Listening to Life - Sound Meditation

How Mindful Sound Meditations can help you feel calmer, improve your concentration, bring insight - and might even improve your sex life!

Can you imagine a life without sound? A life in never-ending silence? Maybe you are thinking how blissful that would be: no more cockerels waking you up in the morning, no more barking dogs disturbing your relaxing Sunday afternoon in the garden…. But it would also be a life without the rustling of the leaves, without the bubbling sound of rivers or the whooshing sound of waves by the seaside, no birds singing or bees buzzing, no children’s laughter, a life without your favourite music… Whilst the universe may be silent, on planet earth, sound is everywhere, created by the wave of air molecules caused by movement of objects.

Sound also affects our other senses. If you think that your enjoyment of food is just about smell and taste, then think again. Imagine hearing someone bite into an apple. When I imagine this, my mouth starts to water. What about yours?

Food manufacturers know about this connection between sound and appetite. They engage specialists who “design” sounds for certain foods, the noise of breaking off a piece of chocolate, the crunchy noise of a biscuit or crisp.... And this doesn’t just stop at the food itself but includes packaging, think of the noise of opening a can of any soft drink or a packet of crisps.

Hearing is one of our early senses. It is developed in the womb. By the time we are an 18-week-old embryo we can hear: the noise of our mother’s heartbeat, digestion, the fluids that surround us, the outside world… When we are born, we recognise the tone of our parents’ voices, it is part of how we bond with people and our environment.

Sound is a fundamental of life. We know from recent medical studies that those who suffer from age-related hearing loss are more likely to develop dementia. This is not surprising as loss of hearing has shown to change our default mode network, a brain network implicated in cognitive activities, such as self-referential processing, memory retrieval, and mind-wandering. The insight into the importance of hearing for making sense is not new. Hearing is regarded as such an important sense, according to Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses)[i], that the root of the word “absurdity” comes from “surdus”, the Latin word for deaf or mute.

It is therefore not surprising that sound meditations are found in many meditative traditions. It is also a meditation we practice in mindfulness.

In Mindfulness training we learn to guide our attention, to stay present in the here-and-now. Sound, like breath or sensation, can support us in this, can help us train our mind

1. Sound meditation can improve our ability to concentrate

One of the first things we learn in mindfulness training is to focus our attention. Mindfulness specifically trains our attention to be in the present moment by noticing what is happening as it is happening, this can include all that is happening or a focus on something specific, such as the breath, sensations or sound.

Regular practice of mindfulness is an effective way of training our attention and has been shown to reduce the default mode network, a brain network associated with mind wandering.

Now, our mind is designed to wander. To ensure survival, our brain is constantly on the lookout for dangers and opportunities. Modern life doesn't help. Our attention is constantly pulled in diffent directions. Most of us are overstimulated, by smells, sounds, images… Everyone is trying to grab our attention.

Our attention may also be affected by changes in our life, like moving home, changing jobs, trauma (old or new) or physical changes, such as menopause or andropause, times of hormonal change.

And yet, without the ability to concentrate, being aware of the present moment is impossible. We cannot fully track what we feel, sense or think. We are unable to be fully present with another person.

In my work in intimate health, for example, I came across interesting studies that showed how important the ability to focus was for female arousal. Studied found that women with arousal issues often reported how their attention would drift from the intimate moment to something like the full laundry basket or another task they had to deal with. When these women started to practice mindfulness they often reported how their issue resolved. Concentration is sexy!

As an aside, women were also found to respond more favourably to a “sexy” atmosphere that included music. Now, before you try this with the woman in your life, check with her first: not every woman likes music and also musical taste is very individual.

Let’s get back to training our attention: Mindfulness can teach us that we can choose where we rest our attention.

You may recall from the body meditation that we can move our attention from one area of the body to the other. We can also train our attention to have narrow focus, such as the big toe, or a wide focus, say the whole of the leg or body. And this is the same in sound meditations.

We can focus on individual sounds, kind of like shining a torch light on a sound, or we can practice wide-attention, that is, notice the full soundscape, all the sounds near and far, inside our body, our room as well as on the streets or nature that surrounds us.

The first is often used to calm us. If we get overwhelmed, we can choose to block out everything but a single sound and just listen to that sound. The second offers us a wider experience. For some of us it still very calming, kind of as if we are bathing in a warm bath or sea of sound. It can make us feel part of the wider world around us. For some, however, it can lead to other experiences, such as frustration, irritation, disappointment or annoyance. How do we deal with these feelings? Can we allow them to arise? And can we use another anchor, if our mind wanders?

Now in mindfulness, we tend to use sound as an anchor rather than as our main focus. Remember, mindfulness is about being fully aware of what is happening as it is happening without preference. We are resting in open awarenss. However, as most of us know, staying present is not so easy. Very soon our mind starts to wander; we get lost in thinking, images (or song worms!) start to divert our attention, we may start to daydream..... So when we notice that, we gently guide our attention back to the present moment with the support of sound. Our main attention is 80% on the grounding, the being in the here-and-now and 20% is with listening.

2. Sound Meditation can help us to feel calm

Tranquility, a sense of calmness and grounding, are the best conditions for mindful awareness: When the body releases tension, the mind can settle. Mindfulness practices that train our attention can help us to settle the mind and come to rest, making us feel calmer. This is partly due again to its modulation of the default mode network.

Sound does not automatically make us feel calmer, however. Sound, like all other senses, can stimulate our threat or drive system.

Sound can be disturbing, think of a hooting car or a dog barking for example. These are noises that alert us to potential danger. Our nervous system is set up to notice and respond to potential threats. So when we sense danger so our response will be to either fight, flight or freeze. Even if we do not actively do either of these, our mind will become unsettled.

Noise can also stimulate our drive system, that is the system that alerts us to opportunities we need to stay alive, not just as an individual but as a species; food, community and friendship, finding a partner. This system, in moderation, is what gives us the energy to get up in the morning and go to work. When it is overstimulated, however, it can lead us to feel unsettled, constantly on the look-out for new opportunity. In the worst case, it can lead to addictive behaviours.

These two systems stem from our evolutionary past that have remained anchored in our nervous system. They have ensured our survival so they are not bad systems. The only thing is, they are often overactive. Now, there is a third system that can help us to counterbalance these other two systems: the soothing system. It is the system that allows us to rest, rest in present awareness. We notice the present moment and all its stimulations but we are at rest. And all mindulness meditations, including sound meditation, are designed to help us find that restful alertness as we are fully present in this moment.

So how can sound help us achieve that?

Sound can teach us that we have a choice: that we can choose where to place our attention - on the pleasant, the unpleasant or even on the neutral.

Let's think about the pleasant: Most of us have probably done a sound meditation without even knowing it: remember the last time you sat outside, maybe having a cup of tea in the sunshine. You just sat in peace, noticing the sounds around you: the birds, rustling of the trees, maybe the faint sound of a car passing in the distance. Remember the sense of calm, “nothing to do, nowhere to go”, you might have felt at the time. Life unfolded around you, you were fully present, noticed what was happening as it was happening and yet, at the same time, you felt peaceful, at ease.

Or maybe you remember the last time you listened to a piece of music that really moved you: You might have felt the music in your body, the vibration of the drums or a particular orchestral crescendo, or maybe you felt sensations related to an emotional response, like an openness in the chest or a softening of your face…. You may have felt fully alive at that moment. Again, you were fully present, maybe a little less aware of the world around you but instead fully focused on the music and your experience of that music. You may not have felt so tranquil but instead you may have felt a little roused by the music. And yet at the same time you also had that sense of “nothing to do, nowhere to go”. You were fully emersed in the experience.

Both experiences may have left you feeling good, one maybe more tranquil, the other a bit more stirred or energised and yet both might have left you feeling satisfied and at ease.

Now remember from the introduction to this section, that this positive emotional response might not always be the case, that sounds can also overstimulate us! Producers of dance or film score music know that. They use different rhythms to stimulate different emotions. Dance music with a lot of bass also alerts us through vibration. Now all sound is actually vibration. Vibration has a direct effect on our body, not just on our ear but also on the rest of our body. So you may feel the effect of certain sounds directly in your body. Vibration can be calming or disturbing, depending on its frequency. Studies suggest that reactions to vibration and sound can be highly individual.

A study carried out in 2020 found that psychological states of wellbeing affected how individuals responded to sound[ii]. So, you may find that sounds that you may not notice on a good day – or that you might even find comforting normally, can trigger a negative emotional state on other days. Sound is actually vibration. Vibration has a direct effect on our body, not just on our ear but also on the rest of our body. So you may feel the effect of certain sounds directly in your body. Vibration can be calming or disturbing, depending on its frequency. Now we need to be a little careful about making sweeping statements: studies show that reactions to vibration can depend on the individual.

Finally, remember that it’s not just real sounds but even imagined ones that can soothe or annoy us. Apparently phantom sounds, auditory mirages or hallucinations, are very common and if you find that hard to believe, think of a song-worm that you just can’t get out of your head... I spent a week trying to get rid of Boney M.'s Brown Girl in the Ring some years ago. It just kept popping into my head at the most inapproriate moments...

If we allow ourselves to be aware of all that is happening, sound can lead to deeper insights.

3. Sound meditation can bring insight, show us our patterns of responding, likes and dislikes

Insight is really noticing our response, noticing what is happening as it is happening, ideally without shutting anything out or just sticking with our preferences. So we may start our insight by simply noticing our reaction. Do you notice any preferences, likes and dislikes to certain sounds. How do you deal with this? Can we stay in that open awareness where we notice what is happening as it is happening without preference? That doesn’t mean that we like everything, simply that we keep an open mind and let our experience unfold to what is happening. So just notice your thoughts, emotions and sensations as you notice the sounds.

Or, as we do in the sound meditation in the Mindfulness Based Living Course, we can just use sound as a support: we actually don’t focus on the sound, we just use sound to bring us back to the present moment whenever we notice that we are getting lost in thinking. So we actually lessen our attention on sound, bring it into the background with our full experience in the foreground: we notice the totality of us; our thoughts, emotions, sensations, attitudes. You just return back to the sound as a support whenever you notice that you get lost in thinking.

I must just add as a final point that sound meditation was the practice that helped me to shift from a pattern of anxiety and periods of slight dissociation towards stability and calmness. It is still one of my favourite practices although I know these days that each of us responds differently and we all have our personal likes and dislikes and that some people just don’t like sound meditation. For me, however, when I lie in my bed in London, the gentle buzzing noise of the traffic on the South Circular in the background with other sounds playing out their tunes closer to me, brings a smile of comfort to my face…

If you are curious to experience the bodyscan and other meditations and be guided towards a deeper, more mindful life, why not sign up to a transformative eight week mindfulness course with me. Courses are online. If you have any questions, contact me via this link and/or, if you are just looking to be contacted whenever a new course is starting, join the mailing list via this link

Kat is a fully qualified Mindfulness Teacher with the Mindfulness Association and has a Post-Graduate Certificate in Mindfulness from the University of Aberdeen. She is also a movement teacher (Yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais, Somatics), an intimate health practitioner and has a degree in herbal medicine.

[i] As an Amazon Associate I will earn a small commission if you order via this link.

[ii] Lorenzino, M. et al (2020) Acoustic comfort depends on the psychological state of the individual

Categories: : mindfulness