The Sonorous 5D Path to Healing and Wholeness – An Interview with Steve Foland-Brown

What if sound could be more than something you hear—what if it could become a doorway to freedom, healing, and a fuller expression of who you are?

For Steve Foland-Brown, founder of Sonorous 5D in League City, Texas, the journey began with a lifelong love of music, a career in the video game industry, and a series of awakenings—personal, creative, and spiritual. From his early days in the UK navigating faith, identity, and coming out multiple times, to discovering the resonance of choral singing and the immersive possibilities of sound technology, Steve has learned how vibration can shift not just the body, but consciousness itself.

In this conversation, Steve shares how his own healing inspired the creation of Sonorous 5D—an immersive sound-based wellness space blending cutting-edge audio technology with ancient principles of resonance and meditation. He opens up about finding authenticity in a place far from home, why creative expression is the truest composition of his life, and how he’s helping people move from being “digitally frazzled” to deeply connected. Continue reading or listen in by subscribing for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or YouTube to discover how Steve Foland-Brown’s story can inspire you to live fully in your own frequency.

Was mindfulness, consciousness, and spirituality something you experienced growing up, or did that come later in life?

Steve Foland-Brown: I grew up in the UK, and there was some form of Christianity around. I was in the Cub Scouts, which meant going to church on certain days of the year—and doing maypole dancing, which is oddly pagan. It was a bit of a mix.

Back then, we still sang religious songs during school assemblies—All Things Bright and Beautiful and that sort of thing. So Christianity was always present. My mum’s side of the family was Catholic, but she never really forced it on me. Growing up, I’d say I was agnostic. I felt there was a higher power—I just didn’t have a name for it.

By the time I was 16 or 17, I realized there was something there. But as I got older, I lost touch with it. Part of that was connected to coming out as a gay man in the UK during the 1990s, which was a very different time. We’d just gone through the AIDS pandemic. Freddie Mercury had died—and, funnily enough, my dad went to art college with him. Freddie was in the year above, which still blows my mind.

Coming out was hard, and it made it difficult to keep one foot in that spiritual world. I felt it didn’t accept me, so I shut it out. At university, I pushed away all things spiritual. My attitude was, “If it doesn’t accept me, I’m done with it.” I buried that part of myself for a long time.

What brought spirituality back into your life?

Steve Foland-Brown: It kind of snuck back in. At university, I studied music at City University in London and performance studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, majoring in clarinet. But I also fell in love with choral singing. I joined the university choir, and that was the first time I really felt my body resonate.

What does that mean to you?

Steve Foland-Brown: Even now, as I’m talking about it, I’m feeling it. I’m very sensitive—messages come through all the time. When I say “resonate,” I mean that when you sing, certain parts of your body vibrate. It’s not just poetic; it’s physics. Everything has a resonant frequency—even this table. That’s why a car door can rattle when the bass from the car next to you hits just the right note.

When you sing, it’s not just coming from your throat—it’s from your belly, from your root chakra. I teach something I call “resonance tuning,” where you learn how to vibrate different parts of your body intentionally.

Even in my sound bath sessions—though here in the South I have to say sound bowls—I get people to sing at the exact frequency of a singing bowl. I guide them through vowel shapes, adjusting the mouth’s embouchure to find the perfect resonance. You can target the third eye, the throat, and the belly. It’s a powerful way to use sound to connect to higher consciousness.

When you joined the choir and felt that vibration in your body, how did that begin to open you up?

Steve Foland-Brown: The works we were singing were by the choral masters—and they knew the frequencies. I truly believe this knowledge about sound frequencies has been with humanity since the beginning. There’s always been singing, always been tribal music. It’s evolved with us for centuries, woven into our history.

The choral masters know exactly what they’re doing. I’m sure they go straight for the solar plexus because they want you to feel peace and harmony. My ex-partner—who has since passed on, or as I like to say, “moved on to the next level”—once told me, “Steve, when I come to see you at choir, it’s the only peace I get. Thank you.”

So when I sing, I sing for him. I sing for all my loved ones. Yes, of course, the music fills my soul, but my intention is always for others first.

As you began to sing, what were the other breakthrough moments when you started to see or experience life differently?

Steve Foland-Brown: It ties closely to my coming out story. I’ve actually gone in and out of the closet about six times.

Really?

Steve Foland-Brown: Yes. The first time, I had wonderful parents who were very accepting, but it was still difficult—especially for my dad. He blamed himself, thinking it was something he had done. He worked incredibly hard and had a very demanding career.

My dad was a toy designer. Any toy brand you can name—GI Joe, Action Man, Barbie, Sindy (the European equivalent)—he’s worked on it. He worked for one of the big companies, spending three hours a day in the car commuting from near Oxford to London. We were three boys at home with our mum, and we hardly saw him. Most of his life was spent on the M25.

I think he struggled with feeling like he wasn’t there enough. Thankfully, we’re now at a place where we’ve talked it all through and healed it. Honestly, I think my spiritual journey made that possible.

That’s why I’m careful with the word awakened. For me, it can sound lofty. I just feel like I’ve woken up—found who I am as Steve. And that took 42 years. In truth, I think it began during COVID in 2020. I’ve spoken to so many people who say something shifted for them during that time.

What was it about COVID that shifted things for you?

Steve Foland-Brown: COVID changed everything. At the time, I was an audio director in the video game industry. My partner and I had moved from the UK to Toronto, Canada, after I was offered a job at Ubisoft working on a massive franchise. The pay was great—it felt like a dream.

Brexit had just happened, and both of us were feeling disillusioned with the UK. I’ve always thought of myself as European. Growing up, we learned multiple languages by default—though I dropped one so I could spend all my free time practicing clarinet. I was the music kid in school, part of the music league.

So you moved to Canada for the dream job.

Steve Foland-Brown: Yes—and moving to a new country opens your eyes. You meet new people, learn new systems, and navigate everything from taxes to driver’s licenses. It’s exciting, but also stressful. We thought, “Oh, they speak English in Canada—it’ll be easy.” But it’s a different kind of English, and sometimes I felt misunderstood.

My role at Ubisoft was a shift, too. In previous positions, I was the one inspiring and creating—translating visuals and pixels into sound, overseeing dialogue, sound effects, music, and the technical aspects. In Canada, I was only the technical director, which meant less creative input. It was an adjustment.

Then COVID hit. I’d been used to an in-person studio, walking around, joking with people. My husband now calls me a goofball—quirky, a bit British. But suddenly, the perfectly calibrated 5.1 surround sound rooms were gone. We were all on headphones, staring at 2D screens. And that went on for years.

They kept you at home after COVID?

Steve Foland-Brown: Not exactly. I chose to leave that studio and start my own business—Sonorous. At the time, it was just Sonorous (no “5D” yet). My ex, who’s sadly no longer with us, designed the logo, so the name still carries his energy.

With Sonorous, I worked with clients all over the world—Los Angeles, London, and everywhere in between. I was juggling multiple projects: a sports game, a first-person shooter, a narrative action-adventure, and a beautiful indie cartoon game. But everything still happened through a 2D screen.

The truth is, I thrive on people’s energy—feeling their presence, hearing their voices. That’s my life force. Sure, you can meditate over Zoom—I did it just last weekend—but it’s not the same. In video game audio, connection is key. We work with composers, Foley artists who recreate sounds in pits, wildlife recordists who capture authentic environments, and programmers who make everything work. Communicating and vibrating with all those different personalities is an art in itself.

Programmers are very different from creatives, right?

Steve Foland-Brown: Completely. One of the best tools I learned was the “color theory” of personalities—not auras, but a system for understanding how people work. A programmer might be “green with blue,” so I adjust how I communicate. My natural “sunshine yellow” energy can overwhelm them. I’ll come in bursting with an idea, and they’ll say, “Wait, slow down. What do you mean?”

I’ve learned to walk away, put it into a clear one-page document, and then come back so we can work through it step by step. It’s all about knowing how to meet people where they are.

Take us from there to now, owning Sonorous 5D in League City, Texas. How did that happen?

Steve Foland-Brown: Well, it’s quite a story. I had just ended a 16-year relationship—a beautiful partnership that ended on good terms, but when you’ve shared that much life with someone, cutting the cord is never easy. Sometimes that energetic connection still tugs at you. You feel it physically—like a pull in your stomach.

I’ve done a lot of therapy over the years, and they always talk about “cutting the cord,” but with Jon, it was complicated. He was carrying a lot of anger toward the world. COVID had just changed everything, and those years were hard on everyone.

I’d just turned 40 and realized I’d never taken a vacation on my own. So I thought, Where do I want to go? Mexico. I’d fallen in love with Mexican food when I moved to Canada (don’t tell the Canadians, but I never warmed to poutine). At that time, I was doing a lot of yoga—going daily to a hot yoga studio that was pitch-black inside, my personal sanctuary.

Not long after returning from a busy video game convention in San Francisco, I hopped on a plane to Mexico. The hotel I’d booked canceled at the last minute, so I scrambled to find another. One day, after the yoga teacher at the resort didn’t show up, I offered to lead the class. I don’t even know where it came from—the movements just flowed through me, as if the sequence was being given to me in real time.

Afterward, I walked past a man at the pool wearing a sharp black-and-white matching set. I told him, “I love your outfit,” and kept walking. Hours later, a connection happened—digitally at first. I later learned it was his first time downloading that app, and he had only just come out to his family the night before we met.

We did long distance for a year, seeing each other every six weeks. It was wonderful but hard—connection over a screen is never the same. Eventually, he spent three months in Canada with me during a sabbatical from his job. Then I came to visit him in Houston. I asked, “How much did you like Canada?” He said, “I loved the nature, the forests, the hills—but…” He preferred the warmth and sunshine. I’ve always been more of a lizard—coming from cold, gray England, I thrive in heat and humidity. So I said, “Why don’t we just do this?” And here I am.

And how did Sonorous 5D emerge from that?

Steve Foland-Brown: I stayed in the games industry for a while, working with increasingly high-profile clients. And the bigger the projects got, the more violent the content became. I was designing gun sounds for major titles while quietly battling depression. I’d been on heavy antidepressants for a decade, through my years in Canada. The stress of moving countries and working in a job that wasn’t creative—purely technical—took its toll.

My ears were already worn from years of audio work. Back when I worked on Guitar Hero 4, 5, and 6, I’d spend days editing snare drums and refining tracks. For example, when we worked on one of Queen’s songs, I had access to Freddie Mercury’s isolated vocals—something almost no one outside the original engineers has heard.

Freddie was so sonorous that when he double-tracked his vocals, they would phase—an unusual phenomenon where two identical audio signals slightly offset create a hollow, watery sound. You sometimes hear it on a glitchy Zoom call. Phasing isn’t supposed to happen with human voices—but Freddie was so pitch-perfect, so in tune with his body and his instrument, that it did. It was extraordinary.

How is this time—this expression of yourself—different from the other times you’ve come out? Why does it feel like the real you now?

Steve Foland-Brown: Let me take a sip of water before I dive into this one.

When you go to music college in the UK, you show up thinking you’re great. I arrived at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama—one of the top two music schools in the country—feeling confident. I had Grade 8 with distinction, the highest level you can achieve, and I believed I could play anything.

Then my clarinet teacher dismantled me completely. In that first year, all I did was play scales. He’d walk in and say, “G-flat major, dominant seventh, B-sharp,” and I’d spend the hour running it. “Not good enough,” he’d say, sending me away to do it again. This went on for months.

A week before my recital—the performance that determined whether I could advance—he told me just to play something I’d done before. I was crushed. My confidence evaporated, and I completely fell apart on stage.

I put the clarinet down for a while and joined the choir. From there, I discovered electro-acoustic music—an art form born from Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète in the 1930s, using recorded sounds, reversing and mixing them to create soundscapes. I fell in love with it. It’s where I learned Pro Tools, sound engineering, and the technical side of audio. Eventually, I switched my degree from a Bachelor of Music to a Bachelor of Science in Music.

From there, I joined my dad’s sound company after he left a big toy conglomerate. My job was to localize Fisher-Price products for European markets—recording, casting, and directing actors across the continent. Then came video games, and the rest is history.

So why does this time feel different?

Steve Foland-Brown: Because this time, all the compositions are mine. At university, I was told more than once that I wasn’t good at composition—that my work was basic or even rubbish.

Now, everything I create at Sonorous 5D is my own—every sound bowl sequence, every tonal layer, every rhythmic pattern. It’s all built on frequency, harmony, and the entrainment effects you can create when combining sounds intentionally.

For the first time, it’s purely me.

So you’re offering yoga, sound baths, and you also have something unique – a grounding experience in front of a huge wall of nature.

Steve Foland-Brown: Yes, I call them “grounding teleportational walls.” When I try to explain it, I ask, “Are you a Trekkie?” If they say yes, I give them one word: holodeck. That’s what this place is.

Right now, the room we’re in—Albion—can transform into a concert hall or any place in the world. The idea came from my background in video game development. Games can take seven years to make and move through stages: prototype, alpha, beta, gamma, and finally “gold master” (back when we burned them to discs and celebrated holding up that gold copy—now everything’s digital).

The grounding teleportational therapy works like this: we’re landlocked here in Texas, and it can take hours to reach a forest. But here, someone can walk in on their lunch break and say, “I want to go for a walk in Colorado.” I set up a treadmill, project the scenery onto the wall, and use my VR experience to layer in sound and visual tricks so it feels like they’re really there.

And that’s just the prototype phase. The next step—the “alpha” version—will have projections on all three walls, rendered in Unreal Engine, with audio powered by Wwise. As you walk past a bird in a tree, it will move past you. A Kinect camera will motion-track your pace, moving the world in sync with your steps, and the sound will adjust accordingly.

We’ll add ceiling fans for wind and diffuse scents—like the rich, earthy smell of a forest floor. Families will be able to do it together: kids walking on the treadmills while parents create the foley sounds in real time. That means every footstep you take is matched by someone producing the sound, perfectly synchronized, giving you a fully immersive audio-visual-body experience.

It’s deeply grounding—feeling your heel-to-toe movement, the rhythm of your steps. For the sound-makers, it’s meditative too, almost trance-inducing. Everyone thinks I’m crazy when I describe it. I just smile and say, “Wait and see.”

You also have a special offering for families and children with special needs. Tell me about that.

Steve Foland-Brown: America isn’t easy. It’s expensive, and a lot of minorities—whether by identity, background, or circumstance—are feeling pushed down, dimmed. No one gets to dim our light. Whether you’re gay, straight, or whatever—at the core, you’re human. We’re all one.

And yes, I’ll admit, I’ve dimmed others’ light at times. We all have. Sometimes we get caught in a “2D” mode—angry, reactive, not our best selves. But I believe those who feel unseen or marginalized deserve a space to be met with care and possibility.

That’s why all of my offerings for individuals and families with special needs are tailor-made. Children with sensory sensitivities can react strongly to certain frequencies or light patterns. So I work with each family to create the right experience:

“Where do you want to go?” I’ll ask.
“Underwater,” they might say.
“Okay, let’s start with the sound. How’s that?”
“Can I see it too?”
“Of course—does this speed feel good? Is it too much?”

It’s a collaborative process. I use the power of binaural sound and brainwave entrainment to gently guide the mind into calming states—like theta, that near-sleep frequency—through meditation and headphone-based audio technology. It’s about creating peace for families who often desperately need it.

All of these sessions are 50% off, and my dream is to one day offer them completely free. It ties into something else I run called Starseed Rewards. If someone comes into the studio and says, “Steve, I had a therapy session this week, planted a tree, or used Focus State 10 to have a difficult conversation with my partner,” I reward them. I give them crystals—what I call “hertz,” as in frequency—which they can use toward premium experiences at the studio.

It’s my way of giving back, of keeping the energy of generosity in motion.

What’s it like being a gay, English spiritual leader in League City, Texas, and starting a business like Sonorous 5D there?

Steve Foland-Brown: It’s challenging, David—super challenging. At first, I thought, Oh, everyone’s so friendly. This is Southern hospitality. And it is, to a degree. But the more awakened I’ve become, the more confident and flamboyant I’ve grown. I’m now at the point where I’ll wear a wig in the parking lot or go swimming naked in my backyard.

The more I express myself freely, the more I sometimes feel friction from the world around me. But meditation has given me tools—like what I call a “resonant energy balloon,” something I learned at the Monroe Institute—that help me stay in my own vibration. I can walk around without taking on other people’s energy. That doesn’t mean it never hurts—sometimes it really does—but I’m the freest I’ve ever been.

Are people in your area connecting with what you’re offering?

Steve Foland-Brown: It’s taking time. But when someone walks into Sonorous 5D, I can tell if they’re “5D” right away—whether it’s their aura or vibrational energy, I don’t know. I can also see when someone is still in their 3D world—or even 2D. That’s when I step in as a tour guide. I’m not a teacher or an oracle. I’m just Steve—a gay guy in Texas who’s discovered this magic and wants to walk people through it.

You mentioned you have alter egos. Tell me about them.

Steve Foland-Brown: My main inspiration is Kylie Minogue—my girl since I was 14. She’s the master of reinvention and energy. I’ve seen her in concert, and she’s been with me through every coming-out and going-back-in again.

I also do drag, which we blend into the studio’s energy. We shift from the serene, meditative 5D space into what I call a DDP—a Drag Dance Plate party. We set up vibration plates, and I perform in drag; each show is a tribute. The first was Kylie, of course. The next will be Houston’s own Beyoncé.

My style is what I call “animal drag”—short for “tran-animal.” It lets me keep my beard and hairy chest while adding animal elements, creating intentionally “bad drag.” One of my characters, June Sarpong Corfu, is an outspoken, fast-talking woman from the UK who partners with my other alter ego: Sonar De Muse.

Sonar is a classically trained composer, posh and prestigious—very much a product of the UK’s class system, which is deeply ingrained after centuries of monarchy. My upbringing was middle-class—never poor, but far from the upper echelon. The class divide in the UK is just as real as economic inequality in the U.S., where people who most need yoga and meditation often can’t afford it.

These alter egos are my way of therapizing my own experience of not fitting neatly into any “class.” Through them, I get to satirize both ends of the spectrum—the privileged and the struggling—while also weaving them into healing work. In fact, Sonar Demuse leads meditations with June (another of my personas), and together they work through their own “stuff” while guiding others.

Your whole life is enmeshed with technology—you’ve mastered it. And yet it seems you also want to help people get away from technology. How do you reconcile using tech to escape tech?

Steve Foland-Brown: That’s such a good question. Honestly, I’ve struggled with technology for the past three or four years—especially through COVID. It completely shifted my career, leaving me feeling lonely and isolated. I’m such a social person; I need a real human connection. I became angry—angry at the video game industry, angry at my phone.

At one point, I turned my iPhone into a “dumb phone” by switching it to black-and-white mode. I still do it now. If I feel overwhelmed, I go into accessibility settings and strip away the color. People ask, “Why is your phone black and white?” and I tell them: to reduce my tech addiction.

Because it is an addiction, I’ve been in industry meetings where we’ve talked—politely—about “keeping people in the loop,” which is really code for “keeping them hooked.” How do we get someone to play for six, 12, or even 25 hours straight? That never sat well with me. People already spend too much time in the 2D world. I wanted to return to 3D—real connection through vibration and presence.

I even considered throwing my iPhone in the bin—sorry, trash. A spiritual guide in Canada asked, “Are you angry with technology?” I told her, “Yes. I’m livid. I feel like it made me ill. It steals connection. You sit at a table with friends, and everyone’s on their phone.”

I call it being digitally frazzled. By Sunday night, you think back on your week and realize it was consumed by tech hassles—password resets, multi-factor authentication nightmares, account lockouts. Even date night can get derailed when you can’t access your tickets without your phone.

That’s one of the reasons I created Sonorous 5D. Here, we have a strict phone policy: they stay at the door. If your phone goes off more than once, you’re done. That vibration or ding carries energy—it pulls people out of the present moment and interrupts the peace they’ve chosen to step into.

The only sounds I want in that space are the ones I’ve intentionally placed there—natural soundscapes, peaceful tones—designed to slow the nervous system and bring people back to themselves.

I imagine people will want you to start consulting—coming into their studios to help set up these systems. Are you ready for that?

Steve Foland-Brown: Hang on, David—I only started in January! I think my husband might faint if I started traveling already. But yes, I have a lot of contacts in the video game industry, and I’m looking to partner with Dolby to create these experiences on a larger scale.

My first focus is partnerships that can bring this new form of digital wellness to life—a way to use technology for calm, presence, and healing. I manifest every day that, in five years, there will be a resort in Costa Rica with Sonorous 12D.

Twelve? Not five?

Steve Foland-Brown: Exactly. By then, we’ll be up there—and with each location we open, we’ll go up a dimension.

You’re helping people shift from being digitally frazzled to experiencing digital wellness. Will you also offer meditations online for those who can’t come to Texas?

Steve Foland-Brown: Yes. They’ll be binaural meditations—3D audio designed for headphones—using entrainment tones to bring the brain into theta or near-theta states, just like the sound bowls do. We’ll also work with alpha waves, which can foster creativity and relaxation.

Some people find binaural sound a little unusual at first, but that’s where sound design comes in—layering music, nature, and sonic textures to create an immersive experience. This technology isn’t new; the Monroe Institute has been doing it since the 1970s. But I believe we’re on the edge of a healthcare revolution. And I’m not the only one saying it.

Where can people connect with you?

Steve Foland-Brown: The website is www.Sonorous5d.com. We’re also on Instagram. On TikTok, you’ll find my alter egos, June and Sonar. They’re a bit too silly for the main 5D vibe—June lives in the restrooms, Sonar in the back garden—but they’re having fun.

Steve, it’s been such a joy to talk with you. I’m inspired by how you’ve brought all of who you are into this space in Texas—and into the world. Thank you for sharing your story and wisdom.

Steve Foland-Brown: Thank you so much. Quick word from Sonar: “Thank you so much, I’m so clever and so educated.” And a quick word from June: “Oh, thanks very much, I’m good-en.” Thank you. Bye.