Listening

Here is a great exercise in listening. It works best if you try it in three steps. Read the directions for the first step, and then close your eyes.


Step One:

Bring all of your attention to the experience of listening. What is the first sound that you became aware of?

There is a label by which we identify this sound - traffic, refrigerator, people talking, birds... But what's really happening? What is your actual experience of this sound? The actual physical sensations?

Immerse yourself fully in this experience called "a sound." Then, as if you are increasing magnification with a zoom lens, listen more closely to that sound. As if you could travel inside the sound, let it become your whole world. Take your time. Explore every sensation.

Step Two:

This time, rather than focusing on one sound, listen to all the sounds in your environment.

Some are louder - more in the foreground. Some are softer - in the background and harder to discern. Sounds come at you from all different directions - in front, behind, maybe even above or below. How many different sounds can you hear?

And now, rather than hearing individual sounds, hear all of these sounds at once. Imagine you are listening to an orchestra, and each of these sounds is one of the instruments. Listen to all the sounds in your environment as if they fit together beautifully into a piece of music. Sit back and enjoy the performance.

Step Three:

Choose one sound to focus on again.

Where are you hearing this sound? Does it seem like the sound is out there? But where does the experience of listening actually take place? Out there? In your ear? In your brain?

Imagine some event out there causing air molecules to vibrate. Imagine sound waves traveling toward your body ... entering your ear ... becoming mechanical vibrations in bones ... becoming neuro-electrical impulses ... triggering associations in your brain. Imaging all this going on, creating the miracle we call sound.

~Discovering Spirit in Sound

Rhythms Of Life

The following makes a really nice chant! There's plenty of room for variation and improvisation. It's great for a group, drumming circle, or gathering to get the energy moving.

The very inception of life is rhythm.
Life is rhythm and Rhythm is life.

The rising of the SUN is rhythm.
The shimmering of the RAYS is rhythm.
The BLOOMING of a BUD is rhythm.
The Feel of the BREEZE is rhythm.
The ROAR of the WAVES is rhythm.
The Chirping of the BIRDS is rhythm.
The BUZZING of the BEES is rhythm.
The Voice in a SONG is rhythm.
The TICKLE on the FEET is rhythm.
The BREATH we take is rhythm.
The Heart that BEATS is rhythm.

~source

What is Sound?

What is sound, and how do we hear it? Sound is scientifically defined as any vibratory disturbance in the pressure and density of a medium (solid, liquid, or gas) that stimulates the sense of hearing.



When molecules in gases are moved - by someone speaking, a pebble dropping into a pond, a hammer pounding a nail, or voices joinied in chant - energy is transferred, and the molecules begin to tremble and collide. As they bump together, each shimmering molecule passes energy along to its neighbors, carrying this vibration through the air (or other medium) in the form of a three-dimentional wave.

We take our ability to hear sounds for granted, but it's actually a wild and complex process. something happens out there to start air molecules vibrating, forming a wave of sound. Let's imagine for a moment that you are this sound wave. Air molecules crash into each other like billiard balls, causing you to surge and roll through space, like an ocean wave traveling toward shore. You enter a funnel-shaped appendage we call the outer ear, where you are amplified and tossed onto the tympanic membrane - the eardrum - causing it to bibrate.

No longer a sound wave, you have been transformed into mechanical energy, setting in motion the three tiniest bones in the body, the bones of the middle ear: the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup. You collide into the hammer, forcing it into a cuplike socket on the anvil, causing the stirrup to act like a piston pressing against the fluid-filled, spiraling labyrinth that is the inner ear.

As you swirl through liquid, you reach the inner ear and snake your way through a snail-shaped tube - the cochlea - which contains fine hairlike projections that trigger nerve cells. Now you are electrical energy speeding to the brain through the auditory nerve. Countless neutrons are triggered, associations mde, and ... amazingly ... someone hears.

From: Discovering Spirit in Sound