How To Meditate With Noise Distractions

Waiting for The Next Sound is a practice you can learn that helps solve the problem of not being able to meditate when you're in a place with lots of noise and 'distractions'. Once you learn how to use the sounds you encounter as part of your meditation rather than as a hindrance, you can meditate anywhere!
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Custom-created music by Kaleidaline

Transcript

Hello and welcome to today's meditation practice. I thought we would talk about sound and what that means for a meditation. So very often it's seen as a hindrance to our practice to have a sound disturbing us and we often find a quiet place somewhere we're going to not be disturbed to meditate which is absolutely fine and it is helpful but we can't always have that. So if we can't meditate in a busy place or even in our home because there are things that happen within the household, Maybe you have children, Maybe you have pets, Maybe there's traffic, Whatever it is, If you feel as though you can't meditate because of the sound disturbances then there's an issue and today I would like to give you a little practice that you can use to hopefully take away that issue and learn to become comfortable with all sounds and use actually use them in your meditation as a way in rather than a something that's blocking you and disturbing your practice basically. So if you'd like to settle in find a nice comfortable position, Just taking a moment, So just drawing the head away from your shoulders, Elongating the neck, Allowing your arms to hang, Your hands to rest maybe in your lap or down by your sides, Just becoming aware of the breath now, Maybe taking some deeper breaths now, So moving that breath into the stomach rather than just stopping at the chest and as we slowly deepen the breath very softly, Not forced, We're sending just a little message to our mind that our body is relaxed and our mind should follow. It doesn't have to be a instant thing but slowly the more we do our belly breathing, The more we become aware of the breath, The calmer we might feel and as we breathe in I just want you to open your awareness now to your surroundings. So what do you notice? So if you have your eyes closed you may begin to hear some sounds and you might hear the sounds that are in the space directly in front of you, You might hear some more distant sounds and you might hear layers to those sounds, So different sounds moving through time, Moving through the present moment. So what we're going to do for this practice today is just get comfortable meditating on sound with sound. So we're breathing and we're waiting for the next sound. When we locate a sound, When we find a sound, We just simply note it and start waiting for the next sound. It doesn't matter how wide the gaps are, How long they are, How short they are and if our mind wanders and wants to put labels on things that's fine too, Just bringing your attention back to the breath when that happens, Whenever you notice that it's happened and begin waiting for the next sound. When you hear a sound you can follow it, So for example if you hear a car passing by you have the initial noticing in the present moment of that the first part of that sound and then as it moves you may find that the sound slowly quietens, You can still hear it but it gets more and more distant, So we're just following the sounds, Finding where they begin, Where they end in the present moment and when they do end just waiting and seeing when the next one arrives. You can do this with the music too, So what I'm saying about layers of sounds, So you may hear music, You may hear my voice and then you may hear the other sounds in your environment, Outside of your home, Maybe you're meditating outside and you're hearing a river, Maybe you're hearing insects, Birds, Rustles of tree leaves and even if you're in a coffee shop and there's different communications going on, There's someone on the phone, There's someone having a conversation, There's children buzzing around, We can apply this practice anywhere we are, Whatever practice we're doing we can incorporate it into our meditation practice, So just like the breath becomes a anchor into the present moment, The sounds around us can become anchors to remind us to be present, So just like there's a new breath in each moment or a new stage to your breath in each moment, There's a new stage, A new sound and a new stage to that sound in each moment. When we're listening to music we can listen to the next note, Noticing the progression of the music, The progression of the present moment and noticing how waiting, In the moments that we're waiting we feel a sense of calm, It's almost like we give our mind a job to do, So sometimes the job is following the breath, Sometimes the job is to locate another sound and by giving up, Giving the mind that job, It stops it from wandering into thought patterns, Into conversations with yourself and if we can do this without the labels like I said, So we don't need to even identify the sound for what it is, So we don't need to, If there's a sound we don't quite know what it is, That's okay, We just note the sound, We sense the sound, We're using our hearing but we're not necessarily using our brain to work out what the sound means, What it indicates, So let's practice this for a few more moments, So just slowly move in out of this meditation now by beginning to have a sense of your body, So bringing some movement to it, Maybe wiggling your toes and your fingers, Maybe shrugging your shoulders, Swaying your hips, Whatever feels good, Having a sense of the space that you're in, Even with your eyes closed, So maybe getting a sense of how tall the ceiling is, If there is one, Where the windows are, The doors are or just simply having a sense of sitting and in your very own time whenever you're ready, Just begin now to open your eyes, So thank you for sharing this practice with me today and hopefully you will use it in your meditation practices or when you're out and about and you decide to take a moment's pause and see how just following the sounds, Listening to them, Waiting for the next sound can kind of change your practice so things don't disturb you, They just enhance your practice.