Becky Barabich

Becky's Story

"Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray." - Rumi

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My name is Becky and I live with my family in Godalming, Surrey.

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For 20 years I built a career in sales and marketing - and latterly PR and events. I was ambitious, driven, and for a long time, I truly loved it. On paper, I had everything the world tells you should make you happy. But the politics began to wear me down, the pressure never let up, and I found myself burnt-out - stretched thin between the demands of work and family life, and quietly navigating peri-menopause at the same time. Deep down, I knew something had to change. Besides, something else was calling me.

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I had always been drawn to self-help and spirituality - reading, searching, quietly asking bigger questions alongside the busyness of everyday life. It was on my second reading of The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer (New Harbinger Publications, 2007) that something finally dropped in. Singer's central message - that we are not the voice in our heads but the awareness behind it, and that true freedom comes through surrender rather than control - landed differently the second time around. I stopped fighting what I couldn't control and started paying attention to what was showing up instead.

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And what kept showing up was herons. They appeared everywhere - and in places where you simply wouldn't expect them. Then one day, driving back from a meeting on the motorway, three flew directly over me. I couldn't ignore it any longer!

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The heron is a symbol of independence, patience and transformation - a messenger between the earthly and the spiritual, encouraging you to trust your intuition and follow your own path. Later I discovered that seeing three herons together is said to represent spiritual alignment - the sacred connection of mind, body and spirit. At the time I just knew it felt like confirmation rather than coincidence.

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That was the moment I stopped wondering and started listening.

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About a year earlier, quite unexpectedly, I had experienced my first sound bath at the end of a yoga retreat day. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt a profound and complete sense of peace. It stayed with me.

By the time Singer's words had landed, the herons kept appearing and the burnout had reached its peak, I had made a quiet but powerful decision - to surrender to whatever came up. To stop pushing and start following. I had no idea where it would lead. I just knew I was ready.

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Soundbaths were rare back then. So when I spotted one advertised locally - the first I had seen since that retreat day - I knew immediately I had to go. I remembered how profound that first experience had been. At the end of the session the instructor mentioned she was running a Sound Healing Practitioner course - just one place left, starting the following weekend. I didn't hesitate. It felt less like a decision and more like the next step revealing itself, exactly as I had asked it to.

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When I walked into that training room I felt like a complete imposter. I looked around at the other students and convinced myself I wasn't spiritual enough to be there. I actually apologised for being in the room - told everyone I probably wasn't like them and wasn't sure I belonged.

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Within a couple of hours something had shifted. I had found my people. And I absolutely loved every moment of learning - about sound, about frequency, about the profound effect it has on the people who receive it. Watching others experience that peace for the first time lit something up in me that I hadn't felt in years. I had already signed up for Level 1 on the spot at the sound bath the week before - I just knew - and by the end of that first day I had signed up for Level 2 as well.

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I qualified in autumn 2019. Not long afterwards my new boss called me in for a review and asked where I saw myself going. I told him honestly - I just wanted to play Tibetan singing bowls - I had to speak my truth, I couldn't hold back anymore! Before the end of the year, of course, they decided to let me go.

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And, I have never felt so free in my life :)

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I remember walking out of that office in St Pancras and feeling this incredible surge of lightness - like something had been lifted from my shoulders that I had been carrying for years. I didn't jump on the tube. I had the whole day ahead of me. I was finally free. I walked all the way from St Pancras to Waterloo, through the heart of London, with nowhere to be and nowhere to rush to. On the way I stopped at the British Museum - somewhere I had always wanted to visit and somehow never once found the time to go. I wandered through it slowly, taking everything in, completely unhurried. Then I walked on through Covent Garden and did something that felt quietly symbolic but utterly right - I got my nose pierced. It had never felt appropriate in the world I had been living in. Now it did.

I was 43 years old, newly free, and I was just beginning.

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Between Christmas 2019 and New Year's Day 2020, something extraordinary happened. It felt less like planning and more like a download. Heron Moon was born - a coaching and sound healing practice built on everything I had been quietly becoming. The name felt obvious. The herons had led me here and I had always felt guided by the moon.

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I launched with coaching, drawing on the training I had completed years earlier, and sound healing. In February 2020 I added laughter yoga, having trained with Lotte Mikkelsen - the UK's Laughter Yoga Master Trainer and official appointee of Dr. Madan Kataria, founder of Laughter Yoga International. I felt more alive and more purposeful than I had in years.

And then the world stopped.

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Covid changed everything - but not in the way you might expect. Yes, it forced everything online. But it also cracked something open in people. Suddenly millions were questioning how they were living, what they were doing and what truly mattered. The demand for healing, for connection, for something more meaningful grew enormously. I was already there, and I threw myself into it.

I ran an online sound healing membership group and co-facilitated a women's circle with my mindfulness teacher friend. I felt called to help others expand and evolve in a deeper way and developed a six-week self-development signature course for women called Be True to You. I also wrote and delivered The Basics of Sound Healing online - exploring the history, science and spirituality of sound - which would later become the foundation of Activation 1, the first stage of SHSUK's full accredited training. The seeds of the school were already being planted, though I didn't fully know it yet.

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As the world began to open up again I ran weekend in-person retreats and worked with yoga teachers on mini retreat days. Two full and rich years of doing what I loved, learning what worked, and discovering what people truly needed.

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It was through all of this that the natural next step revealed itself. I had spent twenty years in corporate life designing training, leading teams and understanding how people learn. I had now spent two years working with people in a healing and developmental context - watching what transformed them, what held them back and what set them free. And I had built a body of knowledge about sound healing that I was increasingly being asked to share.

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In 2022 I took my first step into teaching sound healing - delivering an accredited course for a year under the Surrey Sound Healing School brand, working as an affiliate in the same way my Hub instructors Tracey and Alex do today. I walked the path I now guide others along.

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That year confirmed everything. In 2023 I launched Sound Healing School UK - combining every skill I had accumulated across two very different worlds. The training design and marketing expertise from my corporate years. The coaching and psychological understanding built over two decades. And the embodied knowledge of sound healing, self-development and what it truly means to help someone grow. It was everything, finally, in one place.

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I have always loved sound. As a child I lived opposite a church and found the bells mesmerising. Music has been a soundtrack to my life for as long as I can remember - from The Stone Roses to Zero 7, whose blend of electronic soul and atmosphere spoke to something deep in me. In more recent years I have found myself drawn to the meditative, healing quality of artists like East Forest and Jon Hopkins - music that does something to your nervous system before your brain has caught up. Music that takes you inward.

Around the same time I discovered the teachings of Ram Dass - whose philosophy of presence, compassion and being of service has quietly shaped the way I move through the world and the way I show up for my students.

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Looking back, it all feels like the same search. Sound healing was simply where it led me.

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I don't think of myself as someone who has all the answers. I am always learning - from my studies, from my students, and from the community we have built together. What I offer is not just knowledge, but a space to grow. I am a guide - and this work, in all its forms, is the most meaningful thing I have ever done.

My Training & Lineage

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Sound healing is a tradition that passes from teacher to teacher - and knowing where that line begins matters.

In 2019 I trained in Tibetan and Himalayan singing bowls with Charlie Christie of Thyme With Charlie, whose practice carries a lineage rooted in ancient Nepalese tradition, passed down through a third-generation singing bowl master. That lineage connects my bowl work to one of the oldest and most respected lines of sound healing in the world.

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In 2023, furthering my study, I completed my Gong Practitioner qualification with Nina Welch of Reiki Space - an IPHM-accredited practitioner based in Essex, whose approach to the gong draws on a broad and deeply intuitive tradition spanning Reiki, shamanic and priestess lineages.

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These two threads - the precision of Himalayan bowl work and the elemental power of the gong - sit at the heart of everything I teach at Sound Healing School UK.

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But lineage is only part of the picture. Alongside my corporate career I quietly built a parallel foundation in psychology and coaching - and it is that background that has shaped the way I teach. At Sound Healing School UK, training is not just about the instruments. It is a self-development journey - structured, supportive and designed to help students grow in confidence as practitioners and as people.

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Students often speak about feeling guided rather than just taught. About the safe space created in the room. About leaving not just qualified, but genuinely transformed.

Qualifications

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• 2:1 Honours Degree in Communication Studies - University of Leeds (2000)

• Certificate and Diploma in Life Coaching - Newcastle College, Fiona Harrold method (2004-2005)

• Postgraduate Certificate in Psychological Studies with Commendation - University of Northumbria (2023)

• Sound Healing Practitioner - Thyme With Charlie (2019)

• Laughter Yoga Practitioner - Lotte Mikkelsen, UnitedMind (2020)

• Gong Practitioner - Reiki Space, Nina Welch (2023)

Accreditation

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• IPHM Accredited Training Provider