Seventeen pieces in his own words: on sound and the instruments, practice and the inner life, Thailand, and a newsletter he once wrote.
What a sound practitioner is and what to notice before booking one, what a crystal bowl is made of, what the first time at a gong felt like, what sound looks like when you can see it, and why the ears are worth trusting. Two more are about music: a song Hamid wrote and a fifty dollar guitar.
Updated September 2026
Quartz bowls are sold with a lot of story attached to them. Here is the part underneath the story: what the glass actually is, where it comes from, what the marketing words are worth, and how to tell one bowl from another with your ears.
January 2025
I bought a guitar for fifty dollars at a garage sale in Texas, played it through music school, and turned down fifteen hundred for it. Inside is a signature nobody has written down: Ryoji Matsuoka, on an instrument sold under another company’s name.
September 2026
A sound practitioner holds space with sound, for a room of people or for one person at a time.
September 2026
Five things worth noticing in a practitioner or a training.
September 2021
Some people want to die in their sleep but not me.
I won’t go that easily.
October 2016
Ever wonder what sound waves look like? With our naked eyes we cannot see the waves of sound moving through the air for a few reasons.
September 2016
Although I have been a musician most of my life and studied music in college, when I realized that I wanted to learn the gong in my early 30’s I experienced a sort of primal fear.
June 2015
We as humans are such visual creatures. Our eyes are constantly taking in information as our brains work hard to process and distill the many sights into an image of our world that does not overwhelm.
Four essays on yoga as a practice of the mind, each built on one idea: commitment, intuition, self study and the search for a purpose.
September 2015
Many people come to yoga seeking relief of some type, for example relief from physical blockages or disease, emotional turmoil, or the relentless churning of the mind.
July 2015
There is a story about a farmer who is in dire need of water on his land, both for his survival and the survival of his crops.
July 2015
Intuition is our most powerful guide, yet most of us don’t know how to access it.
June 2015
I have studied the yoga texts and other great thought systems and nothing in these great systems speaks to the idea of finding a life purpose.
Pranascope was a newsletter of energy updates that Hamid wrote and sent out, and he held the registered trademark for the name. The newsletter is retired. This is the piece that explains it, with three he wrote for it.
“Prana is the life force energy and scope is merely a look into it.”
Hamid Jabbar, Pranascope
September 2021
As long as I can remember, I have been sensitive to the energy of others and what I perceive as a collective energy around us.
May 2015
One of the main obstacles to happiness and awareness is confusing the impermanent with the permanent.
June 2015
The process by which we are affected by the energies around us is called entrainment and it’s very simple.
June 2015
A teacher of mine says that “how it is inside, is how it is outside.”
Before sound there was bodywork in Chiang Mai, and alongside it years of study with the plant medicine traditions of Peru. Hamid wrote both down as history, in his own voice, as part of his story.
Northern style Thai massage, Tok Sen and the teacher who shaped both, with one essay from the same years.
Essay · October 2016
A wai khru ceremony in Thailand is an annual ritual during which time students honor their teachers as a way to show their gratitude.
History
The hands came before the gongs
History
The way to learn this is to go to Thailand
History
Tapping the lines with a wooden mallet
History
The teacher who rebuilt the practice
An account of what these medicines are and of what the traditions that hold them do with them.
History
The other half of how I got here
History
What the brew is, and what a ceremony is like
History
The cactus most people know as San Pedro
History
Two maps describing the same territory
The newsletter carries events, training dates and the occasional piece of writing.
Long conversations with Hamid on other people’s shows, about sound, minerals and plant medicine, and the show he hosts, Plant More Worry Less.