Gong Connections

It’s a while since I wrote a Blog post.. now would seem to be the time for an update.

I have just returned home from the Golden Gong Gathering – a beautiful yearly event in west Wales centred around the gong work, and taking its name from Bear Love’s 80” gong, made by the Paiste company. Thank you Bear and Shion for organizing and hosting this gathering, which included participants from all around the world. It was an interesting and illuminating time, with some lovely new connections made, and older ones re-kindled within the gong community. I enjoyed being invited to play the violin in the concert on the Saturday evening.. it was a great pleasure to make music with my colleagues, and I think we created some magical moments.

There seems to have been a rumour floating around in recent months that I am retiring – that is not true. I don’t think you ever retire from this work – it is a way of life. However, after nearly 20 years of doing the same thing - teaching the Gong Practitioner Course for the College of Sound Healing, plus other workshops – I decided it is time for a change. I am still in charge of the College gong department and am teaching individual workshops, including the two-day Gong Intensive, in which we cover all the basics of the gong work to get people started. But over the last ten years or so I have trained other gong tutors to teach the Gong Practitioner Course, and this has gradually taken the teaching pressure off me, and means I can now be free to follow other creative ideas, like more specialist workshops (still at the planning stage), and take my own journey in a slightly different direction. I play the violin and viola in a band which is growing in popularity, and we are currently recording our first album of original songs. I am a musician first and foremost, and whatever workshops or training I offer will inevitably be grounded in that knowledge. I will also, I think, be offering more practical support and mentoring on a more formal basis for gong players who have done some training and maybe need a more experienced eye to help guide their journey onwards. This gong work is, due to its nature, a life journey, with one foot in the esoteric world, balancing the science of how Sound fundamentally and profoundly affects our being on all levels.

Just to quash another rumour : I am not ill. I have not been ill. I am in excellent health and never felt better in my life! That one was fabricated from an overactive imagination! I’m just taking life more easily and not pushing myself like I used to. We naturally slow down as we age, and as I’ve worked hard all my life, I am now feeling the need for more rest and “me” time. I’ve not stopped teaching though.. quite the opposite. There are plans! The recent sudden and shocking loss of my great friend and 20-year workshop assistant Pauline McCrann has been an emotional jolt (I always thought of her as indestructable!). That in itself has made me catch my breath and look at things anew. I think shock does that, and grief. There’s some major emotional and physical adjusting when these life changing things happen.. it takes as long as it takes for things to settle. And we eventually come out the other end with a clearer sense of truth and even higher level of integrity. I couldn’t talk about it for a while, and needed solitude to quietly process the loss. Now the joy is starting to come back. I am fortunate to have a wonderful team of tutors and assistants, plus friends and ex students who have rallied round and been incredibly supportive and caring when it counted, for which I feel very blessed and grateful. I’ve written about Pauline’s steady, loyal contribution to the gong work in the Eulogy on the College website, if you want to know more.

So that’s where I am at the moment : fit, healthy, and raring to go on new projects as and when the time is right. And mainly enjoying these amazing times we are living through, despite the challenges. There is chaos out there in the world because the old obsolete stuff is leaving noisily, and the new world is birthing quietly underneath. The sensitive among us can feel that all is well, and will be well. The gong and sound work tells us that. There is a massive transformation happening.. the people are awakening. The old knowledge and wisdom is returning.. we are heading into a much better world – one in which sound and music have a fundamental role to play. I look forward to that.

Sheila Whittaker 1/9/26