The Practice of Nada Yoga
Meditation on the Inner Sacred Sound
By Baird Hersey, Inner Traditions, 208 pages
“Nada” in Sanskrit language means sound or thunder. Since the “big bang” when earth was created billions of years ago, everything around us and in the universe is vibrating with energy. Baird Hersey, the author, describes Nada as an inner sacred sound or internal divine light. Nada Yoga is the practice of listening to the correct frequency of vibrating sounds that resonates with our body, mind, and soul, and leads us to true peaceful and blissful meditation. According to Hersey, Nada Yoga begins with tuning into external sounds and transforming them into internal sounds that affect our state of mind. The noisiest chanting can become internal serene sounds that relieve us from obsessive thinking, thereby creating a calming effect.
The practice of Nada Yoga consists of four different types of sounds. The first type is ordinary physical sound (noise) we hear through our ears with which we don’t actively occupy our mind. The second is the sound that is developed through our speech, dialogue, and memories. The third type is the sound that intertwines our imagination and visualization of colors, textures, and shapes, through which we see infinite forms of an individual’s creative nature. The fourth type is sound that elevates us beyond body and mind and puts us in a meditative state, the goal of every spirituality practitioner.
Nada Yoga is integral to the understanding of these four types of sounds and their effects on body, mind, and soul. The ultimate goal of this practice is the transformation of the noisy and cluttered state of mind into a peaceful universal state of being, a weightless existence.
The book offers detailed and precise instructions for healthy and productive meditation leading to total relaxation. Other benefits of a Nada Yoga practice are to help the practitioner realize finer spiritual qualities, such as absolute truth, overwhelming beauty, compassion, love, bliss, and peace. This book has easy-to-practice suggestions, instructions, and explanations to achieve a meaningful and spiritual life.