Sound baths aim to help reduce stress and increase mindfulness

I’m sitting cross-legged with my eyes closed as Baton Rouge wellness practitioner
Noura Kaye “Sofiya” Skakri begins a sound bath demonstration intended to help me reset my nervous system and lower the stress lurking in my consciousness.

Skakri hits metal Tibetan bowls with a mallet, their mellow notes resonating throughout the room. She moves to graduated crystal singing bowls, tapping each to elicit a different tone and encircling their rims with the mallet’s soft head to draw out vibrations. I hear the peppy sound of windchimes and, at some point, the pleasing roar of the ocean made by a wave drum. The sounds range from deep and low to light and airy, but what’s most interesting is the way they seem to hold my attention—a real feat since I consider myself a remedial meditator. My thoughts don’t drift to deadlines or my grocery list. They let go and ride the hums and pitches without distraction. I feel pretty darn calm for the rest of the day.

A longtime massage therapist, Skakri began studying sound baths, also known as sound healing, 15 years ago. The practice is more common in large cities and wellness hubs across the country, but it’s recently become more popular in Baton Rouge.

“It’s grown phenomenally in the last five or six years,” Skakri says. “There are a lot of people doing sound baths now.”

And while still a niche offering, sound baths are creeping into the mainstream. Last fall, the Baton Rouge all-girls Catholic high school St. Joseph’s Academy included a sound bath segment during a student wellness day. The 15-minute demonstration conducted by local practitioner and yoga instructor Trish Little captivated the private school’s sophomore and junior classes, says SJA wellness coordinator Melissa Shaw, who organized the event.

“They loved the sound bath. It helps with meditation, mindfulness and emotional resilience,” says Shaw, also a therapist. “Kids are under a tremendous amount of stress today, more than I’ve ever seen in the past.”

Little traveled to Sedona, Arizona, for a sound bath certification in 2022. She says the sounds and vibrations emitted from the instruments help calm the nervous system and enable listeners to better cope with information overload and stressful stimuli. She says sound baths are also an effective therapy for people who have experienced PTSD and don’t want to be touched.

“It’s an amazing tool for helping people get back into their bodies and access a part of their brain that maybe they don’t access a lot,” Little says.

Sound bath sessions have been cropping up at local yoga studios and wellness venues like The Red Shoes. They’re also part of an immersive sound and light performance called “Honey Gold,” which debuted at the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center last summer. Created by local artists Sariah Sizemore and Taylor Matherne, the show uses live vocals, gongs, crystal singing bowls, string instruments and visual displays to help the audience ease into a contemplative state, Sizemore and Matherne say.

Sizemore discovered sound healing while living in California as a young professional working in a high-pressure tech sector job. She turned to yoga and breathwork to mitigate stress, which led to learning about sound baths. Sizemore left the tech field and returned to Baton Rouge in 2022 to work as a performer and wellness coach. She and Matherne recently gave a “Honey Gold” performance at the City Club in partnership with the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge. About 50 people attended.

“We had a great response,” Sizemore says. “They came in stressed, and they left relaxed. The goal in all of this is to provide a space for people who might not normally go to a breathwork class, or seek out this kind of experience, to see what it’s like.”

Local Reiki master and sound bath practitioner Karen Koprowski has found a growing audience of enthusiasts in her monthly sound bath sessions at Leela Yoga.

“A lot of people get caught in these cycles of thought,” says Koprowski, also a fine arts teacher at Episcopal High School. “A sound bath allows you to stop the momentum in whatever direction you’re going in and clear everything out. It gives you a chance to redirect your momentum in the way you want.”

This article originally appeared in the April 2026 issue of 225 Magazine.