What is Kasa?
Kasa was a title bestowed to traditional Newari metal artisans of Kathmandu Valley for their highly specialized and skilled art of working with kassa, which literally means alloy. These artisans play a significant role in the local Guthi community in Patan, crafting necessary metal tools and items for both ceremonial and everyday use.
Today, Kasa is a living tradition carried by Master Santa from the Shakya Kasa family, now in its seventh generation. The craft continues through the metal objects they have always made—from rice-eating bowls to ritual artifacts, and now through the sound bowls and therapies that have since reached practitioners and communities around the world.
Our Values
Purity
Only high-grade metals are used to ensure the high sound quality of our bowls and instruments.
Lineage
Our bowls and instruments are crafted at the furnace with techniques passed down by those before us.
Compassion
Our hearts are open to peace, love, and compassion as we play our bowls and instruments.
Master Santa
Ratna Shakya Kasa
A sound healing legend and a respected community elder, Master Santa is the lineage holder of a long line of traditional metal artisans from Patan, Nepal. He began helping his mother at the family foundry from a young age, continuing thereafter his father passed away.
Master Santa grew up learning how metal objects were both a tool of service and of healing. His grandfather, a spiritual therapist, used metal bowls to prepare herbal medicines for clients. His mother ate from a metal bowl after giving birth to him, enhancing her recovery through the minerals infused with the food.
It was this wisdom that Master Santa carried on when he later began creating his sound bowls. He knew that a well-made bowl was more than metal. When used with compassion and an open heart, it had the ability to restore, renew, and rejuvenate.
For over four decades, Master Santa has carried the voice of the Kasa singing bowls across the world, sharing them with people from all walks of life.
He has led sound meditations in hospitals, therapy centres, religious spaces, cultural venues, and planetariums throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Many of his students have gone on to carry the Shakya-Kasa method forward, sharing its light in their own corners of the world.
Today, Master Santa operates from a cozy office just five minutes from Boudha Stupa, Nepal, while his foundry sits in Pharping. His instruments are sold worldwide through authorised distributors, and he continues to teach the official Kasa Sound Healing Course in different countries throughout the year.