The Sound that Contains All: O

(waves crashing) Welcome back to the exploration of sounds. We've looked at the long compound vowels, the e and the i. Now we look at another combination of vowels which is the sound o. The sound oh occurs when try and go from a to u. Want to try doing that?

Or listen to me first. A o u. Would you like to try that first? Lovely. You can feel the sound o very clearly inbetween the a and the u.

So what the sound oh represents is a combination of all the vibrations between a to o and o to u. We'll explore the sound in greater depth when we do the ohm, but for now let us just focus on the vowel o and see what it reveals to us. So, the sound o is a combination of the a which represents expansion and being, and the sound u which represents an expansion but with a sense of containing and protecting everything, sustaining everything. So the sound o holds the space of every possible vibration within itself. It's the very sound that seems to represent the ruling power of the universe.

It is the guiding and expanding force that contains everything within it. Let us experience it in our own practice. So close your eyes, take a deep breath, and just do the sound o. Start, (breathing in deeply) o. Lovely.

What I would suggest is that we represent the sound by adding another dimension of an action. And in this case we can hold the right fist with our left hand and just feel as if it contains all the creative energy of the universe in potential. All right. So visualize that very concretely that you represent the creative power of the universe. And with that sensation, take a deep breath, and chant the o.

O. This is a good practice when somewhere we are feeling that we need to gather all of our energies together and become more expressive in terms of our presence in whatever we are doing. The centering of our energies. So we will explore the sound further when we look at the ohm by adding the dimension of the hm in it, but for now we'll do it a last time. As you take a deep breath, hold the right fist with your left hand, take a deep breath, and do the sound o.

(breathing in deeply) O. It occurred to me that we could also try to do the sound by moving our hands a little away from our body at the chest level, still holding the right fist with the left hand, and just doing the sound o and feeling how a change of position can affect the experience of sound. We'll do it together. Take a deep breath, (breathing in deeply) o. Lovely.

Feel free to explore these sounds in whichever way speaks to you most powerfully. And that will be right for you. Enjoy these sounds. Namaste.