Heart Bowls

In the first few Sounding Bowls I made I sought to enfold the sound within the heart of the bowl as deeply as I could.

This effort lead me to lead the rim over until I could hardly get a tool under it any more. In a heart bowl there is a part of the shape that is forever out of sight. One can put one’s fingers up under the rim but not see under it.

The special shape of Heart Bowls presents technical challenges in string flow that I have solved using hand turned brass guides between wood and peg.

The intense inwardness of the Heart Bowls’ shape seems to create a special intensity to the experience of playing them.

Since those early few I have found specific advantages to having the form more open, allowing the sound to radiate out more, as it does in most other models but these first forms have been repeated now and again down the years for people who seek to touch that which is most deeply enfolded within.

The most recent requests for Heart Bowls have been for five string models for use in meditation with a particular tonal sequence intended to encourage an experience of the nature of becoming fully incarnate.

In the 1990s I made a 12 string Heart Bowl for a therapist who needed something to touch very deep places in well defended ‘maladjusted’ youths. She told me that the delicacy of the instrument combined with the tender sound allowed them to open their hearts in a way that nothing else she had used could do.