#14 - What Is a Meditation Bell For? Benefits for Focus, Presence, and Communication

In this episode, Nyssa and Dr. Kelly answer a listener question about one simple but powerful object: the meditation bell. 

What is the purpose of a bell in your meditation space? They explore how a meditation bell (or singing bowl, chime, or timer bell) can mark transitions, create a ritual for mindfulness, and help you “come home” to yourself. From Thich Nhat Hanh’s bell of mindfulness to Insight Timer bells, church bells, traffic lights, and even phone notifications, they look at how sound can become a cue to pause, breathe, and pay intentional attention.

They also extend the idea of the bell into everyday life and relationships—introducing the idea of a “relational bell” for when conversations get heated. You’ll hear about code words like “lunch meat,” using heart-rate monitors as a bell for conflict, and how sound, silence, and space can transform how we communicate. 

If you’ve ever wondered how to use a bell in meditation, how sound and ritual can deepen your mindfulness practice, or how to build in gentle pauses in your relationships and conflict conversations, this episode offers playful, practical, and heartfelt ideas to try.

Main Topics Covered:

• How a simple meditation bell can completely change the energy of a room
• Why humans seem wired to respond to bells, gongs, and chimes (and what that has to do with archetypes)
• The “bell of mindfulness” in Buddhist practice and what Thich Nhat Hanh teaches about coming home to yourself
• Turning everyday sounds—traffic lights, phone dings, microwaves—into mindfulness cues
• How to create a simple, meaningful meditation space (even if you don’t have a whole room)
• What Nyssa’s stop sign, Kelly’s wooden pyramid timer, and acupuncture chimes all have in common
• The idea of a “relational bell” for pausing hard conversations before they blow up
• Code words like “lunch meat,” heart-rate watches, and other creative ways couples can de‑escalate
• Why silence, rest, and space are just as important as sound in music, poetry, and relationships
• How playfulness, humor, and a well-timed pause can shift you from “you’re my enemy” back to “you’re my person”

Stay in Touch:

Nyssa Hanger: www.nyssahanger.com | IG: @nyssahanger

Kelly Brady: www.kellybrady.me | IG: @drkellybrady

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

Welcome to Being Different Together, the podcast for people who want to make the world a better place, but no, they can't do it alone.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

I'm Dr. Kelly Brady, acupuncturist, psychotherapist, and certified dialogue therapist.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

And I'm Nissa Hanger, massage therapist, aromatherapist, coach, and real dialogue specialist.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Together we'll explore how conversations can improve relationships, make work more joyful, and spark healing for ourselves and our communities.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

And listen, we don't shy away from the hard conversations. In fact, we welcome them. This isn't about being right.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

It's about being different together.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Hello, hello. We are here for episode number 14. Ta-da! Being different together. So um a little behind the scenes um trivia. Um this is our second time through, quote, recording this episode because last Thursday when we sat down to do it, we got up early because we had a little couple extra things going on that day. We had our coffee, we were very caffeinated. I looked down to see how much time went by, and I go, Oh, oh baby, I'm so sorry. I did not press record.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

We had been sitting here at the kitchen table just doing a whole episode for 39 minutes. Yeah, like we were getting ready to wrap it up.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

And Nissa's just scoops at me and she's like, Oh, baby, oh no. I get this like pit, it just like drops into my stomach. And then this voice comes into my mind and it says this, be gracious. Thank God.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Yeah, be gracious. You were like, All right, I'm gonna take a shower. I was like, okay, I don't have time to We literally, we literally just talk to each other at the kitchen table wearing headphones for 40 minutes. That is that's what we did last Thursday morning.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I mean, yeah, and it was early.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

So we're actually recording at a different different day and different time of day that we normally do. So who knows what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Well, uh yeah, we were out to dinner with some some friends this weekend, and I was talking about m uh one of my favorite sayings. Yes, which is you know, I have a couple of these that I like to say to clients when things go wrong. And one of them is, well, sometimes you're the pigeon, sometimes you're the statue. This is life.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

And we thought we were the pigeon.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

It turns out we were the statue. We were the statue. Sometimes you're the fly. Sometimes you're the windshield. I always think you're gonna say fly squatter, but windshield makes more sense. Yeah. So I mean it just goes this way sometimes. So I'm happy to be here because um, you know, I have a lot of fun doing this podcast.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah, I do too.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I have a really good time.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

And we talk about the same things over and over again in in our non-recorded life, so why not do it?

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Well, and this particular episode was seated by one of your good friends who just loves the podcast, and she's so you know, she's always sending us messages. I know it's so much fun.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

She's a fan. Yeah. Her name is Suki on Instagram as SukiSows. And just side note, if you were into sewing and particularly want to learn how to use a serger, she's your gal. So check her out. What is a serger? Um, a type of sewing machine. A type of sewing machine. Yes. Every time I hear I can tell you about it.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

I don't know what makes it different than another one. Sorry, Suki. Um every time I hear her name, I double hear it in my mind, the way that the vampire Bill said Suki. Did you ever watch um True Blood? I never watched it. Oh, well, the main character is her name Suki. But they say they don't say Suki, they call her, they call and the main vampire call. I mean, is that like a pun? Is that like a vampire pun? He goes like this Suki. I don't know. I don't know if it's a pun. Oh my goodness. I don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

I wonder if she has that association. But she will now, so I'm sure she'll listen to this episode because this is her listener question. You Suki writes in, hey, I do have a question to Kelly without knowing anything about meditation beyond what I've learned just from doing it a little bit myself. What is the purpose of having a bell in your meditation space? And she goes on to share just a little bit of her own. She does like about ten minutes of guided meditation in the mornings, you know, feels like a baby meditator, which honestly, ten minutes of guided meditation in the mornings makes you a regular meditator in my book. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Well, it's such a great question because the bell itself is a like it's a weird object, right? If you think about it, because it's just sitting there doing nothing.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Isn't that what you're supposed to be doing in meditation?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

No. So it let me just clarify. No, that's not what you do in meditation. Um so you're just sit the bell is just sitting there doing nothing until someone rings it. Yes. And then when you do ring it, right, everything changes. It's like the whole room reorganizes around the sound.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

It does change the feeling. I mean, for me, it does change the feeling of a space. Oh yeah. Um and just to, you know, if uh I guess there are many different types of bells, right? I think a lot of times, I mean, here our bells are more bowls um that get dinged or dunged. Donged? Or donged. I don't know what the the proper past tense verb is. I think a bell gets for dinging a mall.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

I think the bell gets rung.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Oh. Rung. You can't unless you're in France.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Ring my bell. Ring a ling a ling.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

You know, I was talking to another listener earlier today, and she was like, I love how everything is a song lyric to Kelly. I got it is.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Well, that's that that's listening in. So we listen, we can listen out. Okay, so we listen out, right? We use our ears. I'm not gonna get into the whole snowboard. We'll do it, we'll do an episode on that. We'll do an episode on that. But you know, part of our attention is that we can listen out, so we use our ears, we listen to sounds outside. But another another part of attention is but learning to listen in, listen, listening to what's going on inside. Outside, yes. And I have spent a lot of time doing that. So I think I'm highly attuned to these little song seeds that open up in my mind. Um and play. But you know, it's like the more we thought about the question, right? Um, the more we realize that the bell says a lot about how we approach meditation.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

But also attention and maybe even relationships. It's it felt like a cool Yeah. It felt like a cool you know, like I'll give the answer why I put a bell in the meditation space. But then also there's just I I just thought it was a cool symbol to explore. Yeah. For us, like and walk around. So um, so I think, you know, like the bells when I I've done a lot of public speaking and I there there was a period of time when I when I was doing that, uh, when I would bring a bell into the uh into the space where I was giving a talk. Nisa just sneezed, bless you, honey. Thank you. And um yeah, so I would often ring a bell like in between, you know. Yes. So I'd ring a bell at the beginning. It's like right, the bell marks a transition between modes of being. And in the in the ancient in ancient world, I mean, like, think about the church bell at in uh in our neighborhood.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

True. Oh, I was I was gonna say, Poppy's ringing his bell by barking at the back door to say, Hey, let me in, let me in. See, dogs have bells. Yeah. There you go, Poppy. But yeah, the church bell in our neighborhood, you know, I was noticing the other day that I mean it's even uh uh probably a mile away from here, and I don't always hear it in the neighborhood, but just the other night I was walking the dog and it was six o'c six or seven o'clock, and I could hear the church bells ringing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

It's so special. I mean, and I and I think that you know, the church was often in the the center of the city. Yes. Right. Yes and um and so you know, kind of it had that had that, and then and then it had the clock. Yes. Right? And it was I mean, this was at a time I mean I mean not everybody had a watch.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

There wasn't always standard time. There wasn't that was a thing. Right. You know what brought standard time? Trains.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

Oh, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Yeah, there's some history, and I don't know, I don't remember it exactly, but it was like they had to standardize time. Like time would be standardized by the sun and when the sun would be overhead. But when the sun is overhead in this more eastern town is not exactly when the sun is overhead in this more western town.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Oh boy, this sounds starting to sound like a word problem to me.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

If you leave Dallas.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

This is the kind of problem that would have given me diarrhea in the seventh grade. I would have been like, oh, oh, I just reading this makes my stomach hurt.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

But it I there was there's some, and somebody would know so much more about this than I am, and I hope that I'm getting this right, but I I think that standard time started to become more time became standardized with trains and the running of trains, and how they needed to run on time, and how even in the small towns, they need to to know what time it was to be able to get their stuff or get on the train or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Nissa, what does anybody know really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

SPEAKER_02 10:01

I thought I thought you were setting me up. I was like, what day is it?

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah. Is that Chicago song? Does anybody really know what time it is?

SPEAKER_02 10:09

That was before my time.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

It's crazy. I didn't know that about trains. I mean, that's a really cool factoid. I'm glad that you shared that. I didn't I didn't know that. You know, when I I when I was listening to you, I was listening to your words and I'm fascinated by them. I was also listening to my own mind. And I was thinking. I was. And we because we always are. And I was thinking to myself, oh, isn't that funny how like now we can use this as a reason to be mad at one another? You're late. Yeah, don't you know what time it is? Don't you know what time it is? You have a phone. You have a phone. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Yeah, so interesting. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

So, okay. So the the bell is a threshold, right? The bell is a threshold. The bell is a threshold, and it marks a transition between modes of being. So, you know, it's like before the bell you have this everyday mind, uh-huh. Which is like you're just going a around. And then it's like, ring, the the bell rings at the end of class, and you go, Oh, intention, I have to pay attention now. Right. So it gives you a reason to pay intentional attention. So the bell rings, you go to class, the bell rings, you go to school. The bell rings, you sit down and meditate. Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

So the bell rings, you wake up.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

Yeah. I think that the bell actually has emerged from the human mind as a a very n necessary tool.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Um, you know, it so you know, we we need these kinds of ritualized the thresholds, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Because it does create it as a r it does create it does ritualize at least for me, it relitualizes the experience by, okay, now I'm sitting down, now I'm going to start, now let me ring this bell.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yes, absolutely. And okay, so one of the first meditation retreats uh in the Buddhist tradition that I went to was I went and saw Tik Nathan.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

What a beautiful experience, and I was so lucky to be able to train with him a couple of times. Yeah. Um and it was a rare and beautiful experience that I'm very grateful for. And uh he talks a lot about bells in the practice, and he talks about the bell of mindfulness. Uh-huh. And he says, Okay, well, the bell, and in their tradition, they do this thing where all of the monks and nuns anti-they all carry their own little bell. And basically, it like it just anytime they feel like it, they'll just stop doing whatever they're doing and they ring the bell. And when you hear the bell, and you're in it, you're not if you're in one of their monasteries, like if you're at Palm Village or on your you're on retreat with them, like say you're walking along, so everybody's walking along. All of a sudden, the monk whatever his name is just stops and goes, and they'll ring the bell three times.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

The idea when you ring the bell three times is he says you just stop and you just listen to the bell. And so he has a bunch of poems that he, you know, he says, Listen, listen. The sound of this bell brings me back to my true home is one of them. You know, or breathing in, another one. I go back into the island within myself. I mean, he has all these beautiful poems that are gathas. They're like reminders. But you know, Zen has this tradition of gathas or mandos, which are these short little pithy poems. Right. And Ty was just really a master at writing them in a way that they were very beautiful, very simple to understand, and really spoke to uh a a part of us that I think is always awake inside of us, but that we're just not paying attention to. So you know, so the bell would ring and then listen, listen, this sound brings me back to my true home. And uh, you know, Ty and your your true home is inside yourself. Yes. Go back to yourself, go back to your breathing, go back inside, go back to the silence, go go back to yourself, come home. You would say your your home inside yourself. Yes. And um, you know, that that that it really impacted me so uh deeply to be in the presence of all these people. So we're all sitting there eating lunch and silent lunch. But even if it's a silent lunch, you know, we're sitting there chewing and all of a sudden someone on the other side of the room just rings the bell. We all put our forks down and take three breaths together. And then everybody goes back into movement again together. So it's just this intentional stopping to pay attention. And so when you're sitting on the meditation mat, it's more formal. But there are informal bells in our culture all the time.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

And there are friggin' cell phone or the microwave, you know, ding, your dinner's done.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yes. I have been in I have been inviting myself for years to practice seeing traffic lights as bells of mindfulness.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

You know, of seeing, of listening to the sound of my phone, a text message, bing, as a sound, as a bell of mindfulness.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Wow. You know, it reminds me it it uh it's more of a visual cue, but I ha wrote this thing in my newsletter, uh, I think it was a couple years ago, but where and I think it's slightly changed now. I noticed it the other day, but there's this couch in the lobby at our office, and I have a place that I'll sit and like eat my snacks, as I'm wont to do in between um clients. And I I I think the stop sign got knocked down, so I think it's actually in a slightly different height, but for a while there, the stop sign on the corner was like in my direct visual field.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Oh, when you were hanging out at the end.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

When I would sit when I yeah, and it and I would just sit and look at this stop sign and this thing that says stop, and I would be like, Oh, let me like use this as a reminder to maybe eat a little bit mindfully and not scroll through my phone this time.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Sure. Yeah, I mean I think that that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

I love the idea of using stoplights as uh reminders of that as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, well, it's great. It's like the stop sign is not conceptual, and neither is a bell. And so, like a bell doesn't tell you what to think.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

The stop sign is probably a little more conceptual because it's telling you to stop. Yeah. It's a little more conceptual, but it's like the bell, it just arrives.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

And then suddenly you notice where your mind is.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Mmm. It does get your attention. Right.

unknown 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

At least it gets my attention. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

I think I have a I have an idea that it gets your attention because it's archetypal.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

I think it's I think it's gotten to that place where bells are are an archetype.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

So it's not just my personal associations and experiences. It's something larger and beyond that.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yeah. So the bell is a signal of something.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Like if I if if I were to show you two sticks crossed in the middle, uh-huh. That could be a plus sign. Yep. But if I take that symbol and I put it on top of a church.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Say no to the church. Oh no. I'm thinking of it as an X.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

We joke. We joke for our Christian friends.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

You mean you mean where the vertical stick is longer than the horizontal stick. It's a cross. It's a cross. That's where you were going with that.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Sure. That is where I was going with it. Oh, you were going with it that it wasn't a vertical no signal.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

Yeah, I saw you using your because when you said to put two sticks in front of each other and you said plus sign, I was like, or it could be a no sign.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yes, yes. Yeah, no, no. I under I understand what you're saying. I we got our wires a little bit crossed there. But does that make sense to you? Yeah, no, totally. Image. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. That's the word. Yeah. That image is a sign. Yeah. And the sign says this is where the church is.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Mm-hmm. But the cross is a symbol.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

But the cross is a symbol. Yes. And it has a lot more meaning. That's right. Because it it has it has its universal, it has its personal meaning.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

But then it also might have an archetypal meaning. Yes. And so you see crosses archetypally in all kinds of imagery. That's true. That doesn't only have to do with the story of the Christ. Yes. Yeah. So it's uh the bell as a symbol, I don't know. Do you buy it? Does it make sense to you? Do you buy it? Yeah. Because it starts, I think, in an essence, like if you put the meditation bell in your meditation space, then you start to have your own associations with it. Yes. So it becomes a symbol for you, which is why I think it's really nice to have a dedicated meditation space.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

I think it's more than nice. I think if you're if you really want to meditate, I really think you should have a dedicated meditation space with you know a couple of simple things set up on a shelf that are very meaningful to you. It could be a a picture of some uh you know of your ancestors or somebody that you look up to, a candle, a place to maybe have a flower. Um you know, I like to put pictures pictures of my teachers on maybe a place where you could close the door so you don't hear the dog barking. Maybe it's nice if you have that available to you, or at least sit behind something, or you know, whatever, and then have your dedicated, you know, little dedicated pillow that you that you sit on. Yeah. It doesn't have to be, you know, you don't have to create uh an an ashram or a zendo. It's great if you can.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

It doesn't have to be a whole room.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

It doesn't. It could just be sort of a little dedicated space. But if a bell is there and you're ringing it, even if the insight timer, even if you're using an app like Insight Timer, they have a bell.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

I mean it goes ring and Oh yeah, they have a nice bell.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

And it hits it rings. Mm-hmm. So it I think when the bell outside rings, it connects us to the bell inside that's ringing.

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Yes. Yeah, like it definitely draws me more inward. Mm-hmm. And um compels me to stop and mark either the beginning of the meditation or the end of the meditation. Like I like to do that at the end also to be like, okay, this is especially if I'm using a timer, right? And there's a there's a bell on the timer, but it it just it creates um a container for sacred time.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Right, like a teminos. A create a a container for sacred for special time or for special thing put you put things inside of it. Sure. And it creates the container. Yes. Uh in the same way that you know committing to something like a marriage creates a container. Absolutely. Or making a decision in a dialogue that says, I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna say these things and I'm not gonna say these things. I'm gonna contain. Right. Right? You know, so I think back to kind of what you were saying, the bell like interrupts it's an er it's an interrupter. Right? It it like it's an interruption technology. Yeah. Because our minds run just constantly, as evidenced by all of my jukebox karma and how I mean it's in there running right now. You love saying it. See, and the minute you said it, I'm all jukebox hero. It's immediate. Like it just happens immediately. It's just in there, like so. My mind I can't I can't control the first thought. My mind is just generating them. Those seeds are just opening. It's just they've been planted, they've been planted, and they're just opening. And in the presence of other things, right? The causes and conditions for those things, those events to occur, they have to occur in order for the seed to open, right? Like that everything has to be just right. So you and I are here in conversation, you say jukebox karma, and I think jukebox hero. So the if the bell were to have rung right in that moment, it would have interrupted that. It break it like breaks the mental script. Sure. You know? Sure. And resets your attention. Yeah. Um it's like in that moment of silence following the bell, I can listen to the silence with in yourself.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Also, I mean, I don't know if you have any knowledge um of even just like the the resonance. Of the bell. I mean, if somebody's into like sound healing and all that sort of thing, and frequencies and bells will be attuned to different frequencies. And you know, sometimes it's a it's a bowl, like we have. You can also have these um chimes. Oh, yeah. Like a little chime on a wood block. Yes. With the little mallet, also known as the dinger. Yes. Um when I first one of my first treatment rooms was in um my friend Becky's space. She's an acupuncturist, and she had both of the rooms set up for acupuncture, but then she let me use one of the rooms. And so in that room, there was one of these chime bells. And she had been practicing for years before I came in, and I was a very, you know, I was a young buck. And um I knew that at the end of her treatments, because when I would get a treatment from her, at the end of the treatment, when she was all done, she would ring the bell with the dinger, and it was ding! And that's how you knew, especially if you're ending face down, that's how you know for sure. It is, I mean, I think my clients both love and hate that sound. I did have a client tell me last week that the her favorite part is the bell. And then I have definitely had clients after I ring the bell, they're like I had I had a client that same week. Oh boom. All good things must come to an end. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah. So like in meditation, you ring the bell at the beginning and you also ring it at the end. And so that is, it does create that kind of continuity, that that you know, that container. I think the thing about if you if we bring it back to bells in the relationships, like you bring a bell into your relationship with clients.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

I bring a bell into my relationship with my clients too. Right. Yeah, I have a little timer that's hidden inside of a hidden inside of a wooden pyramid. And I know, it's epic. It really is cool. It just looks like a wooden pyramid on the table. Yeah, it looks like a wooden pyramid on the table. But it's a timer. I found it on the internet many years ago, and then I asked my daughter to get it for me for Christmas, and she did. And so, yeah, and you just set it and then it just bing, it just rings from an yeah. So it rings at the beginning and it rings at the end. So we do that in our in our in our professional relationships. Yeah, it creates this container. Yeah. But like most people don't have a bell in their personal relationship. If they're involved in a conversation and things start to get heated, nobody rings the bell and says, I gotta go to my corner coach. I gotta wipe this blood off my face. Take some deep. You know what it reminds me of? I mean, like, do you know what I mean? Like in boxing, and they ring the bell and everybody's like, Okay, break. I mean, you gotta go to the corner and get repaired before you get back in again. Well, it doesn't happen in a dialogue for most people, they just keep going.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Reminds me of we've been watching Parks and Wreck. Oh yeah. Okay, and so we're at the part in Parks and Wreck where Leslie Nope is on the city council and her arch nemesis, Councilman Jam. Yeah. You meant Jam. And so I forget what it was, but we watched some episode recently where it's like every time he gets her, he rings a gong in the middle of City Council.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

She was filibustering. She was filibustering to prevent a vote. And she was only on that three uh three strikes or something.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

Three strikes. And so every time she striked, he would ring a gong. Right, he would ring a gong. And then the other councilman would stop it, and he's like, Can't you just let it reverberate? That's the best part. But what an interesting use of, yeah, I mean, like you were saying with the boxing. That's a I think that's a different type of example of what you were saying. You were saying something along the lines of if we could pause, right? Use it as a way to pause when things get really heated.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Well, that's what I was thinking about. Uh what I was thinking about is that like this is where we could introduce the concept of a relational bell.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

A relational bell.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

And it doesn't have to be an actual bell. Like, I don't know if you and I were getting into it and I was all of a sudden just like bing. You know what? It might be a little intense, but what about if I just took a pause?

SPEAKER_02 26:14

You know, I'm thinking about an interview that I heard with, let's see, John Baptiste and his wife Suleika. Okay. And they have a thing where for them to pause a conversation, I forget the the exact um parameters of this, but I think it's the same idea. For them, they have a code word and it's lunch meat.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Yeah, that's great. Why not?

SPEAKER_02 26:41

And so if one of them, it's like if they really need to slow down in a conversation, one of them just says lunch meat.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah, uh like have a code word. I yeah, when I've been working with clients and they get in into escalation, I will invite clients to learn what their resting heart rate is. And um, and then when they notice that their resting heart rate, like let's say your resting heart rate, if it's 10% higher than normal. So uh it's like let's say your resting heart rate is normally around 70, and all of a sudden you start to feel just slightly feel your heart rate starting to increase. Like maybe you get a little blood flow to the face, maybe your mouth gets a bit dry. Yeah, your breathing's more shallow. Yeah. When I've had really, really when I've had clients who are are high conflict, they're really having a hard time. I'll have them get those uh watches that show you, right? And I'll have it alert them. Like take you need to take a break right now from whatever you're doing because your heart rate's going going up. Yeah. And to to use, I mean, that is kind of like a bell. It's like, okay, so then what when we get to that place and then we're deeply in our limbic systems, and we just really don't communicate very well from that place. And so, you know, it's like learning to take a pause at that moment, being able to say, Hey, I I notice I'm starting to escalate is a really good thing, you know, like I'm escalating, and it might not come out like that. Like in my case, it's gonna sound like this.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

I'm escalating. Or you know, it could also be you're escalating. Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Or whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey now. Let's slow this down a little bit. Hey, hey now. Can we slow this down?

SPEAKER_01 28:20

But in in better moments, I mean, like you've said to me quite often, help me understand.

SPEAKER_04 28:26

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Um, I love that sentence. I I know that I have said to you before, hey, it's okay, let's go back to the drawing board on this. Sure. Other good things to say, like let's take a beat. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Right? Which just thinking about um that languaging there. Right. Let's take a beat. Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

It's not like I'm gonna take you outside and beat the shit out of you. Which, you know, do you want to take the soul done? Take the souls on.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

No, but it it's interesting. The word beat is interesting because it it connotes um percussion. Good point. Which brings us back to the bell or these other archetypal things of you know, using sound as a way of marking time. Yeah. I mean, that's like a key thing to being in music. I mean, to be able to play with m music with someone else, you have to stay on the beat.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Yes. And you also have to know when to rest. So, you know, there's this thing about music, which is like, you know, uh taking the rest.

SPEAKER_04 29:26

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

And you know, maybe you get a measure of rest, maybe you get three measures of rest, maybe you get one beat of rest, maybe you get half a quarter note of rest. But in the in the silence that is created within musicality, the silence helps you hear the music better.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Right. So you I know you and I have talked before on the show about that John Cage piece that's all silence. Mm-hmm. Right. Um, you know, yeah, I d I I love that because I think it's humorous. And that's another thing I wanted to bring up. What what I've seen in couples who do who are doing really well with each other is that it's pla it's a bit playful. Like even if they get into it a little bit with each other, there's some kind of element where they can find a little bit of humor and then they can laugh.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

And even when it's hard, you know, even if you're having a hard conversation, yeah, right, that that ability to sort of like ha have a little laugh about it together. Sure. Um can bring the attention, I think, back, you know, and away from the idea that, oh, this this person is my enemy. Mm-hmm. Which is where we get to when we start to escalate, right? We go certainly where I get to. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's not just you, Boo. Like this is the human, this is our default as humans. When we escalate, we start to see the other person as an enemy. Totally. Instead of thinking, this is my wife, I love her, I want to understand her. Totally. You know?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

I'm like, I must dominate her and win. I said we were leaving the house at 12.03. I said we were leaving at 12.03. It's 12.06.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Doesn't she have a doesn't she have to have a watch? She has our phone. I know.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Can she not read? I know. Okay, so just because it happened last time on paranoid, are we recording? Yep, we're still recording. All right, great. So, you know, in meditation, the bell brings us back to presence in relationship. Um, we sometimes need a bell, I think, that says, let's come back to each other.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Because what we're trying to do in conflict is actually make contact. But what happens because of many unconscious forces is that we end up becoming entangled with one another. We're so entangled in that moment that we actually can't make contact because we're just all over each other.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Mm-hmm. Yeah, making contact to me sounds like the the the premise of making contact is that there's space. Yes. Totally. You know, it's that it's that Michelangelo God and whoever that other person was touching fingers. Ooh, cool image. Who's who's he touching fingers with?

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Well, I don't know, but it's that big old long hand.

SPEAKER_02 32:00

But I can just see the two little fingers. Yeah. It's like E.T. Yeah. Isn't there an ET thing about touching fingers?

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Phone home. Yeah, now I'm just hearing God say phone home, which is really weird. But those are those are phone home. Well, I mean, it's like the finger is like permission or something. Um and so, you know, it's like the bell also does that. Like I I remember, man. I just used to be so bored in school. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Just thought you were just waiting for the bell or something. Yes. Waiting for the bell to ring. You know that was like that Friday.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

And it was like the permission to get up and go. The bell was like permission, you know? It's like, ah, you know, school out for summer. You know what I mean? Running, like, let me get the hell out of here. Yeah, school often just felt really oppressive to me. Yeah. Unless I was in music class, but um true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:09

Well, music class was full of bells. You know, music class was all of this, right? It was the bells, it was the rest, it was the space. Yeah. Another thing I wanted to mention too, when you were talking about like the silence. Um, I don't know who said it, but I just remember in the study of poetry that poetry poetry oh, was it Lee Young Lee? Maybe so. Gosh, it's coming back to me. But the idea is that poetry is when it's spoken out loud, it's it is shaping silence. Oh. Yeah, and he actually referred he referred to the metaphor of a cathedral. Now I'm it's coming back to me. I saw this poet Lee Young Lee speak, and he was talking about how one time he was in this cathedral and that cathedrals are shaped. He he said that in the same way the architecture shapes space. And that when you're in a cathedral, when it's done really well, it it looks like if you look up, it feels like you're falling. Even though it's the same space, but it's the way that it shapes the space. And so poetry in that same way shapes silence by the sounds of the words and the space between them.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

I like that.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

Now I'm just thinking of the uh the police song, which I never knew was a police song, but it was covered by Kurt Elling. Take the Space Between Us and Fill It Up Someway. Oh, love that song. Yeah. I don't know what the song is called, but I'm listening to it now. Oh in my mind, I gotta Kurt Elling's version is so good.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

I it'll come back to me in a minute.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

It might be called Oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Oh my god, you take the biscuit treating me this way. Expecting me to treat you well no matter what you say. How can I turn the other cheek? It's black and bruised and torn.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

I've been waiting since the day that I was born.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

Yep. Yep. I know, it's great.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

I'm gonna find that version and put that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Yeah, it's so good. So good. So, you know, I I think then maybe the reason we keep a bell in the meditation space is that humans need reminders to come back to themselves. Like it might not be natural for us.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

No.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

And so we we help ourselves in this way to come back to ourselves. And so maybe the church bell, the other types of bells, assumably in different cultures before that we were s you know living in cities, which is where civilization came from, and we had churches, there were probably other types of musical instruments that were played to mark the woods. The drums they were played to mark the seasons.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

You brought up horns. I brought up what? This was in that other episode. You brought up you brought up these horns that the Tibetans would play. Oh, the horns. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Yeah, there's all these things we said in that other episode.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

You know what I mean? The symbols. Yeah, the symbols are yeah. I mean, and they just I mean to me, when I get in the presence of those things, I I get the chills. I get I mean, I'm I'm one of the I don't know about you, but I get the chills when I'm when someone plays a gong in my I've been to those sound baths, you know the lemon listening. Or it's like any drumline. Oh, a drum line.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Any drumline.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

I will cry. Yeah. Yeah, no, it touches it touches something really deep. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

Yeah. So I think then it's it's part of the way humans human is to make some kind of sound. Yeah. And you know, maybe in the past it was like the sounds of nature. Yeah, it could have been you know, when uh I used to when I like the sounds of the seasons to mark the seasons.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

The birds, you know, birds are migrating all the time, so different birds and different sounds will mark different parts of the seasons.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

Yes. Yes. I mean, whenever I go and stay with Ariella at the property on the Shala, I'll be staying in the school bus, which is a good two, you know, maybe an acre away from where she is. I'll open the door to the school bus coming out in the morning and I always go, Kakar! She'll do it from the front of the property. You know, I I would imag I I would imagine that this is what we we do. It's in like it's in our DNA. It's in yeah, it this is why I think it's archetypal. I mean, maybe the tool itself is a manifestation of the archetype, but yes, I think that the archetype is to make it's is to is to make some kind of sound.

SPEAKER_02 37:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

That brings our attention to something specifically.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

And um and and also to silence and uh and then the idea of how that works into relationship is really, really cool.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Well, and certainly in this world, I mean uh uh in the in our modern secular world and all of the busyness that we're all carrying around, uh, we really need some help to come back to ourselves. You know, it's a great tool for that.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah. I love the question, Sokia, and I'm really glad that you brought it up. And the next time you're in town, I would love it if you would come over and we can meditate together.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

That would be awesome. And also have delicious snacks. Yes. Always. Always have delicious snacks. Always have delicious snacks.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

But um Yes, thank you so much for sending in this question. Wonderful question. And please, listeners, send in questions because it's any questions you want us to answer. We are open for cues and we will give you our eggs. Yeah. You can message us on Instagram or text us or send an email, whatever, however, you want to get in touch with us. Yeah. And let us know what uh what else we can um Oh yeah. I love a good QA. Oh, yeah. It's the best. Totally. Yeah. I would have never thought of this topic.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Yeah, and we've talked about the idea though of having dedicated episodes that are kind of like ask it basket, you know, questions where people What did you just say? Oh, ask it basket. It's an old saying from the 12 step from 12 step rooms, it which I did a lot of. Um you've never heard that. So oh yeah, I started going to Al-Anon meetings when I was like 17. And then one of them one of the meetings I used to love was called an ask it basket. So the person could volunte could anonymously put a question in the basket. And then that is good. It's great because a lot of times people don't want to ask questions because they don't want to be, you know, like they're embarrassed to ask it or they don't want to be associated with it. I mean, whatever. I mean, it's took you you didn't have anything to be embarrassed about about this question. I did ask that at the time. You asked, yeah, and that's why we keep mentioning her name. But it's it's but it's like, you know, you could ask us a question anonymously and that would also be fine. So that's what it's called. It's called an ask it basket. And I used to love those meetings because they're spontaneous. Yeah. You know, and it it just it gives it an opportunity just for people just to riff on things and just to answer them, you know. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Well, I guess we're we're gonna institute an ask it basket.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Oh, it's so much fun. I love the ask it basket.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

I'll make a uh I'll make a Google form and link it on the website. Oh, yeah. Someday. That's fine too. I'm not gonna promise it by the time this episode drops, but you can just message us. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this episode and send us your questions. And thank you all for listening to another episode of Being Different.

SPEAKER_04 40:40

Together.