Mindful Beats With Tyson Baird

In conversation with fellow Insight Timer meditation guide Tyson Baird. Tyson has a really refreshing and fun approach which uses music as a accessible route for people to embrace mindfulness and meditation.

Transcript

So hi,

I'm Tom Evans and welcome back to the Zone Show.

You might have noticed the Zone Show has been off air recently.

I've just done a couple of podcasts and the reason for that is that the novel Soul Waves is just about to be published,

I'd say this August,

September,

We'll start to see the light of day.

It's been 15 books in the making and I'm really proud of it.

So there'll be more about that on the podcast soon.

Now,

The observant amongst you may have noticed that the sting of the intro to the podcast is slightly different and that's because I'm absolutely delighted to be speaking with Tyson Baird of Mindful Beats.

Hi there,

Tyson.

Hello,

Tom.

How are you going?

Nice to be here.

Now,

People can obviously detect you've got an Australian accent.

It's nine o'clock in the morning over in the UK.

What time have you got over?

It's Adelaide,

Isn't it?

You're in Australia.

It's Adelaide time in southern Australia and South Australia.

Yes,

It's 5.

30 at night.

So about dinner time for me.

Yeah,

So end of the day and it's winter time here as well.

So it's actually just been drizzling outside.

We're just about to experience a heatwave over in the UK.

I'll just share with listeners,

I'm now officially in my eco home.

I've moved from Surrey to Wiltshire.

The eco home is all solar powered and the solar system cools the inside of the house down 10 degrees below ambient in summer and warms it up in winter.

So talk a bit more about that again soon on the podcast.

Fantastic.

I want to kind of share this trajectory that this wonderful app Insight Time has thrown us on.

And it's Insight Time that's brought us together,

Isn't it?

It has definitely,

Yeah.

And sort of,

Yeah,

You contacted me out of the blue,

Which I'm very honoured by.

And yeah,

Pleased to be chatting to you today through the Insight Timer.

And it's an amazing platform that,

You know,

I have had people contact me out of the blue,

Even people in Adelaide,

But people all over the world.

And yeah,

It's an amazing community and an amazing little tool to connect people up.

And that's the thing,

Because people see it,

It's just an app,

You know,

That you can just listen to all the time or you can listen to guided meditations that you and I provide to it.

But to me,

It's been the most amazing connector.

And what I do every morning is I listen to a new track by a new guide.

And I picked one of yours that must be two months ago,

And I was just I was blown away.

Because I'm left field,

I'm not classically trained in meditation at all.

I kind of make things up as I go along and what have you.

And I just acted in you a kindred spirit.

I just went,

This is such a refreshing approach to mindfulness.

How did you talk about how you put your mindful tracks together?

What was your journey and entree into meditation and mindfulness in the first place?

Yeah,

So the journey into meditation to start with,

I suppose,

I'm well,

I'm 38 now,

Don't have to have too many secrets on this podcast.

So probably when I was 30,

I had my first child.

And that probably coincided when I really started practicing mindfulness and meditation for myself.

And I think I just think I needed it personally at that point in time,

To be honest,

You know,

Young family,

Busy,

Busy lifestyle,

And you know,

Being in my career for a while and things like that life tends to get a bit on top of you.

Definitely lack of sleep,

Things like that.

So I knew about meditation and mindfulness,

You know,

A lot through,

Through sort of my professional life,

Which we'll go into shortly,

But also,

Yeah,

Just in general.

But then I thought,

You know,

I need,

I need something to,

You know,

Regroup and ground myself and slow down.

So I think as far as sort of formal mindfulness practice goes,

I probably found that through the Headspace app,

Really.

So one of the,

I guess,

The friends of Insight Timer or the rivals of Insight Timer.

But so I started with that and found that really a useful tool and just a really user friendly tool,

You know,

It's a time when,

You know,

Smartphones are prevalent.

So you've got this tool in your literally in your back pocket whenever you need it.

Yeah,

So I just started to really explore that.

Did baby,

When you're cuddling your baby,

Did your baby get into it as well by proxy?

That's a good question.

I don't think so.

But my two boys who are eight and six now,

They both really love music.

And it's,

And so I do hope that they've got caught a little bit of that from me,

Definitely.

And it's,

It's amazing,

Actually,

What they and really encouraging what they do in some schools here in Australia,

And no doubt around the world,

Teaching mindfulness and things like that.

Yeah,

We're going on a bit of a tangent here,

But they are really comfortable with these,

These concepts of stopping,

Listening,

Being mindful,

You know,

All of those sort of things that are the core,

You know,

Tenants of mindfulness.

And certainly from that was unheard of in my childhood.

And I imagine probably your experience as well.

I was 45 before I even got introduced to it.

So,

A late boomer.

So listen,

You tell me you've just done a 300 kilometre drive north of Adelaide and you've been helping out with Aboriginal health.

Is this your professional capacity as a clinician?

So I'm an occupational therapist.

So I've been doing that for 15 years.

So I work part time in Aboriginal health.

So first Australian health.

So I travel out of Adelaide for that once a fortnight.

Like in many places of the world that have,

You know,

Indigenous cultures,

There's,

You know,

There's unfortunately a lot of poor health outcomes.

So I'm keen to sort of be a part of that.

And it's something I've done for about seven years or so.

But then in my other job,

So I work,

I work about three to four days a week.

I work in essentially brain injury rehabilitation.

So treating people who have predominantly had strokes and yeah,

Or brain injury,

You know,

Brain tumours,

Things like that.

And then general adult rehabilitation.

And that's been an area that I've tried to bring mindfulness into because,

You know,

These people can really benefit from these sorts of practices as well.

So that must be quite stressful,

But also quite rewarding I would imagine.

Yeah,

I don't find it that stressful.

I do find it very rewarding,

Yes.

It's a real privilege to sort of help people get through really tough times.

And,

You know,

I get to work with people for sometimes a couple of months at a time,

And I meet with them a few times a week.

And that's,

You know,

It's fabulous to see their improvements and the,

You know,

The core philosophy of occupational therapy.

It's a profession that's a bit misunderstood at times,

But it's basically getting people to participate in,

You know,

In meaningful activities and the occupations,

Which by our definition is not necessarily work,

But your occupation is whatever you do to keep yourself busy.

So at the moment you and I are having the occupation of talking across the world via,

You know,

Via our computers,

But your occupation could be,

You know,

Spending time with family,

Driving,

Working,

Whatever.

And for humans,

If we're not participating in those tasks,

We're not healthy and we're certainly not happy.

So occupational therapy,

You know,

It treats the physical aspects of health.

So,

You know,

Someone might have a stroke,

So I help them to dress themselves again or use their hand again or compensate for their visual loss or their cognitive loss,

But it's about them getting their life back on track.

Now,

The thing with any form of healthcare is these people are only seeing me or my colleagues because they're going through probably the most stressful experience of their life potentially.

You know,

They've had a,

They've had a stroke or a,

You know,

Or a brain injury.

So they're stressed.

So their brains are,

You know,

Running absolute overtime.

They've got huge amounts of anxiety,

Huge amounts of stress.

And on top of that,

Their brains are not running as efficiently as a healthy person.

So they're getting very,

What I would call cognitively fatigued.

So,

You know,

They bomb out,

You know,

After a couple of hours of stimulation.

So for example,

I've got a lady at the moment who goes to a cafe because she is slowly exposing herself to,

You know,

To the world and general life,

But she has to sit in the cafe facing a wall because the noise of people in the cafe,

The lights,

Things like that are too stimulating for her to be able to cope more than about five or 10 minutes.

So for someone like her,

The practice of mindfulness,

As far as consciously relaxing her,

You know,

Her attention and her thinking and that sort of stuff is really crucial and a really valuable tool.

Wow.

So how do you make that jump then from being a user of mindfulness to being then this,

This,

This guide and also then jumping into the most amazing way of using music as the anchor?

Yeah,

Good question.

So I think,

I mean,

I know I'm probably,

I'm definitely preaching to the converted for you,

But probably for a lot of the listeners,

But when you're a personal practicer of mindfulness,

You know,

You can sense the benefits of that really quickly.

And if you,

When you get into that discipline of practicing it regularly,

When you need it for times of stress and strain in your life,

You know,

You can really draw on that and,

And you,

You can see the benefits of regulating your mood and your stress responses and things like that.

So,

Um,

I guess I really just jumped and thinking,

Well,

Hang on,

I'm,

I'm an occupational therapist.

I should be treating people holistically.

Um,

And you know,

I need to address their mental health and you know,

Their mood and their stress levels and things like that.

I can't just be treating,

You know,

What is the most common sort of deficit that they have for one of a bed of a word,

You know,

I can't just treat it there,

You know,

The lack of limb movement or something like that.

I need to treat their,

You know,

Their mental health as well,

Cause that they're not going to rehab as quickly if they're depressed or,

You know,

Forever anxious or,

You know,

On the edge of not coping.

So that wasn't,

And you're a drummer,

Aren't you?

So does,

Does drumming go to the limbic brain?

Does it go right down to the core and then sort of permeate up or percolate up from that?

I think so.

I haven't really looked into it,

But yes,

I think it does definitely go down very deep.

It's something you can,

Drummers can,

Can do.

People often ask,

You know,

How do you use all your,

All your limbs all at once in different ways?

But drummers find that sort of thing quite easy.

Yeah.

Well,

The,

The,

The,

The,

The,

The indigenous tribes use drumming quite in a kind of shamanistic way.

Yeah,

They definitely do.

Yep.

Yep.

So definitely use the didgeridoo or the yidaki and the clap sticks and things like that.

Yeah.

It's fascinating to see.

Yeah.

But,

Um,

I suppose as a,

In my undergraduate,

I was exposed to,

You know,

I was trained in mental health,

So,

You know,

I was exposed to,

You know,

Meditation and,

You know,

Mindfulness practices and things like that when I studied.

So I knew there was benefits to it.

And then,

You know,

Then the combination of practicing it myself and looking a little bit at the research and I thought to myself,

Well,

I think I've got something to offer here and I've got a responsibility to offer it to my clients as well.

Yeah.

So that's kind of how I made the jump.

And the mindful beats itself,

Where the idea exists,

I tell you what it reminds me of is the Bonzo Dog Doo Da Band.

There's a track where they introduce all the instruments one by one and,

Yeah,

Right.

Okay.

I'll have to look it up.

I'll dig it out and put it in the show notes as well.

The one I'm thinking,

Oh,

I can't remember what it's called now,

But it's very funny.

And it just says someone on Sousaphone and someone on piano and this sort of stuff.

And it's,

It's a very humorous thing from the 1960s.

So well before you were born probably.

But,

Uh,

But you,

But the way that you've introduced it to me,

What you've done is make the whole aspect of mindfulness accessible.

And that's,

You've hit the nail on the head of what I was trying to achieve.

So,

I mean,

I,

I grew up in a,

Uh,

How should I put this?

Like a Christian Baptist background.

Um,

And for a lot of,

For a lot of my upbringing,

If I'd,

You know,

Talked about mindfulness and that sort of,

Or meditation,

That sort of thing,

It was,

It was labeled sort of new age,

I suppose.

And,

Um,

So yeah,

Where am I going with this?

Um,

So I came up with mindful beats,

Um,

Probably about a year and a half ago.

So one of my,

Um,

Favorite things to do as a musician is just,

Just to lay down in the bed or sit on the couch,

Put my noise canceling headphones on,

Sit down and listen to music and close my eyes.

And there's nothing else going on except what's happening in those headphones.

So you put on your favorite album.

It might be,

You know,

An old radio head album or even the Beatles or whatever you listen to.

And you start noticing things when you really listen deeply,

You notice different sounds,

Different instruments,

You know,

Different vocal line or a different percussive instrument.

And you know,

You observe that and you can be curious about that.

Um,

And so I would do that fairly often.

And then it just occurred to me once,

Once,

Hang on,

I think this is more or less mindfulness.

The reason why I find this so relaxing is because I've just blocked out the rest of the world and just focused on sound.

So I don't have to be focusing on my breath or visualizing myself in a forest or whatever.

I can just be listening to music and be doing mindfulness.

And I think any musician,

Um,

I believe you play a little bit of guitar,

Tom,

Is that right?

Now I'm a bit rusty these days,

Brendan,

Cause I've been writing so much,

But any,

Anyone who's played music with other people will just know how powerful it is to pick up an instrument and be in tune with someone else.

And so,

You know,

Be playing a different,

You know,

A different instrument and a totally different craft,

But you're creating something together and just how powerful that is.

And I'll,

You know,

I would argue that that's mindfulness as well.

And yeah,

So,

So that's kind of how I came up with the idea and then,

You know,

Music's always been really dear to me.

I've played music since I was very young.

My brother was a drummer and my father's a drummer.

Um,

And I've played with lots of friends and things like that.

Um,

And it's musical music is just a very powerful medium.

So almost everyone loves music and,

You know,

Everyone's musical tastes are different,

But you know,

When you hear a song that really resonates with you,

It's a,

It's a very powerful experience.

So I was listening to a band from your part of the part of the world,

The cinematic orchestra.

I'm not sure if you know them,

Um,

They're from the UK and they have a song called every day.

And I was listening to that one day.

It's about an eight minute song,

I believe.

And I thought,

This is really what I'm trying to do.

So it's just an instrumental piece.

So what I did is I put that song on the stereo.

I sat down my wife and I sat down a friend of mine who have played a lot of music with,

Um,

Sat them down on the couch,

Cranked this song fairly loudly.

And then I talked them through a mindfulness session over the song.

Wow.

I got them to focus on different sounds in the song.

So in this particular song,

There's a,

Uh,

Xylophone.

So I asked them to focus on the xylophone to try and block out the other thoughts.

And then I asked them to focus on different sounds and I did the standard things of,

You know,

If your mind wanders,

You know,

Come back,

Come back to the sound of the xylophone,

Ground yourself on that sound.

And then I gave them the,

You know,

The opportunity to really just be curious about other sounds in the song.

Um,

Yeah.

So I put them through that session and then I just said to them,

What do you think?

This is my idea to write some original music and have some guidance similar to what I just did with you.

What do you think?

And they thought,

Yeah,

That's great.

We really enjoyed it.

Um,

Yeah.

And I suppose at that point in time,

I wasn't,

I hadn't delved as deeply as I have now into mindfulness,

But for me as a musician,

The music that was on offer for mindfulness was pretty boring to put it bluntly.

So,

You know,

Things like Tibetan singing bowls and pan flutes and things like that,

That sort of stereotypical music for mindfulness just wasn't really doing it for me as a musician or,

You know,

It was a guitar line that would repeat after four bars,

Which as a drummer would just drive me crazy because I,

I needed there to be more.

So my idea was to create original music that wasn't repetitive.

And there are benefits to repetition,

Of course,

You know,

Using the,

You know,

The timer and that sort of stuff.

There are definitely definite benefits to repetition,

But I also like,

Like my,

My,

My musical brain is curious when it's not repetitious,

I suppose.

It gets frustrated when it is.

Um,

Yeah.

So all of my songs that I've written with my friends,

You know,

They're one piece of music,

So they're recorded live and yeah,

There's no,

Um,

You know,

Repetition there.

Fantastic.

So,

You know,

There's a picture that says a thousand words.

Shall we actually get the listeners to listen to a track that you very kindly shared with us?

We should,

That would be fantastic.

Tell me a little bit about this,

One,

The name of this track and also what was the inspiration about this particular track.

Yes.

So the name of the track is Pokhara.

Now Pokhara is a lovely town in Nepal and it's right on the,

In the Himalayas there.

Um,

And it's just a special place to me.

All the songs I've named are from places I've traveled to that I have fond memories of.

Um,

And it's a place where you can sit and we was there with my wife and we had,

You know,

A lovely relaxing time after a very hectic time living in India.

Um,

And we sat and had good food and lots of,

Lots of rest and just looked at the mountains every morning and every evening as the sun made them change in color.

So that's the name of the song,

But it's a,

It's a jam from a mate of mine that lives in Melbourne.

A guy called Steve,

If he's listening and then a,

A dear friend from here in Adelaide,

Tim,

And we used to play it many years ago together.

Um,

And so we reinvented it for this,

For this,

Um,

Project.

And then I called up help from a friend to play some cello along as well.

And then,

Yeah,

Added all the percussive elements and things like that.

And there's even a little bit of tabla that I pretend to know how to play.

Well,

Let me ask you a question then.

So normally when we do the guided meditations in the middle of a podcast,

But,

Um,

A caveat out there for people that are driving,

Cause people often drive when they're doing podcasts because most meditation is quite soporific.

Uh,

Some of the music you're referring to,

And let's say one of my guided meditations or another guy's meditation.

And so I say,

If you driving pull over or pause or fast forward and this sort of stuff,

Would you say this is fairly safe to listen to while you're doing something else like driving?

I think it's fairly safe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Certainly don't close your eyes.

Yeah.

Don't close your eyes.

Pretty safe.

Cause if you listen to some music on the,

On the radio and you're driving,

Uh,

You know,

You can get,

Again,

Get drawn into bits of it that you wouldn't have heard before.

So let's have a listen to Pokhara and,

Uh,

As a great example of the wonderful work that you do.

Thank you.

Position yourself in a comfortable posture,

Ideally sitting with your back straight,

But in any position that allows you to breathe easily and remain relaxed throughout the session,

Bringing your awareness to the pressure of your body through the surface you are sitting on the points of contact,

Noticing these physical sensations.

When you are ready,

Gently closing your eyes,

Listening to the beat of the drum,

Bringing your awareness to the slow and regular rhythm.

Let's use this rhythm to take a series of deep breaths,

Bringing your attention to the sensation of the air going in and out of your lungs as best you can follow the inward breath and the outward breath.

Just noticing the movement of your stomach and chest.

And then perhaps using the beat as our anchor,

Breathing into the counter six and then breathing out to the counter six.

As you breathe in,

Out,

In,

Out,

In,

Out,

In,

Out,

Allow your breathing to return to a comfortable rhythm,

Its own state of rest and natural relaxation.

You may notice the sound of the glockenspiel.

You may choose to shift your attention onto this instrument.

Glockenspiel can remain your anchor of focus at the beginning and at the end of the song.

The song will build and change as other instruments are introduced.

Take some time noticing these different instruments.

If your mind wanders or if other thoughts interrupt your focus,

Simply acknowledge these thoughts,

Where your mind has gone,

Then put them aside and gently bring your attention to the sounds of the song.

Perhaps you may make an instrument to focus on.

Does it have a repetitive rhythm?

How does it interact with other instruments?

Perhaps building a picture of someone playing the instrument where you choose.

Ok.

Perhaps you may pick an instrument to focus on.

Does it have a repetitive rhythm?

How is it interacting with the other instruments?

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps you may pick an instrument to focus on.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Perhaps building a picture in your mind of someone playing the instrument you choose.

Bringing your awareness back to the sound of the glockenspiel.

Gently reconnecting with the sound of the instrument as the song slowly comes to its conclusion.

Thanks for sharing that Tyson,

That was absolutely wonderful.

I've done five songs and they're all between 12 and 13 minutes in length.

I think it's a bit over an hour's worth of material.

I chose different genres of music,

Some that are a bit more upbeat,

Some that are a bit more reflective and sombre.

Hoping that people will find something that resonates with them.

Great advocates for getting people into mindfulness early.

Is this the sort of thing that you can bring into schools?

People get into different instruments and that sort of stuff and you do it as a collaborative work.

Yeah,

Definitely.

So I've got a friend who lives in Canada that plays mindful beats to her.

I'm not sure what year they are,

But they're high school students.

She teaches maths.

And I think when she has a double lesson with them,

She breaks up,

Gives them a brain break and they do mindful beats in the middle of it.

Wow,

That's amazing.

So that's really lovely.

And I think those sort of applications can be very powerful and very useful and hopefully very fun for people too.

And could you also get people that have had brain injury strokes and this sort of stuff also to use some of the percussive techniques to get some of their body functions back again?

I think so,

Definitely.

Yeah.

So you reminded me when I,

One of my first tracks,

Jodhpur,

Was still in its demo form and I had a bass player who'd had a stroke.

And so his right hand,

So the hand he's plucking the strings with,

Was affected.

And he was retired,

But one of his key sort of hobbies and occupations,

As we would say,

Was playing the bass in community groups.

So he'd play at pubs nearby where people would come together and learn songs together and have a bit of a sing-along.

And he'd do that a couple of times a week.

So suddenly that task was gone for him.

And I did play him,

You know,

Early recordings of mindful beats.

And he sat in my clinic setting,

Listening to it,

Plucking away with his hand and visualising that he was playing along to it,

Which was really lovely for me to see.

But I think that's quite a powerful way of reorganising his brain and working with the neuroplasticity.

And what we do know from the research in brain rehab is people get better by being engaged with meaningful tasks and meaningful activity.

So it's all well and good to practice opening and closing your hand a thousand times.

But if you're applying that to a task and to something that you find enjoyable,

Then your recovery is going to be improved.

Yeah.

So the application in that instance was really lovely.

And to answer your question,

I think,

Yeah,

Definitely it's something that I think can be powerful for a number of people.

I had an experience a couple of months ago,

This 85 year old Polish lady,

She emigrated to Australia after the war as a child.

And she was sitting in my clinic setting and she told me some horrific things about being kicked out of her village as a child.

And her father was killed and all of these horrific things.

But she told me she enjoyed meditation and just out of the blue.

And I said to her,

Oh,

You know,

That's something I'm really interested as well.

And I had this lady sitting in my clinic setting,

Listening to mindful beats off my phone with the earbuds in her ears.

And yeah,

It was just really,

Really satisfying moment for me,

Like as a clinician,

But just,

You know,

Sort of.

Humor to human interaction with her just to give her 10 minutes of respite from what was a really stressful time for her.

Fantastic.

Well,

Listen,

I'm excited for mindful beats,

Because it's obviously not just something you can do as a manager of practice for yourself.

But it's got it's got therapeutic applications.

It's got educative applications.

It deserves to be heard by a worldwide audience.

So where's the best place for people to find you got a website,

Haven't you?

Which is mindful beats dot com,

I believe.

Yeah.

Yes,

That's right.

So there's a website there and you can follow links to to all the things from there.

So that is a good place to start.

There's two tracks on insight timer,

Which you can track down.

So just typing in mindful beats into insight timer.

There's two tracks there.

Or you could if you're familiar with the band camp app.

Sorry,

The band camp website is an app actually as well.

But if you just search for mindful beats in band camp,

You'll come up with that.

And that has the full the full list of all my songs.

So that all five songs are up on there.

Yeah.

I said best places and then you've had what's next for you.

What's next for me?

Good question.

I've I wanted I'm going to do a song in the next month or so.

And I've chatted to a guitarist about this,

But I want to explore using breath work to to the beat and,

You know,

Doing a big inhalation for for a certain count,

Holding the breath for us for a certain count and then doing a long exhalation.

So working with that idea of,

You know,

Stimulating the parasympathetic nerve nervous system to promote some relaxation.

But to get people in that flow of the music,

Which is something that I try and do if the beats right.

Yeah.

If that makes sense.

I think one of my tracks I do that on,

I wish I could kind of borrowed from someone else on insight timer.

Yeah.

Four beats of outbreaths,

Four beats of whole four beats of inbreaths,

Four beats of uphold.

And one of the things in mindfulness that when not always mindfulness about mindful of that is the gap between the the inbreaths and the outbreaths and the outbreaths and the inbreaths.

Exactly.

Yeah,

I think I've heard the same one on on insight timer as well.

So,

Yeah,

Working with that idea.

So I'm just trying to work out what the what a good tempo would be for people.

And yet trying to then I work with a mate of mine to get some melodies happening.

And,

Yeah,

I'm hoping to get that up at some point in the in the near future.

I'll find it.

Yeah.

Consider me a guinea pig.

You want to send the oversea?

For sure.

Definitely.

I like that idea of the outbreath,

The long outbreath,

You know,

Stimulating the parasitic parasympathetic nervous system and promoting relaxation.

And,

You know,

My understanding is there's research coming out about that,

Which is really interesting to me.

Yeah.

As a health professional.

And it makes sense.

Yeah.

So but being mindful of that counting as well in the music and then feeling the music,

You know,

I just feel that that's powerful in for a lot of people into mindfulness.

Wonderful.

I wonder whether there's other counts other than 4x4 time that we can explore as well.

There is.

But I can.

Yeah,

There is.

I think we'll start with some some simple time signature.

I struggle a lot with that.

And I'm a drummer.

Yeah.

Now,

Listen,

It reminds me of I remember when I did play guitar and I got to read and classic guitar.

It's faded recently.

But my guitar teacher used to say,

It's not the notes,

But the gaps between the notes.

And so thank you for providing so many wonderful gaps.

Yes.

And I was actually having this discussion with a friend who came to see me play over the weekend.

And he said that exact thing.

That's why he enjoys my drumming is because I I leave some space and it is something I do consciously try and do.

Yeah.

And and and you'll notice that in in all of my tracks there is down.

There's times of where the music really does drop down to hardly anything.

And yes,

Some of my favorite music is is some of the quietest music and the least production.

Yeah.

For that exact reason.

Yeah.

So I do want to I will answer your question about what next time.

Yeah.

Keep trying to do this.

I'm finding I'm finding it really fun.

It's opening doors like chatting to yourself.

And I've collaborated with some some old mates that although we live in the same town,

We hardly catch up to play music anymore.

And we all collaborated together for that.

What do you run song that you were talking about?

That's up on Insight Timer.

And we haven't played music together in 10 years.

And,

You know,

That was really lovely.

So,

You know,

It's it's just fun.

Music's fun.

And yeah,

Connecting with people is is really what life's about.

So I'm enjoying that.

So if anyone's listening to this that wants to be involved,

Let me know.

We live in a digital world now so we can shoot musical tracks over the Internet really easily.

So if you have any ideas,

Let me know.

Well,

It sounds like your work is closing the space between people,

Which is wonderful and closing the space between ourselves.

So I'm really thrilled to speak to you.

I'm glad that when I reached out,

You took the bait straight away.

And I'm so pleased.

I did.

Yeah.

And thank you for your work.

I am.

Yeah.

I'm I must admit,

I'm in the process of moving house as well.

So I'm a little bit through your course,

Mindfulness for busy people.

But the irony is that I've been extremely busy and it's dropped off a tiny bit.

You worry.

I really I really like your your approach of,

You know,

Just for today and just for just for a moment.

And that kind of repetitive that sort of repetitive mantra and questioning.

And I've applied that to myself a lot.

You know,

If I'm really stressed before,

You know,

A presentation or doing something that causes a bit of anxiety,

I ask myself,

You know,

Just for now,

Why don't you,

You know,

Feel this way or why don't you just get yourself out there and give it a go or whatever.

Yes.

I know.

I thank you.

Thank you for your work on the insight timer as well.

That's a real pleasure.

We'll wait.

This hopefully the first of many conversations.

Sounds lovely.

And I'll just fade out a bit more.

But I hope to talk to people just to chill out.

So thanks so much,

Tyson.

And I'm glad to meet you.

No worries.

Thank you very much.

Nice to meet you,

Too.

So thanks for listening to the zone show.

I've been Tom Evans.

Be back soon with some more news about what's happening in the inside time and space.

Also what's happening with my forthcoming novel,

Too.

In the meantime,

If you need access to any of my information,

Just come over to www.

TomEvans.

Co.

Be back on air pretty soon.

Reviews

Really enjoyed hearing this type of music and meditation together! Thanks Tom for introducing me to other teachers!

I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast and look forward to many more!

I immensely enjoyed this piece & I’m looking forward to hearing more. 🙏

Superb! Thanks for introducing us to Tyson and his musical approach to meditation. His featured track anchored my breathing and focus... and put a smile on my face. Great way to start the day 😃

Thank you for introducing us to Tyron Baird and what he is doing with music!!! I’ve been part of a “community drum circle” for 9 years.......and how it brings something different to each participant. It’s so exciting to hear some of Tyron’s stories and how he is helping to make a difference in so many lives!! Blessings to you!!!

Thank you Tom and Tyrone. Resonate with a lot of that. I had my son at 32 but did not practice mindfulness or meditation then. I came to pathworking and journeying in my late 30s and dis African drumming with my friend and her husband. Appreciate chance to thank her husband who died 3 years ago for wonderful evenings when one would drum and guide and others work. Discoverd mindfulness and meditation when in my 40s I learnt reiki and have deepened my practice over the last 20 years. Thanks again for a very empowering podcast. Though its constantly raining this week Tom in the North West so 🙁