Can I Listen to Music While Meditating?

Music and ambient sounds can help bring the mind to a state of calm, temporarily, and sometimes this is useful. However, consistently meditating with music tends to set us up for reliance on particular external supports (sound) and reinforces the idea that a calm mind is preferable in our meditation practice.

What we teach at Happier meditation is to develop your capacity to meet your current experience, whatever it is, with some sense of acceptance and equanimity, without having to rely on external support through music to achieve that.

As we navigate our daily lives we won't always have access to ambient sounds or music to help us calm down, but if we learn how to work with our mind in the moment, however it is, we can use the skills we practice while we're meditating in these critical moments in our daily lives.  So though you can meditate with music, that isn't the way our teachers have been trained and it isn't the kind of meditation they guide.

If you want to read more, try this: Wild Mind Meditation, Should I listen to music when I meditate?