Meditation Induced Tinnitus?

Ryan, modified 8 Years ago at 5/16/15 12:12 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 5/16/15 12:12 PM

Meditation Induced Tinnitus?

Posts: 5 Join Date: 5/16/15 Recent Posts
I've been reading threads here for awhile, but I was prompted to make this first post by a recent meditation experience.  I've been doing a combination of Goenka body scanning and noting style Vipassana meditation for around 6 months.  I generally do around 1.5 hours a day divided into one 1 hour sit and one 30 minute sit.  The other night I came inside and retreated to my bedroom after taking several inhalations of cannabis in my backyard.  I proceeded to put on a quiet jazz record, lie down in bed, and listen to the music with my eyes closed. 

Generally speaking, I don't meditate after smoking, however, I started paying attention to my bodily sensations, so I decided to just go with it.  I then started to notice a crescendo of energy developing in the areas of spinal column associated with the various chakra locations.  This increase in energy eventually worked itself up to intense, vortex-like, spinning sensations at the Chakra locations.  It felt as if energy was emanating from these spinning sensations, and the emanating energy seemed to envelop my entire body. 

The intensity of the energy was failry debilitating, and I felt as if I had no choice but to experience it in my reclined position.  Along with this energy, I noticed a fairly prominent sound in my ears.  Initially the sound resemble a chorus of high pitch, vibratory, cricket chirpings, with a stable high pitched tone layered somewhere in the chorus of sounds.  While those energy sensations decreased in intensity a bit, the sounds have not left my ears for several days now.  At times the the chirping is the predominant sound, and during other times the stable tone is more noticeable. 

Last night, however, the sound transitioned to a kind of high pitch, white noise, hissing type of sound, with occasional hints of that high pitch stable tone nesteled somewhere within the white noise.  The sounds don't bother me that much, but I'm curious about their cause or origin.  Due to the fact that these sounds presented themselves in tandem with that energy outburst, I can't help but feel that the two are related.  Are these likely meditation related, caused by cannabais alone, or could there be something else at stake?
Chuck Kasmire, modified 8 Years ago at 5/16/15 12:44 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 5/16/15 12:44 PM

RE: Meditation Induced Tinnitus?

Posts: 560 Join Date: 8/22/09 Recent Posts
This topic comes up from time to time. Look into nada sound.
It can be used as the object of your meditation -
http://www.lionsroar.com/the-sound-of-silence/#
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Dream Walker, modified 8 Years ago at 5/16/15 1:17 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 5/16/15 1:17 PM

RE: Meditation Induced Tinnitus?

Posts: 1657 Join Date: 1/18/12 Recent Posts
Google --> site:http://www.dharmaoverground.org tinnitus

Lots of threads talk about it...some interesting stuff
~D
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Lewis James, modified 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 5:57 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/8/15 5:56 AM

RE: Meditation Induced Tinnitus?

Posts: 155 Join Date: 5/13/15 Recent Posts
I developed this around 10 months ago and my research led me to the nada sound, it's the best explanation I have so far. What's interesting is that I have regular tinnitus too from years of reckless live music without ear protection, and the 'nada' is completely distinguishable from that, tends to only appear in my right ear but occasionally moves to the centre, and varies in both volume and pitch over time. It has a sort of silky, filtered quality to it and if I make it the object of meditation it becomes very 'digital' in quality, almost as if it's a carrier wave or binary signal or something (not posturing that it is either of those, it just sounds similar to that kind of thing).