Being mindful means coming to our senses. In other words, being aware and able to attend to what is already happening in the world around us through our sense of sight, touch, smell, taste, and sound. The traditional five senses are attributed to Aristotle. Recent research has since discovered many senses, including proprioception, the sense of knowing where parts of our body are in space, as well as equilibrioception, the sense of balance, acceleration, and changes in direction.
Sound is caused by a movement that passes through the air or some other medium as waves of vibrations. The frequency is the distance between the waves and loudness is their level of energy. There’s an old thought experiment that asks. “If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to hear it, is there a sound?” Without a human or animal to receive and process the sound, there will only be vibrations passing through the air and forest. When you are next at a music concert, take a moment to appreciate how the sound of the instruments is actually in everyone’s heads, a collective act of perception. In the auditorium, there are only waves of acoustic vibration pulsing through the air.
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