13/08/2026
I’ve been wanting to talk about volume levels since I found out that this isn’t being taught in every sound practitioner courses as standard, and I’m not meaning being told “don’t play too loud.” I mean the actual UK regulations.
When I test the instruments with a decibel reader, the biggest shock to practitioners is usually with the crystal bowls where there can be up to a 10 dB difference between what the player is hearing and what the participant is actually receiving. That could easily take the noise levels over the threshold.
Every single practitioner who has ever come through a Sound Therapy Scotland practitioner course has this knowledge, it’s standard basic training for gong players, bowl players and drummers. So why is this not standard everywhere? Why is protecting your own hearing, and the hearing of the people you’re holding space for being overlooked?
Every instrument behaves differently too. With gongs the player usually hears more than the participant, and where you place the gong in the room matters too. Crystal bowls are where the biggest gap shows up, the participant can be getting far more than the player realises. Drums and bowls played over the body can go well over safe levels near the head. This should be tested during training so that the every practitioner knows how to do this long after their course finishes, whether they are using a handheld reader or an app on your phone.
And comfort isn’t the same as safety. I’ve had one person in a session say it was too loud while the person right next to them said it was too quiet, this is completely normal but I can work with that because I actually know the reading. What worries me is the opposite, practitioners who gauge volume purely off whether the client enjoyed it. That’s a comfort measure, not a safety measure, and treating them as the same thing could be doing real damage.
If you play these instruments please measure what you’re actually producing. Hearing doesn’t come back once it’s gone, and the people playing these instruments deserve to still be playing them in twenty years, same as the people lying in front of them deserve to still be able to hear in twenty years too.
