Talk and Deep Sound Meditation Practice (1/29/21)

Subscribe to SonicYogi.com for timed meditations, meditation courses, and sleep tracks.

Follow SonicYogi on the Insight Timer meditation app.

This is a transcript from a Live Session that was recorded concurrently from a Live Meditation Session for the Insight Timer Meditation App. I have made some slight edits and additions to the transcript for clarity.

For a deeper dive into these topics please see the courses:

• Heal Through the Power of Sound and Frequency
• Release Stress though Sound and Frequency

Also, available from sonicyogi.com

• 

Welcome, everyone. Thank you for being here tonight. So I’m going to go ahead and start (with) talking just a little bit. And so, as you guessed from the title, this is a little different than the other (previous group) meditations. And I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a while, something live, using sound, and to also help folks experience at least the beginnings of a deeper practice.

I would like to talk a little bit in the beginning of this session, even open up to any questions at some point. First, I’d like to share some of my ideas around this. And so, I look at it as that we can have really two different styles (modes) of meditation practice.

• Daily Meditation Practice (Generally shorter practice times creating consistency, stability and growth)
• Deep Meditation Practice (Longer practices providing access to subconscious, allowing a deeper look at patterns of perception and behavior)

So, of course, we can have our normal daily meditation practice. For many of you, that could be anywhere between 5 minutes and probably 40 minutes depending on your practice, maybe that’s something that occurs every day. And then many of you, of course, are familiar with meditation retreats, and things like that, where you can take your meditation practice to a deeper level.

The difference, in my experience, is simply where you might arrive in your state of being. With our daily practice, generally, “state of being” maintains pretty much a constant level. In a deeper practice, we might actually achieve different “states of being”.

So, I like to think of meditation also as a state of being. Many times, we think of meditation (and our popular view of it) as a practice where we sit on the mat, or sit on the cushion, and meditate. I’d like to also suggest that it’s actually a state of being, and a different way of experiencing the world (outer and inner).

We have different ways of getting into different states of being. For the masses, there are chemicals (drugs) and drinks (alcohol etc.) and things that people can change their consciousness because the fundamental desire of many people is to change their way of experiencing the world, and their (inner) consciousness.

Meditation is (really) a way of engineering our perceptions and also experiencing the rewards of those different perceptions.

So, I’m going to talk just a little bit about what we’re actually going to do in the session, and if you’ve been in my sessions, this won’t be a lot different. It will just be more concentrated.

So first we’ll start with setting our intention. And intention setting, I found through deeper practice is very important because in life we don’t always or we actually many times do not control the outcome of circumstances or actions.

So, it’s not important to “make” something happen, but simply to act from the right intention. So, I always want to set my intention so that win, lose or draw with my actions that I know that my intention was coming from the right place, and so that applies also to our practice (as well).

We want to approach the practice with a sense of reverence and respect.

When we come to those deeper places within ourselves, I’ve found that it’s really important to have that sense of reverence and respect for the practice and for the process.

Benefits of Breath Practice

So from there we’re going to focus on the breath, and focusing on the breath does several things:

• First, it helps us to come out of our thinking mind and the thinking mind generally keeps us in sort of a beta state of awareness.

• Secondly, it helps our nervous system begin to calibrate to that different state of being so it can help our brainwaves begin to come down. It helps our nervous system begin to calm and to send a signal to our nervous system to reach those calm places.

• (Third), it (slowed breath practice) also helps us begin to produce melatonin, and melatonin also sends that signal to our brainwaves (brain, and nervous system) that we can begin to go from the normal waking state of consciousness and come down into alpha and theta brainwaves.

From there, we’re going to move into a body scan and go through the chakras.

I’m going to play a singing bowl for each chakra, and I will guide you through that area of the body with some guided scanning, as well as just (share) info about that chakra. Then, at the end of each section, I will mention an affirmation that you can say internally about those particular energies.

Body Mind Connection

So, we’ll go through the body (scan) that way.

The body is also in many ways, the subconscious mind. So whether you are talking about traditional meditation, or maybe you’ve heard about shamanic practices from indigenous cultures. Many times they talk about getting “into the body”. So many times we get up in this mental workings of our mind, and we forget about coming back into our body. Coming back into the awareness of our body can help us begin to also connect to those places in our subconscious. Some even refer to the body as the subconscious mind.

(If you ever have the opportunity to, you could do it on Google. Google the brain plus nervous system, and you’ll see images of the brain and the nervous system.)

You can see that our brain is connected via the nervous system to every part of our body. So, in many ways, our body is our brain.

From there, we will move into a mantra, an internal mantra, just focusing our awareness on the mantra, so hum, which means, “I am”.

The I AM, The Now and Self-Realization

So I’d like to talk through those concepts really quick. So the I am, is something that we hear many times when we’re talking about meditation or spirituality, and the I AM, coincides with other concepts, too. So, the I AM to me is just the pure space of awareness beyond the concerns of my identity. And so the I AM is also, in my view, synonymous with the present moment.

One of the first books I read after my own particular awakening experience was, “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. After my experience, I thought I’d certainly lost it, but then I read his book and I realized, “Oh, that makes total sense. He’s talking about exactly what I experienced.”

The “I AM” part of ourself is also always in the present moment. Also synonymous with that is the concept of love. Love always arises from the present moment. Love, the I AM, and the Present Moment are one, and that’s also synonymous with the concept of Self-Realization, which is (partly) the realization that I’m not this “character” (identity, ego, self-image) that I have created in my mind but simply the Pure Awareness within me that experiences all of life. So, that’s (also) synonymous with simply being in the Present Moment.

Those are sort of intellectual “pointers” that I think we’ve all heard through various teachings, and I also want to make real that those various pointers also help us to calibrate our nervous system, and bring our brainwaves into a different state of being.

So, with the sounds that we’re going to hear tonight, they’re going to help to assist our meditation into moving into that place.

Brainwaves

So I’m going to take just a few moments and talk about the technical parts of our brainwaves and how that applies to what I just mentioned. As many of you know, we have different brainwave states, and so the basic brainwave states are:

• Beta
• Alpha
• Theta
• Delta

(There is also Gamma, which is less commonly occurring. Gamma is also associated with mystical states. In my experience moving towards “stillness” in the lower brainwaves states may also activate more Gamma waves.)

Each of those brainwave states has its own frequency band.

• So for Beta, that’s our normal waking state.
• For Alpha and Theta, those those are meditative states.
• For Delta, that’s generally a deep sleep state.

As we listen to the sound therapy that can help our mind and brain waves begin to relax and move from our normal waking consciousness in Beta down into these more meditative brainwave states of Alpha and Theta.

In those meditative brainwave states, we can begin to connect with our subconscious mind and so we can begin to release the framework of our identity, which determines how we’re perceiving the world to some extent.

We can begin to let go of that framework and simply begin to experience our Pure Awareness.

• 

Brainwaves and Childhood Development

Interestingly, as we’re born and growing up, we go through those different brainwave states in our childhood development. When we’re born, we are typically in the Delta state for the first couple of years of life. From Delta, then we go into Alpha until we’re around four or so. That’s when we’re having a lot of make believe and things like that in the Theta state. From there we go into the Alpha state for the next few years of life. Then, finally, we come into the Beta later in our development and on into adulthood.

So as we touch these different brainwave states in our meditative state (practice), sometimes it can bring up those old memories and those old feelings and sensations. In the Bible, Yeshua even said, “Except for that you become like little children, you wouldn’t enter the kingdom of heaven.” (paraphrase).

My interpretation of that was that by becoming like “little children” we’re actually touching those spaces within our brainwaves and in our consciousness to experience that place again within ourselves.

That’s just an idea or a concept to consider, and essentially we might want to “transform”. So what we’re seeking is change, but positive change. Many times our habit patterns of our mind have become ingrained, so they form that framework of our “identity”.

We go from pure awareness as when we were just little babies, and then we began to create a framework as we’re growing and maturing, and we learn what to do and what not to do based on specific experiences that happen.

Of course, as little children, we don’t always have the wherewithal to interpret things 100% correctly, or we’re picking up on patterns of our caregivers or the adults in our lives. So, as adults, it may be desirable to go back and change some of those perceptions and patterns.

Meditation is a great way to help ourselves to begin to alter those habit patterns in neuroscience. There’s a saying that the neurons that fire together wire together. That’s another way of saying the things we think about and the way we perceive things over and over and over becomes a very well-worn (neural) path.

With deeper styles of meditation, we can begin to dissolve that well-worn path and begin to create new pathways. In that process (of creating new neural pathways), it’s almost like re-parenting ourselves.

We can begin to create new patterns and new pathways and be conscious about all of those details.

Yes, [inaudible] tapping into our Truest Self.

I want to talk just briefly about the concept then of “pure awareness”. So as we’re coming back and changing those into those states, we have the opportunity to touch “pure awareness”, which to me is also synonymous with the I AM, with the Now moment, with Love. And so we could imagine that from that time when we were babies, and we were just in that pure awareness state, and then we go up through the brain waves, first we have pure awareness. Then we begin to have perception. And based on those perceptions, we began to learn to trigger sensations in the nervous system. And then from those sensations, we have reactions.

• Awareness
• Perception
• Sensation (Sensation and Perception are sometimes interchangeable. There are times when sensation arises, and the perception or interpretation follows.)
• Reaction (Action)

This is the cycle of our consciousness that happens many, many times a day goes from awareness to perception to sensation to reaction.

So first, we’re just aware of our environment and our inner world. From there, when something might occur or the way we see something is a perception which we define. And then from that perception, a sensation arises in our body in response, whether we think something’s good or bad. And then, from that sensation, we might have a reaction where we take action in a certain way.

So, yes, awareness, perception, sensation, and reaction. And so I covered some of these topics a little more in detail in my course called Release Stress Through Sound and Frequency so those are some basic concepts.

I also want to mention that in the deeper style of meditation, sometimes that can bring up those old memories. There could be old traumas. There could be old fears and things like that. Sometimes it could just be a purely wonderful, blissful experience, but it’s important to be aware of the different sensations and emotions and experiences that might arise.

Rosetta Stones

There are some “Rosetta Stones” (psychological reminders) that you’ll hear throughout my courses, and these are phrases that I really clung to as I was coming through my own experience, and these phrases really helped me to parse the fears of my mind versus reality.

The first phrase was simply to “Choose love and not fear in this moment Now”. What that phrase taught me was that:

• Number one, it’s always Now.
• Number two, that I always have a choice.
• And that I have a choice to choose between Love or fear.

And of course, fear is that triggering of our nervous system that causes stress and response to perception. But love helps us to calibrate and maintain that place of ease and clarity.

The second Rosetta Stone (reminder) was to simply Observe, but there’s no need to react.

So as my consciousness changes, there may be sensations that arise in the body. You may feel different sensations that occur. You may have those emotions that arise, but remember, that there’s no need to react but to simply observe. Typically, those things simply come, and then go.

And then, of course, in response to any intense emotions, remember the yogic principle of “ahimsa”, which means simply to Do No Harm to yourself or others. Remember, that these intense emotions, if they arise, will simply pass.

Finally, (remember) to simply Trust the process.

I’ve learned that really the difference between love and fear, as I mentioned in the first phrase, is to simply trust. We don’t always know what’s coming next. In fact, we almost never do. Our thinking mind likes to create a “sense of safety” by telling us that we know what’s coming next and that we know what’s going to happen in the future. But, the truth is we almost never do.

So, as that feeling and realization of that “not knowing” arises, sometimes fear arises. We can remember that we can simply trust the present moment, which is Love, and Love casts out fear. We can stay present and trust the present moment.

Conclusion

So, those are some different thoughts that I hope will be good allies for you. I also want to mention to simply enjoy and enjoy the experience. What we’re practicing today is kind of like a beginning level into the deeper meditation, and I hope you enjoy.

So, we’re going to begin with setting our intention, and from there, we’re going to go into the counted breath that I will guide you through with my voice. From there, we will move into various periods where we’ll go to simply focusing on the breath. In those periods, I would recommend breathing in and out of your nostrils and not the mouth, and just focusing on the sensation of the air as it moves in and out of the nostrils. After two rounds of the rhythmic breath and the focused breath, then we will move into the chakras (guided meditation), then we’ll move to the mantra (So Hum) and the breath.

I will guide through each of those sections.

Thank you, everyone.

(Please note: The audio for the session (automatically) ended before my closing statements. Thank you for taking part in this session and thank you for your meditation practice! Namaste.)

Subscribe to SonicYogi.com for timed meditations, meditation courses, and sleep tracks.

Follow SonicYogi on the Insight Timer meditation app.