Guitar Meditation
My shortcut into a meditative state
Like lots of people, over the course of the pandemic, I’ve revisited old hobbies. One thing I’ve gotten back into is playing guitar.
I used to play a ton back when I was a teenager, working my way through all the classical grades, but stopped after going to uni and in the subsequent years. It’s been really fun to pick back up, and try playing all the old sheet music I could find.
Another thing I’ve tried to do more of this year is meditate. At the start of the year I was using Headspace pretty religiously, but I now just sit with a timer app for seven minutes each day.
(I’m also exercising more regularly and voice journaling (‘Sounding Off’) each day, both with the aim of investing in my wellbeing and ‘being more mindful.’)
If you’ve done any meditation at all, you already know that the goal isn’t to actively clear all the thoughts from your mind and think about nothing. Instead, it’s just about sitting and watching thoughts go by. That’s why breath control is so important — it gives you something to focus on, instead of getting caught up in a thought and following it down its rabbit hole.
This is also why audiological forms of meditation are so powerful: Vedic chanting and kirtan from Hindu and Eastern traditions; Compline…
