Gong Fundamentals for Sound Healers with Thomas Orr Anderson and Gabriella Gaona

December 4-6, 2026

If you’re drawn to “healing with gong,” the most reliable path is learning how to make the gong sound beautiful, coherent, and safe. In this 3-day immersive training, you’ll learn to play the gong as an instrument of listening and feeling, then translate that craft into therapeutic soundscapes for sound baths and private work.

This training is practical, embodied, and technique-forward. We focus on the fundamentals that directly shape the experience in the room: touch, tone production, smooth drones, pacing, transitions, and how to build intensity as waves instead of spikes. You’ll also explore a Qi‑centric approach inspired by Qigong, where Qi is trained as an observable, repeatable skill set: breath, attention, posture, efficient movement, and timing. The result is playing that feels steadier, more sensitive, and more sustainable, with less effort and more resonance.

IN THIS TRAINING, YOU WILL:

• Develop deep listening and felt-sense for timbre, dynamics, and decay, translating that awareness into touch

• Learn mallet fundamentals: selection, grip, rebound, and control, so the mallet and gong work as one system

• Build a clear strike vocabulary for reliable sweet tone at low-to-moderate volume

• Explore friction textures, muting, damping, and envelope control for nervous-system-friendly pacing

• Map tonal zones on the gong, learning how placement changes color, intensity, and feel

• Practice “safe intensity” skills: wave-building, clean transitions, and grounded endings

• Train through the Six Foundations lens: attention, breath, movement, posture and geometry, feeling, and rhythm

WHO IT’S FOR:

Sound healers, yoga and meditation teachers, bodyworkers, and anyone ready to bring gong into healing work with clarity and integrity.

PREREQUISITES:

None. No prior gong experience required. Prior sound healing experience is helpful but not necessary.

MODULE PATHWAY (3 MODULES):

Module 1 builds listening, touch, and fundamental gong technique.

Module 2 refines technique into musical forms and transitions for session composition.

Module 3 prepares you to facilitate full 60-minute therapeutic group gong sessions.

Cost: $1222

Early Bird: $1111

Recording: A recording and class notes will be sent out after the class.

Facilitators:

Thomas Orr Anderson is a physicist, musician, author, and longtime Qigong instructor whose work brings together acoustics, meditation, movement, and the art of gong playing. With bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics, he offers a grounded understanding of vibration, resonance, and attention while remaining rooted in direct practice and deep listening. For more than two decades, he has explored sound in settings ranging from university research and integrative wellness work to ceremonial spaces and ancient sacred sites, with a sustained focus on gongs and overtone-rich instruments.

Thomas teaches with the Advanced Institute of Sound, has served as a moderator for the Gong Summits, and is a returning invited teacher with 9Ways Gong Camps. His approach blends technique, sensitivity, and inner cultivation, helping students deepen both their musical relationship with the gong and their capacity to use sound in meditation, movement practice, and everyday life.

His books include:

• Master Handbook of Sound Healing

• Introduction to Attention Field Theory & Its Application to Sound Healing

• Living Way —Yoga Sound Integration Teacher Training Textbook

• Silent Center —Zero Lessons on Zen

• Accidental Vampires & The Real Wooden Stake

• The Book That Swallows Itself

Gabriella Gaona is an Artist, Yogi, Nature Lover & Co-Founder of The Inner Warrior in 2014,  Louisville’s first donation-based Yoga Studio and MYPATH Fest in 2016, Kentucky’s first Yoga Festival. She’s a Yoga Teacher, multi-instrumentalist, Sound Therapist, Event Producer, International Retreat organizer, and Co-Leader of Yoga & Sound-Integration Teacher Trainings. Gabriella loves sharing her own experience & modern interpretation of classical Raja-Hatha Yoga through her offerings. She is continually driven by her deep & ever growing passion for sharing wellness with the global community.

Questions: Please contact Rebecca at rebecca@advancedinstituteofsound.com