Breath meditation to music (and a review of Dragon Rising's "Ice River" audio meditation file)

So last night I did a breath meditation to music and followed it up with listening through a Dragon Rising meditation audio I'd come across a couple of nights ago and downloaded.

The breath meditation went well. I found myself pretty easily relaxing into the music and rhythms of my breath. Plus, the earphones I was using are those ones that actually slip slightly inside the ear canal, which means that not only do they help block outside noise, but they mean that I actively hear my own heartbeat - which is great for grounding me within myself :-)

There were a couple of times where my mind wandered away on its own for a bit before I gently reined it back in; but other than that, it was all good. I started off only focussing on breath, but eventually, felt that I wanted to work toward an endpoint, so I counted each breath as it flowed in an out, and basically stopped at 50.

After completing that, there was a new audio I wanted to check out that I'd downloaded a couple of days back from Dragon Rising. It was the "Ice River" one, which is part of a group of meditations that together are called 'Wisdom of Water' and are billed as a 'collection of healing dreams, each one evoking a rich tapestry of healing energies, of states and of experiences.'

And the results? Conceptually I liked it, but I found the balance of music volume to vocals volume frustrating. It may just have been those earphones I mentioned (I'll have to try it again with a different set of phones and see if it makes a difference), but the music seemed 2-3 times louder than the vocals, which meant that I'd often have to strain to pick out what the narrator was saying - not conducive to a relaxing meditation! Sometimes I'd lose the vocals track altogether for 10-20 seconds at a time, meaning there were parts of the visualisation where I had no idea what was going on, or how I got from one point to another.

I'll try it again today with a different set of phones and see what that does for the experience. Assuming it doesn't change at all, though? My general response to this particular meditation is "great idea, but unless the execution is improved, I'm not likely to be buying any of the download files (something I was considering doing if I liked the free sample download) any time soon". :-(

Ah well, c'est la vie sometimes.

Philosophical blessings




Starfire