Music for Meditation

It is now 2021, and who hasn't tried meditation by this point? Everywhere we look health gurus are bombarding us with the message to MEDITATE. Well… FINE, I said, YOU’VE GOT ME. So on a convenient spring day, I leisurely sat down on my dusty, bobby-pin tangled rug and began to tap into my inner hippie and …. release…

ahhhhhh

… Unexpected to me, I did not experience a great epiphany or discover the meaning of life. Instead, the only thing I heard was my own voice, bombarding me with the message to email my tutor, and wash my bath towels and bin those 7 year old M&S knickers sitting at the bottom of my sentimental memory box. by the end of my meditation I felt more stressed than when I went into it. It was a catastrophically ironic attempt to find inner peace. I persisted through the recommended 10 minutes of ‘mindfulness’ but did not feel the glowing rush of zen I was expecting. So I tried again another day, and again, and again. As I’m sure you can imagine, I gave up. Maybe meditation isn’t for me, I thought. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I realised I had been meditating all along, since I was eight years old through the medium of music, and I didn’t even realise.

When playing the piano, singing or any instrument for that matter, it is by far the most mindless practice I do. You cannot acknowledge any of the issues that are swirling about your life, because you have to focus on the notes. Reading music can take time and patience, a task that requires no distraction! Piano playing is rarely combined with technology or screens. In fact, it is one of the few things we can do in the 21st Century that can’t be done (properly) with screens and outside noises. The hand movements in piano playing are calming and grounding. I compare it to a yoga session for your hands, after days, months, years of phone holding and typing. Finally, Listening to the music you are playing is completely rewarding and (hopefully) pleasant. If you enjoy the music you play, then if nothing else, the sound of music is calming in amongst itself.

So, playing musical instruments is a massively underrated practice for mindlessness and relaxation. If you don't have access to a piano or any other instrument, then singing is the next best thing. Whether you believe you can sing or not, plopping yourself in a calming room, taking deep breaths and vocalising is an INCREDIBLE form of breath work and mindfulness. The main aim in any singing lesson is to release all mental and physical tension and letting whatever sounds come out, without judgement. A proper singing breath (diaphramatic, or ‘splat’ breath) is felt in the lower abdomen, breathing deeply into your stomach and gradually releasing. You focus on connecting each vowel and having an open and free sound. Just like the ‘OM’ sound in meditation, singing is connecting our breath with noise. We cry and wail during our first minutes on earth. We make NOISE. People sing to babies to calm them down. As humans our natural instinct is to vocalise and make sounds, yet as we age, we are encouraged to be seen and not heard, to be quiet and to keep the noise down. Our ability to connect with our sound is discouraged as we enter adulthood. Singing is one of the only activities we can do to be loud and noisy without judgement.

The next time you take a shower, really relish in the moment and start singing! I can assureeeee you that you’ll feel better after your shower. Perhaps your neighbours won’t appreciate it, but who cares.

I will write about this in more depth in a future post, but essentially, practicing music in any form is a fantastic way to meditate and relax.