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AUM Sound Healing Center · Since 2014
How a handful of singing bowls in 2014 became Koh Phangan’s largest sound healing collection.
Origin
In 2014 we opened a small room on Koh Phangan with a handful of Tibetan bowls, one gong, and the conviction that sound is medicine. No academy. No café. No steam room. A wooden floor, a few mats, and the people who showed up because the island was already whispering about a new sound space worth visiting.
The center grew because the community asked it to. A second gong, then a third. A sauna built in the Russian tradition. The ice bath. The academy, when more people wanted to hold these sessions themselves. The vegetarian kitchen, because the practice deserved food that matched it. Every addition answered a real need from the room — never a business plan written in advance.
Over a decade on, AUM holds daily sound baths, weekly gong nights, an active academy training facilitators from around the world, a vegetarian kitchen and a fermentation bar. Still rooted in Phangan. Still founder-led. The collection of instruments is the largest on the island, but the practice is exactly what it was that first year: people lie down, the sound moves through them, and something quiet rearranges itself.
What we believe
Bowls and gongs entrain the brain toward alpha and theta — the frequencies of deep meditation. Vibration moves through tissue, settles the nervous system and quiets the parts of you the busy mind usually drowns out. The work is precise. The room does the rest.
The sauna and ice ritual is hormesis in its oldest form. Controlled stress, applied with patience, teaches the body how to recover. People leave the bath bench clearer than they have felt in months — not because we promised them anything, but because cold tells the truth.
A solo practice is good. A practice held inside a circle of forty people, all breathing in the same syllable until the air vibrates, is something else. Shared ceremony amplifies what a single session can do. We have measured this on the floor, week after week, for over a decade.
Nothing here runs to the minute. Sessions begin when the room is settled and end when the sound is finished. The kitchen does not rush the food. The sauna does not rush the heat. Ten years on this island have taught us that everything worth doing has its own time — our job is to make space for it.
The space
The temple, the steam room and the sound library each carry a different texture of the same practice. You can spend a morning, an evening or a whole day moving between them.
The Gong Temple
The central sound hall. Wood floors, low light, room for forty bodies at rest.
The Steam Room
Built in the Russian tradition. Birch brooms, aroma oils, the ice bath one step away.
The Sound Library
Tibetan bowls, quartz crystal bowls, hand-hammered gongs, chimes, drums — every instrument played.
Lineage & instruments
Our gongs are hand-hammered, sourced over years from makers we trust. The largest pieces took months to find and months more to break in. They are not decorative — every gong in the temple is in active rotation.
Our Tibetan bowls come from Nepal makers we know by name. Each bowl is hand-forged and tuned by ear, not factory-stamped. We have built the collection slowly, choosing each piece for its voice rather than its size.
Our crystal bowls are pure quartz. Their sustained overtones are the cleanest sound in the room — high, glassy, precise. We play them sparingly, because the contrast is the point.
The rest of the collection — chimes, drums, koshi, monochord — has grown the same way. Premium pieces, specific provenance, every instrument loved enough to be played live in front of guests every week.
The team
Lead facilitator · Morning yoga · Gong nights
Daily 07:00 yoga since AUM opened. Holds the weekly gong nights and most of the larger ceremonies. Trained on the island, deepening the practice here for over a decade.
Facilitators · Daily sessions
Five trained facilitators rotate the group sound baths and private sessions. Different voices, different temperaments — all working from the same instruments and the same lineage.
Kitchen · Steam · Daily care
A local Thai team runs the vegetarian café, the fermentation bar and the sauna rituals. They are the reason the place feels lived-in rather than performed.
AUM in numbers
Since 2014
Daily on Koh Phangan
12K
Instagram community
4.3 ★
235+ public reviews
Largest
Sound healing collection on Phangan
Press & community
What’s next
On-site accommodation opens in 2027 — so guests can stay inside the practice rather than commute to it. The academy keeps growing, training more facilitators each season. New collaborations with retreat leaders who hold the same standard. None of this is expansion for its own sake. The center grows because the work keeps deepening, and the work keeps deepening because the people keep arriving.
