whizzing across the multi verse, and then…….well to be honest I have no idea what happened next. I kept closing my smiling mouth as part of me knew I was making that noise that civil servants make when they fall asleep in the first class compartment of the 6.15 from Charing Cross. I felt my body empty and I was a soft shelled creature with nothing but air inside me. The gong patterns changed, the journey continued. A sharp pain stabbed my left middle finger but it passed, my toes finally got warm, as I sunk deeper and deeper into the warm couch. Angela moved round me, sung a tiny melodious chant, released the squeal of a seagull over the sound of waves which she made from an ocean drum then, after however long it took, I opened my eyes. I was still out of my body so I had sips of ice cold water and tried to make sense of the gongathon.

Angela said she works with the ‘song’ of the person. I cannot tell you any more than that. Only that as I write I feel like I’ve smoked seventeen joints, had 43 Jaegermeister’s and a deep tissue massage from a 5,000 year-old Indian Swami. I do not claim to understand one bit about vibrations, or energy, or the earth shattering profundity of sound, but I can tell you that what Ms Mason did for me was deliciously life affirming.

The rational amongst you will no doubt call me mad, the irrational amongst you will no doubt call me lucky – but after what them gongs did to me I couldn’t give a tuppenny tam-tam what you think. I am as chilled as a cucumber from Mrs. Elswood’s haimisha pickle range.

Angela told me that more and more people are turning to sound therapy since the lockdown. I’m not surprised, she cared and healed. She calmed and rebalanced. In these times of upheaval and malevolence, in such times where war is rife and love is absent, in such times when we should be listening and acting on behalf of each other rather than maligning and attacking ourselves, a bit of a gong-bong can’t be bad can it?

I think it should be available on the NHS – well what there is left of it – everybody should experience the healing overtones and lavish harmonics that soothe the soul.

Whether you are a light worker or a politician we could all do with the healing balm of a Ms Mason.