sound bath

Stepping away into the L.A. mountains, you’ll be greeted with a sound bath from crickets and birds as the smell of pine, sage and bay laurel fills your nostrils.

They had gathered this Saturday morning on Abbot Kinney Blvd in the courtyard behind the Japanese skincare store Albion Garden to attend “Echoes of the Heart,” a two-hour cacao, breathwork and sound bath workshop that promised to guide participants toward “deep self-exploration, energetic healing and profound relaxation.”

Meanwhile, Alison Ungaro, founder of the wellness non-profit UThrive Wellness, conducts the sound bath, gently circling the bowls with a mallet and intermittently hitting a small gong, while Ebsen guides her horses into the enclosure.

Workshops and retreats here typically range anywhere from $70 to $2,000, and encompass new-age activities like the sound bath I experienced and horse grooming through a neuro-somatic lens.

“There’s ‘flight and flight’, which is anxiety, and ‘rest and digest’, which is feeling, you know, pretty good,” she told me on my first visit to the ranch, a few weeks before the sound bath.