One of the things I love about mindfulness practice is that you can bring it to so many areas of your everyday life. In fact, practicing mindfulness during those every day moments makes the practice deeper and stronger than if you try to keep it just for your specific meditation time.
What mindfulness does it bring you into the present moment. It allows you embody your body, to experience life in its fullness, and be OK with it. It increases your tolerance for distress, thereby reducing anxiety and bringing more spaciousness and peace to your internal emotional landscape.
And it’s not empirically hard.
Mostly you need to stop resisting life, pushing away the things that feel annoying, uncomfortable or difficult. Instead, you surrender to them, relaxing into them, which makes them ultimately have less power over you.
Listen to the sounds around you
One specific way to practice mindfulness is through deliberate listening. This practice allows you to get quiet enough in your physical self that you begin to notice the sounds of your surroundings. This, in turn, allows your mind to quiet its usual chatter.
As you notice the sounds around you, your job is to just notice them, not assign meaning to them or become carried away on a train of thought.
For instance, one of the sounds I’ve noticed while writing this article is the sound of a distant train horn. Immediately my mind started thinking about how far away the train tracks are from our house, how it’s interesting how far the sound carries, and why doesn’t the city pay to upgrade the train crossings so the trains don’t have to sound their horn whenever they come through?
Ah, thoughts. And then I let them go and notice what other sounds there are around me to hear.
During the time I’ve been writing this blog post here, are some of the sounds I’ve noticed:
- The typing of the keys on my keyboard
- An ambulance or firetruck siren along the main road a few blocks away
- One of the kids walking up the stairs to their bedroom to eat their lunch (I saw them cooking it in the kitchen earlier)
- The quiet popping of the bubbles in the can of seltzer water next to me
- The hum of my ductless A/C unit
- A train horn in the distance
This video explains how to do this kind of mindful listening meditation.
This is a kind of meditation you can do anywhere, especially places where you have to sit and wait. The next time you’re standing in line at the grocery store or waiting at the DMV or doctor’s office, instead of getting out your phone to distract yourself, take a breath and listen to the sounds around you. What do you notice?
Listen for the edges of sound
Another way you can practice mindful listening is by listening for the edges of a sound. A bell or chime is the easiest way to do this. You can use Tibetan chimes, a standing bell, or even a hand bell. If you don’t have any of those, try a meditation app where you can set bell chimes, such as Insight Timer.
Ring it once and focus your attention on the sound. Can you hear the edge of the sound – where the sound drops off into silence? At what point do you hear the very last vibration?
When it’s quiet, ring the bell or chime again and focus your attention again on the sound it makes.
Here’s a video that will lead you through this kind of mindful listening meditation.
Spending even a few minutes of time resting your thinking mind and allowing it to relax while you focus on sound will refresh you, mentally and emotionally.
This isn’t a meditation you can easily incorporate into your everyday life – unless you have a dinner bell that you ring to call your kids to the table like I do. It’s an old school bell, like the one I had at my elementary school in England, that we’d use to announce the end of recess. Whenever I ring it, not only does the vibration clear the energy in the air, but I take a moment to breathe in and listen for the edges of the sound, before placing it back on the kitchen counter and entering the fracas of dinner time.