How Do You Listen To Your Music?

Music — a common thread that binds us all. Well, most of us! If you are not a musician or can’t play any instrument, I am sure you enjoy listening to music at the very least! Listening to music is one of the most common and favorite pastime for many.

But how do we listen to music?

Often, listening to music is a secondary activity or something that happens in the background while we tackle something that appears to be very important in the foreground. We listen to our favorite tunes while driving, reading, walking/jogging, eating, drinking or even writing!

We never JUST listen to music. The music never gets our fullest attention. It is always competing with other activities. In fact, we hardly pay our fullest attention to anything we do these days.

Here is something different you can try.

• Pick a single piece of music that you enjoy listening to. It doesn’t have to be soothing, calming or a slow song. Whatever you enjoy — Hip Hop, Heavy Metal, Jazz, Rock, Bollywood, Instrumental…literally anything as long as you love it! Make sure the length is no more than 5–7 minutes.
• Put headphones on, not the ear phones. Headphones works better at blocking the external noise. Make sure you are not engaged in any other activities such as drinking, eating, talking, walking or running.
• Sit down and close your eyes if you can. This helps in paying attention to the act of listening. When eyes are open, the mind likes to grab things from the surroundings and starts its thinking mill. Closing your eyes and not eating/drinking will help preventing the split in your attention between other sensory modalities such as ‘vision’ and ‘taste’. Only ‘hearing’ is engaged.
• And when you listen, pay close attention to what is going on..vocals, instruments, lyrics, vibration on your ears…every bit that is related to the music you are listening to..

You will soon realise that you have never truly listened. You will start hearing things that you have never heard before even though you have listened the same piece about a million times!

It is very refreshing and relaxing!

If you had a busy and tiring day, it would be a very satisfying thing to do.

and the best part is that it does not need lot of your time!