Not usual for me, I stopped in Lush on the Upper East Side. The Lush attendant pointed me upstairs of their 68th and Lexington shop after I let her know I was there for the spa. My aunt had bought me a gift card for my birthday and I was super excited to try out Lush’s Sound Bath. Wholeheartedly expecting some kind of bath I headed up through the narrow stairway and was greeted at the top by my esthetIcian. The Space was dark and decorated like an English cottage. It was rather cozy. There was a large table in the middle that she sit me down at and returned a moment later with a box.

In the box we’re a tiny vile that said “drink me” and a little treat that said “eat me,” a la Alice in Wonderland. She prepared a tea for me with the contents of the vile and explained its purpose. The liquid in the vile had masculine elements and the treat had feminine elements. Consuming those two things before a sound bath helps to balance your hormones and enhances the experience. She then lead me through what a sound bath was which was really the moment we’ve all been waiting for. If you’re wondering, there was no tub involved. The sound bath is a cleansing of your sound palette and then the application of therapeutic sounds. The idea is that sound is incredibly therapeutic but it gets a bad rap, especially in NYC, when we use it as signals and it’s overwhelmingly around us causing stress. The sound bath works to press restart and retrain your body to be calmed by sound.

They achieve this a number of ways, from using the drone of singing bowls to place you in a trance- like meditative state, from placing tuning forks on your pressure points and around your head to achieve balance of your headspace, to using incense and a head massage to help relax you. At one point, I looked up and she was using a feather to spread incense around the room. This treatment is not for the skeptic. Come in open minded and prepared to witness something entirely unique. Even though I consider myself rather open minded, I still had trouble believing that a bunch of tuning forks and singing bowls were going to affect me in any major way. I was wrong.

As much as I tried to pull myself out of it, I did sink into that meditative state. It was very different then falling asleep because I did have a heightened sense of awareness the entire time, but was definitely in my own little meditative world. After the sound bath she allowed me to use their bathrooms and facilities (with all of the Lush goodies!) as long as I wanted. She fixed me another tea and I sat on the couch for a little while to debrief before going out to the world again and having my freshly cleansed sound palette penetrated by people and ambulances and more. I did notice an ability to think clearer when I was debriefing. I even felt like I walkEd straighter because the relaxation had gotten rid of a bad shoulder pain I had earlier that day. Overall, I would highly recommend the sound bath. Though everyone’s experience is different, it’s exactly what I needed when I couldn’t exactly take a break from the city. The Lush sound bath will run you $140 and is a 60 minute service. Lush has tons of other services available too, check them all out here.