I first encountered what I call “sense-tracking” in a seminar course on Buddhist Meditation. A teacher and practitioner of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) used the exercise as an accessible introduction to mindfulness meditation. What I noticed as I performed the exercise, however, is that it has just as much to do with a person’s understanding of what writing is as it has to do with a person’s state of mind.
The activity goes like this:
- Find someplace to write. It can be a crowded place in public, or someplace quiet. The main condition is that it should be someplace where you will not be interrupted for ~5 minutes.
- Close your eyes and sit quietly for a minute. It can be a little more or a little less. During this time, mentally note all of the different sounds that occur. Stay in the moment. Try to distinguish all of the sounds that occur. Where do they come from? Have you noticed them before?
- After a minute has elapsed, continue monitoring the sounds as they occur, but instead of mentally noting them, write them down–preferably on a piece of notebook paper to both avoid the distracting qualities of laptop computers as well as to avoid the at-times rather loud noise of computers. As new sounds arise, record them. As sounds cease, note their absence and the new sounds that fill the void.
- Even in relatively quiet spaces, you will notice that there are more sounds occurring at any given moment than most people realize.
- Once you have written down all of the sounds that are occurring and their possible sources, you can take the activity a step further and describe the sounds. In doing so, one might make use of simile, hyperbole, metaphor–whatever combination of words and associations you feel are appropriate.
- Another fun variation on this exercise is to do it with a partner or a group, and to compare notes when “finished.” Just as interesting as the complexity of the descriptions of sound are the variations in how people choose to describe them–which sounds stand out to certain people, and which do not.
As stated on the main page of this web site, the “purpose” of this activity is various. Advocates of MBSR allege a number of benefits for MBSR practitioners, but this is only one activity of many that MBSR practitioners engage in. To me, the advantages to such an exercise largely relate to writing. Specifically, this exercise encourages writers to develop a more spontaneous relationship to writing. We’ve all struggled to come up with the exact words to convey an argument for a school paper or business document, but what can we come up with when we hitch our writing to something as open-ended as “sound”?
You might also consider performing this same activity but with any of the other five sense–taste, touch, smell, and sight.