If you are hearing unusual and unwanted or bothersome sounds in your body and ears, the first thing you need to do is recognize it’s normal to hear the sounds in your ears. It will not hurt you and it is not a sign that there is something wrong with you. However, it’s always useful to get medical clearance. Once you’ve got medical clearance and you understand that your body does make sound, and it’s safe and okay to hear it, it becomes much easier to step into mindfulness exercises of being present with what is in your body, being nonjudgmental, practicing awareness without bias so that we can sit in our body and scan our sensory system, including touch. We might even have our eyes open and be mindfully looking at what we see. We might be mindfully noticing what we smell or taste. And, of course, mindfully noticing what we hear.
And for those of you with tinnitus, it’s really important to welcome in your body sounds rather than resist them or avoid them, but then also move on. Welcome them in and say, “Well, what else can I hear? Can I hear a clock ticking on the wall? Can I hear a bird outside my window? Can I hear the neighbor’s car or some traffic over there? Can I hear anything further away?” So, really getting a sense of not only your immediate sound environment, but also your local neighboring and further afield sound environments, practicing presence, awareness, non-judgment, and ultimately coming back to that self-kindness that is so central to the ROCK STEADY process, the ROCK STEADY healing, and the ROCK STEADY program.
