Fed up with the noise of modern life? Try EAR YOGA!
FROM bleeping train doors to self-service tills, not to mention the incessant ping of text messages wherever you go, there’s no denying the fact that modern life comes with a constant soundtrack.
In offices there’s the whir of the printer, the hum of the air-conditioning. At home, if it’s not the TV blaring, then it’s the dishwasher or washing machine beeping or coffee machine tut-tutting.
What is truly worrying, though, is the impact this cacophony of background noise is having on our health as well as on our hearing. Experts are increasingly concerned about the impact of noise on stress levels and the effect it has on our mental health.
‘When we’re exposed to a lot of noise, our heart rate goes up, blood pressure rises and research shows it can lead to an increase in fatigue, stress, heart attacks or even stroke,’ warns Stephen Stansfeld, professor of psychiatry at London’s Queen mary University.
‘Noise is stressful on the body and was designed, from an evolutionary perspective, to be a warning and an alarm. We are bombarded by so much noise every day and tend to block a lot of it out, but by doing so we miss out on soothing sounds such as a bird singing or flapping its wings, which provides psychological restoration.’
So what can we do about this auditory onslaught? Well, the answer, say some, is a series of simple meditation exercises that has been described as ‘ear yoga’.
Pioneered in New York, one of the noisiest of cities, there’s no wiggling of the ears required. Nor do you need to contort them into funny positions, although ear yoga practitioners do advocate sticking both fingers in your ears now and again like a truculent toddler — as well as a lot of humming.
Ear yoga, for the uninitiated, is a series of neck, head and breathing exercises designed to combat exposure to harmful and distracting noise.
Also described as ‘deep listening’, the aim of ear yoga is to stretch and strengthen the auditory muscles, teaching yourself how to isolate individual sounds when it’s loud outside.
THE exercises will also increase the blood and oxygen supplies to the inner ear. This helps the sound waves in the air to travel through the fluid-filled cochlea more efficiently, so all sounds, whether music or simply a slam of a door, are clearer.
Like yoga for the body, yoga for the ear is a holistic approach said to help you to de-stress, as well as improve hearing.
‘We live surrounded by so much babble these days it affects our concentration and stress levels. Any yoga or meditation is going to help with that,’ says professor Bridget Shield, emeritus professor of acoustics at London South Bank University.
Composer ron herrema, who teaches deep listening workshops at venues across the UK, says: ‘If done correctly, these sessions create a sense of peace and calm and connect you with other people, reducing tension.’
The sessions include breathing exercises and meditating while humming.
This can help restore hearing in the same way that listening to higher frequency sounds (ultrasound therapy) is a known way of treating tinnitus and deafness. Even just sitting cross-legged and silent for 15 minutes can calm the brain.
Give it a try: listen carefully to everything around you, from a dog barking in the street to the ticking of a clock, before writing it down in a ‘sound journal’.
‘In modern life we have a tendency to be irritated by noise and it stops us from concentrating,’ says ron. ‘Deep listening is the opposite — you learn to single out sounds and pay attention to everything around you.’
Could you learn to love the sound of your morning commute? You might find out how to deal with the stress and noise of daily life a little more serenely. Try the exercises above to improve blood flow to your inner ear, focus your hearing and calm your mind.
EXERCISES taken from a study by Mahendra K Taneja at the indian institute of Ear Diseases, New Delhi, india.