“Music gives color to the air of the moment.” ~Karl Lagerfeld
I used to think I was a good listener. I was able to maintain eye contact, nod at the right moments, and ask thoughtful questions. But one afternoon, sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat in a small studio in Rishikesh, I realized that I had never really listened to anything, not even myself.
The teacher asked us to close our eyes and simply notice the sounds around us. A ceiling fan rotates slowly overhead. A dog is barking somewhere on the street. My own breath, uneven and shallow. And then behind it all, something I can only describe as stillness with a texture—a living, vibrating silence that I’d previously been too busy to notice.
This was my first profound encounter with Nada Yoga, the ancient Indian practice of yoga through sound. And it quietly dismantled everything I thought I knew about the presence.
When we fill all the silence
For most of my adult life, I traveled the world with background noise as a constant companion. Music while cooking. A podcast during my morning walk. The TV was blaring as I fell asleep. I told myself I just loved the sound. But to be honest, I was afraid of what might surface in the silence.
There is a kind of noise that we make not for pleasure, but for protection. It prevents us from asking the hard questions: Am I living the life I really want? Why is this relationship so empty? What do I really feel under all this busyness?
I used sound as an escape from sound, from the deeper sounds of my own inner life. And I had no idea.
The feelings I was most afraid to face in silence were a sense of purposelessness and a deep uncertainty as to whether the path I had chosen, devoting my life to music, was truly mine or simply what I had always known. Growing up in classical Indian music, it was difficult to differentiate between calling and conditioning.
In the silence, these questions were raised. Do I teach because I love it or because that’s all I know how to do? Am I joining this practice or have I simply built an identity around it? There was also sorrow for the relationships I let drift because I was always traveling, always teaching, always immersed in the sounds while somehow missing the people in front of me.
The noise kept it all at a comfortable distance. It was only when I sat really quietly that I stopped running away from the questions and let them shape me into a more honest person.
The exercise that changed everything
Nada yoga is rooted in the understanding that all existence is vibration. From the hum of the universe to the rhythm of the human heartbeat, sound is more than just something we hear. It’s something that we are.
The practice begins simply. You are sitting. You listen. You resist the urge to fill the silence with thought, judgment, or anticipation. You let the sound flow through you instead of bouncing off the surface of a distracted mind.
I was terrible at it in the early days. My thoughts on the shopping list, the unanswered emails, the conversation I should have handled differently. My teacher gently but firmly said, “Come back to the sound!” And I started slowly.
Then came the music. We listened to a single drone, tambourine, singing bowl, sometimes just a held note on a harmonium. And within that sound, the mind would find something extraordinary: a place to rest.
It was not silence, as we usually think of it as the absence of noise. It was silence like a presence, wide, unhurried and completely real.
What does the sound teach us about being here?
There is something uniquely powerful about using sound as a pathway to presence, because sound demands presence. You can’t hear yesterday. You can’t hear it tomorrow. Sound exists only in the living moment, and to truly listen is to arrive with it.
I began to notice how this changed the structure of everyday life. I would be doing dishes and hear the water in a different way, not as background noise, but as something remarkable. I would be sitting with a friend and I could actually hear the quality of their voice, the hesitation between their words, and what they didn’t quite say.
The practice gave me new ears. And with new ears came a new kind of presence, not the pretentious presence of eye contact and nodding, but the real acceptance of the here and now.
I also began to understand something about my relationship with music. I’ve always loved it, but like many of us, I used it to manage my emotional state, to elevate or suppress feelings. Nada Yoga invited me to stop controlling and start meeting.
Letting the music meet you where it is, without having to take it somewhere else, is a profound act of self-acceptance. This is the difference between using sound as a tool and experiencing sound as truth.
Three exercises to get you started
You don’t need years of dedicated study to begin to discover sound as a doorway to presence. Here are three simple exercises that changed my relationship with sound and silence:
1. The two-minute deep listening.
Once a day, stop what you’re doing and close your eyes. For two minutes, simply notice the sounds around you without labeling them as good or bad, welcome or unwanted. The hum of the radiator, the distant traffic, your own breath. Let everything be exactly as it is. This is the basis of Nada Yoga: non-judgmental listening.
2. Conscious listening to music.
Choose a song and listen with your full, undivided attention. No phone. No multitasking. Notice the silence between notes as well as the notes themselves. Notice what music brings to your body. Notice the moment your mind wanders and gently return. What you practice is the same as sitting meditation, but the sound will be your anchor instead of the breath.
3. Sit down with one voice.
Find a singing bowl, a tuning fork, or a sustained note on a piano or guitar. Let it ring out and follow it with your full attention until it fades completely. Where does the sound end? Where does silence begin? If we sit with this question and do not answer it, but want to live in it, we can open something very deep.
Returning to the present
I still love the background music. I still enjoy podcasts on a long walk. But something fundamentally changed. I no longer need a voice to fill a void. I learned slowly and imperfectly that silence is not empty. It’s full of everything I was too distracted to do.
Presence is not a personality trait. This is an exercise. And the voice, in its full richness, in all its subtleties, in its ability to arrive and dissolve in the same breath, is one of our most accessible teachers.
You just have to listen.
About Bhuvan Chandra
Bhuwan Chandra is the founder of Nada Yoga School, an Indian classical musician, sound healer, music therapist, and expert in Sanskrit and mantra chanting. He dedicated his life to making the ancient wisdom of Nada Yoga available to students worldwide. Explore his teachings here nadyoga.org.
