Well, for the last one month or so, I have been at the receiving end of a seemingly never ending series of bad news, all of them, in my opinion, resulting from unchecked idiocy, and definitely not limited to my own actions and decisions. In fact I am quite sure, as a pleasant change of pace, I can not be blamed for most of it. Though I do blame myself for not doing enough and it bothers me to no end! Now I know the title promises insights in to our mysterious love for the sound of crashing waves but let me build some context to my Eureka moment! In case you don’t know about mindfulness check this out first.
Idiocy and bad news have one thing in common, as long as you are not at the receiving end; you may find it very funny!
PloPdo Originals
In this aforementioned time of duress a pattern has started emerging. I spend my mornings getting disheartened at the situation, mornings seamlessly yet painfully turn in to afternoons and I find myself wondering what I can do to improve the situation. And soon it is evening where I find myself trying to implement my half baked solutions. By the time it is night, I somehow start gaining an outsider perspective and start to see the humour in this whole mess, wondering how I could not see it coming!
Well, the last couple of days, I could sense that the situation had gone from bad to worse and there was no way of fixing it. Some damages never get undone! So, disappointed and confused about how to change any of it, today I decided to fall back on meditation. I used to meditate as a kid, it definitely soothes one down. Though some people will tell you meditation or mindfulness can do you just as much harm as it could be good, if it is not meant for you. I personally find this idea laughable!
As I mentioned I was only trying to restore normalcy to my agitated mind and little did I know that my attempt to pull myself together will result in a frivolous discovery, about which I am so unnecessarily proud; that I decided to write a blog about it! Well if I am being completely honest, writing also calms me down. So there is definitely some of that in there as well!
So let me tell you a little about how I was meditating. I usually meditate in Bharmari Pranayam but with slight modifications. Firstly, I am not a big fan of covering my nasal cavity as I really like to take deep breaths when I meditate. So what I do instead is cover my eyes completely and close my ears. Now another variation that I like to make is instead of making the humming sound, I focus on my breathing. In this posture my face looks like the kid in the picture above, accept my thumbs close my ear canal and I don’t look so animated.
Just by the way, did you know that we usually breathe from only one of our nostrils! If not, check out the video below. For some reason I like such trivia.
So as I was meditating, I slipped into, as is the purpose of meditation, this state of heightened awareness, which is another name for mindfulness. Now for some reason I decided to do this lying down though this is to be done while sitting up because lying down you may just slip in to sleep without even realising it. I am not sure how significant this detail is but it felt like I should mention it.
As I slipped further into the state of mindfulness, my breathing started to sound like the ocean. Every time I breathed in, I could hear the waves crashing on the shore and I breathed out, it sounded like the waves are receding. You don’t have to take my word for it, try it yourself! Find a quiet place, lie down on you back, keep your feet relaxed, cover your eyes with your fingers/palm in such a way that you see pitch black; keep both your thumbs such that they are completely blocking your ear canal. Your ears should be blocked tight enough that you actually fee like everything has gone unusually silent. Now, just breathe in and breathe out. Try to take long breaths and exhale as slowly as possible. Get your mind to focus on your breathing and nothing else.
The Answer
I felt I should write the answer in a separate section so that if someone wants to skip my bickering, they can just straight away come to this section. So, my serendipitous findings suggest that we like the sound of the ocean or crashing waves because we hear, out loud, the sound which is constantly being produces within our bodies; which is the sound of breathing. This makes you feel in resonance with your surroundings and thus puts you in a good mood. To prove my point further let me point out that we only like rhythmic crashing of waves, when they crash at random over the rocks, we don’t find them as soothing.
Any challenge or criticism to this is theory is welcome and shall be treated with just as much seriousness as I am proud of having put forward this theory. If your sarcasm detector is flickering, I don’t know what to tell you!
