Wordless Mind

Wordless Mind is a unique meditation tool offering an entirely new approach to achieving a silent mind.

Many people in times of stress are unable to silence their thoughts. A disagreement in the workplace, a worry about a child at school - all kinds of common stresses can result in a chatty mind. This is a perfectly natural thing and part of the process by which we solve life's problems but it sometimes can get too much. Seemingly unstoppable trains of thought can cause insomnia at night, stress and fatigue during the day.

After practising many types of meditation from visualisation to mantras over many years with mixed success I developed my own technique which I found to be more reliable than any I had read about or been taught.

I learned from other meditation techniques that a silent mind is often preceded by short episodes of silence - like little glimpses of silence - before silence itself sets in. These glimpses of silence can be a key to reaching a sustained silence because they give the meditator a ‘feel for it’ - like finding a balance point on a bicycle. They help you ‘get the hang of it’

Just as you cannot make yourself forget or make yourself fall asleep - you cannot make a silent mind, you can only create the conditions in which silence will naturally come about. Bringing the mind to silence is in many ways like getting rid of hiccups or relaxing a muscle in cramp. It is a bit unpredictable but with practice it is possible to develop a technique. This unique app - Wordless Mind will help you do just that.

How does it work?

Wordless Mind works by playing the meditator a simple audio countdown like a hypnotist - but rather than count down predictably to zero this countdown stops at a random point. This has a curious effect on the mind. Quite suddenly where the missing number should be the meditator will catch a ‘glimpse of silence’. This glimpse of silence gives the meditator the key or a ‘feel’ for a silence that can sustained.

Practitioners can record the countdown in their own voice.

The length of the meditation is time limited and is ended by a gentle sound after some period set by the user. This is important. Knowing that silence must be achieved in a set time focuses the mind and improves results.

Unchecked chains of thought are the main reason meditators fail to achieve silence and this is often because they simply forget they are meditating. The mind wanders off into a chain of thought that can go on for several minutes. While meditating I noticed that I often became aware of an unchecked chain of thoughts only after hearing some random noise such as the clicking of a radiator or a sound on the street outside. For this reason, occasionally while the Wordless Mind timer is running the meditator will hear a click or tick sound. These ‘Focus Clicks’ are there to remind the meditator that they are meditating and break any chain of thought that they may have wandered into. You can switch the ‘Focus Clicks’ off if you want to but I find them useful. These sounds are carefully selected to alert the wandering mind while not disturbing the silent one.

Like riding a bike meditation cannot really be taught - it can only be learned by trying to do it and the more you practice the quicker you will get the hang of it. One of the biggest mistakes I made was to perceive unwanted thoughts as something that had to be knocked away like hitting balls away with a tennis racket. Wordless Mind helped me learn that these seemingly unstoppable thoughts are much more like a muscle in cramp - like a brain cramp - and like cramp can be stopped by learning to relax the source into a sustainable silence. If Wordless Mind helps you learn how to do this you will have acquired a skill you will use for the rest of your life and you will no longer require this app. Good luck!