Sounds True Spreads Positivity Across The Universe

Sounds True is an online seller of books, CDs, DVDs, and online courses directed toward providing spiritual healing and wisdom. The company is not, however, a mere New Age products operation. That is because its founder, Tami Simon, has since the firm’s founding in 1985 sought out writers, teachers, healers, and guides from each of the world’s major spiritual traditions, and has further extended the company’s reach into the arts and humanities. Sounds True offers the works of major authors, teachers and visionary artists of our own time, presenting their work under the company’s imprimatur.

Today, Simon’s multimedia publishing firm has 80 employees, and a library of over 1500 titles. The phenomenal growth of the company is a tribute both to the value of Simon’s vision, her organizational savvy, and to the spiritual hunger among the readers, course enrollees, and video viewers who have benefited from the content she has discovered and disseminated.

The company uses a range of formats to present these leading works of wisdom and spirituality, including books and spoken word audio, but also, as mentioned, online courses. The company’s mission statement says that its mission is to “find teachers and artists who serve as a gateway to spiritual awakening and to produce, publish, and distribute their work with beauty, intelligence, and integrity.” Let’s take a look at some of their offerings.

A Glimpse Into A Vast Catalog

We can’t present all 1500 titles, of course, but a sampling of some of Sound True’s best selling works should offer a representative look into what visitors to the company’s site will find available.

The firm currently offers 69 online courses, and some of the present titles include Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction by Saki Santorelli and Florence Meleo-Meyer, The Power of Vulnerability by Brene Brown, Resurrecting Jesus by Adyashanti, Choose to Change by Kelly McGonigal, Healing Trauma by Dr. Peter Levine, and Brainspottin” by David Grand, PhD.

As you can see from this very partial listing, the courses give equal place to religious, Eastern/meditative, and science- and even neuroscience-based approaches to stress reduction and spiritual awakening, and this is in keeping with Simon’s original vision.

Some of these courses are self-guided videos, and others are more interactive, with corresponding pricing.

Strolling over to the book section, we find The Chakra Sound System by David Ison, The Self-Hypnosis Diet, by Steven Gurgavich, Falling Into Grace by Adyashanti, Healing Through the Akashic Records by Linda Howe, Spontaneous HappinessTool Kit by Andrew Weil, Building Emotional Intelligence by Linda Lantieri and Daniel Goleman, and Awakening to the Spirit World by Sandra Ingerman and Hank Wesserman.

The company’s book offerings often include CDs that can act as interactive tools for use in one’s personal and spiritual development. So help yourself to the self-help.

But what if you need spiritual uplift while you are driving? Sounds True has this aching need covered as well with over 500 spoken word audio titles that range in content from spiritual journey, meditation, psychology, creativity, health and healing, to self-discovery and relationships. These recorded journeys in spiritual awakening range from one to five hours in length, and were produced by teachers who are, as the company itself says, “presenting their own ideas in their own words. “

Although they made their first appearance over 30 years ago, many of us have not yet tried our first audio-book. Once you do, however, you may well become hooked, since they provide an additional connection between author and auditor. And to add to that sensation of intimate communications, nearly all of the recordings are unscripted, less “readings” than communicated performances. This may be one of the secrets behind the success of the company’s audio offerings.

The awakening experiences offered by the company are accompanied by music, including inspirational sacred music that the firm has collected from multiple sources worldwide, and from multiple traditions. Some of their best-selling titles include Tibetan Meditation Music, Deep Sleep, The Music of Deval Premal, Vibrational Sound Healing, Rhythms of the Chakras, The Musical Body, and hundreds more of the greatest hits of the spiritual healing world.

The firm’s website takes an especially generous stance toward listeners who want to sample before they buy, offering Sounds True Radio, whose link on the homepage takes you to a treasure trove of free music and interviews. The music comes in five to seven minute clips, but that is certainly enough to get your meditative, healing or spiritual groove on, and more importantly to experience the multifarious variety of artists who produce sound stylings of this type. Should you fall in love with a particular song or artist, related CDs are of course available.

The website’s “radio” station also wisely includes interview clips with a range of the authors, spiritual guides, gurus, physicians and psychiatrists who make up its author/instructor list. As a result, visitors can sample their communication-oriented wares as well. The interviews cast a wide net, covering such topics, or approaching the human experience from such perspectives, as Qi Gong, meditation, breath work, gratitude, chakras, life visioning, facing death to live fully, brainwave work, shamanism, intuitive vision, quantum physics, chanting, yoga, healing, tapping (not the dance kind), and more.

In this case, you are allowed to enjoy full hour-length interviews, which will certainly be enough time both to benefit from the guidance and wisdom that can be offered in an interview form, and to decide if there is a particular sage, guide, or guru that rings your spiritual bell more loudly than the rest. If so, again, books, audio books, online courses, and more will be made available to you.

The company realized at one point that what many spiritual searchers wanted and needed was a multi-media format that allowed a single spiritual teacher or guide combined many of these formats to allow a deeper experience of the teacher’s wisdom and guidance. The result is the firm’s interactive learning kits, which place all that you need to experience your chosen guide’s wisdom, including books, CDs, DVDs, and study guides or work books, in a single box, together with tastefully designed cards and reference charts where called for.

Pricing – Spirituality At A Discount

The healing and elevating effects that you may experience once you find the right path to follow (assuming you’re not finding what you need at a church or synagogue) will have the same high value for you regardless of the actual price. And if you need to gather your spiritual enhancement at a discount, Sounds True offers some remarkable rotating deals in exchange for simply agreeing to put yourself on their email list.

Patience is a spiritual virtue, and it can gather financial rewards as well, rewards of up to 70% depending on the product, simply by reviewing these deals as they arise and waiting for a product you are interested in to be discounted.

Criticism

As with certain other of our reviews, there just isn’t a lot of criticism of the company to be found, except from customers who simply find that products of this type are not to their taste. This is a solid, well-established, and well-run multimedia publisher with a well-defined niche, and if you like these kind of products, you will be well served by them.

Customer Service

The company bends over backwards to provide a positive online experience for it customers – positivity is its stock in trade, after all. Purchases can be made online at any time, or by phone via an 800 number from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday Mountain Time. You can purchase by card or check or money order, and if you change your mind before they ship, and contact customer support, they will cancel your order.

Otherwise, their return policy is generous, permitting a refund or exchange within a full year of the date of purchase for items produced by the company. For items that the company resells, you must consult the return policy of the original seller.

Overall Impressions

Sounds True has remained true to its original vision, creating a space that brings together the offerings of healing guides of every major tradition, and allowing visitors to experience a great deal of what they have to offer, both musically and personally in the form of interviews, for free. For those who seek wisdom in this form, the firm’s website offers generous samplings that will allow you to choose a path, and then to choose a guide within that path. And the firm’s discounting feature is particularly kind to those on a budget. All in all, this is a valuable and well-run website that has acquired a vast library of spiritual goods for those who seek them.