The Sound Bath I didn’t pay for

It wasn’t supposed to be anything special. Just a few hours out in the campo just outside Chiclana on a random Wednesday afternoon in October with my friend Seba. The place belongs to his family. It’s basically a run-down cottage in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dry fields, three horses, and two donkeys. And a pond with wild turtles. Seba goes there daily to go take care of the animals. I love going with him every once in a while because it’s so peaceful. And there’s hardly any phone reception. He went to feed the donkeys and the horse, filling plastic buckets with dry food, and I leaned on the fence watching.

Tío Pepe, the smaller donkey, looked like a toy someone forgot to bring inside. I said that out loud, we laughed, and then Seba walked off to get more feed. I stayed there and mentally reconfirmed to myself that this place really was paradise. I closed my eyes for a moment to soak up the experience.

That’s when I noticed.

Three animals, three distances, three rhythms. A circular crunching. Grinding. The donkey’s fast noisy chewing, the horse slower and heavier. Every so often, a hoof hit the dry earth. Thump. Then the horse’s tail whipped through the air rhythmically to get rid of the flies. Wshh. Wshh. I suddenly realised I was in a sound bath. A real one.  No bowls, no rain sticks or Native American flutes, no people lying on yoga mats waiting for transcendence. Just animals eating, the wind moving, the Spanish countryside humming along.

The wind made its own kind of music.  Through the tree's branches above me, it shook the leaves sshh tsshh. Across the open plain it sighed fffff.  Around the cottage it curled whooo whooo.

Even the sun’s energy seemed to make a sound. Not one I could technically hear, but a steady, silent hum sustaining it all. Like a drone holding the whole composition together. 

I was taken aback by how beautiful it was. And how immediately I was immersed, once I shut my eyes. Funny, really. I spend hours planning, tuning, and setting up sound baths and here it was, perfect, for free. Played by two donkeys and a horse with bad table manners.

And maybe the nicest part: there was no spiritual insight in that field. Just sound. Just life doing life. So fricking mundane. Was it Einstein who said: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle"?

Seba was walking back when I opened my eyes again. Tío Pepe shuffled off as the bigger donkey moved in to steal whatever crumbs of grain were left in the bucket. The horse was still chewing. Slushhh... a second portion of oats, corn, and barley slid from the sack into the bucket. And I thought: this too is sound healing. A toy donkey chewing. A whip of a horse’s tail. The sun's heat, humming. The swishing and swooping of the wind.

Which begs the larger question: do healing sounds only heal when we actually pay attention to them? We can bring a thirsty horse to the water, but it will only benefit from this proximity if it lowers its head and drinks. In the same way: do we need to consciously listen and drink in healing sounds to benefit from them? This will be a topic for a next post but I'm curious what you think!