Mindfulness of Breath and Sounds

Welcome back to our weekly mindfulness and wellbeing blog. We have been focussing this present series on ‘how to meditate’ and have discussed our positioning and also the body scan over the past two weeks. Today, we will examine the mindfulness of breath and mindfulness of sounds practices. Let’s get into it!

Mindfulness of Breath

Guiding your ‘spotlight’ attention onto your breath

Mindfulness of the breath is similar to the body scan, except that rather than putting the attention in different parts of the body, we place it in the breath. Or more specifically, we place it in the part of the body where we most notice the breath. This might be the nostrils, the lips, the back of the throat or the mouth, or the chest wall expanding. Try to guide your attention — like a torch or a spotlight — right into this part of the body where you feel the breath, and with curiosity and inquisitiveness, investigate what the breath is like. Is it cool, or warm? How does each breath change with each in breath and outbreath? Can you feel the skin or muscles move or stretch as you breathe? As best you can, try to experience the breath directly, feeling the breath directly, rather than ‘thinking’ about the breath. Try to let the breath just breathe itself, without necessarily controlling it. Just investigate it as you find yourself breathing. And notice, just like in the body scan, that the mind doesn’t often stay in one place for too long — it tends to often drift off into thinking, into the ‘thought stream’ — thinking about the past, the future, events during the day, worries, or pleasurable things. The trick to the practice is to notice when you have been ‘thinking’ — in the moment of realisation, when you ‘come back’ to the present moment — and, having realised that you are now back — gently, and with kindness (if you can) and curiosity, guide your attention back to where you best experience the breath in the body. This practice can usually be done over 10–15 minutes.

Mindfulness of Sounds

Place your attention into the sounds around you and the ‘gap between them’

The focus of the attention in this practice is on sounds. Bring your attention into the room and right into sounds around you. Like the breath, there is no need to ‘control’ the sounds — just try to ‘hear’ the sounds as best you can as they fall onto your ears, like waves on the ocean that crash on and meet the shore. Are the sounds near, or far away? Are they loud, or soft? Maybe they come from within your own body, like a rumbling stomach. Is there one sound in front of the other sound? Are the sounds singular or are they combined? If you can, place your attention right into the sound, almost like there is no gap between ‘you’ and the sound. Also, if you can, notice the ‘gap’ between sounds, where there is silence. If you can do this, investigate the silence, which is of course the absence of sound. What is the silence like? Like the previous practices, noticing each time when the mind wanders into thinking, which it does so well. And each time, having noticed that it has wandered, bringing it back to sounds, or to the absence of sound. This practice can usually be done over 10–15 minutes.

That’s all for now. Remember to look out next week when we conclude this series with the mindfulness of mind practice and the walking practice. And remember to join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 19:30GMT in the Secondary School FocusRoom (we use this as a combined session for both rooms) for live and free mindfulness sessions. We look forward to seeing you there!