About
Healing Through Sound
Join Leigh and Tamara from Live from Chevy Chase as they visit The Sound Healing Center of Lexington, where owner Amy Hudson shares how sound healing with quartz crystal singing bowls promotes deep relaxation and well-being.
Discover Sound Healing
Jason Swanson, a University of Kentucky professor of Tourism, takes us to The Sound Healing Center of Lexington to learn about a typical sound healing session, some of its benefits, and Amy’s advice for someone considering doing this for the first time.
How It Began
One evening in July 2023, I sat at my desk with my journal and asked the Universe, “Where do you need me?” The answer came through clear as a bell; not just the idea, but the full name: The Sound Healing Center of Lexington.
I could feel the shift. For years, online connection had been my world, but I knew this was the time to gather in person. To create a place where people could meet face-to-face, heart-to-heart, and let sound do what it does best: meet you exactly where you are.
Sound healing wasn’t something I chased. It chased me. Years earlier, during a rough patch, I asked Spirit, “How can I help? What’s my role?” The answer was so simple it almost felt like a joke: play the bowls. And when I did, everything clicked. People resonated — literally — with the crystal singing bowls in a way I’d never seen with any other modality. It felt effortless, and I’ve learned that ease is often the sign you’re right where you’re meant to be.
After that meditation, things moved fast. I grabbed the domain, the social handles, and the business name. I started looking for a space, and three months later, I was standing in this historic building that seemed to hum with its own quiet magic. I didn’t fight for it; it landed in my lap. We signed the contract in October, and by November 5, the first sound bath was held here.
From the very first visitors, people told me the same thing: “It’s so calm in here.” Before a bowl is ever played, the space itself starts to work on you. I believe that’s because it was built with the intention to hold healing frequencies. It’s baked into the bricks.
The Mission
This is a space for you to be.
No one to please. Nothing to produce. No “right” way to do it.
At The Sound Healing Center of Lexington, we use sound to recharge the body, calm the mind, soothe the heart, and open the door to deeper spiritual connection. Sessions here are designed to harmonize your energy so that you can step back into the world a little more grounded, a little more yourself.
If you remember one thing about this space, let it be this:
Here, you get to turn it all off and come home to yourself.
Who This Space Is For
If you walk through these doors, chances are you’re looking for something. Maybe rest. Maybe peace. Maybe a sense of connection you can’t quite find anywhere else.
You don’t walk in broken for someone to “fix” you; you walk in, and we create the context in which you can heal yourself.
Sound meets you exactly where you are. Whether you need stillness, clarity, or just a break from the noise of life, the sound will meet you there. And when you leave, my hope is you carry more than relaxation — that you feel lighter, clearer, more balanced, and able to meet your life with fresh eyes.
FAQs
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Sound healing is an ancient practice that uses sound vibrations to support physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Instruments like crystal singing bowls, handpans, gongs, rattles, and drums are played to create calming frequencies that resonate through the body and mind.
These vibrations help shift us from stress and overthinking into deep relaxation. As tension dissolves, the body’s natural healing processes are supported, offering benefits such as improved sleep, reduced anxiety, and enhanced clarity. Many find that sound healing reconnects them with a sense of peace, presence, and inner alignment.
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A sound bath is a type of sound healing session where you are immersed in waves of soothing sound. There’s no water involved—the term “bath” refers to being surrounded by sound.
During a sound bath, instruments are played in ways that encourage the brain to slow down. As you lie down and breathe, your nervous system shifts from the fight-or-flight response into a state of rest and repair. This experience supports deep relaxation, emotional release, and energetic balance.
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Participants often report:
Deep relaxation and emotional release
Improved sleep and reduced anxiety
Pain relief and stress reduction
Grounded, peaceful energy
Enhanced intuition and clarity
A sense of lightness or renewal
Spiritual connection and energetic cleansing
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If you're feeling ungrounded, stuck, overwhelmed, or spiritually curious—this work may support you. Sound healing is for those ready to explore new ways of healing and self-discovery. You don’t have to have all the answers; you just have to show up with an open heart and a willingness to listen inward.
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Dress comfortably, you’ll be lying down for most of the session. We provide yoga mats, blankets, blocks, and even hammock swings to support your experience. Feel free to bring anything else that helps you feel relaxed (a water bottle, journal, favorite pillow, etc.).
We recommend arriving well-rested, lightly nourished, and hydrated. Avoid heavy meals, alcohol, and excessive caffeine before your session to help your body settle more easily into a relaxed state.
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Our center is located on the third floor of a historic building. Several stairs lead to the entrance, and there is no elevator access. We understand this may limit accessibility for some and deeply apologize for any inconvenience.
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Not at all. Sound healing is accessible to everyone; no prior experience or knowledge is needed. Whether it’s your first time or you’ve explored many healing modalities, all you need to do is show up. Just come as you are, and allow the sound to guide you into a space of rest and renewal.
Building History
In 1888, The Women’s Guild of Christ Church Episcopal Church established an infirmary for the care of Lexingtonians. It would be Lexington’s second hospital, as St. Joseph had been established by the Catholic Church in 1877.
The mission began in Farmer Dewees’ ca. 1814 White Cottage, located on East Short Street, which the Guild purchased for $5,000 from Bernard Fotch. The cottage had been home in the late 1830s to H.H. Gratz, the editor of the Kentucky Gazette; it was ultimately torn down in 1940.
Good Samaritan Hospital
According to the Herald-Leader, which published a history of the medical facility on its golden anniversary, the physical plant of the infirmary cost just under $40,000. Although no records exist from 1888, 1889 witnessed some 659 patients being treated here. That year's operating budget for the infirmary was just over $11,000.
In January 1889, the Episcopal Women’s Guild transferred control of the infirmary to a consortium of Protestant churches of the Baptist, Christian, Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian faiths. A decade later, in 1899, the Protestant Infirmary was also renamed the Good Samaritan Hospital.
Realizing the need for nurses, a nursing school was established at the hospital, and the first class of nurses graduated in 1893. On perhaps an unrelated note, an effort was made “to get [the] red light district moved away from [the] neighborhood of Protestant Infirmary,” according to the Morning Transcript in August 1894. (Belle Brezing’s infamous bordello was only a one-and-a-half blocks away at 59 Megowan, now the corner of Wilson Street and Eastern Avenue).
Additions and annexes to the facility were constructed on multiple occasions, including those in 1895 and 1897. Below is the Good Samaritan Hospital as it appears on the 1907 Sanborn map, including an operating room, laundry building, colored ward, and morgue.
To Be Vacated
At the bottom of the 1907 Sanborn is a notation that the buildings of Good Samaritan Hospital are “to be vacated in the near future.” Plans had been developed in 1905 for a new and modern medical facility, which purchased land at 310 South Limestone Street from W. H. McCorkle. The site had once been part of the James O. Harrison estate, with Mr. Harrison having passed away in his home on the site in 1888.
Mr. Harrison was a prominent citizen and early leader in Lexington’s local school system (for him, Harrison Elementary is named). His daughter, Mary Eliza, was a member of the Women’s Guild, which helped establish the Protestant Infirmary in the first place.
In 1907, the Good Samaritan Hospital relocated to its new 130-bed hospital. In 1924, the Methodist Church took exclusive control of Good Samaritan, but it would change hands several more times during the 20th century. In 2007, Samaritan Hospital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy relief, and the University of Kentucky Healthcare System purchased the medical facility during the bankruptcy.
Coffee Times
The structure on East Short Street remained standing. In 1920, it was publicly sold to W.T. Woolfolk, whose Woolfolk Coffee Company, after that, called it home. The coffee company had previously been located between Upper and Mill on Vine Street.
Remembrances of the coffee days can be found around the building, with Greenbag Coffee stampings on the walls and the advice to keep peanuts off the floor.
Mr. Woolfolk, this was written in the Lexington Leader preceding a 1905 election: “William T. Woolfolk, of the wholesale grocery firm of Martin & Woolfolk, corner of Mill and Market streets, is the Republican candidate for member of the Lower Board of the City Council in the First Ward. Mr. Woolfolk was born and reared in Garrard County, Ky., and came to Lexington about fifteen years ago, engaging in the retail grocery business at High and Broadway.”
According to news reports, Woolfolk’s coffee and peanut operation ended near the start of World War II. This was undoubtedly due to the federal policy of coffee rationing, which began in 1942.
A New Role
After World War II, the old Protestant Infirmary was the home of Hurst Office Supply. In 2014, Zeff Maloney acquired the structure at public sale through one of his businesses and has since gone through a painstaking process of bringing beauty back to this nineteenth-century structure and adapting it for modern use.
The structure is now rented to various commercial interests, including a sound healing center, marketing agency, financial planner, and law offices. In the restoration process, Maloney extracted ten tons of plaster from the building, which had covered the beautiful interior brick.
Source: The Kaintuckeean Article
Additional History: Lexington Herald-Leader Article
Sounds, vibrations, and “music will best bring healing and strength to the body…”
— Edgar Cayce reading 949-12