Ross Edwards BSc DipBSoMThis is a free 30-minute meditation guided by Ross Edwards BSc DipBSoM, founder of Deep Psychology, long-term meditator, and meditation teacher.
Today we’re working with sound, bringing attention and clarity to the sounds we hear. We practice truly listening to sound, moment to moment, and working against our tendency to take it for granted.
This is a wonderful practice, and there are several reasons we do it:
- the senses are a great source of joy and satisfaction when we fully attend to them,
- we strengthen several core attention skills, which are crucial in meditation,
- we see how we constantly categorise and superimpose thoughts onto life,
- we’re working against our tendency to habituate, or to tune out from our senses,
- this is a wonderful practice for everyday life: we constantly hear, but do we really listen?
an elemental challenge of mindfulness is to rest in the awareness of hearing, hearing only what is here, moment by moment by moment, sounds arising, passing, silence inside and underneath sounds, beyond interpreting the momentary experience as either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, beyond all identifiers and judgments, beyond all thoughts about anything…
John Kabat-Zinn
30-Minute Guided Meditation on Sounds: Before You Start
Make sure you’re able to give 30 minutes of unbroken time to this. Before you get started, take five minutes to prepare correctly.
If you’re new to meditation, I suggest you find a quiet, comfortable space with minimal distractions.
Since we’ll be stationary for 30 minutes, posture is crucial. If you want to get started with a simple posture, lie down on a firm surface with a pillow behind your neck, or grab a chair and sit with your weight forwards.
But if you have a few spare minutes, check out my article on the best meditation postures, then follow these three tips to get into perfect position. These tips will serve you for your entire meditation journey.
Drop all your expectations about how you’re supposed to feel or what this meditation will do for you, and give yourself over to the instructions.
30-Minute Meditation on Sounds: Guided Audio
In this 30-minute meditation, we start with finding perfect posture – looseness, symmetry, alertness – before going into our sound meditation.
Try to hear the sounds around you as they are, beyond your interpretations and preferences. And for the purposes of this meditation, treat silence as a sound.
Listen to my 30-minute guided meditation on YouTube.
Next Steps
Now that you’ve tried this meditation, what are the next steps?
It takes time for this way of hearing to become habitual, and it’s all down to practice. I suggest you set aside 30 minutes every day for two weeks to do this meditation.
I also encourage you to bring it into daily life. As I said, sounds are always coming and going, and each is an invitation to listen with exquisite clarity and attention. Try this meditation for 5-10 minutes during your daily life, whether you’re in a cafe, walking, or at home.
I also have a free 20-minute guided breath meditation and a body scan meditation, which you can use in tandem with this one.
And if you want to learn the fundamental mindfulness practices, consider taking my six-week online course.
Master The Essentials of Mindfulness Meditation and Build a Solid Foundation in Spiritual Practice
The online Mindfulness Meditation For Beginners Course gives you 20+ lessons packed with techniques, advice and discoveries.
This is a six-week journey into the most important mindfulness techniques and a profound exploration of yourself.
