Lesson 3.3: The Vedic Healing Session

Course Three: Healing Methods · Lesson 3 of 9 · 12 min read

The Vedic healing session

This is the session Sunita's notebook sets out step by step, and it is the one you will give most often. Around thirty minutes, seven bowls, crown to root, on another person.

Everything in Course Two has prepared you for it. The difference is that someone else is lying there, which changes the pace more than it changes the method.

Before they arrive

• Set the bowls out in order along one side of the mat — crown bowl at the head end, root bowl at the feet. You will work down the body, so the layout should match.
• Larger bowls on cushions. A bowl set directly on a hard floor will buzz.
• Light the incense and let it settle before they come in, so the room is already prepared rather than being prepared around them.
• Tingsha within reach of where you will stand at the head.
• Warmth and a blanket. People get cold lying still for half an hour, and cold ends a session faster than anything else.

Sunita's notebook adds one detail about your own preparation: white is worn as a sign of peace, or otherwise the Buddhist colours. Whether or not you follow that, dress deliberately.

The client's position

On their back, on a mat, with a cushion under the head and one under the knees if the lower back needs it. Eyes closed. Arms slightly away from the body, palms up if that is comfortable.

Do the intake from Lesson 3.2 before they lie down, not after. Once someone is horizontal with their eyes shut, they will agree to almost anything.

The session

1 — Open. Stand at their head. Say your intention silently. Sound the tingsha two or three times, softly, moving slowly in a circle around them.

2 — The crown bowl on the palm. Take the B bowl, rest it on your open palm, and hold it above the crown of their head — twenty to thirty centimetres, not touching. Strike once and let it run out. Then, playing gently, move it in a slow clockwise circle above the head, and gradually bring it down toward the throat.

This is the notebook's own opening move, and it is the part clients remember. The sound arriving from above and travelling down is the whole shape of a Vedic session in miniature.

3 — Descend, one chakra at a time. Always beginning at the crown, work down using the mallet:

At each chakra, place or hold the bowl beside the body at that level — not on it unless you have asked and they have agreed. Strike once, let the tone run completely out, then strike again. Two or three strikes per chakra with a full silence between each.

Do not chant. On another person the practitioner works in silence. The affirmations and mantras of Course Two belong to self-practice.

4 — At the root. Strike the C bowl, then rim it slowly for a full minute. This is where the energy leaves through the legs and it should not be hurried. If you place any bowl on the body during a session, this is the one people find most settling — at the feet, with permission.

5 — Silence. Stop entirely. Three minutes, no sound at all. Stay in the room, stay still, and resist filling it.

6 — Close. One tingsha. Then wake them properly, which Lesson 3.9 covers in full — including the rule that before 5pm the right hand moves first, and after 5pm the left.

Timing

About thirty minutes of sound, and closer to forty-five with the person in the room. Do not book them back to back.

What you do while it is happening

More than beginners expect, and less than they want to.

Watch them. The face and the hands tell you everything. A jaw releasing, fingers uncurling, breathing slowing and deepening — those are what you are working toward. Tightening anywhere means back off and go quieter.

Keep your own state steady. This is why the opening exists. A practitioner who is rushing transmits that through the pace of their strikes, and the person on the mat feels it without knowing why.

Do not talk. Not to explain, not to reassure, not to narrate. Say what you need to before you begin.

Move quietly. Bare feet or soft shoes. Set bowls down rather than putting them down.

Practice

Run one complete session on a willing person. A friend or family member, with a real intake beforehand rather than a token one.

Afterwards, ask them three questions and write the answers down:

1. Where in your body did you feel it most?
2. Was there any point where you wanted me to stop?
3. What did you notice in the silence at the end?

The second question is the important one, and people will only answer it honestly if you ask as though you want to know.

Common mistakes

• Working upward. Healing descends. Root to crown is therapy, and that is Lesson 3.5.
• Rushing the strikes. The commonest fault by far. A session that finishes early was too fast, not efficient.
• Chanting over a client. Silence on your part. Mantras belong to self-practice.
• Placing bowls on the body without asking. Every time, every person.
• Striking hard near the head. The head end is always the quietest part of the session.
• Skipping the closing silence because it feels like nothing is happening. That is where the session lands.
• Waking them abruptly. Lesson 3.9. Do not skip it.

How do you know you got it right?

You ran the whole thing without consulting notes, it took at least twenty-five minutes of sound, and the person took a moment to sit up afterwards.

That last detail is the real marker. Someone who springs upright and reaches for their phone was not in it. Someone who blinks, moves slowly, and takes a second to speak has been somewhere.

Something to sit with

You have just spent half an hour making sound for someone who said nothing and did nothing in return.

What was that like — and was any part of you waiting to be told it worked?