By Bethany BROWN

The La Cañada Engineering Club (LCEC) held an evening of meditation for La Cañada High School students as they push through the final stretch of the spring semester and prepare to conquer final exams. Staff, mentors, family members and other residents in the community were also welcomed to attend on Friday, May 6 at the LCHS gymnasium as a sound bath was led by first-year LCHS science teacher and LCEC advisor Dr. Kevin Bice.

The program served as both a fundraiser to support LCEC and an opportunity for attendees to disconnect from the “outside world” so they could relax, release their anxieties and feel at peace. A sound bath is a meditative experience where those in attendance are “bathed” in sound waves. These waves are produced by various sources including healing instruments such as gongs, singing bowls, percussion, chimes, rattles, tuning forks and even the human voice.

A study conducted by research experts at University of California, San Diego suggests that waves of soothing, echoing sound may help with symptoms of stress, fatigue and depression. Since stress is associated with other conditions, like diabetes and heart disease, engaging in sound baths might be a good preventive strategy to reduce the risk of chronic conditions.

“We found that sound baths elicit the relaxation response and in this response the body relaxes, the blood pressure lowers, heart rate lowers and the body basically enters healing mode,” said Tamara Goldsby, one of the research psychologists in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health at UCSD who aided in the study. “When people are in chronic stress, they tend to be in fight-or-flight mode, so sound baths really help to counter the fight-or-flight response.”

Bice and his wife Maryem have been offering sound baths for nearly a decade and feel passionately about the baths’ unique ability to help settle and center one’s state of mind. He emphasized that this was the first in a tradition of many to follow, with newly implemented plans to hold one quarterly. These will be open to not just students, but anybody in the community who may be interested in the experience.

“The event was a total success,” he said, noting that a total of $900 was raised for LCEC. “All of the bathers seemed to have a positive experience and it was just a really peaceful and enlightening evening.”

LCEC is a group of students of all grade levels throughout the area who are passionate about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). The mission of the club is to acquire and spread the knowledge and skills of STEM by participating in national engineering competitions of all types, as well as inspiring and changing the culture by reaching out to surrounding communities through workshops, demonstrations, after school programs, LCF Engineering Appreciation Day and summer camps. Members stress that they have learned that it is not only about the robots that they build, but the relationships they form and the impressions they make on those around them.

Christopher Kurdoghlian, LCHS student and member of LCEC, said he benefitted tremendously from the sound bath experience and hoped more people will take the chance to participate when the next one is offered. He believes parents and teachers would benefit from an opportunity to slow down and focus on relaxing, too.

“Generally, in our everyday lives, we are concerned with events and items that relate to us. At school we think about our grades, our friends, our teachers, our assignments and our tests and at home we think about our family and our work,” Kurdoghlian said. “We all have these concerns and thoughts, but the sound bath offered an experience where, instead of being concerned with the things around me, I was able to focus on myself and my soul. It provided time for internal reflection, which is something that is hard to find in our busy lives.”

Dr. Bice said his hope is that, with increased efforts to spread the word, the community will gain awareness of what a sound bath is, how beneficial it can be to a person’s wellbeing and ultimately people will feel inclined to participate in the experience next time.

“Wellness is a really important aspect of the LCHS mission; you know, it’s a rigorous school and there’s a lot of pressure on kids to perform,” he said. “Offering programs like the sound bath provides a nice moment of peace for everybody and can help remind them to prioritize their health, both mentally and physically.”