Here are some simple tips on how to make your Tibetan bowl sing.
Place the singing bowl rmly in the palm of your hand
Make yourself comfortable. As for any meditation, try to nd somewhere quiet, comfortable and pleasant.
Place your bowl in the palm of your hand, making sure that your palm is as at as possible.
If you are right-handed, place the bowl in your left hand and vice versa. Make sure the bowl is stable on your palm. Firmly maintain your posture, keeping the hand that supports the bowl still.
Make sure that your ngers remain open and do not come into contact with the bowl, as otherwise they will absorb the vibrations and mue the sound.
Make the bowl sing with your mallet
Method 1: Strike the bowl with the mallet
This is the easiest method: simply strike the bowl with the mallet on its upper outer surface.
This method is best for very large bowls and for some hand-painted or hand-carved bowls.
Hand-painted or hand-carved bowls have irregularities that block the vibrations when the mallet rotates around the bowl. It is therefore dicult to make this type of bowl sing by rotating the mallet around the bowl. Nevertheless, they produce a long and pleasant sound when one strikes them with a mallet
Method 2: Rotate the mallet around the bowl
Hold the mallet like a pen, between your thumb, index finger and middle finger.
To begin with, gently strike the bowl (see Method 1). You will get a rst sound. Immediately stick the mallet against the upper outer surface of the bowl and rotate the mallet around the outer rim of the bowl. This will allow you to maintain the rst sound and make it grow. The sound may not appear right away, or may be mued at rst. There is no need to speed up your movement. A slow movement, at the right constant pressure, is key to making your Tibetan bowl sing well.
Be patient and continue your rotational movement for a while, even if the sound is very weak in the beginning. If you lose the sound completely, start again.
To be more homogeneous, the movement must come from the arm and not just the hand. The wrist must remain still; it is the forearm that performs a supple rotational movement. After a while, you will encounter slight resistance in your movement, and will hear a rather crackling friction noise. Your mallet will skip slightly, coming o the outer surface of the bowl for a split second. You have reached your bowl’s saturation point: slowly reduce the pressure and slow down your movement. It is important that the mallet remain in uninterrupted and even contact with the outside of the bowl.
To use a Tibetan bowl is to perpetuate a thousand-year-old tradition and know-how.
We hope that this short guide will help you make good use of your singing bowl. If you don’t have a bowl yet, we recommend that you pay close attention to bowls’ origin. Choose a handmade bowl, ideally from Nepal, the country where this tradition has been maintained the best.