Asia Camacho Hilario and one of the crystal singing bowls that can be used in sound bath therapy.
SAIPAN-BORN podcaster, self-love and business coach Asia Camacho Hilario is looking for a community partner to help bring sound bath therapy to a wider, local audience.
Hilario, who was raised on island, moved to California in 2003. She began lifestyle blogging with a focus on mental health and women empowerment in 2019 to eventually win the Women on the Rise’s Woman of the Year award.
In June, she was a keynote speaker and workshop facilitator at Guam-based Ina Well Fest, a “holistic wellness festival” that organized a festival and conference space “to explore what it means to live well,” according to the event’s website.
Hilario tells Variety that she is back on home soil on a mission to offer sound bath therapy and other holistic healing modalities on Saipan.
Sound baths employ the use of crystal singing bowls and other pleasant, ambient sounds to aid in healing the “mind, body, and spirit.”
On July 13, she hosted a private sound bath session as a “pre-launch” event for a small audience of participants. It may be the island’s first sound therapy session ever offered, Hilario said.
In future sessions, she will guide participants through a “meditative journey” with highly resonant, immersive music while they lie on a mat.
“We set intentions for the sound baths in the beginning of the session, and everyone has their own unique experience depending on the intentions set,” she said.
Immersion in the sounds and meditation is a key part of the session. Sound baths can range from an hour to an hour and a half, with opening and closing ceremonies.
“Just as a typical bath involves a person immersing themselves in water, a sound bath immerses a person in sound,” she said. “The instruments used will vary with each sound bath — like bells, chimes, rain sticks, wind instruments, drums — but the signature instrument used at every sound bath is the crystal singing bowl. Singing bowls originated in Mesopotamia over 5,000 years ago, and made their way to the regions of Tibet, Nepal and India. They’ve been used for healing practices all over Asia for thousands of years.”
Hilario said some of the benefits of sound bath include improving sleep, assistance with processing grief and other tough emotions, and reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.
She became interested in holistic healing through sound bath after beginning a journey to improved mental health.
“I was drawn to this particular modality of healing because I had been in therapy to heal my mind from trauma, but I didn’t feel that it was enough — that I was just scratching the surface,” she said. “So I started my research on healing the body from trauma to accompany my healing of the mind and I found the stark difference. Healing the mind without healing the body doesn’t address the deeper level of healing that needs to take place. I’m glad I sought out more research.”
Hilario said she is interested in partnering with a community institution or institutions to sponsor a space for the sound bath.
She plans to have donation-based admission for residents to the sound bath events so she could make these healing sessions accessible for the community, and sponsorship could help meet this goal.
“For entry, people can either bring canned food, perishable items that will be given back to the community, or they can show proof via receipt that they shopped at a local business that week for their entry ticket,” she said. “I designed it so that it could help local businesses and the economy, in exchange for healing.”
She wants the community to benefit from holistic healing.
“I think the community, and every community, greatly benefits from healing the mind, body, and spirit so that we can show up as a better daughter, son, partner, colleague, parent, better person for each other in community,” she said. “I really believe that it supports the liberation of the people of the CNMI because we are not fully liberated unless we are liberated from our emotional wounds and physical illnesses.”
To partner with Hilario, email SaipanSoundHealing@gmail.com/.
