The Obesity Guide with Matthea Rentea MD

119. Why I Turned My Birthday Party into a Healing Sound Experience with Sarah Gardner

• Matthea Rentea MD • Season 1 • Episode 119

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In today’s fast-paced world, we’ve become so consumed with chasing productivity that we’ve forgotten what it feels like to truly feel good. Exhaustion, stress, and burnout have quietly become the norm, leaving many of us disconnected from our own wellbeing. But what if the answer isn’t pushing harder—or adding another task to your to-do list—but actually doing nothing at all?

This May, with Mental Health Awareness Month in full swing, it’s the perfect time to explore new ways to prioritize rest and healing. In this conversation with sound facilitator and meditation teacher Sarah Gardner, we explore the incredible potential of immersive sound healing to help us reset, reduce stress, and reconnect. After experiencing the benefits firsthand (including turning my own birthday party into a sound bath!), I’m excited for you to learn how sound healing works, why it’s so powerful for calming the nervous system, and how it can help you reconnect with yourself in today’s high-stress world.

References

Sarah Gardner’s website 

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Resources for Mental Health Awareness Month:

If you or someone you know needs support, here are some helpful resources:

Audio Stamps

01:37 - Today’s guest, Sound Facilitator and Meditation Teacher Sarah Gardner, shares her background and what drew her to sound healing.

07:38 - Sarah explains what a sound bath is and what people can expect from it.

10:35 - Discover how the instruments Sarah uses can 'hijack' your brainwaves and deeply relax your nervous system.

13:00 - Sound baths don't just help in the moment — they can create lasting calm in a chaotic world.

17:57 -  A reminder that sleep is the foundation of health — and how sound baths help you connect with your body, promoting stillness and better sleep.

27:08 - Sarah explains the difference between in-person and digital sound baths and the unique benefits of each experience.

35:45 - Sarah tells us the best place for people to find her, connect with her, and

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

Premium Season 1 of The Obesity Guide: Behind the Curtain -Dive into real clinical scenarios, from my personal medication journey to tackling weight loss plateaus, understanding insulin resistance, and challenges with GLP-1s. Plus, get a 40+ page guide packed with protein charts, weight loss formulas, and more. 

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Okay. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast, everybody. We have a really, really special guest today. We have Sarah Gardner. She is a sound facilitator and meditation teacher. And I always tell all of you listening, no one random comes on the podcast. Sarah is absolutely incredible. I have done a sound bath with her and her work was really transformational for me. I'm getting chills as I say this, you know, you ever, you ever talking and it's like, yeah, look at Sarah right now. It was truly transformational to the point where I said, listen, I need you to come on the podcast because I think that this tool, it's not just meditation today. I'm really wanting to kind of dig into the sound bath side of things, but I really like to bring tools to people that they don't know exist that can help them on their journey. Because we were talking about this before, and I'm gonna have you introduce yourself in a second, but. People, especially along the health journey or with work, anything, they're really trying to get at everything from an intellectual standpoint. And sometimes you can't think your way through why you're stressed, why you're tired, why sleep isn't working, um, in my, in my line of work, why you're having urges and cravings all day long. And it's really all connected, frankly. And so I'm just, let's just start out with, can you introduce yourself a little bit? sort of how you help people. And even if you want to talk, I'm actually really curious also of, of hearing, um, you know, not only about the world of sound baths, but also what, what drew you to sound healing? If you can talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Again, I am Sarah Gardner. I am a sound facilitator and meditation teacher. And I, to, to answer your question, I think with the most appropriate context possible, I have to go a little ways back in my personal history, but it is so relevant to my sound journey and why my first sound bath was such a revelation for me. So I was raised in a family of athletes. I am the oldest of five. We all played sports in high school. And the expectation was that we would get scholarships and continue our athletic careers. in college. So the environment I grew up in was one of both expectation and competition. And I did get that scholarship and I played D1 volleyball. And then after college, I was hired as a software sales rep at IBM in Chicago. And I experienced a lot of very early quote unquote success in my career. And what I mean by that is I made a lot of money. But, and two years later, I moved to Nashville for grad school and I kept working in the tech space and I say all of that, because I was conditioned to be what most people would call a high achiever. When I turned 30. I really started taking stock of my life for the first time despite making good money, I was not happy with my career in the tech space, all of my relationships were frankly pretty superficial, and they revolved around drinking and being out and about in Nashville. And I just couldn't reconcile that the life that I was living was as good as it gets and that this was it. And honestly, this process of questioning things was a huge reckoning for me. It's definitely the point in my life that I look back on as, hitting rock bottom. Because I had done all of the things that I was supposed to do, and I did all of the things that were expected of me, and in that process I don't know if this is relevant or not, but like in that process I developed a stress related eating disorder. So like it was this internal experience I was having was have, was manifesting in very physical ways for me and without knowing what to do, I just started, Opening myself up to new paths of knowledge primarily, and I hate the way that this sounds, but like I started reading self help books, I just read, started reading self development, and I learned about intrinsic motivation and I learned about alignment and the big thing was I learned about meditation and so I implemented a daily meditation practice and I, um, I was going to yoga every day and through these behavior changes that I was making, I was occupying new spaces and I was meeting new people. And one of the women I met during this period was a sound facilitator and we really hit it off. And I didn't even know she was a sound facilitator when we met. This just happened very organically. And one day she was like, Hey, have you ever heard of a sound bath? And I was like, no, what is that? Absolutely not. Yeah. What? A what? But I was in this place of just being so open to trying anything that was going to help me navigate. I was going through this crisis of self that I was going through. And so I signed up for a session with her. And you can probably, you know, add on to this, but I can't really articulate what happened during that session. But I experienced a hugely Transformational energetic shift and within two weeks of that experience, I quit my almost 10 year career in tech, I quit drinking, and that, and these were like very unconscious decisions, right? It just became very clear to me. That these were the reasons I was unhappy, and if I continued to engage with them, I was going to continue to be unhappy. And I still don't drink, so we are going on eight years now. These are like changes that have, have stuck. And I, I booked a one way ticket to India, and I solo traveled throughout Southeast Asia for three months. So all that to say, my first experience was a real catalyst for positive change in my life. And because it had such a huge impact on me, I wanted to learn everything that I could about it. And I was just like, why isn't everyone doing this? Why doesn't everyone know about this? Yeah. And since then, I didn't make the shift from experiencing a sound bath to facilitating sound. That took, it was, it was like three or four years before I actually started facilitating. But that really, that's where my, my love affair, happened with sound. Oh, okay. I love how, first of all, thank you for sharing all of that. And that is such an amazing journey that I know many people are on this where they're in things and they cannot, because you had achieved what you had been sold. The bill of goods was the answer, was the way, right? Like the, like you wrote this down, right? You were, you were, You were saying here, the expectations and competition and the success and all of that. Right. But yet when you get it, I know in medicine, when people become what's called an attending, like the end step, they're like, wait a minute, I thought this was when it gets good. And it's not because it's not what they expected. And so thank you for going through that. And wow, was that powerful how that happened for you. And so here's what I'm wondering, a lot of people, they're going to, you know, they're, they're going in, in my world, the same thing happens when people are going on a health journey. They're trying to read different books. They're finding podcasts, right? Some people find this podcast. I'm wondering if they're hearing this and they're thinking, Oh, I've never entertained the idea of a sound bath what could we tell them to expect from it? Just to tell them what it even is. Yeah, so I would say sound bath is a completely passive and restorative modality that uses sound and vibration to prime our brain and our body for well being. And like I said, if you don't know what passive and restorative is, effect, to make it very simple, when you go to a sound bath, You don't actually do anything. You literally just lay there or you sit there for an hour and you just listen. And honestly, you don't even have to actively listen. This is my favorite, honestly, my favorite thing about this modality is. You can sleep through the whole session and you're still getting all of the benefits of the experience. So when I say it requires nothing of you, it quite literally requires nothing of you. I love it. You said this when we were together where you were like, you have to actively try for it to not work. And I was laughing because we had my stepson join in. I was like, I think this was a really cool experience for a 17 loved it. But I was sitting there and I loved how you said that. And I. Don't know. Honestly, when I think about it, what else is passive and restorative? Even meditation. You sometimes need to sit there and be like, let's release the thought and the thought bubble goes. And because I don't have the easiest time with meditation, to be honest. And so this being able to come and nothing asked of you, I know we, well, I had you come when it was a Friday afternoon, I was done finished. I was like four o'clock on a Friday afternoon. I'm done. And yet I felt the best of my life afterward, right? Where can you say that? Thank you for saying that. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. And you are hitting the nail on the head, right? And why it was so powerful for me is because my whole life up to that point, it was effort equals reward. And when you do this, there is no effort to receive the reward. And the reward is feeling good, I think we are so disconnected from Feeling good in our culture. Most people don't even know what it feels like to feel good Oh, no, and they don't even know what rest means because that's viewed as this like shun like you're not Productive during that time and thank you late stage capitalism. Yeah But when you're saying this like this, having to work for it, right? For that to always, yes. And then sometimes even if they're working for it, they still can't get it, which then it's even more sad because you're like, Oh my gosh. And I, all I hear all the time, I'm putting in so much effort and I feel so bad because of course I want things to work out differently for you when you're putting in all that effort. I love hearing the perspective on this. Can we tell people maybe logistically? What are some of the kind of instruments that you use and maybe how does that influence maybe the nervous system or stress response along the, along those lines? Yeah. And that's such an important question because you could, you can't just turn on music and hear and have this experience, right? It is all rooted in the instruments that I'm using or that people are using when they are facilitating this experience. And I primarily use singing bowls. And they are very unique in that they produce vibrations and sound waves in a way that no other instrument does. And in physics, there is this concept called coherence, which expresses the potential for two waves to interfere. And in the case of singing bowls and a sound bath, the two waves in question are the sound waves from the singing bowls and our brainwaves. And the easiest way to say it is. Effectively, the sound waves hijack our brainwaves. They are so much slower than the brainwave state that you and I are in right now, and that we all spend the majority of our time in. And so the longer our brainwaves are exposed to the sound waves from the singing bowls, it just Starts to slow our brain down and so they have actually done, experiments where they hook, people up to EMG who are doing a sound bath. And what they see is the exact same brainwave state there. Let me preface this by saying there's a number of different brainwave states that people can experience during a sound, sound bath. It's not just one. But what they see is the same brainwave state as monks who have been meditating every day for 20 years. In a person who is doing a sound bath for the very first time. That is incredible. Okay, kind of feels like cheating a little bit, right? Well, it's a hack. It's a total life hack and I always say this I'm like in a perfect world We would all have a meditation practice But we don't live in a perfect world. And so if you could have access to that experience Without doing anything. I'm just like, why wouldn't you? I know. And something that, and this is a little bit different than kind of the train I was going on, but you also set out it, can you, well, maybe you've seen with people, I know I've experienced this, that it, that it also, that it lasts, right? Because that, that's something like, I feel like, let's give an example of my sister's a chiropractor, right? Sometimes when you get that sort of physical work done, you feel great, but maybe it returns within an hour, a week, a month. That's something that I know a lot of people are like, well, it's one hour. What have clients told you with that? Cause I know I can speak to my experience, but what do you hear on mass from people? Yeah. And it, and I will be honest, like it varies so much from person to person because. Because we are all dealing with very different stressors in our everyday life and we're navigating different life transitions and changes. And so somebody who has five kids is going to have a different experience than like the single person who has no children. Right. Just as a point of reference, we're realistic here. But I know at least from my experience, that first soundbath I had I mean, it stayed with me for months, I felt that, that internal and external shift for months following my first soundbath. Other people, I have people who come every week, they might be navigating a challenging, experience or transition in their life and they come every week. I have other people who come once a month, I have people who come, come once. like once every two months. I think depending on what you are bringing into the experience with you certainly matters. Um, but yeah, it can, it can really, it can stay with you for a very long time. That's just absolutely incredible. Cause I know I have felt this, so I don't know that I've had more than one per month, but What I used to, uh, before this, I'm not, okay, everyone that's listening, we're not saying like sound mats are going to change your whole, like everything in your life, but here's what I experienced. Okay. That I do feel that I take really good care of myself as in daily, doing, an hour walk, doing weights a few times a week. Like Really? I radically changed my life. You know how your direction totally changed? Like for me, it was corporate medicine where, I was going to, I was going to die early. Like it, it was not going to work long term. And so I changed all these things, but there comes this point where, especially if you're a little bit sort of in the type a, like a little bit kind of. You're trying to get out of perfectionism, but you like things to be good for people, and you're always trying to kind of do more, that it's hard to really achieve that, that calm, and to stay there. And so I experienced that it helped me with that. And at first I'll tell you with this, I was like, Oh, it just had a really good month. Then it's like, I don't think that was on accident. I mean, I will say for me again, it's like we can't make claims, but I really feel like urges and cravings and things like that are down because when you're just not. I just feel like it's just a little bit of a different energy level that I'm at. It's not quite constantly about to fly off the hinges. It's not emotional. I can't describe it. Right. We're just talking energy here. Right. And so that's what I've seen. Right. And I think that's a really good way of putting it. It's just you kind of, experience for, and I don't really like this word'cause I don't even necessarily believe in balance, but. You achieve balance and I can speak a little bit to, physiologically what is happening. So during a sound bath, we are balancing the right and left hemisphere of our brain. And I think that has a lot to do with it people think that you need. quote unquote, a reason to go to a sound bath or engage in self care. And what I want everyone to know is if you are a human alive on earth right now, you are not evolving as quickly as the environment around us. Like we evolve so. Slowly, and these bodies that we are in, our brain and our bodies were not meant to be engaging with technology the way that we are engaging with technology. If you can't turn your brain off at night. There's almost like a hundred percent chance it's because of your interaction with technology. You're saying exactly, I say this all the time, modern world, ancient brain, a hundred percent. And so it's great that we have computers and all these kind of things, but it gets to a place where we no longer know how to regulate or to come to a different understanding because it, unfortunately, it has crept into so many things, right? We're like constantly getting emails and social and Yeah. It's just a lot. All of it. And what used to be very adaptive for us, our stress response in the face of a predator or something legitimately harmful to us has totally changed. Now you get an email you weren't expecting and boom, there goes your stress response. And that is not adaptive. Yeah, that's, you're hitting on, I mean, that's almost the next thing I wanted to ask you about. I really think that talking about things that are not helping people necessarily. I find one of the biggest things with weight management and health in general, it's sleep quality. I always say to people when they come into the clinic, I'm like, look, this is actually the bottom of the pyramid. If we had to think about going up is rarefied what we need to do, but at the bottom, if you don't have sleep, we really can't work on other things. I guess my question would be, have you ever seen a sound bass have improved sleep for clients for you for anything like that? I love this question. And I also just want to say, I am so obsessed with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Like I am just obsessed with it. So I love that you are, that you're going there with this because if we would focus on. The base found our foundational needs, we would feel so much better. But people are like, I wanna be enlightened. And it's just like, right, but you're sleeping four hours a night, so you're never gonna get there. But you're, you're skipping steps in between, right? Yeah. Right. No, but sleep is the foundation of our health. If you are not sleeping well. Every other thing you are doing to improve your life it, you're wasting your time. If you're not sleeping well, nothing else is gonna be as optimal as it can. And we are so sleep deprived. Because again late stage capitalism, you are worth nothing unless you're being productive, and I think, there is another part of this conversation, which is undoing all of these really harmful beliefs that are so systemic and ingrained in us in this country and that's been a big part of that. This journey for me is just recognizing this is all bullshit. We are inherently valuable because we exist full stop. That's it. And if you're not giving yourself permission to relax and sleep, and that is impacting the quality of your life, what is even the point? Yeah. What is the point of being productive and successful if you feel shitty? Have you ever heard that, that story where it's, I'm totally going to butcher this, but it's like the guy that's goes on vacation to some like little beach, amazing town. And there's a fisherman who's all happy and the guy says, why don't you grow your business? And why do you make more money? And he says, why? Then you would make more money and you could do more things to that. And then he's like, and then what in the end? In the end, so I can retire in a small town and go fishing. I mean, you know, yeah. I absolutely love that. And that I can relate to that so deeply because, I've been doing this business for five years full time now. And I've been approached by VC firms who want to, They want to make it like the orange theory, like where people have wearables and we can just, go wild with the data of what's going on in our bodies. And I'm just like, why, why? I don't want to replicate this. I don't want progress for the sake of progress. All I want to do is keep introducing this to as many people as I can and showing them it's easy to feel good. We are overcomplicating this so much. Completely. And I think too you were talking about programming, right? And to bring this down to everyone listening, I, again, I, I'm always thinking in the health lane about things. A lot of times people have a challenge because you got into certain behavior, certain ruts, certain ways of doing things. You don't even know it's a problem. And so sometimes if we can get kind of stress, or you feeling differently, sleeping differently, some of these other things self correct, instead of having to make it so conscious, where you can't consciously correct everything in your life. It's not, I often say that with food, you're trying to come at a conscious process, but it's, it's unconscious, a lot of what's happening. And so it you can't make the two connect often. If someone, if you think that they're new to sound healing, do you have a recommendation for, I don't know how they should start the frequency? What do you think? So I'll say this, most people will experience the benefits immediately. So, before the first session is even over, like you will feel that shift in the way that you did immediately. And it's just a matter of how long, that sticks with you. And, again, I think it really depends on what people are trying to achieve, and what they view as the benefits. I mean, basically you're saying that there's a variety of responses and it's basically like titrate accordingly is the way I would say it. The best guidance that I can give is a question. Yeah. And that is, what does your body want? Yeah. What does your body want? Do you feel like you, you're tired? Do you feel like you want a break? Do you feel like, you know what I mean? And I think, and that's a big part of, of why I love this. I love this modality so much too. I often call it a Trojan horse because the way I present it, cause I work with lots of very corporate clients, like so Salesforce, Delta Faucet Co, like very corporate. And to gain the buy in from those people, the way that I position this is you can come and take a nap for an hour and you're going to sleep better that night. But the reality is there are so many other things. Things that are happening, you're going to improve your brain body connection. I will tell you, it was not until and this is coming from someone who was an athlete who would tell you, I had an incredible brain body connection, but it was not until after I experienced a sound bath that for the first time in my life, I was driving in my car and I was like, why are my shoulders up near my ears right now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I was not even aware and to just, when you notice that being like, Oh, and take a deep breath and lower the shoulders and give your body these cues of, you're fine right now. You are fine. You know what's striking me here? You said, what does your body need? And part of, I, I'm sorry to always bring it back to what I do with patients, but we have this thing called a compassion pause. And part of it's checking in. What do I need? But do you know what I always say before you can do it? You have to connect with your physical body. This is not a cognitive head experiment. Like, urges and cravings live up here, right? Like, so everyone, I'm pointing above my head. It's this thought, what I want, da da da. But, but when you actually think am I physically hungry, things like that. Most people do not know that they need to spend months figuring out what their hunger signaling is, especially if they get on a medication, it's changed a little bit. So what you're talking about, this is so fascinating because I'm, I was trying to, that's why I knew I had to get you on the podcast because I was like, there's these things happening for me, but what is it that's going on here? And so that's interesting. This, being more in connection with your body, based on this really powerful. Cause we never take time for stillness. Oh, yeah. And how can you ever listen to your body, if you're making your body do something all the time, let your body be still so that you can listen to it. This is quite freaky that you bring this up because I don't think we talked about this. My word for 2025 here has been stillness. Yeah. And then enter Sarah. No, this is so funny. But no, I literally after, you know, cause I'm a few years into my business and I love what's happening. I love all the things, but there has to be a little bit more stillness involved because it's feeling a little. Yeah. I want to use the word frenetic, but it's a little too much for me. It's a little too overstimulating. It's good when great things happen in a business, but you don't want it to be so much where you're exhausted all the time. Right. And so it's really interesting that you're bringing this all up because yeah, that was my, so I cut a lot of conferences. I really changed a lot of things in order to bring stillness and more, but then I realized your aspect of sound bass, I was like, I'm going to, I actually consciously have planned them in like literally the rest of the year. I already, I know. I was so happy when those all came in. I was like, yes. And there's one other comment that I had the benefit of talking to you before as well. You said how people, and I always say this too, like people use it as an emergency procedure instead of sort of maintenance, right? So in my mind, I want to stay on top of it and I don't want to always be at the edge of super stressed. Oh, I really can't handle this. I don't want it to get there. And so I feel like these tools really help to. Keep you tuned into what you want instead of always having to overcorrect what it happens. And just like going back just a teeny bit, I, again, going back to my paths of, uh, paths of new knowledge, obviously, I went from learning about sound to learning about our nervous system because that was just a very relevant, a very natural progression. Yeah. And what I learned is, and I even have certifications in trauma informed facilitation, which again, that's very nervous system oriented, and just patterning in our nervous system. system and learning about that. And I also very transparently, I come from a family of addicts and addiction in the nervous system. There is a, there is a very real correlation there. And what I learned is very simply our nervous system heals in stillness. Yeah, I'm already, I'm feeling healed having even having this conversation, you know, Oh, it's incredible. So I have a question for you. People are going to be listening to this. They're going to say, where is the sound bath and how can I do it? I mean, just if you can speak within your business, what are some of the options, right? Cause so I will say this. If you have never attended a sound bath before, digital resources are going to take you much further than if you have attended a sound bath before because you then have that sort of baseline experience and the digital experience where I'm so grateful for it, it's not the same. That's, I was going to ask you about that because I was like they do, I feel like people sell this a lot where, and it's something, I mean, I think anything is better than nothing, but so you're saying definitely much more powerful in person versus a recording, right? Because think about it. When you're getting the, when, when it's just a recording, you're not actually receiving the vibration. Your body is not receiving the vibrations from the instruments. It's only receiving the sound waves. Yeah. Through, through a digital means, I don't even know how to word that, but it is, and the reason I say, if you've never experienced it before, as long as you don't have that baseline to compare it to, and even if you have digital resources can be incredibly helpful, right? It can help you fall asleep at night. It can certainly relax you. But if you have had that in person experience, you will certainly be able to tell the difference between going to a soundbath and listening to a soundbath. Yeah. Some of our listeners are going to be an indie, right? And so I'm wondering, can you tell us, there are classes, there's, I know you said there's like a side where you either do private things or work with clients, corporate clients, things like that. But can you tell us about the classes, how does that work? If someone signs up, what do they do? Um, and, and I am, again, like, I am a type A person. So I, I send an email that it very clearly outlines, like, what you need, what you should wear and what you should bring and how, because comfort is essential. Key to having a good experience. Like the whole point of what we are doing is trying to relax. We're just trying to relax. To be in comfort is to be in relaxation, right? Like they're almost the exact same thing. I get really frustrated when people show up with nothing, they show up wearing their work clothes and they didn't bring a yoga mat and they didn't, and I'm just sort of like. They don't know, right? But you told, I want to tell you, I was so grateful for how you wrote out what to expect because then, honestly, I got to chill out and I realized, oh, I'm actually going to be comfortable. I'm not going to be on a floor where it hurts me. I can do this pillow and da da da, but I know that sounds, that sounds less than smart, but I didn't know because I think you have this image of what you think it's going to look like. Yeah. And what I tell people, when I am doing a sound bath, if a bed is accessible to me, you better believe I'm laying in bed. I love that. And I also say, if you feel like you're preparing to go to an old school sleepover, you're doing it right. So I say, I always tell people, wear your pajamas. Let let's inform our conscious and our subconscious we are going to relax So put your pajamas on Put an extra layer on because you are gonna get cold because your heart rate it's wild. I love where we're at technologically right now from the standpoint of biometric wearables because so many people who come to my classes have whoops or they have aura rings or you know an apple watch that can tell them what their body's doing. So many people, their heart rate Gets lower during a sound bath than when they are sleeping. Oh, I believe it. You had said you can get cold, but I thought, no, I'm in my bed. Nobody ever believes me. No, I didn't believe you. So I, guys, I'm going to give you a, I should have taken a picture at some point we don't take that many pictures. I was in bed. I had the biggest blanket over me. I'm thinking. I'm going to just relax. Do you know I got cold? And I was like, how is this possible? And you get, you get so cold that, the other part of this is it sound bath activates your digestion because your parasympathetic nervous system is activated. So you start to digest. And when you digest. So much of your body's blood and your energy goes to those organs to help you digest. So your blood is leaving your extremities. You can't feel your fingers. You can't feel your toes. You can't feel your nose there are very real and somewhat, extreme physiological responses that are taking place that I've learned, over the first couple of years were such a learning curve for me. Cause I would have someone come up to me after class and say, I was freezing. And because I was so cold, like I didn't like it or my stomach was. going crazy the whole time and I didn't know what was going on and so I couldn't enjoy it. And now you get an email basically saying these things are going to happen while we're together. So plan ahead for them. And then I also have a intro that I do for all of my classes now, where I reiterate these. These things are going to happen. Like your heart rate's going to drop. You're going to start digesting. You're going to hear your stomach. You're going to get really cold. Just to reiterate right before we start, you might not believe me, but I'm going to prepare you anyway. I'm very lucky that I get to do this and I'm also just full time because I think it gives me an opportunity to really dial things in a way that people who are doing this as a side hustle just don't. They can't. They can't. No, no. Right. And I hear from so many people, well, I went to somebody else's sound bath and it was nothing like yours. And it's because I have all of this anecdotal data from people who have been coming and coming and coming to say, I know exactly what I need to say to you before we start if you have never done this before to ensure that you're going to be comfortable, that you're not going to have any questions while we're, while it's happening. And you can fully unplug and just be in the experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I want to say, Sarah, you know, I had had a sound bath right before I started working with you. Oh, no, I didn't know that. Oh, you didn't know that? First of all, my mom was way ahead of her time. She actually listens to the podcast. She had actually bought sound baths in the past. So we actually had them growing up you have to imagine I was in grade school. I was like, what is this? These bowls that came in. So there was that, but I've had sound baths before, but not everybody's as talented. And so again, I'm just, I mean, obviously I have you on the podcast and I believe in you and you're amazing and you're my person, there's an art to this. It's like, I mean, it's, it's, it's so interesting because it's an intersection of an instrument. What you're saying, how you're setting it up there's just so many aspects involved. So no, no, no. Yeah. Not everybody. It's like, I'm getting chills as I say this. Not everybody's as talented as you. So I can imagine that people are telling you that. Thank you so much for saying that. And the way that I would say it is no one is, no one is, is as sensitive as me either. And so it's just been like I've disclosed a little bit here, like my, I come from addicts, like I deal with addiction. I've had an eating disorder. I've dealt with a lot of trauma in my life and the experience, and so that has very much informed my worldview and my worldview is life is hard. Like life is hard and anything that we can do to help each other make this life a little bit easier. And that's why I approach it from a standpoint of let me help you sleep because if I can help you sleep, so many other facets of your life are going to feel better. I want to provide a safe space for people who can come into this not having a single clue what's going to happen, and for them to be able to comfortably fall asleep, even with all of these unknowns surrounding them. Yeah, gosh, especially in these times and I'll just at that, but, um, just, I, first of all, we're going to make sure so everyone that's listening, we have what are called show notes, right? Like meaning right underneath where you're listening. There's some written words there. We're going to have the links to Sarah's website. People are going to be listening to this and they're going to want to run to do a soundbath. So obviously not everybody lives directly where you can facilitate, but can you tell us where is the best place for people to find you, connect with you, find classes that you offer? What's the best way to get into your world? Yes. So definitely my website. My website is a great resource. If you sign up for my newsletter list, which Hint, hint, I don't actually send a newsletter. So you will get a 20 minute recording. If you sign up for my newsletter list, you will, you can, get your first taste of a digital experience. And it's a very low commit because like, you'll probably never hear from me. Can I tell you, I love that because I hate people that are messaging me all the time and they think it's effective and I'm like, then I just unsubscribe. Well, and that's, I mean, I really try to walk my talk. Like I am not out here trying to, you know, like our, Your time is valuable. And I also think we are so disrespectful of digital boundaries, we act like it's not an extension of us. I'm not going to fill your inbox up if I don't, unless I have something important to say, like, I'm not just going to send an email to send an email. So sign up for my newsletter list, get a free recording. That could be for everybody. If you're in Indy, I even work with a couple of. Therapy offices in Illinois. But, if you're close enough, like I am, I'm fully mobile. So I work with. Tons of companies. I work with six Indiana school districts. I have three universities. I work with IU, Butler, Wabash, so I'm traveling to Wabash pretty frequently. But basically, if you have a group that could benefit from this, whether that's a work group or a friend group or whatever, go to my website. You can book a private session with me. And I will travel. If you're in Indy, I host a class every Sunday night in Broderpool and I call it the Sunday reset. And my thought behind that is just get a good night's sleep the night before the week starts and you're just sort of giving yourself a, a, right, exactly you are setting yourself up for a good week by having a good night of sleep on Sunday night. And I also have. I'm in the process of establishing a weekly class in Carmel as well. So trying to make it as accessible as I can for, for people. I love that. We're going to have the links to everything, right? So no one needs to worry. Again, if you don't see it underneath where you're listening right now, rentiaclinic. com, R E N T E A clinic. com. You click on podcast and we have right this episode you click on it. All all of this written out know that everyone's gonna want to go to a sound bath like there's no way not to like After hearing this also, I want to tell people this is we're recording this in march So my birthday's in April and my birthday party, guys, spoiler alert for those who are attending, it's actually gonna be a sound bath where Sarah's gonna lead it. And I just have to laugh because I'm like telling them, like, come in your pajamas. It's super, it's like the opposite of what they would think of a party, right? I love that so much. Oh my God. Yeah. So I'm so super excited. Thank you so much for coming on today. Do you think that there's anything else that our listeners need to know? Anything else that we didn't cover? I just wanted to make sure as just sort of as like a extension of what I was saying about my website, I do have a science of sound page because we, you know, this, we live in an area of the country where people are very skeptical of these alternative modalities. And so I just want people to know, there is data, there is research, like this is evidence based, this is not a. a super woo woo thing this is real. Maybe it's the people I'm attracting on the podcast because I myself believe in these things. So I don't think we have people that, that are only a medication. It's like at some point we know that Western things to cap out like that. I think it'd be foolish to not think that there's other things that are needed. So I love that you have that science page, but at the same time, I think sometimes people, you need to have these experiences because you can't, I don't know, it's like, you can't make it a science experiment. I don't know. It's like experiencing things in your body is different. I totally agree. And I will say I've been so. I've had a handful, like you, of people who actually work in the Western medical establishment who are approaching me and they're like, how do we bring this to our patients? How do, and I'm just I firmly believe that this absolutely has a place in Western medicine. Oh yeah. And the more that people like you can start to inform people this is an option that's available to you. Yeah, I think the better for everybody Yeah we've literally just hopefully a few listeners here. We've just expanded their toolkit for what they're going to even know exists. Cause I'm going to tell you, people are going to hear this. They will never have known that a sound bath was a thing. So we're going to make sure the title of this episode to not put sound bath because what's going to click on that. So we're going to, we're going to make sure to have it be relevant. Well, and thank you so much for saying that because this is an anecdote, like the name of my company is immersive sound experiences because I wanted to avoid the terminology of sound bath. And I will tell you the biggest reason for that was. working with middle aged men. As soon as I would say the word sound bath They start, they like, take a step back And they start looking at my body. Like they're looking at my, like, oh am I gonna be like doing something with you where we're in our swimsuits? Sound bath has a weird connotation. People take it to a weird place, I don't even really ever use the word meditation because again, where we live, people's eyes just start glazing over. I was just talking to a friend about this. So actually she's coming, you're going to meet her at my birthday party, but she's amazing. She's a physician she's always been into meditation and mindfulness and all that. I said, you can't use that terminology because people are turned off by it. And here's the thing. We all actually want what it is, but the name is repulsive to people. They don't actually understand. I'll say this. is that there's also such a variety in this space that it's hard to know because yeah, some of it I don't relate to. There's certain yoga classes that I just, it's too far out for me. Like I just can't connect anymore, but then there's some where I'm all in. So again, I like that you just keep the terminology different because then people can just come for what it is and not a preconceived notion. And thank you for bringing up yoga because that is another really interesting Misunderstanding this is not a part of yoga. Most people do, their first experience of a quote unquote sound bath is their yoga teacher will bring a little singing bowl and they'll strike it during Shavasana. And so there's this association and I even went to a sound bath once where the facilitator was a yoga teacher and she was like, this is one of the limbs of yoga. And I had a horrible experience because the whole time in my head I'm like, I can't wait to tell her no, it's not. I'm so glad we got to talk about this part. I feel like this would have been a missed opportunity. This is so good. We're clearing up things all over the place today, you know? Truly, especially with the more rural schools that I work with, I have had those students approach me and they're like, Is this going against my religion? And it just throws me away when I get those questions. It makes me so sad. But it's so easy to answer to just say, absolutely not. This is just sound like it's the same as you listening to music. It's just a different kind of music. I wouldn't have even thought about that because it's true. I've seen this in the coaching space. These people say I'm religious, and so isn't this going against, whether a god or creator, whatever you believe in? And that's the same thing where we say, no, we're just asking you your thought on it. And if anything, it actually can make your belief stronger. All right, I'm gonna, I'm, we could talk for hours. I feel like I need to have you back and we need to go deeper. Thank you so much for taking the time, sharing with us and just, sharing this with more people so that they can get this amazing experience in their life. Oh, thank you. Thank you for helping me get the word out. The more people who are doing sound bath, the better this, the better they will feel and the better our world will feel. Yes. Thank you.