You might think about a ringing bell and imagine the force that preceded the sound: there’s a clapper oscillating back and forth in response to the flick of an impatient wrist, or the muscle behind a rope being pulled in a steeple. Then there are all the secondary associations: time, dinner, angels getting wings, Clarence-style.

But forget the symbolism for a moment. Forget the stories we’ve tethered to sound. There is a way to melt into the deep orange and warm yellow of singing bronze without it prompting an anticipation of what comes next.

That happens in Olivia Bazzano’s studio in Provincetown, where Bazzano, a percussionist who describes herself as a “sound practitioner,” is the force behind the ringing, which emerges as she draws circles with her mallet around the rims of crystal and brass bowls.

“I gravitated to playing a whole orchestra of different sounds,” says Bazzano, who is also a massage therapist and yoga teacher. “A chime can balance the gong,” she says.

Bazzano, who opened the Sole Luna Studio in Provincetown in 2022, leads 30-minute sound bath meditations five days a week. But she’s doing something different on Dec. 21 to celebrate the solstice, which Bazzano says is a sacred time to rest and go inward to reflect on endings and new beginnings, like the growing light that follows. That day, a workshop at her studio will lead to a group sound bath at the Gifford House.

“I like to remind everyone that there is no flower that stays in bloom year-round,” says Bazzano. “You have to allow room for dormancy.”

I had been to a sound bath before a recent visit to Sole Luna. It was held at the art museum in my hometown of Charleston, Ill., and it aimed to usher in the fall equinox, when day and night, light and darkness, were balanced. There, three dozen people in stretch pants splayed on yoga mats in a circle around a woman playing about a dozen crystal bowls.

Maybe it was the lack of balance in my own life at the time, but I found that to forestall anxious fidgeting when blanketed by those unfamiliar frequencies I had to keep reminding myself to take deep breaths and focus on the tangibles: linoleum supporting my head, shoulders, knees, and toes; the blister from hot tea on my tongue; the hole in the toe of my wool sock.

The experience recalled the scene in Miss Congeniality when Sandra Bullock, donning a red dirndl with garlic bulb puff sleeves, plays the water glasses for her talent in the Miss America pageant.

The transformative power of sound has been practiced and studied for centuries. In the mid-20th century, the Swiss physician and natural scientist Hans Jenny built on experiments by Galileo Galilei, Robert Hooke, and Ernst Chladni to develop “cymatics” — the science of visualizing audio frequencies.

In one experiment, Jenny spread lycopodium powder on a circular metal plate connected to an oscillator that vocalized the ancient Sanskrit “Om,” a sound Hindus and Buddhists consider the sound of creation. Through vibrations, the powder arranged itself into a circle with a center point, one of the traditional symbols of Om. It is a result that can be explained by classical physics. Around the same time, borrowing from Eastern religions, Western counterculture co-opted sound as a medium for spiritual transformation and access to altered states of consciousness. Today, sound — including chanting and ringing — often shows up in yoga studios and mediation centers.

The light is soft in Bazzano’s studio. A poster on the wall charts the notes of her bowls, and she has arranged mats, blankets, and cushions. Palo santo smolders faintly in a corner. “Part of meditation is dropping down to right above falling asleep,” she says. “You’re going in and out.”

Lying down, I am enveloped in a cocoon. The first sound is a low hum, like something ancient waking up. Then come higher tones, thin but steady, threading through the lower ones. Bazzano’s mallets circle the bowls slowly, then pick up speed. Vibrations fill the room, then settle. When she strikes the bowls, the tones bloom outward, warm and round.

“When I play a crystal and metal bowl together, they create a third note,” she says. I can feel it, a vibration that seems to hover just above the thin skin of my open throat, as if the sound is trying to get inside me.

Provincetown resident Chris Casale attends Bazzano’s sound baths about once a month. “I’ve always found it hard to disconnect mentally,” says Casale. “Stress and work and my mind are just always spinning.” The sound baths, he says, have helped him go deeper into his yoga practice. For some, sound baths bring an emotional release. Crying isn’t uncommon. Anxiety can bubble up, then dissolve. Tim Green-Thompson, a nurse from Los Angeles who spends summers in Provincetown, goes daily when he’s here. “It puts me in such a state of gratitude,” he says.

When the meditation ends, guided by Bazzano, I sit up slowly, spine tall, and prepare to move into the night with new awareness.

“My favorite part is seeing the after,” says Bazzano. “Take side roads,” she suggests, on the return to reality. “Take time getting from point A to point B. That way you can bring more awareness to your movement and where you are in the moment.”

I walk down Commercial Street and up to Grace Hall alone, past businesses closed for the season and places I used to go with people who have left. The sound has hollowed out a reflective stillness in me. It isn’t peace exactly, but it feels like the kind of quiet you could grow something in.

The last thing I see, before my car engine installs a new reverberation and I brave the fluorescent pulse of Stop & Shop, is a fox, sidestepping a pool of lamplight and disappearing up a road I have never been on.

Ringing in the Solstice

The event: ‘Winter’s Stillness’ sound bath workshop with Olivia Bazzano

The time: Saturday, Dec. 21, 6:30 to 9 p.m.

The place: Sole Luna Studio, 140 Commercial St. and Gifford House, 9 Carver St., Provincetown

The cost: $40; see solelunaptown.com for information