Guided, built on sound, then widening out. Music underneath
For people who find meditation hard. No silencing anything, no forty minutes on a cushion. We just use sound.
About 13 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.
Start with my voice and the gaps in it, and notice a word is only a noise until your mind decides what it means. Then widen out to what you can feel, taste, smell. Some of the best sittings take no effort at all. If it slips, back to the breath, and that is fine.
Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for sitting with me.
Steven
Who this is for
People who find meditation hard. No silencing anything, no forty minutes on a cushion.
We use sound, which is always there, and then we open out from it.
What happens in this meditation
The body relaxes on invitation rather than instruction. Arms, back, legs, face, tongue, even the ears.
Then sound. My voice, and the gaps in it. And then a small thing worth noticing: a word is only a noise until your mind decides what it means. You hear it, it goes in, and something translates it.
So for a couple of minutes you do not label anything. You just hear.
Then the breath alongside the sound. Then what you can feel, the seat under you, anywhere your body is touching something. Then taste and smell.
Holding several things loosely rather than one thing tightly is the point. Focus goes rigid. Open awareness drifts between and stays soft.
How to get the most from it
Thirteen minutes, and there is nothing to picture, so it works in a car park or a waiting room.
If it slips, back to the breath. That is not starting again, that is the practice.
Some of the best sittings take no effort at all. If you notice you are working at this one, you have gone into focus instead.
Questions people ask
What if a dog barks halfway through?
Then it is part of it. That is rather the whole design. Nothing outside the window can interrupt a meditation built on hearing.
Which anchor should I use?
Whichever is available. Breath, sound, taste, a candle, the leaves on a tree. They all do the same job and sound is the one you can never mislay.
How do I do this at a party or at work?
The same way, briefly. One sound, one breath, and the noticing that right here is usually fine. Yes, there are things going on. Not in this square metre, this second.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
mindfulness · present-moment · breath
Read the transcript
Hi and welcome to a very simple meditation we're going to do that you can do anywhere really. It's just
an open awareness meditation and we're going to use sound as the
first pinpoint that we use to focus this.
I'm Steven Webb and I have a podcast called Stillness in the Storms that helps you to see life differently
when you're having a real hard time. And also this meditation podcast that Inner Peace Meditations,
that just help you to find a little inner peace when you need it most. And it's mainly for people
that find meditation really difficult. Sitting down for 40 minutes trying to silence the mind which of course is
not Not the idea of meditation, but it's certainly what we could do if sometimes or we feel like we
could do it. So without me talking on too much, I just want to say thank you to all the
supporters. Thank you to anybody that donates towards this podcast. It's really appreciated. I love you guys and you'll
keep it going. I don't have no sponsors and I don't want to add sponsors really to it. So you
can do so just by going to the link below. Anyway. Let's just become comfortable and
you don't have to do anything in this meditation. Just loosely follow my instruction and if you miss a bit,
don't worry, it's fine. Allow
your body to relax.
Allow your mind to just relax a little
And you don't have to do anything to relax the body. It knows how to relax.
Just give your arms permission, your back and your bum and your legs and your feet. Just
Just invite them to relax into this moment.
Even your face and your eyes, your
cheek and your tongue, even your forehead,
even your ears.
Just allow them all to relax in this moment.
And this meditation is really about bringing everything into our awareness. So
if a dog ends up barking outside or something ends up making a noise, just allow it to be.
And don't just bring your awareness to your breath.
You don't need to do anything with it. Just be aware that
you're breathing in and
you're breathing out.
Man, you could soften your gaze just a few feet in front of you or if you choose to, close
your eyes
And do so with a knowing that all is well in this moment.
As you're aware of your breath, be aware of everything you can hear.
The sound of my voice,
The gaps between my words.
You may notice my words are... Not
just simple words or sentences. They're
just different noises. The
start of the word, the
middle and the end.
Each word comes and goes.
And we hear them in our ears. And the sounds going through our ears into our minds.
And
then the mind does something with them to translate them into something it recognizes And we do this with all
sound. Whether
it's a sound of the wind or a sound of an air conditioner or Some other sound that we suddenly
hear, we
label it.
And what if just for a couple of minutes we don't label anything and we don't do anything with the
sound?
So just purely listen
And just allow each sound to come and go.
And if your mind wanders, just smile and thank you for the little thought and just bring it back to
the breath and then
move the awareness to your sound
when that's we're listening...
Move your awareness or open your awareness to your breathing as well.
So you can hear everything
at the same time you're aware of your breath.
And you notice the way everything just becomes a little quieter and we're not putting any effort into it.
Some of the best meditations are just no effort. You don't have to do anything with this moment.
You don't have to do anything with your breath or the sounds that are coming in.
I'm going to invite you to open this awareness to even more.
Perhaps you can open the awareness to not only the sounds you can hear, not
only to the sounds and the breath you can become aware of. But what about what you can feel?
Can you feel the seat that you're sat on? Can
you feel maybe somewhere else your body's touching something?
It's nice to be able to open our awareness to more than one thing and when we do that we
soften it.
There's a gentleness there.
When we're focusing on one thing, we
very often
become rigid or so focused that we have to not lose focus. Whereas the awareness
of more than one thing, we can drift between each one and we can recognise, ah, there's a sound. Ah,
there's my breath.
Ah, there's a feeling.
And we can open it up to our other senses as well. Perhaps our taste. What's going on inside of
your mouth or your tongue?
What's going on when you breathe in through your nose? Can you smell anything?
And if you do find it difficult to keep your awareness open, just bring it back to your breath and
smile and that's okay.
The main lesson really from this meditation is whatever you're going through, whatever's happening, you don't have to do anything
with it.
It's the fundamental teaching of Zen.
You know, what arises, we can choose what to do with it. We suddenly become in more control. And if
you think about this moment now, are you in more control now or when you were fleeting from one thing
to another before the meditation?
But how do we practice this in everyday life? How can we be at a party or be at work
or amongst the kids or something else? A doctor's appointment. And remain home and in control.
It's not easy. But
your breath is there.
The sounds are there. All
these things are always there as anchors for us to just go to and use to drop into the awareness
of this moment.
And that's all we're talking about in the present moment Eckhart Tolle and all the different world teachers Just, ah,
hear. The
sound that's happening now. The emotion that's happening now.
Because very often the here is perfectly fine.
Yes, there's things going on around the world, but right here now is okay.
What a joy in okay Okay
So in a moment I'm going to ask you to gently open your eyes and shake out your arms. But
before that, just bring this feeling back with us. This
feeling of we can be present and with it and aware.
So five, four, gently open your eyes. Three. Shake out your arms.
Two. One. And just be aware and look around the room and the sounds are still here, your breath's still
here, my voice is still going on. Ah. Yeah. You can do that anytime Just
pick a trigger, pick an anchor. Breath, sound, taste, feeling. You could
even use a candle or an incense or even just look at a tree and just use of leaves on
the tree as an anchor. I'm just going to purely, totally just be aware of what's going on. I very
often stop in nature and I just watch a tree or watch a leaf and I just watch it intently.
That's the mindful moment. We can listen to somebody or we can watch a movie or we can do all
these things intently in the moment.
That's all. Just do the one thing but you can have an awareness that's open.
And don't forget to check out my other podcast, Stillness in the Storms. Thank you and thank you for your
support and have a wonderful day. Have a wonderful mindful awareness day. Take care.
