Gong Stories

SPIRIT

One of my clients my first year playing the gong told me some friendly entity was showing up, maybe a deceased parent or something. Unfortunately, there was a sort of clock mechanism in the room that intermittently clicked. Every time it clicked it jarred his meditative state and the entity went away. He was so mad at that sound!

NO MORE CRAMPS

One of the first clients to ever talk about pain relief told me that her menstrual cramps went away during the gong meditation. She was feeling so much better! She said the pain was usually debilitating and so she was so grateful.

AMAZING HEALING

In my third year playing the gong I had a client who came back five times in 3 – 4 months. She always seemed so grateful for the gong and so frazzled when she arrived. Sometimes she would have tears in her eyes as she was leaving. One day, out of the blue, I received a text from her saying that the gong had been helping to heal head injuries that she had sustained many years prior.

GRIEF RELIEF

The very first gong bath meditation I gave in Green Bay, WI was for a friend of mine. Of course she was being brave as she had never experienced something like this before. She was stunned and grateful and confused, too, when she found herself in tears for most of the meditation. The sound and vibrations of the gong had allowed her to release some of the grief she had been holding regarding her father who had died of Covid the year before.

HIP HIP HOORAY

One of my clients was pleasantly surprised to find that her hip pain was relieved during the gong meditation. She had already had a few gong sessions and perhaps was able to relax as well as set an intention for pain relief, but I can’t say that for sure. At any rate, she had had a hip surgery that still bothered her. The next thing she knew the pain went away. I know for certain it stayed away for a few days, but I don’t know beyond that.

THREE IN ONE

At an outdoor event at the Green Bay Botanical Garden I had a full house – 23 people! We had a lovely session set in the trees with the sound of the wind complementing the symphony of the gong. At the conclusion of the session three people mentioned their experiences. One client, a teenager who had laid down in the spot the farther from the gong said, “I fell asleep! I came with a headache, but it is gone now.”

Another client who was lying some distance from the gong said, “During the gong bath I suddenly smelled something really amazing and fragrant. I wanted to open my eyes to see if we were near flowers. [We weren’t.] But then the smell went away. But it came back again later.” To me that indicated that she had reached a state of consciousness that gave her access to extrasensory perception. I’ve had that happen to me, too, but not during a gong bath.

The third person was a woman who had been laying fairly close to the gong. She came to me in tears, “I got teary. I was feeling something rise in my heart. Is that normal? What was that?” I told her it was normal and that her body must have been ready to release some deep emotion. (Although it is also possible for transcendent experiences to open you to such Divine truth that you can become overwhelmed and teary. I need to remember that as something worth mentioning to other clients who become teary.)

OPENING THE HEART

During my first trial session for Opening the Heart for Health and Wholeness I had four volunteers. They were an amazing group. All members had significant experiences. One became overwhelmed with emotion – as if she could have launched into a good cry. Another felt an overwhelming sense of peace. Another released negative emotion after negative emotion and transmuted them, which was the focus of our guided meditation. It was a beautiful thing. “This is so needed,” they said. “Do this class for others!”

SENIOR MOMENTS

As soon as I began playing the gong at senior living facilities, clients began sharing experiences. One woman told me that she hadn’t felt so relaxed for months. Another woman came to me in tears. “I don’t know why the tears came, but they did,” she said. “I think I will go lay down for a bit and let them keep coming.”

LONG TERM BENEFIT

One day I was seeing my chiropractor when he surprised me by talking about the gong. “I have another patient who mentioned someone came to play the gong at his senior living home,” he said. “That was me!” I said. “I’m the only one doing that.” “Well,” he said, “the man wanted to know what I knew about gong therapy. And if I could explain how his shoulder pain could go away during the gong bath.” My chiropractor continued the story by telling me the man had had unrelenting shoulder pain for several months before the gong bath but in the two months since the experience the pain had not returned. This story truly astounded me because I had only played the gong for those clients 15-20 minutes! I was also very grateful to receive the feedback of the long term benefits this man had experienced from one short gong session. I’d never had that kind of data provided before.

TRANSCENDENT

Many clients report that they feel out of body or out of time, as if time disappears. But my favorite was when a friend of mine who is a pastor told me with genuine surprise after the gong bath they had an experience they couldn’t explain. I asked, “Were you floaty?” “Yes!” “Were you outside of time and out of body?” “Yes!” “Was it like you were a soul without a body?” “Yes!” they said again. To me that is the most authentic spiritual experience one can have, to know yourself as pure soul. I was please this pastor had that opportunity.

ANSWERS

Sometimes I suggest to my clients that they can ask for clarity on a question or a situation that is important to them. One of my clients had me play the gong at her place several times in just a few months. She would hold gong bath parties for her friends. The group would often debrief afterward. Upon several occasions a particular client would “hear voices” respond to her during her meditative state. “I don’t know who the voice is, but it’s not me,” she would say. “I think it’s my higher self. And it said several times the same short message in answer to my question.” The client felt much relief and a sense of knowing how to move forward in her life due to the messages she received.

PETS

By now I’ve played the gong in many homes. Many of the clients have pets. I’m always astounded by the pets’ behavior. Without fail, be they cats or dogs, they will lay down once the gong begins playing and they will stay relaxed the whole time. The moment the gong finishes they might get up and walk around or just stay chill. One cat in particular was so funny! On my third visit to the home, the cat came right over as I set up the gong, sniffed my stuff and laid down next to the gong and near my mallets. It couldn’t wait for the good vibes to begin!

NOODLE ARMS

One of my favorite moments has to do with a man who was experiencing the gong for the first time. He had no idea what to expect but his companion had done this several times and loved the gong. This man was a hard worker whose work was pretty physical and hard on the body. Anyhow, I played the gong as usual and was at the point where I bring people back into their bodies. Gradually he began to stir. His face was stunned as he tried to engage the muscles in his wrists and hands. They were like noodles, just flopping around as if he had no control of them! I laughed and laughed and he exclaimed, “My arms have never been so relaxed! I can’t even move them!”

FROZEN

I had just started my gong business and my second customer was a dear friend of mine. She laid down on a mat in front of the gong in my new basement studio. During the session, I found myself playing the bottom of the gong nearly the whole time. This area is the “grounding” area of the gong. As we were concluding the session I began to “bring her back into her body” with the words, “Now wiggle your fingers and toes.” Later she reported that she couldn’t even move a finger for several minutes! She felt like she had been nailed to the floor and was totally immobile! I guess my grounding was too strong. In future sessions I was sure to never play solely the grounding portion of the gong for clients.

FOUNTAIN OF TEARS

One of my clients had lost her husband to cancer. I started playing the gong for her shortly after that. She told me that tears would come flowing from her as I played the gong. This happened every time for months and months. After about two years, she told me she finally experienced the gong in a new way – without tears arising automatically. I’m sure her grief continued on, but I took this to mean that much of it had been processed so that she was no longer overflowing with tears during the gong meditations.

NO MISTAKES

When I first started playing the gong for people I would sometimes accidentally hit the metal of the gong with my fingernails. It would make a strange and clunky noise. I was sure that such a thing must be very disruptive to the peacefulness of the gong bath experience. Because my first clients were also my colleagues, I would apologize afterwards about the mistakes. Every time, though, the response was the same. “What do you mean ‘mistake’? It was just at that moment you brought me right back to clarity. It actually was just what I needed at that moment.” Because this was so consistently the response to my mistakes, I began to trust myself. There are no mistakes, I learned.

RAINSTICK

I love my rainstick. The first rainstick I bought was cheaply made and broke within six months. I was so sad! I loved using a rainstick as a part of the gong sessions. Alas, it would be months before I would get back up to Door County to buy another one, I realized. In the meantime, I travelled nearly every month to my folks home to help them downsize before moving. One day my mother randomly walked into her living room holding out a beautiful rainstick. “Do you have any need for this?” she asked. “What? Do I ever!” I said. But what I couldn’t figure out what why or how my mom even had a rainstick! I’d never seen it. She didn’t even remember anything about it either. It turned out this rainstick was high quality! I use this one all the time. I’ve been able to “make it rain” for up to 90 seconds.

One time I had a client who got up to use the bathroom during a gong session. She told me afterward, “That rainstick made me have to GO!”

TO COUGH OR CRY

With Covid 19 around, we all became sensitive to anyone coughing. It just so happens that one of the ways the body releases old, unneeded energies is by coughing. With this in mind, it didn’t surprise me when more than one client said to me, “I felt like I wanted to cough but I stopped myself. But whatever it was wanted to come out! So I ended up tearing up instead.” Strange but cool, don’t you think? After that I started stressing that it is okay to cough if you need to cough.

HEARING BETTER

Strangely, after one gong session I had a client call me the next day. She told me she had been having trouble with her hearing recently and that for some reason she was hearing better after the gong meditation the evening before. “Well, that’s a new one,” I thought!