“Music gives color to the weather today.” ~ Karl Lagerfeld
I used to think I was a good listener. I can hold my eyes, nod my head at the right time, ask follow-up questions. But one afternoon sitting on the yoga mat in a small studio in Rishikesh, I realized that I had never heard anything, not even myself.
The teacher asked us to close our eyes and recognize the sounds around us. The ceiling fan is slowly turning over the head. A dog barking somewhere on the street. My breath is uneven and shallow. And then underneath it all, something I can only describe as calm with the texture – the vibrant serenity I used to be too busy to notice before.
That was my first in-depth encounter with Nada Yoga, an Indian traditional yoga practice through sound. And it quietly dismantled everything I thought I knew about the presence.
When we fill every silence
For most of my adult life, I have traveled the world with noise as a constant companion. Music while cooking. Podcast during my morning walk. The TV roars when I fall asleep. I tell myself I like the sound. But to be honest, I was afraid of what might happen in silence.
There is the kind of noise we produce, not for fun, but for protection. It prevents us from sitting down with the difficult question: Do I live the way I want to? Why does this relationship feel hollow? How do I feel under all this hustle and bustle?
I used the voice as an escape from the deeper voices of my inner life. And I have no idea.
The feeling I was most afraid of in the face of silence was a sense of aimlessness and deep uncertainty about whether the path I had chosen to dedicate my life to music was truly mine or something I had always known. Growing up in classical Indian music, it is hard to tell the difference between dialing and air conditioning.
In silence, those questions became louder. Do I teach because I love it or because it is something I know how to do? Am I connected to this practice or am I just creating an identity around it? It is also sad there for the relationship that I have lost because I always travel, always teach, always shed tears while remembering the person in front of me.
Noise kept it all at a comfortable distance. It was only when I really sat down with silence that I stopped running from those questions and started letting them transform me into a more honest person.
Practices that have changed everything
Nada Yoga is rooted in the understanding that all existence is vibration. From the sounds of the universe to the rhythms of the human heart, sounds are not just what we hear. It is what we are.
The practice begins very simply. You sit. You listen. You resist the urge to fill silence with thought, judgment, or forethought. You let the sound roll through you, rather than bounce off the surface of the disturbed mind.
At first I was really scared. My mind would run to the grocery list of unanswered emails, conversations that I should handle differently. My teacher will say softly but firmly, “Come back to the voice.” And slowly I started.
Then the music arrived. We would listen to a single drone, a tomboy singing, sometimes just a note on ammonium. And in that record the mind will find something wonderful: a place to rest.
It is not silence in the way we normally think, it is silence. It was as quiet as a wide presence, unhurried and completely real.
What voices teach us about being here
There is something particularly influential about the use of voice as a path to presence, because voice demands it now. You could not hear yesterday. You can not hear tomorrow. Sound exists only in real life, and real hearing is to get there with it.
I began to notice how it changed the texture of normal life. I will wash the dishes and hear the water differently, not the noise from behind, but something to pay attention to. I would sit with friends and really hear the quality of their voices, the hesitation between their words, what they rarely say.
Practice has given me new ears. And with the new ear came the new kind of presence, not the practical presence of eye contact and nodding, but a real settlement in the here and now.
I also began to understand my relationship with music. I have always loved it, but I have used it the way many of us do to control my mood to push it up or down. Nada Yoga invited me to take control and start the meeting.
To have music meet you wherever you are without having to take you somewhere is a deep act of self-acceptance. It is the difference between using sound as a tool and actually experiencing sound.
Three practices to get started
You do not need years of study to start looking for a voice as a gateway to presence. Here are three simple practices that changed my relationship, both voice and silence:
1. Listen for two minutes deep.
Once a day, stop doing things and close your eyes. For two minutes, simply mark the sounds around you without labeling them good or bad, welcome or unwelcome. Refrigerator traffic away your own breath. Let everything be as it is. This is the foundation of Nada Yoga: Listening Without Judgment.
2. Listening to music consciously.
Choose a song and listen to it with full attention. No phone. No more work. Notice the silence between notes as well as the notes themselves. Notice what music is going on in your body. Notice when your mind wanders and comes back gently. What you are practicing is the same as meditating, but sound becomes your anchor instead of breathing.
3. Sit with one voice.
Find a plate for singing, a basket, or a single supporting note on the piano or guitar. Let it wake up and follow with your attention until it is completely extinguished. Where does the sound end? Where does silence begin? Sitting with that question is not to answer it, but to live in it can open something deep.
Come home to the present
I still love background music. I still enjoy podcasts on long walks. But things have basically changed. I no longer need sound to fill the space. I have learned slowly and imperfectly that silence is not empty. It was full of everything I was anxious to get.
Presence is not a personality trait. It is a practice. And the sound in its richness, in all its softness, in its ability to arrive and melt in one breath, is the most accessible teacher we have.
All you have to do is listen.
About Bou Van Chanda
Bhuwan Chandra is the founder of Nada Yoga School, a classical Indian musician, chiropractor, music therapist and Sanskrit and blessing expert. He dedicated his life to making the ancient wisdom of Nada Yoga accessible to students around the world. Find out about his teaching at nadyoga.org.
