Awakening to Awe with Gongs – Free Class with Martha Collard
Have you ever heard a gong and felt something shift before you could explain it? The resonance can draw your attention out of ordinary thought and into a quieter, more spacious experience of presence, wonder, and connection.
Gong Master Martha Collard explores this experience through the lens of awe — a profound state of awareness associated with wonder, inner stillness, compassion, generosity, and the feeling of belonging to something larger than yourself.
During this free online event, Martha will guide you through a loving-kindness meditation accompanied by the resonant sounds of the gong. You’ll explore how gong meditation can invite calm and presence while also opening the door to subtler experiences of reverence, openness, and interconnectedness.
You’ll also look beyond the personal experience of a gong bath to an intriguing question: How might practitioners begin capturing and measuring the state of awe more intentionally? Martha will introduce her vision for connecting centuries of lived gong experience with modern inquiry through citizen science.
Why Attend “Awakening With Gongs”
Awe can interrupt the familiar momentum of everyday thought and open a different quality of awareness. In a world where stress and constant mental activity can make stillness difficult to access, Martha Collard invites you to explore why the resonance of a gong may offer a powerful doorway into presence, wonder, and connection.
Martha’s approach goes beyond treating a gong bath as simply a relaxing sound experience. As the founder of Red Doors Studio and an internationally recognized gong teacher, she brings together direct experience with gongs, ancient contemplative practices, emotional wellbeing, and a growing interest in how these experiences might be investigated more systematically.
The session also addresses an important tension in the world of sound practice: people frequently describe meaningful experiences with gongs, yet those subtler effects have remained difficult to measure scientifically. Martha’s citizen-science perspective offers a way to explore that gap while honoring both lived experience and thoughtful inquiry.
What You’ll Learn
We’ll begin by exploring the state of awe, so you can better understand the kind of profound shift in awareness that researchers, psychologists, and mystics have tried to describe. You’ll consider how awe relates to qualities such as wonder, inner stillness, compassion, generosity, and a sense of connection beyond the ordinary thinking mind.
From there, you’ll explore why gong baths seem especially capable of inviting calm, oneness, and expanded awareness, which means the experience can be considered as more than sound alone. Martha will guide you through a loving-kindness meditation accompanied by gong resonance, so you can encounter the practice experientially as well as intellectually.
Along the way, Martha will examine why the effects people describe after gong meditation have been challenging to capture through conventional research, and then introduce her vision for citizen science. You’ll see how practitioners and enthusiasts could help bridge lived gong experience with more structured inquiry, so that the future of gong practice can be explored with greater depth and credibility.
- What the state of awe is and why it can shift ordinary awareness
- How awe relates to wonder, compassion, generosity, inner stillness, and connection
- Why gong baths may invite experiences of calm, oneness, and expanded awareness
- What you may notice as you listen to gong resonance during a loving-kindness meditation
- Why the effects of gong meditation have remained difficult for science to measure
- How lived experiences with gongs can inform questions for future research
- What Martha means by bringing citizen science into the world of gong practice
- How practitioners and enthusiasts could contribute to a growing body of evidence
- Why combining personal experience with structured inquiry matters for the future of gong meditation
Who This Is For
This event may especially resonate if you are curious about the effects of sound and vibration, drawn to meditation, or looking for a meaningful way to explore greater peace, presence, and connection. It also offers an accessible entry point for people who are simply curious about why gong baths can feel so profound.
Gong practitioners and sound enthusiasts may appreciate Martha’s deeper inquiry into awe and the future of gong research. The citizen-science perspective is particularly relevant if you want to understand how personal and community experiences with gong meditation might contribute to a more structured body of knowledge.
- People curious about gong meditation and sound-based contemplative practices
- Anyone interested in exploring awe as a state of consciousness
- Sound enthusiasts who want to understand why gong experiences can feel so powerful
- Gong practitioners interested in deepening their understanding of the practice
- Meditators drawn to loving-kindness, presence, and interconnectedness
- Practitioners interested in the relationship between lived experience and future gong research
About Martha Collard
Martha Collard is the founder of Red Doors Studio, the first center in Asia dedicated to meditation gongs and complementary ancient practices for emotional wellbeing. After three decades in management consulting, she created the studio as a center of calm, experiential learning, and access to quality instruments.
Her work brings together a longstanding interest in practices that support personal growth with a particular focus on labyrinths, gong meditation, and Kundalini yoga. She was the founding chairman of the Yoga Society of Hong Kong and works through Red Doors Studio to make ancient intuitive practices relevant and accessible.
Martha leads sessions, teaches, and performs internationally, including in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Singapore, New York, and Ottawa. She has presented at TEDx in Hong Kong, spoken at the World Coaching Congress in Mumbai, and served as a keynote speaker at the Global Wellness Summit in Singapore.
Her sound training includes work with Gong Master Don Conreaux as well as study in singing bowls, overtoning, voice, and integral sound. In this event, she brings her experience with gong meditation together with a forward-looking interest in citizen science and the possibility of studying awe more intentionally.
Endorsements
“Martha’s musicianship, sensitivity, and hospitality are world class. It’s been a over a week since I had the opportunity to experience a gong bath with her, and the response I posted on social media that evening says it all: ‘I have experienced sound baths. I have given sound baths. I have a deep appreciation for what sound can do to the mind, body, and soul. But I just got out of a gong bath by Martha Collard (of Red Doors Studio) that was mind-blowingly unbelievable.’”
“Not a day goes by, Martha, without me hearing from someone who attended the Global Wellness Summit in Singapore that your gong baths and main stage performance changed their lives. I think it’s fair to say you were the talk of the summit, and that’s quite something. It’s particularly noteworthy because our audience, as you know, is invitation-only, C-suite executives, mostly running multinational corporations. For them not just to experience what you offered, but to be so moved by it, is a testament to the power of what you do. I was also personally moved by your work, and if it were possible, I’d make sure you were present at every future summit. I cannot thank you enough for sharing your exceptional, unique, and powerful expertise and gifts. It was a remarkable, memorable experience.”
“Martha, this class invited me to investigate the deep vibration of sound on my soul, and the peace that ensues. I recently retired from a business — but not from life! I can’t wait to learn more and get started with my first gong. It’s very appealing in that being a musician is not required for success. Who knows where this will lead, but I feel it opening the way as I move forward in life.”
“Fabulous course. Beyond expectations. Martha’s knowledge, enthusiasm, patience, and preparation all came through. I absorbed a lot during this class. I now understand the art and science behind the gong. I seek to play a gong musically, and for healing. Using Martha’s techniques and the homework introduced in this class, I found how soothing and enlightening the gong can be.”
“I’ve owned a Jupiter Paiste gong since 2000 and traveled with it to sacred sites, performed as part of full moon and other rituals, done home cleansing, etc. As a Reiki master, I’ve always felt powerful shifts each time. It’s been silent for about six years, and it’s now time to bring its voice back to life. Martha’s goal of creating a gong community is what I was missing!”
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- Sep 20 2026
- Expired!
- 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: Sep 20 2026
- Time: 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm
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