LONDON — A former teacher claims she cured her burnout, insomnia, and depression by listening to bells and meditating. Tia Harris now works as a sound healer, helping others with their ailments and contends that the sound of wind chimes can actually lower your blood pressure.
The 43-year-old decided to leave her role as an interim principal after suffering a breakdown. A friend suggested she try sound therapy, a process that uses sound and music in therapeutic ways to improve health and well-being. During her first session, she experienced sounds from crystal bowls and Tibetan bowls and found it helped immediately with the insomnia she was experiencing.
Harris says the experience also helped her feel relaxed following a long period of stress. She was so amazed by the effects that she decided to become a sound healing practitioner herself. The former educator now spends up to three hours a week immersing herself in healing sounds, alongside the time she spends with one-to-one, group, and corporate clients.
Harris treats people with conditions including insomnia, anxiety, depression, and high blood pressure at her studios and during home visits. She also plays Tibetan singing bowls and crystal bowls to people to help ease symptoms, but says different sounds affect people in different ways, making each session unique to the person receiving treatment. Also in her sound armory are wind chimes, bells, and tuning forks to help treat her client’s various maladies.
“I recommend getting a tiny little Tibetan singing bowl as they’re not very expensive – I like the notes G and A,” Harris says in an online video post. “There’s not one instrument over the other – I love the Kalimba and wind chimes but a lot of my clients love the bells. It’s so auditory and sensory I couldn’t pinpoint one piece of equipment that is my favorite.”
“[Since being a sound healing facilitator] I’ve got a different perspective and am far more regulated and aware, I’m sleeping better, I’ve lost weight and I feel physically my body shape has changed,” the sound healer adds in her video.
A family crisis reshaped the teacher’s life
Harris says she began experiencing heightened symptoms of burnout in October 2021 after her mother underwent a stem cell transplant. She began suffering with insomnia and struggled to take care of herself while working long hours in schools.
After taking some time off, she was due to return to work in February 2022 but felt unable to return and took leave on medical reasons for another four weeks. However, in April of that year, Tia says her mother was placed on life support and she felt she had to step away from the school.
Her friend reached out and suggested she try sound therapy, and Tia says after attending one session she felt the benefits immediately. The principal realized she wanted to provide other people with the same relief and after attending a course and completing a diploma in April 2022, she started her sound healing venture in August 2022.
Despite no longer earning roughly $101,000 per year as a school principal, Harris says the risk has been worth it and she is now seeing her business grow.
“I work with some secondary schools, and I’ve got case studies where we’ve cured teaching staff’s insomnia and they’ve asked for downloads of the sounds to use over the summer,” Harris continues. “I worked with a member of staff with high blood pressure, her attendance wasn’t great and now we’ve improved her attendance and her heart and blood pressure had reduced in the last tests.”
“I believe I’d never been interested in holistic therapy – I never thought about being facilitator but I couldn’t manage going back to conformity of my previous role now. I’m very into universal energy now – my mum being unwell plus the pressures of work shifted something in me energetically,” the 43-year-old adds.
“I work with one-to-one clients, women’s circles, we work with the moon and manifestation – the whole thing is about energy. I’m over the bowls four to five hours per week. I’m a lot more centered person with clearer boundaries and all of that has come from a change of life – the modality that brought that change is sound. I’d say to people interested just go for it – you need to live it, breathe it and feel it for it to become successful for you. If anyone is thinking of participating, the benefit is instantaneous and the healing benefit of sound is transformative.”
Tia’s recommendations for instruments to assist with sound healing at home include:
- Wind chimes to help with high blood pressure
- Tibetan singing bowls to help with grounding
- Bells for burnout and insomnia
Sound and music therapy may also help with more serious conditions
Along with studies that have documented music’s ability to change moods and relieve stress, at least one patient says the right beat helped to cure his paralysis.
A patient who was left almost completely paralyzed from a rare disease recovered after listening to The Carpenters each evening. Ian Palmer, 71, says he’s now on top of the world after listening to the band as part of mindfulness techniques to overcome near total paralysis of his body.
Palmer was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome in June 2022, forcing him to spend seven months in the hospital where he was unable to walk or speak properly. The rare condition develops when a person’s own immune system attacks their body’s nerves, causing muscle weakness and sometimes paralysis.
However, when doctors transferred the patient to Sue Ryder Neurological Care Center, a state-of-the-art care unit in the United Kingdom, clinicians taught him to sing using revolutionary music therapy. His therapist, Clare, also taught him mindfulness techniques using his favorite records. As part of his recovery, he switches on The Carpenters each night.
Outcomes for alternative treatments like sound therapy can vary greatly for every individual. Before making any changes to your current health and medical routines, you should always first speak with your doctor.
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South West News Service writer Josie Adnitt contributed to this report.
