Sara Auster on Fine-Tuning Your Life Through Sound Therapy | The Slowdown - Culture, Nature, Future
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Courtesy Sara Auster
Courtesy Sara Auster

For Sara Auster, being receptive and listening to the world around you—both literally and metaphorically—are essential to the good life. The Brooklyn-based sound therapist and meditation teacher has followed this M.O. in the aftermath of two traumatic, life-transforming experiences: the death of her older sister, who had been chronically ill, when Auster was just 10, and a major back injury when she was 23 from when the floor of her second-story artist studio collapsed. Making space through sound has completely changed her life.

In the decade since Auster began pursuing work as a sound therapist full-time, she has become one of the most notable voices in the field, as well as in health and well-being more broadly. The author of the book Sound Bath: Meditate, Heal, and Connect Through Listening, she has guided group meditations at the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, and the Oculus transportation hub in Lower Manhattan. She has also created sound baths at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, done events in cities around the world such as London and Amsterdam, and facilitated retreats in Italy and Morocco. This past year, she’s also collaborated on events with the New York Philharmonic.

Here, Auster speaks about sound as a tool for overcoming pain and trauma, her various instruments and the tools of her trade, and why the words ritual and reverence reverberate in her mind when thinking about her work.

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I was hoping you might slowly bring us into this interview with a sonic interlude.

That sounds good. Yeah, let’s do it.

Okay.

[Plays crystal singing bowls for roughly three minutes]

That was the most calming start to an interview ever. [Laughs]

It’s a good way in.

So, tell me a little bit about your path to sound therapy and meditation. Do you have a musical background? Was it a long, slow evolution? Did you have some “aha” moment that led you here? Was it both?

Yes. It was all of those things. When I was very young, my oldest sister had a chronic illness, and she was in and out of hospitals a lot. Between 7 and 10, I, too, spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals, because that’s where my family was. I have a strong sensory memory of the experience of being in the hospital, noticing the sounds and the lights, and being very attuned to what my family was going through.

Actually, music was always a way that we communicated with my sister, who became noncommunicative at a certain point. We would bring in a [Sony] Walkman with headphones and her favorite cassettes and play music for her. Even though we couldn’t communicate with words, there was a connection happening that was beyond words. If I trace [my path] back, that’s the first moment.

Do you remember what the songs were?

Oh, yeah. She loved the Jackson 5. She was a super Chicago fan. She was the type to listen to a song over and over again—obviously, before the internet—and write down the lyrics. She knew every word to every song. That was her thing.

When she was 16, and I was 10, she passed away. After that, I really wanted to explore what it meant to have a failing body. As an artist, I started to create mixed-media work around that, with the body and especially inside the body as an influence. It was always multisensory—mixed media, installations, artist books—things people could touch and smell to fall back onto their own experience.

Another key moment along the journey was working as an artist in New York City. I was awarded a free studio space to make my art. I was really “doing it.” I was on my way. Then, one night, I was working in my studio and heard loud banging sounds. And the banging sound was not crazy actors rehearsing at six in the morning; it was the floor breaking underneath me.

Wow.

I was 23. I fell through the floor and broke my back. It actually was a pretty poetic moment, falling with all of my work from the second floor into the first floor and flipping through the catalog of my life and all those things people talk about. I came out of that moment with temporary paralysis and chronic pain, and that reset my thinking about what I was doing as an artist. Could I even make work? Obviously, I needed to get out of pain, so that was the first way in. Needing to get out of pain, I was willing to try anything, albeit reluctantly. I went to the chiropractor for the first time. I tried acupuncture. These things, about twenty years ago, were not so mainstream. I was a born skeptic, but willing to try anything to get out of pain.

Then, through those different explorations of trying to get out of the physical pain in my body, I started to realize a lot was going on in there, emotionally and psychologically. I was dealing with the loss of my sister, my healthy body, and my ability to make work. It was through my reluctant practice of meditation that I started to make these connections. For a while, I had two separate lives: the artist-musician Sara and the yoga-meditation-green juice Sara that were two very different personalities. And I didn’t feel fully invited into either world because of the other one. It was a slow integration of both interests and curiosities that took me to what I’m doing now.

So much of what you do is about healing. I know you intentionally steer away from the word “healer”—and we can touch on that—but I wanted to bring this up, because it seems that so much of what you’re doing is about addressing pain. Not coming to terms with it, but helping with trauma, creating a space for relaxation, making space for yourself and others, slowing down, and being more present in your body.

You’ve said that sound baths offer an opportunity to travel without moving. That’s pretty interesting to think about, a sound bath being an opportunity into all those ways of accessing yourself. So I wanted to ask: What are your thoughts on this healing aspect of what you do? And why do you steer away from the “sound healer” term, even if so much of what you do is about healing?

You mentioned pain. This is something we can all relate to. Each one of us has been through difficult times, difficult experiences, whether it’s injury, loss, physical pain, emotional pain, or all those things. It is not so much the pain, the situation, or the thing that happened that defines us as much as what we choose to do with it.

Sound baths create space around the pain. Which, when you think about it, pain is a contracted feeling. When you’re in it—the loss and the discomfort—it’s difficult to see a connection. It’s difficult to see a lesson. It’s difficult to know how to move forward. So, yes, a sound bath provides an opportunity to create space around pain, discomfort, trauma, and all the difficult things you want to talk about so that you can have a little distance between you and it. That, to me, is where healing happens.

One of the reasons I make a conscious choice not to call myself a healer is because I feel it implies that I am healing you or doing something to you. Therefore, I have power over you that doesn’t live within you. To be a healer is the opposite. To be a healer is to hold space around a person so that they can make the connections, see the openings, and navigate through the pain.

Tell me about your approach to a sound bath. Taking a step back, how do you go about deciding what to play and which instruments to use? How do you meet your audience, listeners, sound bathers—if I can call them that—where they’re at?

I tried to get that term going, by the way, and it failed. “Sound bathers.” [Laughs]

You should make towels.

I’m always in conversation with what’s in front of me. I’m always listening. Wherever I’m facilitating a sound bath experience very much informs how I’m playing, what I choose to say, and how I guide people in. Some of it is preexisting: my study of sound, acoustics, and meditation and how these things work. However, you do need to let that all go in the moment and be present with what’s happening. I’ve facilitated sound baths for people of all ages, backgrounds, and industries, and in locations from public schools to museums and even on an airplane once. I’m always interested in just being in conversation with the environment.

You use a range of tools and instruments, including crystal bowls, tuning forks, and a shruti box. Run me through your toolbox and tell me about the alchemy you create by combining all of these.

Over the years, I’ve put together this very specific palette of sound. How I got there was pretty organic. I started with every instrument under the sun. I still have an arsenal of instruments. But a lot of it is about working and getting feedback. When I facilitate sound experiences, I’m always looking to get feedback from people, because we all have a very unique relationship to sound. Different people have different experiences with the same sound. I’m always curious to learn more from people about what affects them and in which ways, and then I use that as I move forward.

Of course, you can’t please all the people all the time, but the experience is not about pleasure. It’s not about bliss. It’s about creating space for what needs to happen. The tools I use are highly resonant instruments that allow spaciousness and an opportunity for the listener, the participant, or the sound bather to be held in the nuance of sound, in the layers of what’s sonically happening. That’s why I choose to play these instruments.

From what you’ve learned, what impact does the act of deep, immersed, meditative listening have on someone?

We know that sounds affect us on every level. Physiologically, psychologically, and emotionally, sound touches all of us. We can use sound as a tool to go beyond the mind and body, and to what I often refer to as the “sensing self.” The sensing self is your intuition. More than the emotional body, it’s an awareness that goes beyond the physical and psychological. Listening to these types of sounds is also very similar to savoring. There’s a slowness in how you’re invited to listen. I think this is a powerful way for people to access that other internal place.

I love this idea of music as a tool to make sense of yourself. There is this bodily experience when you’re playing a musical instrument. I was wondering if you could talk about how you feel as you’re playing and performing.

People ask me all the time, “Do you feel the same way I feel when I’m listening?” And the answer is definitely no. I’m using my brain. I’m making choices in the moment. I’m very aware and awake as to what I’m doing, but there is an almost heightened sensitivity in the way that I listen. In particular, I’m very conscious of being responsive to the moment. I’m in conversation with the moment.

I think it’s worth bringing up that before we started recording this interview, there was this really awful noise out on the street. I’m sure that you had a reaction to that. I know I did. Every noise you hear has an effect on your body. Do sound baths offer some sort of balm to this? They’re away from the noise, away from the screens, away from technology. In a way, they are kind of anti-technology. Perhaps, they’re connected to this return to nature, land, Indigenous technologies, ancestral thinking, and even traditional ecological knowledge. Do you see the sound bath in that context?

Yes, in all of those contexts. Although a sound bath won’t make the jackhammer stop or protect your ears from a jackhammer either, it helps shift your relationship to sound and listening. It provides the opportunity to feel safe. On a basic level, it is permission to turn your phone off, all the way off, not even on vibrate. That’s what I instruct people to do in every experience. It is permission to leave your stress aside for a moment and let yourself be without needing to do, react, or respond, which is what we’re being asked to do all the time.

I also wanted to bring up the community aspect of what you do. There’s a ritualistic component. It’s not religious, but there’s a churchlike feel. When you’re in some of the rooms you perform in, there are hundreds of people, probably thousands. Tell me about the community you’ve been able to engage and connect with through your work.

You said “religious” or “churchlike.” The words I use a lot around my work are “ritual” and “reverence.” Those are two words that are associated with those other two words because there is a yearning and longing for connection. In a time when I feel like many people of our generation have pushed away organized religion, we’re craving experiences around ritual, connection, and something a little more spiritual. But because there’s no framework or order through which religion might present these experiences, they’re more difficult to access. Hence, the rising trends of sound baths and ceremonies. I think people are seeking that connection.

What I witnessed happen in the middle of [my performance at] the Oculus [transportation hub at the World Trade Center] during rush hour…. The building wasn’t closed down. We had about seven hundred people sitting in the circular formation in the middle of Oculus. And that group of people made a choice to get quiet, intentionally being together for a moment to pause. They invited other people to slow all the way down—security officers, people who were shopping, people who were running to catch a train. The pace of the whole place slowed all the way down. Even if people weren’t participating, they were standing there, still, watching. They didn’t have to know what was going on. They felt what was going on. I’m interested in the ability of sounds and listening to transform space and environment, not only the external environment but also the internal.

Let’s close on the subject of sleep. You recently partnered with Audible to create a series of sound bath recordings specifically designed to help listeners have a deeper, more restful sleep. Do you consider what you do as sleep music, sort of in the vein of Max Richter’s Sleep album?

Hmm. Well, there’s a difference between rest and sleep. Very often, we are in a constant state of reactivity throughout the day. Then, if we’re lucky, we drop into unconscious, dreamless sleep. We’re usually missing that space in between in our daily lives. A sound bath, or the type of sound I’m facilitating, helps us get into that liminal space, the restful space before sleep, which ultimately then helps people drop into sleep. It depends, just like the way that different people find different things soothing.

Another thing that’s offered in the Audible series is P. Diddy reading a bedtime story. I don’t think that would put me to sleep. [Laughs] I would be hyped to hear Diddy read me a bedtime story. You see what I’m saying.

You also have a new project with the New York Philharmonic.. [Editor’s note: This interview was recorded in the fall of 2022.] Can you share a little bit about it and what you’re hoping to achieve through this collaboration?

It’s really interesting how they approached me. They said, “We want to explore a series designed around health, well-being, and especially mental health. We really want to offer that to our community.” I said, “Of course, I would love to meet and talk to you about what you had in mind.” Right away, they were speaking about how they really admired my work bringing people together in a meaningful space of shared experience. I asked them to stop for a second. I said, “I would like to be a mirror for you, New York Philharmonic. This is actually something you’ve always done, that you always do. You are designing sonic experiences and inviting people to come into them and have a shared moment of sound that helps them to access their emotions, experience joy, and step away from their phones for a moment.” I said, “In a lot of ways, our work is very similar, and you’re already providing an opportunity around mental health and well-being, so I feel that the partnership is really complementary.”

I will be working with different members of the orchestra. I don’t want to give too much away because it hasn’t happened yet, but I’m going to be facilitating a sound bath and integrating some of the members of the orchestra into the experience. I’m honored to be collaborating with them.

We’ve covered a lot of terrain today, and I really appreciate you sharing your personal story. It’s an incredible story of growth and exploration through sound. I was hoping to finish on one last question: What is the good life to you? How would you define it?

To me, having a good life is to be receptive, and listening. If we do that, then we have the opportunity to savor each moment. There’s nothing better than really being in the moment, savoring whatever it is, whether it’s pain, joy, or all those things. Being able to savor each moment is what gives us that good life, that connected life.

Well, in the interest of savoring this moment, I would love for you to finish this conversation by playing whatever you want for as long as you want for me and the listeners to enjoy as we interpret this conversation, this moment, and our time together.

Yeah, we don’t just talk about it. We’re going to be about it.

[Sara plays singing bowls for roughly four minutes]

Sara, thank you.

You told me to play as long as I wanted. [Laughs]

This interview was recorded on September 16, 2022. The transcript has been slightly condensed and edited for clarity.

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Amid last year’s travel restrictions and global lockdowns, Erkam Şeker, a Turkish graduate student studying in Munich, mDrive & Listen, a website that allows visitors to do exactly that. Enter the site, and high-resolution video footage (obtained from Yo

A man wearing gold ear jewelry underwater.

Brooklyn-based model, artist, and activist Chella Man received his first hearing aids when he was 4 years old. Eight yeajewelry collection that Man released earlier this year in collaboration with the New York fashion label Private Policy. Together with desishort film that featured himself, alongside model Rayly Aquino and dancer Raven Sutton (who are both also deaf), wearing the jewel

Poster for The Midnight Miracle podcast

In West Africa, legendary tales have been passed down for centuries by griots, storytellers who are also poets, historians, genealogists, and musicians. A deeply respected speaker, the griot is tasked with memorizing and retelling—sometimes with the addition of new details that relate to the lives of a modern

An illustration of a man wearing headphones

British musician Jack Stafford likens his Podsongs podcast to the end credits of a movie, when the title song plays and keeps audiences in their seats, embodying the spirplaylist. “When I listen to other podcasts now, and there’s no song at the end, there’s this huge letdown,” Stafford says. “This

A bedroom with cork and brick walls

Wizened cork oak trees carpet the gently swelling highlands of Portugal’s Alentejo region, where Cédric Etienne, co-founStudio Corkinho, is transforming a cork farm into an alternative healing retreat that will open in 2024 under the Slow hospitality bann

Interior of an industrial space with yellow scaffolding

Morning prayer. Children playing. Cooking dinner. Singing a lullaby. The quotidian sounds that form our everyday experiemahallas—tight-knit, multi-generational living quarters that feature shared amenities including kitchens and gardens—that are beMahalla: Urban Rural Living,” the pavilion of the Republic of Uzbekistan at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, open today through November 21.

A bench with a gold plaque on it.

Late last year, park benches in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens—each with a clear view looking west—were stamped with smThe End of the Day, a meditative public audio experience created by artist April Soetarman. Her voice gently guides listeners through a 10

Clinical psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon.

The fallout from the climate crisis gives us plenty to fear: habitat destruction, extreme weather, and—in case you slept through the last year—global pandemics. But clinical psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon, foundeEp. 51 of our At a Distance podcast), believes that fear and other intense emotions are some of our best tools for pursuing meaningful climate action. “PasClimate Emotions Conversations, a digital forum for people to express their emotions out loud.

Peter Adjaye wearing headphones and a fedora, on a light blue background.

Creating immersive environments that tell stories using music is second nature to London-based sound artist Peter Adjaye. He’s used his skills as a DJ-producer, musicologist, and composer to collaborate on a wide range of interdisciplinary Dialogues, which explores the connection between music and architecture.

Junaco's two members facing opposite directions while standing in desert foothills.

Last week, the emerging Los Angeles folk duo Junaco released its latest single, “Weight of the World,” which they wrote after listening to Ep. 20 of our Time Sensitive podcast featuring fashion designer Jesse Kamm. (Pakistani singer Shahana Jaffer, who started the band three years ago with drumBlue Room, in June.

Mikey Muhanna sitting in a chair before a large group of presentation attendees, all looking at a presentation.

In colloquial Levantine Arabic, عفكرة roughly translates to “on second thought” or “come to think of it.” Pronounced afikra, the term is a fitting name for the grassroots movement social entrepreneur Mikey Muhanna founded in 2014, dedicated to cultivating curiosity about Arab history and culture. U

A hamster eating a piece of fruit in grass.

“Studies have shown that listening to the sound of beavers enthusiastically munching on white cabbage can temporarily retweeted last fall. (The account is maintained by the family of the late children’s book author, who wrote the story that inspired the criBabe). The post, accompanied by a video of a rodent enjoying a cabbage buffet, went viral and was clearly untrue—but nodded

Two hands mixing up Lego pieces on a white table.

The sounds of Legos poured out of a toybox, dropping to the floor, and clicking together are recognized all over the wor“White Noise” playlist. Made using only the sounds of Lego bricks and pieces, “White Noise” is a score of seven tracks made to produce calming

The dark interior of Burnside Tokyo, facing the kitchen.

Dominated by companies such as Sony, Sennheiser, and Bose, which leverage technology to make ever-smaller components, thestimated $28.5 billion by the end of this year. On the flip side, there are proudly D.I.Y. audio designers like Devon Turnbull, who with his brand Ojas creates high-end sound systems from his basement and a studio near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. By hand-building speakers th

Caius Pawson in glasses with disheveled hair.

It’s been a tough year for musicians and DJs, as the pandemic continues to make traditional revenue streams for performiYoung Turks (which counts FKA twigs, Sampha, and The xx among the musicians on its roster), the absence of in-person performances ia playlist of uplifting songs for us that have “amplified the best parts of my year,” he says, “and distracted me from some of the worst.” There’s so

The Oda sound system on a creme background.

Sound designer Perry Brandston grew up plugging away in New York institutions such as CBGB and Fillmore East in the 1970Oda, a speaker system that was originally designed in 2016 as a means for the American musician Phil Elverum to broadcast l

A red OB-4 boombox photographed from below.

When Teenage Engineering released its OP-1 portable synthesizer, in 2011, the device received glowing reviews from an arOB-4, a Bluetooth speaker system that it’s billing as a “magic radio.” The term isn’t too far off: The mobile, four-speaker

Sam Harnett and Chris Hoff holding audio equipment between two bushes in a parking lot.

“We love radio, but it’s become so dependent on information and story,” says Chris Hoff, who, with Sam Harnett, producesThe World According to Sound, a podcast comprising minutes-long episodes that tell tales with sounds in lieu of language. “There’s not a lot of spac

Nick Kwah in a grey suit, black tie, and glasses.

In 2014, Nick Quah launched Hot Pod, a newsletter focused on the art of podcasting. Today, the Malaysia native also serves as a podcast critic for New York magazine’s culture and entertainment website, Vulture, and hosts Servant of Pod with Nick Quah, a podcast on the craft and culture of podcasting. We recently phoned Quah at his home in Idaho for an off-the-cuff con Podcasts can adapt to a wide array of topics. Is flexibility their greatest asset?

The Somewhere podcast art, featuring a cartoon desert and map.

The middle of a pandemic may seem like an odd time to launch a podcast about road trips—but maybe it’s ideal, as unexpecGreetings from Somewhere, a show about how travel affects us; how we affect the places we visit; and, to date, how the pandemic changed everythi

Malcolm James in a blue tracksuit, in front of a white background.

Malcolm James, a senior lecturer in media and cultural studies at England’s University of Sussex, examines the relationsSonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio, and Grime YouTube Music Videos (Bloomsbury). It’s a thoughtful, scrupulous study, demonstrating how technology, politics, and perception have influenc

A Vintage Odyssey cover image, featuring a vintage microphone.

Music is art, according to Los Angeles–based musician and sound engineer Dan Alexander, who, since 1967, has bought and Dan Alexander Audio: A Vintage Odyssey (Rowman & Littlefield), a lyrical, emotive study of classic audio equipment. The 440-page tome comes with all the geeke

Author and scholar Elliott H. Powell with a red scarf in front of a mural.

By analyzing examples from the 1960s to today, Elliott H. Powell, a scholar of race, sexuality, and pop music, traces thSounds from the Other Side: Afro-South Asian Collaborations in Black Popular Music (University of Minnesota Press). “In the end,” Powell says, “the book is about illustrating what the political stakes a

A red and white Radio Flyer with city names on its buttons.

Don’t be fooled by the no-frills appearance of this device—it’s actually something of a shape-shifter. Created by the ItCity Radio (available in the U.S. through Uncommon Goods) lets users pick from 18 international radio libraries with a few flicks of the finger: Simply download the gadget’s ap

Keith Abramsson in sunglasses, walking through the desert.

Keith Abrahamsson is the founder of the independent record label Mexican Summer, which operates out of New York and London and counts the likes of Cate Le Bon, Ariel Pink, and Photay among the artistEp. 3 of our Time Sensitive podcast.) Launched in 2008, his venture has grown to include a reissue label, Anthology, and a book publishing arm, Anthology Editions. In an effort to soothe anxious, isolated souls, Abrahamsson put together a playlist of transporting tunes for us. “It’s culled from material both in and outside my orbit—songs I work with directly or have connected to as a co “Love Is A Jungle,” Peter Ivers “For Lise,” Matchess “Rectifiya,” keiyaA “Stay Sane,” Pink Siifu “Charlotte's Thong,” Connan Mockasin “Infinitamente Nu,” Sessa “Min

Olivia Lopez in a yellow dress, with a black leather handbag.

An international pandemic may seem like an unusual time to kick-start a podcast called The Art of Travel. But for Olivia Lopez, a Filipina fashion blogger whose pre-Covid life entailed constant globetrotting, being stuck at the first episode of the podcast, which she launched over the summer. Through the project, Lopez hopes to provide a “temporary escape for listeners, whiYOLO magazine founder Yolanda Edwards, who talks about an unforgettable trip to Greece; Life House Hotels founder Rami Zeidan, who discusses how to make travel more meaningful; and perfumer Frédéric Malle, who explains how to travel via the senses. The conversations have been a balm for Lopez, who, like all of us, has been missing the excitement of everyday life. “