A crystal bowl yoga class will be held at Ananda Yoga Center this Saturday, May 9.
Fourteen years ago, after completing radiation and chemotherapy for cancer, Barbara Perry walked into a store full of crystal singing bowls, “My doctors had told me to get my energy up,” she said.
Invited to play them, Perry immediately felt her mind stop, with peace and harmony vibrating through her body. She has been playing the bowls ever since.
“The reason you feel the vibrations is because they’re resonating within your crystalline structure — which drops you from your head to your center — so you feel calm, beautiful, and harmonized,” Perry said. “They work on the emotional body, raising our energy level.”
She mentioned the work of Mitchell Gaynor, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical College and board-certified oncologist and internist, who uses crystal bowls as part of his sound therapy for healing.
Although Dr. Gaynor practices traditional medicine like chemotherapy on his patients, he also offers alternative healing instruction in yoga, singing bowls, and others.
Perry will join yoga instructor, Alice Leland, to present the session at Ananda Yoga Center, 221-A Mt. Hermon Rd. in Scotts Valley.
Leland, a yoga practitioner of 30 years, believes that “this blissful combination creates a safe and meditative environment for participants.”
“It’s really hard to talk about the crystal bowl and hatha yoga,” Leland said. “It’s about experiencing a feeling. The bowls take me to a deeper level into my yoga experience. It helps me have a still mind, which is hard because the mind’s role is to dissect and analyze. It’s constantly active. It gives my mind a place to focus and brings me into the present.”
The history of crystal bowls is murky because early practitioners could not write and had to pass the knowledge down from generation to generation. Dr. Gaynor writes about a museum exhibit he attended several years ago that featured Egyptian quartz and alabaster carillons — which were crystal bowls that had been found in the pyramids.
Perry, who plays 17 quartz bowls using a wand, says that each one is a note. “I play them like a musical instrument, not as a song, but I play them as a harmonic clear sound.”
Participants will be able to see and hear her collection of ruby, emerald, iron, citrine, amethyst, and white gold bowls. Her practitioner’s bowl allows her to go around to individuals within the yoga group and be close.
Participants are asked to wear loose clothing.
“We’ll keep the postures soft on the outside, we don’t want people to go to their edge because we don’t want people to be distracted,” she said.” Bring a mat or we’ll have loaners.”
Leland and Perry offered the class for the first time in March and would like to do it monthly. The next class is scheduled for the summer solstice, June 20, and another one in the fall.
Register online at anandascottsvalley.org or in person up to the day of the event, Saturday, May 9 from 10 a.m. to noon. The Ananda Yoga Center is located at 221 Mount Hermon Road in Scotts Valley at the same mall as Starbucks.
