By day, the pool at V3 Sports in north Minneapolis is bustling with students taking swim lessons, adults training for careers in aquatics, and open swim sessions for people of all ages.
But one Sunday evening a month, the big lights go off and the pool area is bathed in soft hues of pink and purple. The mood is set for a floating sound bath.
The wellness practice offers a creative opportunity to rest, unplug and reset.
In a recent session, 45 participants began poolside with gentle yoga movements. Then they entered the pool on inflatable beds, where they could wrap themselves in cozy blankets.
Once in the water, they were surrounded by soothing sounds from crystal singing bowls, a vocalist, chimes and other healing instruments, further amplified over the water.
Last fall, Bruce Leroy Williams, a yoga and mindfulness educator from Minneapolis’ North Side, started bringing together a group of multidisciplinary wellness practitioners to offer the floating sound bath at V3 Sports.
“I would like for [those who come] to be lighter when they leave,” he said. “We are heavily stimulated right now. And not all the time do we have opportunities to really be heavily in a state of rest.”
Thanks to buzz on social media, the sessions fill up quickly. Williams says he’ll offer them as long as people keep signing up.
The power of sound to heal
During the recent session, sound healers Aja King and Aisha Wadud were poolside with crystal singing bowls, which create clear, lingering, bell-like notes. When struck or rubbed around its rim with a mallet, each bowl’s size and shape creates a different sound through vibration, resonance and harmonics.
King also walked around the pool with chimes. Williams moved through the water, occasionally striking an aluminum wave instrument that produced two pitches.
“There are a lot of things that come with wellness, and part of it is the nervous system,” said King, a psychologist and licensed clinical counselor. “And we understand that sound helps the nervous system; you can almost equate it to your favorite song. We use sound bowls as a healing measure to touch different parts of your nervous system and different areas of your body that maybe words or self-talk might not help with.”
King said that during the COVID-19 years, she sought to practice more holistic approaches to wellness, in addition to talk therapy. She became a reiki master, embraced healing touch practices, and took up sound bowls and meditation.
There’s science behind the frequency created by sound bowls, she said. Each one is thought to target different chakras — energy centers — in the body. The way sound affects brain waves may release endorphins and other feel-good chemicals in the body. And as a natural, holistic art, it’s a safe and healthy way to ease stress and trauma, she said.
To create a more layered soundscape at the pool session, vocalist Vie Boheme wove her voice into the sounds of the singing bowls while walking around in the pool.
“For the past five or six years, I’ve been singing at the end of my yoga classes,” said Boheme. “And that has been something that I’ve been cultivating — using sound to kind of vibrate the center space of the body to calm, to rest and give people a capacity in their own bodies to access healing.”
“You know I can’t heal anybody; I can’t heal you,” she said. “I can create a sonic environment for you to heal yourself, for you to tap into whatever you need to heal. So that’s my intention.”
After the sound bath, a collective sense of calm prevailed as participants quietly packed up their yoga mats. It was a contrast to a more social environment when they arrived at the pool.
“I felt like I was at the beach, because the sounds were reminding me of waves at the beach. But I also felt like someone was carrying me somewhere,” said Eden Bekele, a first-time participant. “… It was an ethereal type of feeling.”
Bringing wellness practices to Black and brown communities
Wadud, a massage practitioner and founder of Nura Holistic Massage & Bodywork in Minneapolis, also helped found the Healing Justice Network, an intergenerational community of BIPOC healers and cultural workers that focuses on Black and brown wellness.The network helped sponsor the first floating sound bath after Williams approached Wadud with the idea.
Wadud said while more people are interested in alternative or integrative wellness practices, cost remains a barrier, and insurance rarely covers them.
“[Wellness practices] have not been that accessible to communities of color, and as you know, we tend to follow our grandmother’s medicine, and that is a big way that we heal ourselves,” she said. “So when it comes to integrative practices here in an urban city, it’s almost unheard of outside of clinics and hospitals. These types of areas of healing and wellness need to be integrated, because it also addresses the emotional body.”
Williams said BIPOC communities may not view wellness practices as for them when they don’t see as much representation among practitioners. In addition to the floating sound bath, Williams offers free and donation-based yoga classes. He also belongs to Peace in Practice, which trains and supports culturally responsive yoga and mindfulness professionals based in the Twin Cities.
V3 is the first pool where he has held classes. Williams said he’s used to “creating spaces” in conference rooms, gyms and classrooms. He is also a comedy producer and performer who filmed his first comedy special in 2023 and most recently performed in December at the House of Comedy in Bloomington.
“One reason [Black and brown communities] might overlook wellness practices is that they were never presented to us, especially from someone like me,” Williams said. “I know that if these are the practices that I use, then I need to use them out loud.”
Williams said people often ask him about his backstory — how he found yoga while recovering from a sports injury — and appreciate his approach to yoga, which incorporates his comedic side.
“When speaking to other yoga teachers, I say that you don’t need to have the yoga voice or traditional voice,” he said. “You can be your authentic self and still get your message across. So in my classes, there’s a lot of laughter. I might say a joke, very light-hearted. If you don’t like to laugh, you probably shouldn’t come. I think the strictness sometimes of these wellness practices is what scares some people away.”
