For 15 years, Tanji Samson offered sound baths with Tibetan singing bowls, energy healing and chakra balancing at her alternative healing business, the Heartsong Healing Center in Hooksett. Now, she is ready to close up shop.

Samson will turn 70 soon and has chosen to retire, recognizing that “it's time for me to move on and do something different,” she said. She plans to leave the world of alternative healing in her retirement, with the exception of doing sound baths, a practice that has brought her many clients searching for alignment and restoration over the years.

Sound baths are immersive experiences where the sounds and vibrations from instruments hitting solid surfaces wash over participants as they lie down in a room. Participants and practitioners believe the practice provides healing by resetting one’s energy centers.

During her sound bath sessions, Samson plays Tibetan singing bowls, metal bowls of varying sizes that produce different musical notes when struck with mallets. The 32 bowls she owned gave her a range of musical notes to work with, she said.

Samson learned about the Eastern healing traditions she would offer at her business as a student at the Snowlion Center School in New Mexico.

From 2005 to 2009, she studied energy in the world and in the human body, like the function of the seven chakras, which Eastern medicine posits are the main energy points along the spine. There, Samson learned to recognize when chakras are unaligned and how to keep them balanced, teachings that informed her passion for healing people through sound.

“People come to sound immersion for relaxation, to let go of stress, to let go of anxiety, to be able to sleep, to be able to just be in a space where they don't have to be aware and just be centered and grounded,” she said.

For her, the experience of practicing sound baths is also restorative.

“When I play bowls for somebody, I'm in what they call the zone,” said Samson. “I'm in my own little world, but I'm still paying attention to all the people that are in my space, lying down and listening.”

Samson never choreographed her sessions; instead, she said she allowed the universe and her intuition to guide her in providing what her clients needed.

Kristen Stefiuk, who owns her own alternative healing center in Merrimack called Guiding Light Sunset, has been a regular at Samson’s business for the past two to three years. She said it was a wonderful addition to the community.

“I'm sad that she's closing because it's been a breath of fresh air to be able to come into Heartsong and feel safe and supported,” Stefiuk said, stopping by Heartsong’s going-out-of-business sale to buy pillows, blankets and a large easel pad for her own business. “My kids have come, my husband has come. She's just a true angel. So, I'm sad to see it close. It's been therapeutic for many of us.”

Jessica Gaines, owner of Sacred Sound Circles in Eliot, Maine, also visited the store during the sale, where Samson is liquidating an array of miscellaneous items like floor lamps, humidifiers and yoga mats.

On her way out, Gaines said she would be returning to test out Samson’s Tibetan bowl selection. In the meantime, she had decided to buy a Tingsha — an instrument with two small cymbals connected by a leather strap that can be used in sound healing.

“I thought, ‘Oh, this might be a good opportunity for me to get some more instruments and whatnot,’” she commented.

As for Samson, retirement away from the business will give her time to complete her bucket list.

“I’ll be traveling offsite and going to different yoga studios and stuff — doing sound,” said Samson. “I'm just going to kind of go where I'm guided to go and do what I'm guided to do.”

The Heartsong Healing Center sale will continue from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. between Friday, July 11 and Monday, July 14. The Center is located at 1461 Hooksett Road, Unit C-9 in Hooksett.

Yaa Bame can be reached at ybame@cmonitor.com