“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”

— John Lubbock

We are constantly being pummeled by a litany of things flashing at us in our technological world. And in between beeps, dings, rings, and flashes we dive back into our consuming inner chatter. Our multi-tasking life style is exhausting us with distractions and psychological demands, often leaving us inattentive and unavailable.

Listening Meditation can bring great relief to our busy, bombarded and preoccupied mind.

Listening meditation is simple and anyone can do it anywhere. Essentially, we are training in being open and receptive. Eventually, listening meditation becomes an opportunity not only to cultivate a spacious attitude, but to also be able to wait quietly for the unknown without expectations or fixed thinking.

Plus, we will enjoy additional healing benefits when we use nature as our subject. Tuning in to sounds in the natural environment can help to enliven our own natural rhythms and rekindle our feelings of connection to the world around us.

While there are lots of reasons and benefits for using listening meditation, one reason I love it, is it’s fun! It’s easy, portable, and very calming. And you can do it with kids too! (Afterwards, talk about some of the things you heard. And what it was like to notice them come and go.)

Try it today:

Find a place to sit down in a natural surrounding. If you can't be outside, sit by an open window.

Sit comfortably, relaxed; somewhere you feel safe, and where you won't have to get up for a few minutes. You can lay down if it's appropriate. You can choose to close your eyes or leave them open.

Begin with a few deep breaths into your belly. Use these big breaths to help you feel more sensation in your body, in the present moment.

Let your breath grow more natural and begin to trace it's path with your awareness; follow it in and out of your body. Do this for about a minute.

Then slowly shift your awareness from your body and your breath to your immediate surroundings. Begin to notice the sounds around you. Let your ears open to anything in your immediate environment. Maybe it's birds, or bees; flowing water, a plane in the sky, a child laughing. Maybe it is a car zipping by, even a siren. Listen to the symphony of sounds rising and falling in and out of your range of hearing.

Relax as much as you can, and simply notice how sounds come and go. No one sound will stay the same for long. Even a jack hammer will eventually stop. Whenever your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the experience of nature.

As you do this listening meditation, feel free to let your attention go where it is naturally drawn. Try to listen without judging it or interpreting, and resist the urge to follow a particular sound too long.

As you notice you are over-focusing on a particular sound, back up your awareness and see if you can take in the overall soundscape, until your attention goes again to where it's naturally drawn.

Continue to do this over and over again. Shifting your attention from focusing in on what becomes interesting, and pulling back out to recognize there is always a bigger space – behind the sounds scape.

We are training in being open and receptive. Eventually, listening meditation becomes an opportunity not only to cultivate a spacious attitude, but to also be able to wait quietly for the unknown without expectations or fixed thinking.

Before you close your practice, pause and contemplate how all sound rises and falls in and out of space. In the same way clouds and weather patterns flow in and out of the space of the sky, sounds flow through one continuous space.

"Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen." - Margaret J. Wheatley.

This basic listening meditation is a foundational building block to cultivating the skill of compassionate listening. And cultivating compassionate listening is at the very heart of my new book, Deep Listening.