One of the simplest and most powerful ways we can practice mindfulness is by slowing down.
Easing our pace—even by just ten percent—can shift how we meet each moment, creating more space for awareness, steadiness in the body, and choice in how we respond.
This small shift in mindfully slowing down changes something fundamental. While the content of our experience doesn’t change, our relationship to our experience does. When we slow down, awareness widens. Our experience feels more spacious and unfolds with greater ease. We take in more without more effort. And often, we find ourselves more present with what’s here and less caught up in what’s coming next.
Sound offers a particularly direct doorway into this slowing.
We don’t have to create sound or manage it. Sounds arrive on their own—near and far, loud and soft, inside us and around us. They come and go whether we’re paying attention or not. Because sound unfolds in time, it naturally invites us to slow down with it.
Sound, Attention, and the Pace of Experience
Much of the time, our attention is occupied. We’re often caught up in the mind—sometimes with words, sometimes with images or scenes, sometimes with music or sound fragments looping in the background.
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), an evidence-based approach that combines mindfulness practice with cognitive therapy, helps us notice how attention moves and how our relationship to thoughts and emotions shapes our experience. In MBCT, we learn to recognize how awareness narrows when attention becomes absorbed internally.
When awareness narrows, we tend to miss what’s actually happening now. Sounds may fade into the background or become a kind of noise. We may technically hear, but we’re not really receiving.
As we practice mindfully slowing down and gently allow sound into awareness—without focusing it or trying to listen in a particular way—attention begins to widen again. Thinking doesn’t have to stop, and usually won’t. Rather, thoughts no longer fill the entire field. Sound joins the picture, and our experience becomes more balanced and spacious.
This widening of attention is a core movement of mindfulness.
When Experience Feels Overwhelming
When we’re under stress, feeling anxious or low, or living with the effects of trauma, both our internal and external experience can feel overwhelming.
As humans, we have a capacity to filter experience—to sense what needs attention right now and what can remain in the background. When that capacity is strained, everything can feel loud, urgent, and close. Sound is often one of the first places we notice this.
Mindfully slowing down helps restore this natural filtering. As awareness widens, sounds begin to organize themselves again. Some move into the foreground; others settle back. We’re no longer taking everything in all at once.
This re-organizing of experience isn’t something we make happen. It emerges naturally as we slow the pace.
Sound, the Body, and Signaling Safety
Sound reaches us very quickly. It can alert, startle, soothe, or overwhelm us before we’ve had time to think. That’s why sound plays such a powerful role in how safe—or unsafe—we feel.
As we slow down with sound, especially when our awareness includes slowing the body, many people notice a shift. There’s less bracing. Breathing deepens on its own. The body begins to soften. The moment feels more manageable.
There is a physiological reason for this. When the pace slows and sound is received rather than scanned, the body receives a different message—one that allows it to move out of constant readiness and into a mode of restoration and digestion. Heart rate and blood pressure can ease. Focus and memory often improve. We feel more present.
Certain sounds—like humming, singing, gentle music, sound bowls, or even the purring of a cat—can be especially supportive because they are rhythmic, steady, and undemanding. They allow awareness to rest. Even very ordinary sounds can have this effect when we’re not rushing past them.
Time, Space, and Choice
As the pace slows, time itself often feels different. We feel less pressured and more open. There’s more room to notice what’s happening as it’s happening.
In this space, thoughts can be experienced as thoughts rather than facts. Emotions can be felt without being immediately acted on. Sounds can be noticed without needing to change them. With more space, we’re less driven by habit and more able to pause and choose how we respond.
Slowing Down Speech
Sound doesn’t only shape how we listen—it also shapes how we speak.
When we’re anxious, stressed, or rushed, speech often speeds up without our noticing. Words come quickly. Breathing becomes shallow. We may speak ahead of our own experience, moving toward what we want to say next rather than staying with what’s being said now.
As we practice slowing down speech, many people notice a shift similar to what happens when slowing down listening. When we feel the physical sensations of speaking—the movement of the mouth, the rhythm of the breath, the sound of our own voice—attention settles more fully in the body.
Speech becomes less effortful and more connected. Pauses feel more available. We’re less likely to rush, interrupt, or rehearse while someone else is speaking. Often, others feel this change as well. Conversations soften. There’s more space, more ease, and more genuine connection.
Slowing down speech isn’t about choosing words carefully or saying the “right” thing. It’s about allowing sound—both spoken and heard—to unfold at a more mindful pace.
Sound, Memory, and Feeling Tone
Sound also carries memory. A song can transport us to another time, another place, another relationship—sometimes gently, sometimes painfully. Sound doesn’t only meet us in the present; it carries our history with it.
Mindfulness invites us to notice what arises and how it lands. With sound, feeling tone often becomes especially clear. Some sounds are pleasant and comforting. Others are unpleasant or jarring. Many are neutral and barely noticed.
Simply recognizing the feeling tone—pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral—slows things down. It helps us see our habits more clearly and creates space for choice.
When Sound Is Difficult
For people who live with tinnitus—the experience of hearing ongoing or intermittent sounds, such as ringing or buzzing, without an external source—sound can be especially challenging.
Slowing down with sound doesn’t make tinnitus disappear, but it can change how it’s experienced. As awareness widens, the sound no longer fills the entire field. Other sounds, body sensations, and moments of quiet are allowed in.
The same is true for other unwanted or disturbing sounds. Practicing mindfulness with sound isn’t about liking what we hear. It’s about noticing our relationship to sound in the present moment—with curiosity, kindness, and compassion.
Mindfully Slowing Down Sound in Everyday Life
Sound meets us in many ways. Some sounds soothe us. Some unsettle us. Many pass by unnoticed.
Mindfully slowing down allows us to recognize these differences and understand how sound shapes our experience. As awareness widens, we’re less compelled to chase what feels pleasant, resist what feels unpleasant, or check out when things feel neutral.
Through sound, we practice receiving our experience as it is—moment-by-moment. And in mindfully slowing down through sound, we discover more presence, more choice, and more connection with ourselves, our relationships, and the wider world.
Stay Connected
If you haven’t already, I invite you to sign up for the free, monthly newsletter, Grow Your Inner Wisdom—in the midst of it all… , which offers an anchor to help each of us deepen and strengthen our mindfulness and meditation practices. In each newsletter, you’ll receive a little note from me discussing a different theme each month, a link to my most current blog post, and practice to help you feel into and connect with the theme of the month. Please join us, and sign up for the newsletter on my website.
Monthly MBCT & Mindfulness Meditation Group
You’re warmly invited to join our monthly MBCT & Mindfulness Meditation Group, meeting online on the second Tuesday of every month from 6:30–7:45 pm EST (Zoom).
Each session includes a short dharma talk, a guided meditation, and time for reflection on a mindfulness theme relevant to everyday life. Together, we practice settling into the breath and body, gently returning attention to the present moment.
This group is open to those who have completed the 8-Week MBCT Course, as well as anyone interested in deepening their mindfulness practice. It can be especially supportive for those navigating stress, worry, or low mood, and for anyone seeking ongoing practice and community. More info is available on the Mindfulness Meditations Sessions page on the website.
About Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is an evidence-based approach that supports people navigating stress, anxiety, low mood, and depression by helping them develop a different relationship with thoughts, emotions, and body sensations. Rather than trying to fix or eliminate difficulty, MBCT offers practical tools for meeting experience with greater awareness, steadiness, and choice.
To learn more about MBCT and upcoming offerings, visit the MBCT Course page on this website. If you have questions or would like to explore whether MBCT might be a good fit for you, you’re also welcome to contact me directly at karen@drkarenwalant.com.