Harmonizing With Sound

Beginning with attuning to the physical ears and finding interoceptive awareness, we take time in this meditation to step-by-step integrate into the hearing sense. We identify qualities of overstimulation and sensory sensitivity. We find the stream of sound and learn to harmonize in our own unique way.

Transcript

This meditation is called Deep Listening,

Harmonizing with Sound.

Wherever you might find yourself for this practice,

I invite you to begin with finding out how your body needs to be in space in order to have some comfort,

Some degree of ease.

This could be a seated posture where you spend a moment to find a midline of your body,

A slight rocking back and forth or forward and backward until you find your center.

If standing,

You can do the same thing,

Rocking back and forth on your feet.

This practice could even be done walking.

If you have a place to walk back and forth about 10 paces,

Just walk slowly and gently,

Placing one foot at a time on the ground.

If you're lying down,

See if your body feels supported.

Whatever posture you're taking,

Take a moment to use your hands to smooth down the sides of your body,

Stroking from one side all the way down through the legs,

From the shoulders.

You can use the other hand if you started with one side.

You can bring the hands to the forehead and do the same thing,

Just a slow,

Gentle dragging of the fingers along the skin,

Down the eyes and the cheeks,

Releasing any tension in the jaw.

Please feel free to follow any instructions that feel helpful for you and to let go of the ones that don't serve you right now.

Continuing to use the hands,

Bring the pointer finger.

You can do one side at a time or both.

Bring the pointer finger to the ear and very softly,

With a light touch,

Begin to let your finger gently explore the ear.

You might start with the area right where the ear connects to the side of the face.

Notice the sensation of touch there.

Let your finger run down along the edge of the ear and back behind the ear,

Exploring an inch or two around the back of the ear,

On the surface of the ear or on the side of the skull.

Bringing the finger up around the top of the ear,

Into the inner ear,

Tracing along the curved edge,

Exploring the pattern of the ear.

Just letting your finger wake up all the nerves.

Bring soothing to this area,

This sensitive area of the body.

If you started with one side,

I invite you to do the other side now.

Same thing with your pointer finger,

Gently beginning at the side of the cheek that meets the ear,

Noticing what the sensation feels like.

You can even hear the sound as the skin is moved close to the ear.

The prickle of the skin,

The movement of the little hairs moving around to the backside of the ear.

You can move in little micro circles or little strokes,

Exploring the area behind the ear and up and over the ear,

Onto the top and into the inner ear,

Following the curve.

Using both hands,

Grab the ear between the thumb and the forefinger.

You can do both ears at the same time or one at a time.

Gently explore pulling the ear,

One stretch at a time,

Not with any sense of striving or grasping for sensation.

Out of curiosity,

What does this feel like to pull the earlobe in different directions?

Finally,

I invite you to use both hands and cup each hand over the ear.

So as to block out the sound,

Soften the sound.

Hold your hand there over the ears,

Noticing any changes in the way you're sensing the body.

Noticing the sound quality and how that shifts with the hand cupped over the ear.

It might allow you to hear your breathing in a different way,

Noticing if that's the case.

You can also notice if you don't like this sensation.

If this is not a preferred manner of sensory stimulation for you.

You could continue to be curious with that.

And when you're ready,

You could allow your hands to drop and choose to keep your ears open to the air and the space around you.

If you're still holding your hands over your ears,

Continuing to take a few breaths here,

If you haven't yet,

You can experiment with closing your eyes.

Closing your eyes is a preference,

Has preferences around it.

If you find that it's preferential to have the eyes opened for the time,

You can have them open.

Just attempt to soften the eyes,

Soften the gaze.

You can drop your hands now,

Slowly bringing them down into your lap or onto your belly.

Noticing how the ears feel.

Is there sensation in the ear?

What does the ear feel like in this moment?

Now that we've warmed up the ears and brought more physical sensation to this area,

And we've spent some time settling into this practice,

I invite you to begin to turn the awareness to sound.

Slowly,

One thing at a time,

Begin to notice what sounds you can identify.

There could be a hum of machinery,

A dishwasher running in the background,

Maybe an air vent blowing air.

Sounds like voices talking from a room nearby,

Or traffic moving outside,

Maybe birds chirping,

Or wind blowing.

These are all external sounds at a somewhat big level.

You hear the sound of my voice.

As you practice listening,

If it's possible,

Relax the body.

Notice any sense of striving or effort that's going into this.

You can evaluate what is right effort for this practice.

Am I making too much effort to find sounds and listen?

What is the quality of my effort?

Is there tension in the head or the jaw?

In the shoulders?

And if there is,

Allowing the energy to drop down into the body.

If you're sitting,

You can allow the energy to pool down lower in your seat,

Where you're grounded.

If flying down,

You can let the energy spread back down through your body,

Out through your limbs,

Down through your toes.

If you're standing,

You can feel the weight of your feet planted on the earth.

Continuing to listen to sound from this position of a relaxed body,

Noticing the quality of sound.

Sound is just like a stream constantly moving through the senses.

We don't need to latch on to particular sounds,

Striving to attach ourselves or insert ourselves into the moment of sound.

It's simply something that's happening,

And our ears are automatically picking up the stream,

Interacting with it.

We inter-are with the sound.

What happens around us creates vibrations in the air that travel into the ears that vibrate small,

Small parts of our body,

Which translate into nerve impulses that get activated in certain areas of the brain.

And this constant exchange of information from the environment into our bodies is a moving,

Changing process.

You may start to notice more subtle sounds,

Such as your own breathing,

Maybe the static-y quietness.

It's even possible your ears could start to pick up on the sound of silence,

Some of the spaciousness,

When there's not a lot of acute noises happening.

And if you find it hard to pay attention to sound,

Maybe you're hearing your own mind very loudly,

And it's not easy to hear sound.

No worries.

This can be how things are sometimes.

If it feels helpful,

You could put your hands back over your ears or lightly massaging the ears again in a way to gently coax the mind to calm down in the sense of thought and to turn towards the sense of sound.

Gentle coaxing,

Knowing it'll take time to make that transition.

Perhaps there are things stimulating your brain and your thoughts that are needing to process and that need time to settle.

And in a wise way,

You can continue bringing the awareness to sound through the ears.

It's a gentle way of practicing loosening up the thinking mind and listening with the ears.

There might be preferred sounds and non-preferred sounds.

You can just notice the vedana,

The feeling tone that it brings up when a certain sound arises,

Whether that's pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neutral.

Sensitivity to sound can be very painful at times and can cause distress in the body.

Notice this if it's coming up at all.

If a sound arises that causes cringing inside or pain,

It's pretty amazing how much our ears can really do,

How much those little muscles and bones in the ears pick up and then translate into these nerve impulses and how amazing it is to have a brain that computes that into sound and organizes that information into concepts and impressions,

Perhaps especially if you have a sensitive nervous system.

Your sense of hearing is a powerful tool.

It's a guide to your process of living,

Tuning back to the stream of sounds around you,

Watching them,

Always changing,

Always moving.

The more we become aware of our relationship to our ears,

To our hearing,

To this active process of interbeing with the world,

The more space we can get from the sway of sensory experience to really evaluate and see how the impact of sound moves us,

Creates thoughts,

Feelings,

Shapes our behavior.

Taking a deep breath here as we close our practice,

Noticing if or how you feel different from when we started.

Maybe you open your eyes and continue noticing your sense of hearing with your eyes open.

Carrying with you this connection to the sense of sound into your ears as you move forward with your day.

We'll close our practice here.