Robert Lee

Wellness Professional, Breathwork Instructor, and Co-Founder of SoundbathPlayer

Robert Lee has worked in fitness and wellness since 1997. Over more than two decades he built a practice that spans personal training, pilates, yoga, gyrotonics, and breathwork, working with private clients, celebrities, and group fitness programs across Los Angeles. He is the co-founder of SoundbathPlayer, The Soundbath Center in Los Angeles, and The Gong Room near Joshua Tree, California, and the architect behind the teaching structure of the Group Soundbath Player Certification Course.

Robert came to sound baths through breathwork. His experience leading people through intensive breathing sessions, and watching what happened when deep relaxation followed, made the connection to sound baths a natural one. Since 2015, he has co-facilitated every Soundbath Center event and training alongside Jamie Bechtold, and his background in program design is what gives the Group Soundbath Player Certification Course its structure and clarity.

 

1997 to 2010: Building a Wellness Foundation

Robert began his career as a certified personal trainer in 1997, working with private clients in Riverside, California before relocating to Los Angeles in 1999. From there he built a freelance training practice that spanned more than two decades, working with clients across West Hollywood, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, and Pacific Palisades, including celebrity clients. His focus throughout was strength training, injury prevention, and self-care programs, with an emphasis on designing structured, results-oriented wellness plans tailored to the individual.

He expanded his credentials steadily across those years. In 2002, he completed 2,000 hours of pilates certification through The Pilates Studio, training in the original method developed by Joseph Pilates before the practice became widely mainstream. In 2004, he trained in Gyrotonics in Santa Monica, a movement system that integrates principles from yoga, swimming, gymnastics, and dance. In 2005, he became a Certified Biofeedback Therapist through the Neurotherapy and Biofeedback Certification Board.

He completed his first yoga teacher training in 2010 at YogaCo in Santa Monica, a 200-hour certification, followed by a 500-hour Smartflow Yoga certification at Exhale Yoga Studio in Venice in 2011, and a Yogaworks Bridge Training at Pacific Palisades the same year. In 2013 he completed Restorative Yoga Training with Arron Reed, and in 2015 he completed a 500-hour Kundalini Yoga training at Yoga West, certified through the Kundalini Research Institute.

Across this period he also worked as a group fitness instructor at Equinox from approximately 2010 to 2012 and at Warner Bros from 2013 to 2017, bringing structured fitness programming to corporate and entertainment industry settings. In 2018 he stepped away from personal training to focus solely on his work with Jamie Bechtold.

 

Breathwork: Developing a Signature Method

Robert first experienced breathwork in 2008, taking private sessions and immediately recognizing the potential of combining intentional breathing with the body-based principles he had spent a decade developing as a trainer. In 2009 he trained in Deep Emotional Release Bodywork, and in 2010 he began developing his own breathwork style, drawing directly on his background in personal training, fitness, and movement.

His method uses an open-mouth, three-part breath set to music, an approach used by a number of breathwork practitioners, but infused with the structural rigor and safety-first philosophy of his fitness background. Robert’s sessions are grounded and methodical, designed to create a profound but structured experience within a safe, clearly defined container. He has held breathwork trainings and was featured in the Hollywood Reporter for his breathwork practice.

Robert currently teaches breathwork once a month at The Gong Room near Joshua Tree, California, in the Breathwork SoundLab™ format he and Jamie developed together. A new breathwork training program is in development.

 

2015: Sound Baths and The Soundbath Center

In 2015, Robert met Jamie Bechtold shortly after she opened The Sound Space in Los Angeles, the first public venue in the city dedicated exclusively to gong and crystal bowl sound baths. Their first joint event, Breathwork SoundLab™, held in June 2015 in Santa Monica, combined Robert’s breathwork method with Jamie’s therapeutic sound bath playing. The response was immediate. From that point, the two worked together to build The Soundbath Center into one of the most respected sound bath practices in Los Angeles.

In January 2017, Jamie and Robert coined the term Soundbath Practitioner and launched the first Soundbath Practitioner Training, held January 28 and 29, 2017, under The Soundbath Center brand. It was the first course of its kind focused specifically on teaching people how to lead group sound baths with gongs and crystal singing bowls professionally. Robert’s contribution from the beginning was structural: taking Jamie’s playing techniques and methods and building them into a teachable, organized curriculum that students could follow from beginner to proficient practitioner.

 

The Course Architecture

Robert’s most significant contribution to the Group Soundbath Player Certification Course is the architecture behind it. Where Jamie developed the playing techniques through more than two decades of professional performance, Robert translated them into a teachable system with a clear sequence, measurable milestones, and a logical progression that students can follow regardless of their starting point.

His background designing personalized fitness and wellness programs, programs that had to produce real, measurable results for real people, is what makes the course feel structured rather than improvised. The pacing, the assignment framework, the exam, and the certification requirements all reflect the same philosophy he applied to personal training: know where the student is starting, know where they need to go, and build a clear path between the two.