Mindfulness of Sound Exercises and Practices

Using sound as your anchoring point for your mindfulness meditation focus is an always accessible tool. This practice will begin to influence your everyday approach to life’s sounds and how you perceive them. It can work to release you from the grip of judgments.

Byron Katie teaches believing our judgments is specifically what causes our suffering. While practicing mindfulness of sound exercises can help you to create distance between identifying with all of your thoughts.

Click here to learn more about Byron Katie’s teachings.

What Is Auditory Mindfulness?

Mindfulness of sound or auditory mindfulness is the practice of allowing your awareness to encompass surrounding sound without labeling or judging them. The goal of mindfulness is to simply witness objectively.

Through meditation, we step into a space of being more present in the moment which will increase our awareness of our surrounding sounds. This meditation practice has numerous health benefits.

This calms down the monkey mind, decreases stress, increases one’s ability to stay calm in challenging situations, and increases our awareness. Learn more about how meditation can calm the monkey mind here.

Practices and Exercises For Sound Mindfulness

Whether you are using Ujjayi breath to create a sound, you are in the middle of a busy city or immersed in a place of silence you can always tap into practicing mindfulness with sound.

1. Listen To Mother Earth

One of the best mindfulness sound exercises is to go sit out in nature and simply observe and listen to the sounds around you. Do not sift them through your mental perceptions only your auditory one.

You do not need to label them or judge them, simply allow them to be there. What makes nature the prime sound to practice mindfulness to is that it is always changing.

This causes our brains to slip into a receptive and meditative mode rather than following a predictive harmony such as within a song! Follow our guided mindfulness sound meditation here!

2.Ujjayi Breath

Yogis use the sound of Ujjayi breath also known as the ocean breath, to anchor their focus while performing asanas, the physical practice of yoga. To make the sound a slight constriction of the throat is created on both the inhale and the exhale. To learn how to perform Ujjayi breath click here.

This practice can be used to ease into different styles of meditation or can be used as a mindfulness sound meditation practice itself. It is a simple technique that beginners can start with while experienced meditators can continue to still dive deeper into it.

Sound Healing

To fully reap the benefits of sound healing, one needs to be able to let go of the mental chatter and fully surrender into the moment. Practicing mindfulness while listening to sound healing, such as with the video embedded below, will amplify the effects of raising your vibration.