In a world where everything feels increasingly loud—digitally, energetically, emotionally—Allison Bagg offers a rare kind of quiet. But don’t mistake her softness for subtlety. A certified sound healer, breathwork facilitator, and visual artist based in Los Angeles, Allison works at the intersection of spirit and science, using vibration to retune the nervous system, recalibrate emotional overwhelm, and bring the body back into a deeper rhythm of healing.
What sets her apart isn’t just the expansive toolkit (think: gongs, crystal alchemy bowls, planetary chimes, tuning forks, breathwork, and energy healing), but the way she weaves them together—like instruments in a symphony—to create personalized “sonic sanctuaries” for both individual and collective transformation.
She calls sound a “Trojan horse” for silence. A portal. A way back to yourself.
In this story, we tune into the rituals, reflections, and real-life practices Allison leans on to stay grounded—especially when the world feels overwhelming. From her brainwave-aware morning routine to the boundary work that’s helped her become a “retired people-pleaser,” here’s how she navigates burnout, energetics, and beauty in the in-between.
What’s one non-negotiable thing you do each morning to tune your energy before tuning into the world? A morning ritual is so important because within the first 20 minutes of waking up, we are in an altered brain wave state. Essentially, we are in meditation while waking up (hypnopompic state) and falling asleep (hypnagogic state). Using this moment for visualization, mantra work, or a simple gratitude practice can be super profound. And it also rewires the brain! On an ideal morning, I tongue scrape, oil pull, do breathwork under my red light panel for 20 minutes, and finish with a little qi gong. If I don’t have time for all that (because: life!) sipping on lemon water with a pinch of salt in the sunlight for a few minutes will do!
Sound healing can feel so mystical—how do you explain it to someone who’s only just starting to dip their toes into this? Absolutely! I love sharing about sound because it invites us to remember that we are vibrational beings and that sound is a universal language we all speak. Our first sensory experience is the sound of our mother’s heartbeat in the womb, and they say the last sense to go before we transition is our hearing. In this way, sound bookends our life. A beautiful piece of music recorded 50 years ago can still evoke emotion and send tingles down the spine – this is the power of sound. It transcends time and space and brings the body into harmony.
You can think of a soundbath (an intentional experience using vibration and frequency) as a way to retune parts of us (whether physical, mental or emotional) that have become misaligned. Sound travels 5x faster in water, and since we are made of crystalized water, it enters into the body, the tissues, the muscles, the organs and bones to reach those nooks and crannies that other things can’t quite get to. Through the power of resonance and entrainment, a soundbath brings greater coherence to the system so that everything is firing together. It brings our hearts and brains (which are often on different wavelengths) into alignment, and lowers the heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature, allowing us to drop into a slower rhythm where healing can occur.
There is so much more to say about the measurable benefits of sound, but I always like to invite in the remembrance that your body knows exactly how to receive and to trust the process. A sound journey is very much about getting out of your own way and allowing the sound to do its thing!
When your brain feels a little fried (tech burnout, emotional overload, etc.), what’s the first thing you reach for: breathwork, a bowl, or a boundary? For me, a simple walk in nature always does the trick! Part of why I was drawn to sound healing was burn out and electromagnetic sensitivity. I was becoming increasingly overwhelmed by the amount of noise I was consuming – the literal noise from citylife, the more intangible atmospheric noise from wifi, bluetooth and satellite frequencies, and the astral noise from social media and societal fear. This led me to study silence as an antidote, and the power of specific frequencies to offset digital debris.
What I came to find out was that we have increasingly been cutting ourselves off from the healing resonance of the Earth, muddying the waters with all the noise we have created. But by gently plugging ourselves back into the Earth whether through grounding (feet in the grass, etc), sitting near a waterfall (lots of negative ions near running water), or simply walking and being around trees, we can reconnect to the supportive frequency of the Earth. I often tell people that my sound journeys are really just an invitation back to silence and that sound, in a way, is a trojan horse! Silence in nature is my #1 prescription!
You’re certified in so many tools—gongs, tuning forks, crystal bowls—how do you choose which instrument to use in a session? Is it intuitive, or is there a method to the magic? Intuition definitely plays a huge role, but I also like to think of each instrument as a portal. They invite in different elements – whether Earth, Air, Fire, Metal, Crystal, Water or Ether. Different instruments can also be cooling or warming. They all have a role to play. Some are there to open and close the space, some are there to sustain us in a lazy river of sound that we can melt into. Some are there to say hello to our inner child (chimes are great for this!). Some are activating and create release, others are grounding. I love to craft a narrative and use each instrument as a texture to weave a larger tapestry.
In my sound training, I teach the history and lineage of each instrument, what they’re calling in, how they can be used to move energy or create relaxation, and how to elicit many sounds out of each so that you can explore tonal painting! It’s so fun! The most important thing is to spend time with all your instruments, map how they feel in your body and what shifts you feel. We can only ever help others walk along a path we have traversed ourselves!
What’s your favorite underrated sound healing tool that everyone should try at least once—and how do you use it? Tuning forks! They are relatively inexpensive compared to other instruments, compact and user-friendly. There are two types: weighted and unweighted. I recommend getting a weighted fork so you can place it on the body for a vibroacoustic experience. This just means, it will send vibrations into your body, which is so relaxing! Try them on acupressure points! And when in doubt, a weighted fork on heart will do you wonders. I love having them with me on long flights!
You describe your work as a marriage of spirit and science—what’s one nerdy brain fact about sound healing that most people don’t know but should? Sound naturally drops us into a slower rhythm. You can think of brain wave states as different rhythms of consciousness. In an active state, we are in beta, which is fast and alert. (Fun fact: people with ADHD have trouble staying in beta so we effectively give them speed to amp up their brain waves into this state).
When we are relaxed, our brain waves slow down to alpha. Meditation is associated with the even slower pace of theta, which is also what we drop into during REM and dream sleep. An even deeper and slower brain wave state is delta, which is dreamless sleep. I like to think of this as the rhythm of oneness, the pace of the collective unconscious. A soundbath using overtone emitting instruments naturally takes us into these slower rhythms without us having to do anything at all! It’s the ultimate hack for meditation!
Some people cry during sound baths without knowing why—what’s happening on an emotional or energetic level in those moments, from your perspective? This is a beautiful release. Sound is evocative. It can wring us out to release trapped emotions or stuck energy. Some might call this process combing through ancestral rivers. When we have a release (maybe through crying, yawning, laughing, coughing, sighing, twitching, etc), it might not even be our own experience that we are clearing. It might be something within the lineage that we are healing for our ancestors. They say when we heal ourselves, we heal 7 generations back and 7 generations forward. I always invite people to trust their own intuition around what this release might be, but also sometimes going into story keeps us attached. Trust your body to let it go. You don’t need to hold on anymore.
How do you lovingly say “no” when your energy’s running low—but the world wants you to show up anyway? This is an ongoing journey! I am a recovering people pleaser who has a history of attuning to other people’s needs over my own. Sound has played a profound role in inviting me back to my own experience, and creating safety within my body so that I can establish stronger boundaries around my time and energy. I think for a lot of people who are drawn to spiritual modalities, there might be a tendency to “leave” or dissociate. This is something I always caution clients around during sessions, and instead invite them to ground and connect with themselves, which strengthens a pathway of safety with self.
When we cultivate safety within, we stop worrying about what other people think and start to claim our needs. That being said, I’ve noticed there are seasons of expansion and seasons of contraction. In a season of expansion, I have learned to stretch my nervous system to hold more and push past my limit.
As an entrepreneur, I am always juggling many things at once (I like to say I didn’t want a 9-5 so instead I work a 24/7!), so I try to notice my creative waves and look to astrology and nature for support around when to speed up and slow down. Growth edges teach us so much! Sometimes the lesson is: I’m never doing that again! Other times the lesson is: Wow, I am capable of more than I thought. Both of these experiences help to inform how we make decisions and what we say yes or no to in the future!
You’re also an artist—how do sound and visual art feed each other in your world? Do you see sound in images or colors when you work? I don’t have synesthesia (the melding of senses), but always love when people share specific colors with certain instruments or tones in my sound journeys! The through line for me for both my sound and visual offerings is storytelling.
I was a film major in college and have always loved creating narratives and journeys. Both music and art allow for emotional interpretation. They are intuitive mediums of cosmic connection. They offer us an opportunity to see and hear ourselves in new ways. I think of them both as mirrors. What you get out of each is just a reflection of your inner world. And that’s why they’re both so subjective! I will always love both equally!
Can you share a time when your practice truly saved you or carried you through something hard—emotionally, energetically, or even physically? After traveling to Egypt in 2019, I returned with some sort of energetic flu. Something about the pyramids, the temples, the land itself, activated within me what some might call a Kundalini awakening. The thing they don’t tell you about this kind of activation, though, is how scary it is! I felt completely ungrounded, out of my body, lightheaded, queasy, and incredibly sensitive to all kinds of energetic and sensory input.
Sound helped me to come back into my body slowly and gently during this time. It taught me to ground and feel my feelings, not just think them. It showed me that I had been living my life outside of myself, and very much in the mental realms. During this time, I worked with sound to walk the very profound path from the head to the heart.
What does “energy hygiene” actually look like in your daily life? Beyond sage or crystals—what do you do to clear and protect your field before and after sessions? This is a huge topic and perhaps the most important module I teach in my sound training! Energetic hygiene is EVERYTHING! It all starts with discernment: is this mine? Did I pick this up somewhere? When and where? Take inventory first. Then: ground. When we are fortified in our own field, we are less likely to take on and enmesh with others. But if we do happen to enmesh or take something on, there are many tools to neutralize and clear this energy.
I mention neutralization because a lot of people employ a “return-to-sender” practice, but this could keep you enmeshed with whomever or wherever the energy came from. This creates karma. It’s best to neutralize first. You can do this by envisioning a golden rose and sending the energy into this flower to be neutralized. You can send it into the Earth to be transmuted and alchemized into gold. A very easy practice for clearing is washing hands after a session and inviting anything that isn’t yours to rinse off you and down the drain. A bath or shower with essential oils and salt is even better!
For my daily practice, I find movement and sweating to be very supportive. Shaking off the energy, grounding into the body, and moving the lymph is so important! Breathwork has also been a big ally for clearing and releasing. There are so many more practices for grounding, shielding and centering that can be employed, but for all practitioners I always like to teach around becoming a conduit rather than employing your own life force energy.
Spaceholders need to be held, too. Connecting with your support system (whether it’s ancestors, your higher self, plant allies, etc) is an ongoing journey, and something to employ in your morning ritual and every day routine. Don’t wait until you need to clear something – fortify yourself every day! Think of energetic hygiene like your immune system. Work on strengthening daily.
