To Listen is Harmonic
Did you know that the more the listener resonates with a story that's being told, the more the brainwaves align with the storyteller? The shape of the story is not the intellectual experience, but the self-reflected shape inside the listeners skull vibrating with sympathetic resonance!
This is also what's happening when we listen to overtone-emitting instruments like singing bowls or the gong: our brainwaves naturally align with the overtones of the instruments, becoming aligned with the harmony of the bowls together within our skulls, connecting and balancing our left and right brain hemispheres with the natural resonance of harmony.
These images are from EEGs done on the brain while listening to overtone-emitting instruments, studies by Alexandre Tannous. See more here
Listening itself is ruled by the right brain hemisphere, whereas our vision is ruled by the left brain. So, to listen is by nature holistic, and connected to the body. Listening is naturally balancing for our over-specialized and achievement-based society, ruled by our left brain.
What would your experience of your day be like with just a little more awareness on all the sounds around you?
But when judgement is a filter in the way you listen, and curiosity and play is dampened, tension, fear, and reactionism can still become the driving factors in the way we listen. If we can practice lifting off judgement to hear ALL sounds with curiosity, we can stay open to hear something new, to LEARN, to discover.
Thomas Hübl says that when we are children and still evolving our psychological interior, there are two driving factors for growth: curiosity and fear. Curiosity encourages the growth outside of the preconceived structure, and fear leads the child back to the safety of the parent. But if too much fear is imprinted and not enough safety to allow curiosity to expand and explore, our growth is actually stunted, and we aren't actually perceiving reality as it is!!! We could perceive a threat where there is none, or very little, or think someone means something different than they mean, because our psychological interior jumps to an unsafe conclusion.
Are there situations in your life where you think this may have happened?
The first step to learning how to perceive what is really all around us is applying a childlike curiosity.
When you listen, can you imagine LEANING IN to a specific tone to hear the nuances with curiosity?
Can you FEEL it with your whole soft being, without preconceived expectations?
Can you immerse yourself in the sound, playing with how many sounds you can hear all at once, and enJOY the ride?!
Then, when you notice you are applying judgement or rejection of certain sounds because you don't like them, just notice if there is tension involved in that experience, and come back to curiosity.
The biggest barrier to our growth is thinking we already know! And yes, that includes me! :)
Join us for conscious practice of listening and sound meditation at aBigAUM.com.
I wish you a PLAYFUL and CURIOUS day!