Sound Bath Case Study
Edge Esmeralda 2026: Science & Sound Healing
This June I returned to Edge Esmeralda with a handful of roles that all shared one common thread: helping people feel healthy, connected, supported, and rooted in a sense of belonging.
For those unfamiliar, Edge City is a month-long pop-up city that (lovingly) infiltrates an existing city. Scientists, founders, engineers, researchers, artists, wellness practitioners, and curious humans gather from around the world to live together, collaborate, and explore ideas for building a brighter future.
This year I served as the Wellness Lead, Connection Lead, and Community Care Lead. On paper, that meant programming the wellness schedule, teaching yoga, breathwork, meditation, and sound healing, facilitating connection experiences, and supporting the emotional well-being of the community.
In practice it meant becoming part nervous system, part host, part listener, part facilitator. Most days I felt like the emotional fascia of the village - helping transmit care, coherence, and connection and electricity 😉throughout the community. Other days I was simply the person people sought out because they needed someone to listen. I am endlessly grateful for the opportunity.
Coming Full Circle
Many people know me today through sound healing, yoga, meditation, breathwork and energy work. What many people don’t know is that I originally came from a research background. I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences with minors in Biology and Sociology (with a theme in death and dying), began graduate work studying Human Consciousness, and later managed a subtle energy research laboratory in San Diego.
My path wasn’t linear, in fact it was very wavy and spirally; sometimes taking steps back before jumping forward; I became severely ill while studying and learning the physiology and function of the body. Unfortunately, conventional medicine created the problem, and that experience opened the door to holistic, alternative and integrative approaches that ultimately changed my life.
The deeper I explored, the less interested I became in choosing between science or spirituality. I became fascinated by the possibility that they might simply be asking different questions about the same human experience. That curiosity has shaped my work ever since.
A Small Sound Bath Case Study
Because Edge attracts such an interdisciplinary community, I had the opportunity to run a small observational case study during one of my sound baths. Participants completed questionnaires immediately before and after the session. Only participants who completed both surveys were included in the analysis (14 matched participants).
The results were encouraging: participants reported notable improvements in:
Stress
Relaxation
Racing thoughts
Physical tension
Sense of peace
Feeling grounded
Feeling present
Anxiety
Emotional overwhelm
Emotional balance
Participants also reported:
Increased mental clarity
Reduced physical discomfort
Reduced fatigue
Greater happiness
Increased connection to themselves
Increased feelings of connection to something larger than themselves
The only measure that did not improve was energy level; but immediately after a deeply relaxing meditation, this isn’t particularly surprising, as many people reported feeling deeply calm, peaceful, or sleepy rather than energized.
Preliminary Findings
Among the matched participants, the largest average improvements included:
Stress: −3.1 points
Racing thoughts: −3.0 points
Physical tension: −2.6 points
Relaxation: +3.0 points
Peace: +2.3 points
Groundedness: +2.2 points
Emotional balance: +1.9 points
Perhaps the finding I found most exciting was that 13 of the 14 participants reported both lower stress and greater bodily relaxation immediately following the sound bath.
This is, of course, a small observational case study but I love that it begins to quantify experiences that many people have described to me for years.
A Glimpse Into the Brain
One of my favorite moments happened almost by accident: my friend Adam happened to wear an EEG/fNIRS headset during one of the sound baths.
The recording captured nearly twenty minutes of physiological data throughout the experience; and the data showed progressive increases in cortical oxygenation during the session, with a noticeable shift approximately eleven minutes into the sound bath. The EEG also demonstrated stable alpha activity (individual alpha peak: 10.2 Hz) and moderate theta activity (patterns commonly associated with relaxed wakefulness and internally focused attention.)
Even though a single recording does not prove that sound healing caused these changes, nor can one participant represent everyone… What it does offer is a fascinating physiological observation that mirrors what many participants reported subjectively.
Around the same time the brain activity appeared to shift, the participant later reflected:
“Thanks for the sound bath! I had an EEG headset on that also captures blood oxygenation. Around 11 minutes in, it looks like my hemispheres began behaving differently - perhaps a shift in focus, attention, or when you invited us to visualize ourselves smiling at different moments throughout life. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but it was fascinating to see.”
Where Science and Spirit Meet
The older I get, the less interested I am in proving that one worldview is correct. I no longer see science and spirituality as opposing forces.Science gives us tools for measuring and spirituality gives us language for meaning. One explores how and the other explores why.
Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.
~ Arthur C. Clarke
For me, sound healing has never been about replacing medicine or asking people to believe extraordinary claims; It’s about creating the conditions for the nervous system to soften, for the body to rest, and for people to reconnect with themselves.
I don’t know if everything can be measured and a lot of times things can only be felt: Both matter.
This little study reminded me why I fell in love with research in the first place:
I remain endlessly curious about what it means to be human.
Sonic Soul Retrieval
Sonic Soul Retrieval is not something I created overnight, it’s something that grew with me.
It’s the culmination of all my years of wandering, learning, breaking open, rebuilding, studying, teaching, and listening - deeply listening - to life, to people, to energy, to sound, to myself. This work isn’t about escaping pain or pretending everything is love and light. It’s about turning toward what hurts with reverence.
Because the truth is - the wisdom is in the wound.
As you know, I don’t separate darkness from light; I don’t believe in bypassing the hard parts. I do believe in walking with and witnessing them to honor them.
Through Sonic Soul Retrieval, we enter the deeper layers of who you are; the wild, untamed, instinctual parts of you that don’t fit neatly into the roles you’ve been taught to play. This is about returning to your Soul Self… not just performing as your Avatar Self.
A lot of the people I work with are holding a lot - pressure, responsibility, family, work, health, and their creative spirit, all the while navigating the world we live in. It’s hard to juggle all those things when every one of them requires so much focus and attention; a deep exhaustion can start to settle deep in the bones and begin to cloud the mind, and thus the vision and the path forward.
This is where I can help.
These sacred spaces that we co-create become a space to reset your nervous system, recalibrate your energy, and expand your capacity to hold both yourself, your life, and everything else in it.
I weave together everything I’ve studied and mastered - Pranic Healing, Biofield Tuning, Reiki, meditation, trauma-informed movement and breathwork, sound healing - all into something that feels less like a modality and more like a living, breathing experience that shifts as you evolve.
At its core, Sonic Soul Retrieval is rooted in something very simple and very ancient: the intelligence of life itself. Light, sound, breath, the elements, the Four Directions, the celestial weather, and the unseen currents that move through us, and thereby influence the way we move through life. We work with these, not as concepts, but as living forces, to clear what feels stuck, to dissolve what no longer belongs, and bring you back into alignment with your own vitality. Because underneath it all- you already know who you are.
There’s a line I come back to often: There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. I don’t believe in fixing you or ‘healing’ you - there is nothing wrong with you. I believe in meeting you, sitting with you, and guiding you.
I blend Eastern medicine, sound healing, subtle energy, somatics and nervous system regulation practices in order for you to feel embodied and wild, soft and grounded, safe and expanded. These sessions are deeply sensory, connecting all parts and pieces of you. We will breathe together creating a sacred space where magic can enter. We will visualize together, perhaps even walking through the footsteps of lives once lived; we may consult the Oracle using Tarot or crystals or dream interpretation. We’ll work through activating meridians and nadi’s and feel how they influence your spine, organs or full body systems.
We’ll tone together so you can hear your own voice, using your own vibration to calm the nervous system. You’ll experience the effect of different sound waves moving through your body - Koshi chimes tuned to elements, crystal bowls tuned to Chakras, tuning forks humming Solfeggio frequencies, Tibetan bowls, gongs, and pangi chimes bringing wood and an ocean drum offering water … these layers of sound don’t just relax you, they speak to parts of you that words can’t reach, through waveforms that can be experienced.
I’ve spent years bridging the worlds of science and energy - working in research spaces while also walking the path of intuitive and shamanic practice. The science, spirit and shamanic world form a rather beautiful overlap - with us in the center.
At the heart of all of it is a deep devotion to the Divine Feminine and her rage, her wildness and her wisdom. Through this deep connection to my own magic and my devoted connection to yours, we bring your parts and pieces home, inviting shadow into light- allowing for what I call a bothness (because we are never just one thing.)
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~ Dr. Carl Jung
Sonic Soul Retrieval exists at the intersection of nervous system science, vibrational medicine, sacred ritual, embodiment, and ancient wisdom traditions. These sessions are a way of welcoming back your most exiled parts, and through loving and integrating them, you become more whole, more aligned, grounded, centered you, in the fact, you become the most you-iest you.
To book a session please click here.
Xoxo
