I can't sleep, and I have never done a sound bath.
So on a recent Saturday night, I walked into Mattress Central on Glendale Boulevard in Atwater Village to find out if lying on a mattress I didn't pay for could fix my life.
L.A. has no shortage of wellness-focused retreats, seminars, and classes. L.A. TACO editor-in-chief Javier Cabral has even done a few himself, taking a microdosed-psilocybin yoga class in Downtown that ended with a sound bath.
For me, this was all new. I usually don’t have time for wellness unless it is green and cigarette-shaped. Like so many others, I have issues sleeping and need something to balance me out; coffee can only do so much to make up for the hours I toss and turn each night.
Paying for wellness retreats or taking time to meditate is not something I have familiarized myself with. Maybe that’s because wellness is often seen as a privilege of the wealthy, and I am a Black Latina from Southeast Los Angeles who grew up thinking the massage chairs at Costco were the epitome of relaxation. Honestly, I was apprehensive about whether sound baths were even legit. But I needed the sleep, so when I heard about Moon Soul Sound Baths —which take place at Mattress Central twice a month and turn the showroom into a lights-out type of slumber party—I signed up.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, a sound bath means you lie down while someone plays crystal bowls, chimes, and other instruments around you. In this case, the woman behind the sound bowls is Alice Moon, who has pink hair and a matching pink necklace with her name on it.
Moon was certified as a sound bath facilitator a little more than a year ago. On top of that training, she took a music theory course and an online course on frequencies and has read a lot of books to learn about "the science of sound and what it does to our bodies."
"It just kind of exploded [since then]," Moon says.
Her first sound baths were held at a jiu-jitsu studio. When that venue closed down last November, she sought out a new home.
"I thought, ‘How can I go bigger and better with my next venue’?" Moon tells L.A. TACO before the sound bath. "I was searching for sound baths in the news, and I saw in Utah somebody was doing sound baths at a mattress store, and I thought, ‘that is genius.’ I got to bring that to L.A."
Mattress Central "showed up high in my search results," she explains. So she emailed the store, and the owners said yes. She started out doing one sound bath per month there.
"We kept selling out in this huge place," Moon says.
So, she bumped the frequency up to two a month. They're still selling out, and she now gets roughly 40 to 60 people every time.
"Which is crazy," Moon says, her voice going up a couple decibels with excitement.
Here's how it works: When you walk in, Moon or her assistant, Ariel Bustamante, checks you in and hands you a raffle ticket. (One person at every sound bath wins a $500 gift card to Mattress Central.) Then you get a deep pink sleep mask, which you can take home after the bath.
"Pink is my favorite color, if you couldn't tell," Moon says while pointing to her hair.
Next comes a spritz of her aura cleanse Reiki mist, which she says gives people "a little refreshing scent,” with notes of lavender and rose. Grab a blanket if you want one, and then it's time for the main event: picking your mattress. You get fresh sheets to make your own bed on a queen-size mattress, so you can feel out whether you want something firm or something cozy.
The owners are there to help you find the right one, and not just for the vibes. According to Moon, plenty of customers have come to the sound bath just to test out a mattress they're thinking about buying. Everyone who attends also gets a 10% discount on a mattress.
"Normally you lay on it for five to 10 minutes, and that's it,” says Moon. “But then you get a whole hour at Moon Soul Sound Bath experience.”
Some people fully commit to the bedtime theme.
"It's a little quirky," Moon says. "And so people are just, like, coming in their jammies or robes, and they really set the tone for the experience."
The mattresses are easier on your body, too.
"A lot of people have trouble lying on a yoga mat. You know, it just hurts your back. Whereas here, you can really just relax on the mattress," Moon says.
Wanting to give everyone a comfortable experience is a very important part of this process for her. For people with back pain or an injury, she says, that makes it "really, really accessible."
Then the lights go out.
"But I just have my little candles that are lit; they are fake candles but set a scene," Moon says. "It's very dark and moody here, and it has such a vibe."
Sometimes she even shuts off the AC so it's "really dead silent, and all you can hear is the bowls." Moon sets up in the center of the showroom and plays several crystal bowls at once so "the sounds build up on each other."
"I take people on this sound journey with my instruments," she says.
At one point, she walks the entire store with an ocean drum, playing it over everyone for about 15 minutes. Toward the end comes her hanging chime, which Moon says "sounds like little fairies frolicking in a garden."
When she described it, I confessed to her that I thought I was a fairy in a past life. Turns out Moon was once a fairy in this current life: She did tea parties for kids.
Before we started, Moon warned me that as a first-timer, my brain would probably be chattering.
"If your brain is doing the chatter, tune in to the sounds of the bowls and just shift your focus and just bring it back to the sounds that you're hearing," she says. "And, you know, eventually you will train your brain to do that."
Not everything is under Moon's control, though. Mattress Central is a storefront on Glendale Boulevard, and while there's a sign on the door explaining what's going on inside, a lot of people don't see it.
"Some people will stand there and just chatter, and I'm like, ‘oh, please be quiet,’" Moon says. "But it's just all part of the experience."
"If somebody's snoring is bothering you, just think of it as an instrument. It's just part of the show because people do fall asleep in here. And honestly, it's an honor, because that means they are very relaxed, they feel safe, and they feel comfortable."
Same goes for the snoring you hear. At some sound baths, Moon says, facilitators wake people up when they snore. She doesn't.
"I kind of welcome it," says Moon, smiling. "If somebody's snoring is bothering you, just think of it as an instrument. It's just part of the show because people do fall asleep in here. And honestly, it's an honor, because that means they are very relaxed, they feel safe, and they feel comfortable."
I wasn't the only newbie that night. Heidi, a teacher from Buffalo, was at her first sound bath, too.
"It was an eye-opening experience," she tells L.A. TACO. "Very relaxing. We just had our first week teaching here in L.A., and this was the perfect way to end my week.”
Katherine and Emily, who came together, were also first-timers. Katherine lives in the neighborhood and thinks she first saw the signs while walking by, "or maybe on social media or both,” she says.
Katherine works in marketing and always tries to look for "restorative experiences" on the weekend. "This is just a nice way to end a Saturday."
Emily runs a small business in the arts and says being a business owner is stressful. "So anytime you can find something to reset, it's really, really wonderful," Emily says. "And I think with sound baths, that experience stays with you for a little while."
"Usually you're on a mat on the floor, so, like, being on a really comfortable mattress is a whole different experience," Emily continues.
Both say they'd come back and that it would be a fun thing to bring people to.
Then there's Bustamante, who went from nervous first-timer to Moon's assistant. She found Moon more than a year ago through a post in a neighborhood Facebook group, and she knows that not a lot of people are on there anymore.
"I am still on Facebook," she says. "I am of that demographic."
Her first sound bath was a cannabis-centric one, where they had a cannabis-infused drink, and she made friends, which she wasn't expecting. When Moon moved to Mattress Central, Bustamante followed her and offered to help.
"I really struggle with insomnia," Bustamante tells L.A. TACO. "I also have some different, like, mental health challenges. And coming to the sound bath for me is such a wonderful way to start my week and kind of end my week at the same time, kind of like bookending it."
"I don't do well with traditional meditation and those sorts of things," Bustamante says. "I've tried so many different things. And this has really improved my health and wellness practices."
She also gets it if the whole thing sounds a little too L.A.
"I know it feels like the most cliché L.A. wellness experience, and I will admit I was very nervous," Bustamante says.
Moon wants the room open to everybody, including people who can't afford a ticket. She gives away seven to 10 free tickets for each sound bath and posts about it in Facebook groups.
"If people can't afford to come, they can shoot me an email, and I can give them a free ticket," Moon says. "I want wellness to be accessible to the community. And I don't want monetary issues to be an issue."
"If people can't afford to come, they can shoot me an email, and I can give them a free ticket," Moon says. "I want wellness to be accessible to the community. And I don't want monetary issues to be an issue."
As for what she wants people to walk away with, Moon says, "I want people to feel a little bit of calm amongst the chaos of the world . . . I want them, for the 50 minutes that they are here, to be able to turn their brain off and just tune in and just calm down."
She knows that's especially hard right now due to the times we’re living in.
"The world is very chaotic, and you guys are doing a lot of reporting about all the chaos that's going on in L.A. right now, and it's really hard to ignore what's happening in our city and our country," she tells L.A. TACO.
Some people even feel guilty about resting.
"I've had to talk some of my friends into coming to where I'm like, ‘you deserve a moment, too,’" Moon says. "People are like, ‘Well, no, no, but I haven't done enough yet to deserve to relax.’ And I'm like, ‘We all deserve to relax frequently. We need to, because we can't be our best selves unless we do relax.’"
If a mattress store isn't your thing, Moon hosts sound baths at other spots around L.A., too. Her smaller events, with about 15 people, are 420-friendly, and her current home base for those is Thrive Studios in Sherman Oaks. Everyone gets a low-dose THC drink, and then the sound bowls come out. Just know there's no THC at the Mattress Central sound baths.
She's also done floating sound baths, where everyone lies on an inflatable mattress in a pool, and people get stoned beforehand, too. As someone who gets seasick, does not know how to swim, and is just diving into wellness practices, that would be an advanced level for me.
So, did a sound bath at a mattress store fix me?
No. I know it's going to take more than one session. But Moon told me people can expect to "have a really good night's sleep" afterward, and that night I slept more than three hours. For me, that's a plus. I'll definitely take it as a down payment.
The mattress store closes early on days that Moon hosts her sound baths. These gatherings breathe new life into the space, a refreshing switch-up from the norm of seeing so many retail stores shutter around us.
If you want to try it yourself, follow Moon on Instagram for upcoming events. Moon's next sound baths at Mattress Central are on Sunday, September 27; Saturday, October 10; and Sunday, October 25.
Each one starts at 7 p.m., so get there early to claim the mattress you want. If you show up more than 10 minutes late, you might not get in.
Tickets are on Moon's website, and if cost is an issue, email her at alicemoon@alicemoon.la about a free one. Anyone under 18 needs to come with a parent or guardian.
Pick your mattress firmness wisely.
Moon Soul Sound Baths at Mattress Central ~ 3319 Glendale Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90039
