“Music colors the air of the moment.” ~ Karl Lagerfeld
I thought I was a good listener. I can hold eye contact, nod at the right moment, ask thoughtful follow-up questions. But one afternoon, sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat in a small studio in Rishikesh, I realized I hadn’t really heard anything, not even myself.
The teacher asked us to close our eyes and notice the sounds around us. A ceiling fan rotates slowly overhead. Somewhere on the street a dog is barking. My own breathing, uneven and shallow. And then, beneath it, something I can only describe as stillness with texture—a living, vibrating calm I’d been too busy to notice before.
This was my first profound encounter with Nada Yoga, the ancient Indian practice of yoga through sound. And it quietly shattered everything I knew about being present.
When We Feel Every Silence
For most of my adult life, I moved through the world with background noise as a constant companion. Music while cooking. A podcast during my morning walk. The television blares as I fall asleep. I told myself that I just like words. But if I’m honest, I was afraid of what might happen in the sober state.
There is a type of noise that we make not for pleasure, but for protection. It keeps us from asking the hard questions: Am I really living the life I want? Why does this relationship feel so hollow? What am I really feeling underneath all this busyness?
I used words to escape from the deep sounds of my own inner life. And I had no idea.
The feeling I was most afraid to face was a sense of purposelessness and a deep uncertainty about whether the path I had chosen, dedicating my life to music, was really me or just what I had always known. Growing up steeped in classical Indian music, it was hard to tell the difference between calling and conditioning.
In the silence, the questions grew louder. Am I teaching because I love it, or is it because I know how to do it? Am I attached to this practice, or have I simply built an identity around it? There was also sorrow for relationships that I let flow because I was always traveling, always teaching, always immersed in the Word while somehow missing those in front of me.
Keep all that noise at a comfortable distance. It was only when I really sat in silence that I stopped running from those questions and they began to shape me into a more honest person.
The habit 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 heart, sound isn’t just something we hear. It’s something we do.
The practice begins simply. you sit you listen You resist the urge to fill the silence with thoughts, judgments, or expectations. You let the sound move through you instead of bouncing off the surface of a distracted mind.
At first, I was terrible at it. My thoughts are grocery lists, unanswered emails, conversations I should have handled differently. My teacher would say, gently but firmly: “Come back to the word.” And I started doing it slowly.
Then came the music. We would hear a single drone, a tambura, a singing bowl, sometimes a note played on a harmonium. And within that note, the mind will find something extraordinary: a resting place.
It was not silence as we usually think of it as the absence of sound. It was silence as a presence, vast, uninterrupted and completely real.
What words teach us about being here
There is something uniquely powerful about using words as a path to presence, as words demand right now. You can’t hear yesterday. You can’t hear tomorrow. Sound exists only in the living moment, and to truly listen is to get there with it.
I began to notice how it changed the structure of ordinary life. I would hear the washing of dishes and water differently, not as background noise but something to focus on. I would sit with a friend and actually listen to the quality of their voice, the hesitation in their words, the things they didn’t say.
Practice has given me new ears. And with new ears came a new kind of presence, not the performing presence of eye contact and head nodding, but a true dwelling in the here and now.
I also began to realize something about my relationship with music. I always loved it deeply, but I used it, as many of us do, to manage my emotional state, push feelings up or push them down. Nada Yoga invited me to stop directing and start meeting.
Letting the music meet you where you are, without needing to take you somewhere else, is a profound act of self-acceptance. This is the difference between using words as a tool and experiencing words as a fact.
Three exercises to get you started
You don’t need years of dedicated study to begin exploring the Word as a gateway to presence. Here are three simple practices that have transformed my relationship with both sound and stillness:
1. Listen deeply for two minutes.
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 unwelcome. The hum of the refrigerator, the distant traffic, your own breath. Let everything be as it is. This is the foundation of nada yoga: non-judgmental listening.
2. Mindful music listening.
Choose a song and listen to it with your full, undivided attention. no phone No multitasking. Notice the silence between the notes as much as the notes themselves. Notice what music brings to your body. Notice the moment your mind wanders and gently come back. What you’re practicing is similar to sitting meditation, but the sound becomes your anchor instead of the breath.
3. Sit with a single tone.
Find a singing bowl, a tuning fork, or a single sustained note on a piano or guitar. Let it play and follow it with your full attention until it fades completely. Where does the word end? Where does silence begin? Sitting with that question, not answering it, but dwelling on it, can open up something very deep.
Coming home now
I still love the background music. I still enjoy a podcast on a long walk. But something fundamental has shifted. I don’t need more words to fill the void. I learned, slowly and imperfectly, that quiet is not empty. It is full of everything I was very confused.
Appearance is not a personality trait. It’s a habit. And the word, in all its richness, in all its subtlety, in its ability to reach and dissolve in the same breath, is one of the most accessible teachers we have.
All you have to do is listen.
about Bhuvan Chandra
Founder of the Bhuvan Chandra Nada Yoga School, an Indian classical musician, sound healer, music therapist, and specialist in Sanskrit and mantra chanting. He has dedicated his life to making the ancient wisdom of Nada Yoga accessible to students around the world. This is his educational pursuit nadyoga.org.
