Tessa Ann from The Sound Healing Spa, talks to The Monthly about her work with therapeutic sound, during lockdown and beyond

How did the Lockdown affect your work?

I decided that I would deliver my sound bath sessions & workshops, online. While it was difficult to begin with, one of the positives was that it made me get creative.  I was able to find space to develop ideas regarding sound and its therapeutic use. That took me in a direction of producing tracks and creating a certified course ‘Exploring the Practice of Therapeutic Sound’.  Before lockdown, I really hadn’t given myself the space or time to work on developing my ideas, or to create music to match the ideas I was coming up with.

You delivered workshops online?

I had to work out a strategy to do this, then all sorts of things emerged. There were people who wanted to attend my sessions, who could never find the time before. Suddenly they found they weren’t distracted or as busy as they had been before and they were able to connect with what I was doing.

What happened then?

Was it easy to do online work?

There is so much work that goes into producing an online session, lots of additional hours are required for preparation. You have the organisation, the booking, the preparation, the process of making sure the audio works the way that it needs to in order to ensure that there is value in the process. It took a lot of effort to fine tune that work.

For some reason, people expect to pay less for online offerings, but they don’t necessarily consider the work and preparation that goes in to bringing that together. There is also potentially a lot more value given to the client or customer through an online offering.

So a lot of development work was needed?

Yes, but it was worth it for what I felt I achieved.  Effectively the Lockdown offered me a moment to reset. I decided to be positive and more creative. I didn’t want the Lockdown to overwhelm me. It has been a very positive experience for me. I feel that fortunately for me I have been able to protect my mental health during this period, due to my ability to get creative.

The Lockdown was useful for you?

Yes, I’ve gone through many different stages emotionally and creatively.  Again a very powerful and positive experience for me.  As I emerge out of lockdown I can now move forward to work with people in-person once more, but with much more to offer and enhance what I did before.

The lockdown experience has encouraged me to reflect on how I delivered my work previously and I can be more effective in order to conserve my energy to suit what I feel is a new phase of my life. I have just launched my new course for in-person delivery, which also has an online option. Over the summer I will be delivering other workshops and some much requested sound healing retreats all outdoor and in nature.