These singing bowls are used to begin and end a meditation session, and for clearing the mind. These are the finest and most resonate gongs available. The singing bowls are composed of five to twelve elements with each metal corresponding to a certain planetary vibration, i.e. gold - Sun, Silver - Moon, Copper - Venus, etc.; they are instruments in a meditational sense, of the highest quality. Each bowl is tuned to a particular note and matures, strengthening and mellowing with the passage of time. To evince sound from these bowls a wooden mallet is used, spinning against the outer bowl's edge, or a gong style beater is used to gently strike the side of the bowl. The sounds that are created are unique in the respect that they are both otherworldly and extremely relaxing in the mental and physical sense of the word. This is why the singing bowls have been used for centuries in meditational and religious contexts to bring people into an altered state of consciousness. Bowl dimensions: 3 1/2" diameter by 2 1/4" height. Each bowl comes with solid wood striker- the finest quality available.

There are two basic ways of playing a singing bowl: you can either strike it with a mallet (there are a variety of these) for percussive, pulsating tones; or you can rub around the edge with a wooden ‘wand’ for a sustained effect (in a way similar to that of rubbing a finger around the edge of a wine glass). With both mallets and ‘wands’ the basic ‘rule-of-thumb’ is that the larger the bowl - then the larger the wand/mallet.

Resting the bowl upon the palm of your hand will usually enable you to appreciate the experience to a greater depth than placing the bowl on a pad or sandbag on a tabletop when using the mallet. Using the wand, we mostly find that, by just resting the bowl in the palm of the hand, the lower sounds will be accentuated, while dampening the bowl by bringing your fingers up lightly around the bowl will decrease the lower sounds and accentuate the higher frequencies, however, too high up and the sound disappears!

The pressure that you use to apply the wand onto the rim of the bowl will affect the sounds the bowl produces, as also will the speed with which you rotate the wand. It’s also true that the wood from which the wand is made makes a tremendous difference to the sound produced by the bowl. Too much or too little pressure, or the wrong speed, will cause a nasty ‘rattling’ sound that most people dislike - and a common complaint from novitiates.