Meet Ben Carroll of Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben Carroll.

Hi Ben, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve spent most of my life as a musician, but my relationship with music has evolved dramatically over the years. For many years, I was immersed in the world of rock music as the guitarist in a band called Ra. We signed with Universal Records in 2002, when I was 25 years old, fresh out of Berklee College of Music. We spent years touring, recording albums, and experiencing firsthand what life inside the traditional music industry was like.
But even during that time, I always felt that music was something deeper than entertainment. I could feel that sound had the ability to change people, open something in them, and reach places a 3-4 minute song could not always reach.
Over time, that knowing became the center of my work. What began as an intuitive exploration of sound, voice, meditation, and consciousness eventually grew into sound healing experiences, retreats, mentorship, and a global online community.
Today, my work is about helping people reconnect with themselves through sound. I create immersive sound healing experiences that support deep meditation, nervous system regulation, emotional release, heart coherence, and personal transformation. In many ways, I feel like I am still doing what I have always done as a musician, but with a clearer sense of purpose. I’m still working with sound, but the form has evolved, and the intention has deepened.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, but looking back, I can see that I’ve always followed my intuition, even when it didn’t make logical sense at the time, and yes, there were definitely moments when I wondered if I was crazy.
For many years I was the guitarist in a rock band called Ra. We were signed to Universal Records in 2002 and spent years touring, recording albums, getting a ton of radio airplay, and living fully inside the traditional music world. There was even a full season of Monday Night Football where they played one of our songs every time they showed a player’s stats.
I’m grateful for all of it, but over time I started feeling pulled in a different direction creatively and personally. I didn’t really know what that direction was yet. I just knew something was shifting.
At the time, the band was based out of New York City, and when we went into a temporary hiatus, I moved up to Portland, Maine to get away and decompress. I thought I’d be there for maybe six months. I ended up staying for over ten years.

That was where I started exploring sound in completely different ways. I started playing with synthesizers, binaural beats, tuning forks, and eventually singing bowls. I remember ordering my first set of tuning forks and being excited when they arrived. I spent maybe half an hour or an hour experimenting with them, holding different frequencies near my head and body just to see what I felt. By the end of it, I had basically made myself feel completely drunk. Not a pleasant drunk either. I was wasted. I had to lay down and sleep it off!

That experience really opened my eyes to how deeply sound could affect not only the body, but consciousness itself.
Around that same time I had also started exploring my voice differently. Not writing songs, just traveling on the sound and allowing the voice to see where it took me.
Then in 2012, I went to my first sound bath and was instantly captivated by the otherworldly sound of the singing bowls. I became curious what it would feel like to sing with them. Not long after that I bought my first bowl, started singing with it, and about a week later I had eight more.
(Fair warning, if you find yourself interested in singing bowls, they multiply. Ha!)
That became my daily practice. Every morning I would sit with the singing bowls and sing with them. Sometimes for twenty minutes, sometimes for hours. There were many times I thought about twenty minutes had passed and I would look at the clock and realize two or three hours had gone by. I was having really profound experiences through sound, but at the time I had no idea where any of it was leading.
Financially, those years were pretty lean. I had stepped away from the rock world and was exploring something that didn’t really have a blueprint yet. I knew sound was leading me somewhere, but I didn’t fully understand where. At the time, I thought maybe film scoring or a more experimental music project might be my direction.
People had been telling me for a while that I should do sound healing, but honestly, at that time, I didn’t really see myself doing that. Part of me was still thinking, “But I’m a real musician. What would people think?”
During this time, I was teaching guitar online a couple days a week, with students all over the world, which was enough to keep me afloat. Then, almost all at once, all of my income dried up. Looking back, it felt like the Universe had been nudging me for a while, and when I didn’t listen, it finally gave me a push.

So I decided to try publicly what I had only really been doing privately at home with the bowls and my voice. I booked three events over the course of a couple weeks because I knew if I only booked one and it went badly, I would probably never do it again. But all three events went incredibly well and people resonated very deeply with the experience. One of the events was at a wellness fair in Portland, Maine, which immediately led to more opportunities.
Very quickly sound healing became my full-time work. I started traveling all over New England and eventually down the East Coast doing sound healing events, two or three, sometimes four, events every week. It was very exciting! But after several years and a lot of miles on my car, I started getting a little burned out.
Then 2020 happened and everything shut down overnight. Every single event on my calendar disappeared almost instantly and, once again, my income completely dried up.
I pivoted online almost immediately. Up until then, all of my events had been in person and fully acoustic, mostly just my voice and the singing bowls, often with no amplification at all. But I had always been curious what would happen if I blended the sound healing work that I had been practicing with some of the electronic textures I had explored years earlier: synths, binaural beats, and ambient sound design. I had just been so busy traveling that I never had the time to explore it. When the world shut down, suddenly I had the time.
For a while, I had also been sharing short clips from those in-person events on social media, and over time that had grown into a decent-sized following. So when I announced my first online sound healing experience, many people signed up from all over the world. I was honestly completely surprised by how much interest there was.
That really opened my eyes. I realized this work didn’t have to be limited by where I could physically travel. That first online experience showed me a completely new path forward. I held regular, well-attended events on my own platform, SoundHeals.Us, all through 2020 and 2021.
In 2022, I launched my online membership community, the Sacred Sound Inner Circle, and settled into offering two online events per month. That has become a major focus of my work today. I also started holding retreats, offering sound healing mentorship, which at times had a waitlist almost a year long, and offering private experiences for other retreats and events.
That same year, I moved to Atlanta, where I’m currently based.
Now I feel like things are evolving again. I still love the online work and the amazing global community that has formed around it, but I’m also feeling called to bring back more in-person experiences in a healthier and more balanced way than before. Not a dozen or more per month like I was doing at one point, but intentionally, when it feels aligned.
So no, it definitely hasn’t been a smooth road, but every major shift in my life happened because I trusted something internally before I could fully explain it logically, and I trusted myself enough to follow my intuition and take the leap. Looking back, that trust is what built the entire path of my life from becoming a rock star to transitioning into sound healing.
Intuition has taken me places logic never could.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My work centers around helping people reconnect with themselves through sound. I create immersive sound healing experiences using crystal singing bowls, voice, binaural beats, and carefully crafted soundscapes designed to support deep relaxation, meditation, nervous system regulation, emotional release, and personal transformation.

While I offer live online experiences, retreats, and one-on-one mentorship, what I am probably best known for is the unique way I combine my voice with the singing bowls. The voice has become just as important a part of the experience as the instruments themselves.

I think what sets me apart is that I didn’t come into this work through the wellness industry. I came into it through a lifelong fascination with sound itself. Before sound healing, I spent decades as a professional musician, recording, touring, teaching, and studying music at a high level. That background allows me to approach sound both as an artist and as someone deeply interested in its ability to affect consciousness and human experience.

Another thing that makes my work unique is that every experience is created in real time. I don’t follow a script or perform the same session repeatedly. I’m listening, responding, and allowing the sound to unfold organically based on the energy of the moment.

What I’m most proud of is the impact the work has had on people’s lives. Over the years, I’ve received countless messages from people who have found peace during difficult times, moved through grief, reduced anxiety, deepened their spiritual connection, or simply felt more like themselves again. Knowing that something as simple and universal as sound can help people reconnect with who they truly are is what continues to inspire in this work me every day.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
My favorite podcast is the Third Eye Awakening Podcast with Amy Belair. She does a great job exploring spirituality, intuition, consciousness, and personal transformation in a way that feels grounded and accessible.

If you’re interested in sound healing specifically, I highly recommend the work of Tom Kenyon. His book, The Hathor Material, had a significant impact on me, and the documentary The Song of the New Earth offers a fascinating look at his life and work. When I first started singing with singing bowls publicly, many people asked me if I had heard of Tom Kenyon, and that is actually how I discovered him. He has been singing with singing bowls for decades and is truly a pioneer in this field.

Beyond any particular book or podcast, I’ve found that some of my greatest learning has come from direct experience. Spending time in nature, meditation, working with sound, and paying attention to intuition have all been some of the most valuable teachers in my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.soundheals.us/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bencarrollmusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/innerselfsustained/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/bencarroll