Music to remind us to breathe, listen, walk

Of course, there are songs and hymns that remind us to breathe as well:
Breathe on me, breath of God

"Let it breathe on me, let it breathe on me, let the breath of the Spirit breathe on me." (See this Bread for the Journey blog entry.)

"Speak, Lord, in the stillness, while I wait on thee. Hushed my heart to listen in expectancy..."

"O Happy Day" that talks about learning to walk... (from one of my favorite movies).

What other songs or hymns can you think of?

Mindfulness: Listening in a Sound Space

W. A. Mathieu writes:
You don't have to have an altar to pray or a special place to practice listening. There are monks who meditate in Grand Central Station. Adepts are always in their sound space, or so I'm told. But temples can make you feel holy, and it is useful to have a sound temple, a trusted place where you can let sound all the way in and listen all the way out.

Any place that pleases you is good. Maybe you won't have to look far. Your sound space could be your bed, or a corner of your living room. Maybe you'll have to adjust something for a few minutes, pull the plug of the refrigerator (don't tell a soul and be sure to replug). Or wait until the kids have piped down a bit. Or wait until the neighbor's stereo is off. Maybe you'll have to get the jump on the natives by waking up earlier. Maybe you'll even have to travel some. But sitting quietly in a place where ambient sounds don't trigger negative responses is worth the effort of getting there.

If you look for such a spot you will no doubt find it. People have the habit of going to the country, of seeking out wilderness. But you can find a little wilderness of your own wherever you are.

What is OK in your sound space:
o Sounds of nature
o Live sounds, including speech, especially at some distance
o Lots of different kinds of sounds, including traffic, or even those listed below, if these are sufficiently diffuse or distant not to offend you or hook you into their drama

What is not OK in your sound space:
o Recorded music or anyone practicing music
o Any radio or TV
o Unrelenting mechanical noise
o Anything unpleasantly loud or close, or that makes you uncomfortable

The idea is to create a space that not only protects you from unwanted sound but also releases you from any impulse to close your ears. The exercise is to open up, and wherever you can do that best is your sound space.
W.A. Mathieu, The Listening Book, Boston, MA: Shambala, 1991, p. 17-18.

Mindfulness: listening to music

Option 1:
Sit and just listen to one CD without multitasking or doing anything else once per week for eight weeks. Listening while commuting does not count. Recommendations: Ray Charles, Genius Loves Company; J.S. Bach, Brandenberg Concertos (pick one); Johannes Brahms, Ein Deutches Requiem; Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Calling; Ella Fitzgerald, The Intimate Ella; your favorite—45 minutes to an hour.

Comment about what new words, music, phrasing, styling, tone, etc. that you notice that you didn't hear the first time.
If you happen to fall asleep while doing this, count it a success as a relaxation technique. :-)

Option 2:
Listen to a short piece of instrumental music (3-6 minutes) twice in a row every day for five days. Classical, jazz, rock, folk, anything you love--just without words. Don't do anything else. As you listen, close your eyes, relax, and "keep coming back to the sound. Grab onto any aural feature, a particular instrument or tone. ... Inhale music and exhale music. ... Scan it high and low. Be starved for it. Let it be starved for you." W. A. Mathieu, The Listening Book, p. 36-7

Comment about what you felt and where in your body you felt it, what shapes, light, colors or textures you "saw" as you listened, or what associations you made.

Mindfulness: Listening, Symphony of Place exercise

Get a pencil and paper. Become aware of all the sounds you are hearing now, this moment, as you read. Make a list of them. Close your eyes from time to time. Swivel your head slightly to change the mix. Make a sweep from nearby sounds to distant sounds. Fall into the distance. Become transparent. Now fall into the nearness. Make a sweep from the highest sounds to the lowest ones. Disappear into the stratosphere, reappear underground. If your space is quiet enough you will hear your own internal sounds: breath, maybe your blood in your ears. Or the subtle sounds of cloth against cloth, skin against skin. Count everything; write everything down. Use words economically. Later, if you like, you can set the scene and go into detail.

Now make your sweeps into scans so rapid that you have the illusion of hearing everything at once. Now close your eyes and hear everything at once. Now cup your hands behind your ears. Technicolor!

This is the sound of your now, your Symphony of Place.
from W. A. Mathieu, The Listening Book, Boston, MA: Shambala, 1991, p. 10-11.

Mindfulness: a search through the Bible

Mindfulness is awareness.
"A good place to start cultivating mindfulness is in the body." Jon Kabat-Zinn
We will start with some physical practices and exercises: breathing, listening, walking, and other aspects of daily life.

While we have talked about Buddhist tradition and here in the U.S. we often think of Buddhism when we think of meditation, I offer the following reflection and selections from the Bible on breath and breathing, listening and walking and mindfulness. We start with breath because that's where God started in Genesis 2:7 "then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."
Job 33:4, The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Listening is used often in the Bible especially by the prophets, to call people to attention to what is going on in the world: Isaiah 18:3, All you inhabitants of the world, you who live on the earth, when a signal is raised on the mountains, look! When a trumpet is blown, listen! Isaiah 55:3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. Matthew 11:15 Let anyone with ears listen! Acts 28: 26-27 'Go to this people and say, You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.' Our exercises in listening address the kinds of issues that these scriptures describe.

Walking also starts early on with God: Genesis 3:8, They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
The central tenet and prayer of Judaism regards walking as essential: Deuteronomy 10:12, So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.
Walking indeed is part of the Christian faith: 2 Corinthians 5:5-7 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight.

In fact, mindfulness starts with God's work of creation as described by the Psalmist: Psalm 8:3-4 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
God is mindful of us, and we are created in the image of God, so that we too may be mindful of all of creation, ourselves included.