In Tune: Music as the Bridge to Mindfulness

Developing Inner Silence through Sound Meditations and Music

Christine Jackman describes silence as the space in which one was “free to breathe and simply be”. It is a space without speaking or being spoken to. In the context of mindfulness, silence does not mean the absence of sound, just the absence of unwanted inner and outer noise – freedom from the noise pollution of our minds and of a busy world. It is a refuge – a place of retreat from inner chatter and outer noise. In stillness and silence, we can find inner peace and tranquility.

Sound and mindfulness

Many mindfulness practices involve being still and listening to sounds, either the room tone or external sounds from wind, rain, birds, or other sounds. The aim of these practices is to maintain focus on sound and keep our minds free from other distractions. Sound meditations can strengthen our concentration and listening skills and contribute to our overall well-being. Sound can also be provided as an anchor for people involved in trauma-sensitive mindfulness.

What we are aiming to achieve in sound-based mindfulness practices is an inner silence and harmony – turning off self-stories, negative thoughts, interpretations, or projections. Basically, it involves tuning out of the inner dialogue by tuning into sound. We strengthen our awareness muscle when we are able to return to our inner silence and focus whenever distracting thoughts occur.

Music as a pathway to inner silence

Christine Jackman, in her book Turning Down the Noise, describes her search for “the quiet power of silence” in her busy world. She found inner silence in a number of places, including while participating in Vespers in a Benedictine Monastery – an evening prayer that is recited or sung.

Another form of ecclesiastical music, Gregorian Chant, has developed over many years by monastic orders dedicated to prayer and silence as a way to develop inner silence – the focus on singing meaningful phrases to the sound of monotonal music serves to shut out distractions and build inner peace and harmony.

Mantra meditations often employ a musical instrument (e.g., a drum or guitar) together with chanting long-established phrases that evoke positive emotions such as peace, harmony, relationships, or connectedness to nature or a higher being. Repetition of the lyrics enables a deeper penetration into the meaning of the words that are sung mindfully and facilitates a deepening inner silence and tranquility.

The silence between the notes

Richard Wolf, author of In Tune: Music as the Bridge to Mindfulness, identified what he called “12 bridges to mindfulness” created by music. These include deep listening and “sympathetic vibrations”. Richard argues that music is a key to inner silence, one of the bridges to mindfulness. He makes the point that silence is embedded in music – music notations for the duration of a note are matched by “an equal notation for the duration of silence” between the notes. He mentions Miles Davis’ emphasis on the “connection between the role of silence in music and in life”.

Some music composers pay particular attention to silence within their compositions. Richard refers, for example, to the work of John Cage and his important piece of music, 4’33”, in which the pianist begins by not playing but sitting still for 4 minutes 33 seconds as a way of “drawing the audience’s attention to the process of listening itself”. This engenders a particular form of participation whereby the audience through their silence become part of the performance.

Reflection

This blog post was stimulated by a conversation I had with a musician friend of mine who played the guitar professionally, both as an individual and as a member of a band. We had been discussing music and mindfulness when he mentioned a story about how he had become distracted during a performance. He was playing guitar with his group on a footpath outside a building when a car pulled up and two men hopped out of the car and headed towards the musicians. My friend immediately began to think, “Are they going to disturb us?” or “Are they interested in the music?”

As he thought about the possibilities, he became mentally distracted, lost his place in the music, and played some wrong notes. Up until the distraction, his band was exhibiting some of the characteristics identified by Richard Wolf as bridges to mindfulness , e.g., concentration, harmony, and sympathetic vibration. However, as a result of regular music practice, my friend was able to restore his focus and catch up with the music and his other band members very quickly.

The positive influence between mindfulness and music is bi-directional – it operates in both directions. As we grow in mindfulness, our capacity to play music, sing and listen deeply, develops; as we play music, practise playing and sing, we can grow in mindfulness because music can provide the bridge to inner silence. Mindfulness practice and music practice both build our power of concentration, our awareness muscle, our ability to achieve resonance with others, and our overall well-being. Richard highlights the positive impact of inner silence on our relationships when he writes, The ability to silence the inner voice creates the conditions for truly hearing the voices of others.

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Image by SplitShire from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Deep Listening through Music and Meditation

Richard Wolf explores the parallels between playing a musical instrument and meditation in his book, In Tune: Music as the Bridge to Mindfulness. I have previously discussed his exploration of the parallels between music and meditation in relation to the role of practice and achieving inner harmony. Richard maintains that a key parallel is the attainment of deep listening through music and meditation.

Deep listening through music

In Richard’s view, playing a musical instrument develops deep listening – musicians can discern many sonic elements such as tone, rhythm and harmonics. He identifies 13 major sonic elements that accomplished musicians recognise and explains that these, in turn, have sub-elements. Deep listening enables the musician to open themselves to the full spectrum of hearing music so that they can not only hear the music but feel it, in its never-ending range of emotional content – from sadness and grief to elation and jubilation. Richard suggests that through practice and playing a musical instrument, you can “feel the music with your body and soul”. Music, too, in his view enables the musician to “filter out” distorting elements within the musician themselves – their blind-spots, assumptions, biases and prejudices – so that their listening is not contaminated by their cognitive limitations. They can move beyond their own narrowness into the breadth and depth of musical expression.

Deep listening through meditation

Sound is often used as one of the anchors for people who meditate to develop mindfulness. Richard suggests that we can learn to listen to our breath in the same way that a musician listens to music, thus cultivating deep listening. He argues that our breath is the “sound of your life” and that through the practice of listening to our breath we can begin to discern the different sonic components of our breath. He offers several approaches to develop deep listening including the following:

Tuning into the sound of your breathing – accentuate the sound of your inhalation and exhalation and tune into these sounds and learn to discern their subtle differences.
Resting in the silence between breaths – focus on the silence that occurs after exhalation and before inhalation, resting in the peace and tranquillity that lies within.
Tuning into your environment – tune into the sounds in your environment, e.g. the “room tone” as well as the external environment and all the sounds from sources such as traffic, machinery, birds and other animals. This exercise makes you realise how little you consciously listen to what is going on around you.

Richard also suggests that you can develop “dual awareness” by not only focusing on the sounds of your breath but simultaneously noticing the movement of your body – the rise and fall of your abdomen and chest or the flow of air through your nostrils. This attunement of breath and body develops “multidimensional awareness” and facilitates the transition from goal-oriented awareness to natural awareness.

Deep listening through music and meditation

Richard explains that both music and meditation require sustained concentration and the capacity to “quiet the inner voice”. In this way, music and meditation assists us to develop mindfulness and to access the benefits of mindfulness such as those identified by MAPPG in the Mindful Nation UK Report. He particularly emphasised that music and meditation take us beyond self-absorption to empathy and compassion.

Reflection

Music and meditation help us to grow in mindfulness, develop concentration and facilitate deep listening. We can become increasingly aware of the different sounds in our external environment and learn to discern the sonic elements in our own breathing. Deep listening cultivates multidimensional awareness and a richer life experience through conscious tuning into sounds and achieving attunement between our breath and our body. The quality of our listening can enhance our relationships, make workplaces more productive and lead to the wide-ranging benefits that mindfulness delivers.

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Image by skeeze from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Music and Meditation: The Key Role of Practice

Richard Wolf maintains that practice is a key element in meditation and playing a musical instrument. Richard explores practice along with other parallels between meditation and playing music in his book, In Tune: Music as the Bridge to Mindfulness. Previously, I explored his ideas on achieving harmony through music and meditation.

It is through practice that we can master playing an instrument or achieving a high standard in sport. The same is true of meditation – our capacity to meditate and achieve its benefits is dependent on how well we practice. The greater the regularity and length of our meditation practice, the greater are the benefits that accrue to us.

Practice and repetition

Practice requires repetition and may be experienced as boring, e.g. playing scales on a musical instrument. However, as Richard notes, after a period of practicing, if we persist, we can be keen to “practice for practice sake”. With sustained practice, comes the realisation that the practice itself achieves the desired benefits of competence, concentration, harmony and spontaneity. This is as true of meditation as it is of practising a musical instrument. It is similar with sporting practice. I recall practicing tennis drills with my brothers when we were playing A Grade tennis fixtures. Repetition was a key part – hitting the ball up the line over and over or practising volleys again and again. However, as we grew in competence, we would marvel at the shots we played, laugh at the fun we were having and experience a real sense of happiness. We would look forward to our practice sessions.

As our meditation practice improves and starts to flow into our daily life, we begin to experience a greater variety of benefits which, in turn, feed our motivation to practice. Richard suggests that this occurs because when you meditate, “your mental, emotional and physical awareness are the instrument you practice on”. The essence of effective practice is to maintain focus in the present moment on what we are doing, whether playing a musical instrument or meditating on nature.

Breathing in time – treating your breath as a musical instrument

Richard highlights the role of beats in music and the need for a musician to master different times in music such as 4/4 time and 3/4 time (as in a waltz). He suggests that “counting beats internally” is an essential component of mastering a musical instrument. He proposes that as a form of meditation practice, you can adopt the parallel technique of “rhythmic breathing”, e.g. what he calls a “four-bar sequence”. This involves holding your breath for four beats (counting to four) for each of the four “bars” involved in breathing – inhalation, holding, exhalation, holding.

In his book, he offers other variations on this breathing sequence that you can adopt but stresses that the important thing is to go with whatever helps you to experience calm and equanimity. It is vital not to beat up on yourself if you lose count in the middle of your practice – just start over again. The outcome is achieving a mind-body rhythm that is beneficial to your sense of ease and wellness.

Reflection

Meditation practice becomes enjoyable as we grow in mindfulness. This increasing inner and outer awareness flows into our daily life and brings a variety of benefits such as focus, productivity, creativity, calmness and richer relationships. The benefits can grow exponentially if we sustain our meditation practice. Rhythmic breathing can enhance our mind-body connection.

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Image by Brenda Geisse from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.