Meditation For Beginners — Step Three: Sound
Experiencing Sound As Vibration
Step 3in the Beginner’s Guide To Meditation series.
The last meditation really got you inside of your body. This meditation is going to get you outside of it. You’ll be focusing on your surroundings, whatever that may mean. This can mean a lot of different things.
It could be your surroundings just a few feet away from you. It could be your surroundings as far as a few miles away. That’s what’s incredible about sound: how far it can travel and how far away sounds can be a part of your experience. Even and especially when you don’t see where it’s coming from.
This meditation, for three minutes, is going to have you focusing in deeply on sound. Think of sound in a way that hits you without attachment, without judgement, without assessment. Think of it as vibrations on your ear drum. Think of it as vibrations on your body…if you can feel it.
This is going to be three minutes of silence. It’s going to start to feel like a little bit longer — a harder stretch of silence than the earlier meditations. Use that time to really dig into the phenomenology of sound as a means of connecting, of being present, with where you are.
Think about sound in a new way. When you hear something in your room or outside your window or down the street, try to disengage with wondering what it is. If it’s the sound of a truck rolling by or your neighbor in another room talking, just think again about the vibration. How it hits your ear drum and how it reaches the surface of your skin on your body.
This is it. That’s all this meditation is. Connecting…with sound.
Let’s dive in.
