“Music colors the air of the times.” ~Karl Lagerfeld
I used to think I was a good listener. I can make eye contact, nod at appropriate times, ask thoughtful follow-up questions. But one afternoon, sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat in a small studio in Rishikesh, I realized I never really heard anything, even by myself.
The teacher asked us to close our eyes and just pay attention to the sounds around us. A ceiling fan is rotating slowly upward. A dog is barking somewhere on the road. My own breathing, uneven and shallow. And then, beneath it all, something I can only describe as peace with the texture – a vibrant, vibrating peace that I was too busy to notice at first.
That was my first deep encounter with Nada Yoga, the ancient Indian method of yoga through sound. And it quietly destroyed everything I thought I knew about being present.
When we fill every silence
For most of my adult life, I moved around the world with background noise as a constant companion. Music while cooking. A podcast during my morning walk. The television was blaring when I fell asleep. I told myself I just liked the sound. But if I’m honest, I was afraid of what the stillness might reveal.
There is a type of noise that we create not for pleasure, but for safety. It prevents us from sitting with the hard questions: Am I living the life I really want? Why does this relationship feel so hollow? What am I really feeling amidst all this busyness?
I was using sound to escape sound, to escape the deeper sound of my inner life. And I had no idea.
The feelings I was most afraid to face in peace were a sense of purposelessness and a deep uncertainty about whether the path I had chosen in dedicating my life to music was truly mine or simply what I had always known. Growing up immersed in classical Indian music, it was hard to tell the difference between calling and conditioning.
Those questions became louder in the silence. Am I teaching because I love it, or because it’s all I know how to do? Am I connected to this practice, or have I simply built an identity around it? There was also sadness for the relationships I had allowed to fall apart because I was always traveling, always teaching, always immersed in sound and somehow missing the people who were before me.
The noise kept them all at a comfortable distance. It was only when I really sat with the silence that I stopped running from those questions and started letting them shape me into a more honest person.
The Practice That Changed Everything
Nada Yoga is based on the understanding that all existence is vibration. From the hum of the universe to the rhythm of the human heartbeat, sound isn’t the only thing we hear. It’s something that we are.
Practice starts simply. You sit. You listen. You resist the urge to fill the silence with thought, judgment, or anticipation. You allow the sound to pass through you instead of bouncing off the surface of your distracted mind.
In the early days, I was very bad at it. My thoughts were racing toward the grocery list, the unanswered emails, the conversations I should have handled differently. My teacher would gently but firmly say: “Come back to sound.” And slowly, I started doing.
Then came the music. We would hear a drone, a tambourine, a singing bowl and sometimes just a held note on the harmonium. And within that note, the mind will find something extraordinary: a place to rest.
It was not the kind of silence we usually think of as the absence of noise. It was silent as a presence, pervasive, unmoving and completely real.
What does sound teach us about living here
There is something uniquely powerful about using sound as a path to presence, because sound demands silence. You can’t listen tomorrow. You can’t listen tomorrow. Sound exists only in the living moment, and to truly hear is to be there with it.
I began to see how it had changed the structure of normal life. I used to wash dishes and hear the water differently, not as background noise but as something worth paying attention to. I’ll sit down with a friend and really listen to the quality of their voice, the hesitations between their words, what they’re not saying.
The practice had given me new ears. And with new ears came a new kind of presence, not the displayed presence of eye contact and head nods, but a real agreement in the here and now.
I also started to understand something about my relationship with music. I always loved it deeply, but I used it the same way many of us do, to manage my emotional state, to elevate emotions or push them down. Nada Yoga invites me to stop managing and start meeting.
Letting music meet you where you are, without needing it to take you somewhere else, is a deep act of self-acceptance. It’s the difference between using sound as a tool and experiencing sound as truth.
Three exercises to get started
You don’t need years of dedicated study to begin exploring sound as a gateway to presence. Here are three simple practices that have transformed my relationship with both sound and stillness:
1. Two minutes of deep listening.
Once a day, stop whatever you are doing and close your eyes. For two minutes, simply pay attention to the sounds around you, without labeling them as good or bad, welcome or unwanted. The hum of the refrigerator, the distant traffic, your own breathing. Leave everything as it is. This is the foundation of Nada Yoga: non-judgmental listening.
2. Mindful listening to music.
Pick a song and listen to it with your full, complete attention. no phone. No multitasking. Pay as much attention to the silence between notes as you do to the vowels. Notice what the music brings to your body. Notice the moment when your mind wanders, and gently return to it. The practice you are doing is similar to sitting meditation, but instead of breath, sound becomes your support.
3. Sit in unison.
Find a singing bowl, a tuning fork, or a single sustained note on the piano or guitar. Let it play and follow it with your full attention until it is completely over. Where does sound end? Where does silence begin? Sitting with that question, not to answer it but to dwell in it, can reveal very deep things.
currently coming home
I still like background music. I still enjoy podcasts on long walks. But some fundamental changes have occurred. I don’t need sound to fill the void anymore. I have slowly and imperfectly learned that peace is not empty. It’s packed with everything I was so desperate to find.
Appearance is not a personality trait. This is an exercise. And sound, in all its richness, in all its subtlety, in its ability to come and merge in the same breath, is one of the most accessible teachers to us.
You just have to listen.
About Bhuvan Chandra
Bhuvan Chandra, founder of the Nad Yoga school, is a classical Indian musician, sound healer, music therapist and expert in Sanskrit and mantra chanting. He has dedicated his life to making the ancient knowledge of Nada Yoga accessible to students around the world. Explore His Teachings nadyoga.org.
