Ever heard of a “gong bath”? No, me neither – and if you’d asked me what it was before I’d been to one, I probably would’ve guessed it at least had something to do with water.
But it doesn’t – not unless you count the fact that the human body is mostly made of water, the very nice instructor taking our session told us – and that means the vibrations from the gongs can do “magical things”.
O…kay. Still, being cynical isn’t big or clever, Victoria, or at least that’s what my parents used to tell me when I was 15 and they’d called me downstairs for a family meeting about my “attitude” (“what attitude?! Oh, and by the way I hate you and I wish I’d never been born!”). Whoops – seem to have slipped into a past life regression, there; which is conveniently also available alongside the gong bath.
That’s right: gong baths, so I was told, have the power to make you see colours (with your eyes closed) and even transport you to past lives. They can bring on heightened emotion – tears, laughter, even anger – or teleport you into reflective moments of extreme sadness, which (I’ll be honest) didn’t feel like a very fun activity to be doing for my birthday.
Nevertheless, determined not to dismiss the woo-woo out of hand, I said an emphatic “yes, please” when my friend Dayna – who’s known me for 34 years and remembers the time at school when I told everyone I was a real witch, because I’d watched The Craft too many times and used to draft my little brother and his friends in for home-based levitation sessions (and it scared them silly, which was secretly the point) – told me she’d booked us a gong bath for my birthday. Specifically: one to promote deep connection and relaxation.
It just sort of… made sense, really, now that we are 44 and taking collagen supplements and making sure we are getting our steps in and have eschewed booze in favour of being pescatarian; now that boot camp sessions in the local park have replaced crawling home at 5am after a night out in Dalston. On a recent friendship trip to Portugal for a week, we woke up at 6am to do yoga. I know. Your forties are wild.
So, a gong bath was pretty much the inevitable next step on this journey of self-discovery, and not being able to stay up past 10pm, because of perimenopause. We’ve read Miranda July’s All Fours. We are primed for this.
What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was lying down for an hour and a half, and how my aforementioned mature years have left me completely unsuited for a hardwood floor. We were told to don eye masks and blankets (in a heatwave? Madam, please), but after shifting around for 10 antisocial minutes I realised I simply wasn’t going to be comfortable – and I just had to put up with it.
The hip pain did take away from my ability to “om”, though, which is nothing rude (though it sounds it): we were to take a deep breath in and then “om” out, loudly, without feeling idiotic. Harder than it sounds, believe me.
Still, after “omming” for a while and studiously trying not to make eye contact with Dayna, who was on the floor next to me, in case it brought out the “heightened emotion” and laughter we’d been warned about (and that past life regression just keeps popping up, doesn’t it? Because it’s true: suddenly we were 13 again and in geography with Mr Watkins and passing notes and sniggering about farts), I settled down, determined to take it seriously.
I stared and stared at the ceiling with the disco ball specks of light in iridescent green beaming around. I was a big girl and didn’t even snort when she wafted sage over our heads with a dead bird (or a dead bird’s wing – I was meant to have my eyes closed and couldn’t do a thorough inspection).
I tried really hard to meditate and find zen and empty my mind and focus on my breathing… to let whatever random thoughts popped into my mind (work the next day, my latest date, what’s going to happen next in Married at First Sight: Australia) to just drift away again… and I almost managed it. I had just felt myself starting to slip, the edges of my consciousness peeling away like a delicious foot scrub…
…and then someone started snoring.
I mean. We’d already had a mini-lecture about this one: “I am going to assume you all snore,” the instructor had said – and she’d also asked for our collective consent that if we snored, the person next to us would have our permission to gently poke or prod us to wake us up and stop us from doing it. And we’d all said yes.
However, for the next 45 minutes, rather than deep connection and relaxation; pondering dreamily on the meaning of life, or the “intention” I’d set at the start of the session (and I can’t say what it was, because that would be telling), sheer British politeness (or awkwardness) meant that nobody stepped up to poke the snoring person; not a single volunteer – and it ruined it for the rest of us.
I know, I know, it wasn’t her fault. But after the session, when we were going around the room giving a single word to sum up how we’d found the experience; and one person said “transcendental”, I couldn’t help but look at her completely agog at how she’d possibly found the silence to be able to transcend (and if she did transcend, then to where, to what) – and it made me realise something: that maybe it’s not about the gong bath, at all. Maybe it’s the friends we made along the way.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s really about going to a woo-woo wellness gong bath with a bloody brilliant best friend you can giggle and bitch about it with afterwards. A friend you don’t dare look at while it’s happening, for fear of breaking down into hysterics and being told off and to sit at the back of the class and then given a detention.
It was quite the epiphany. I’d go to a gong bath again – but only if Dayna goes with me.
