Meditative Musings.

Brad is sent the meditation

I subscribe to Shari Eberts’s newsletter so that I can see what she’s up to. I love seeing her activism and how she shares advice and tips for us hard of hearing folks as we go about our day. Some of it is pedestrian, but still important, stuff. Some of it runs to the more game-changing stuff. A couple of months ago she talked about Janaki Zaremba’s new meditation that has a focus on people with hearing loss. 

I’ve been meditating for decades. It helps me deal with the struggles I encounter on a daily basis as I move through a world not made with my hearing needs in mind. When my tinnitus got worse, my meditation practice became even more important for my mental health. Because of both the hearing loss and the tinnitus, I have a challenging time doing guided meditations. I use ambient noise like chanting, instrumental music, or a fire, to drown out the tinnitus. But those are sounds I don’t need to actively listen to. So when Shari clued me into Janaki’s HoH meditation, I was curious. So I tried it and sent it to Julie to try, too. 

Here are our thoughts

Julie’s Thoughts

I have tried guided meditations before and the challenges that have arisen have been the inability to immediately understand the direction that was being given. I would strain to hear the directive, and then berate myself for not being able to hear it clearly, which would devolve into negative self-talk (completely disregarding the fact that I have hearing loss and was being asked to do the impossible with any level of accuracy), and then resulted in two things: my quitting altogether or my giving up on following the narration and doing my own thing. I typically drifted to the second option, but there have been inflamed moments where the first won out. Understandably. 

Inspired by an article written by Shari Eberts, “Guided Meditation for People with Hearing Loss”, I decided to at least attempt this 13 minute meditation designed for people with hearing loss by hard of hearing creator, Janaki Zaremba, 

In what has become rare snippets of quiet at the start of the summer 2025 season here in Maine, I took advantage of a temporarily empty and silent home to dive into this meditation. I had woken up not too long prior, and had just put my hearing aids in for the day. I was contemplating if I should eat breakfast, wash my hair, or vacuum the porch when inspiration struck that NOW was the perfect time to try out this meditation designed for those with hearing loss. I flopped on my bed, not inspired enough to try and sit in a proper meditation position. With one replaced knee that does not have the flexibility and range of motion as the other knee, I knew sitting on a cushion on the floor would be unpleasant. I could get down there no problem, but the bending and rising would be problematic – it continues to be a work in progress. It is a sight to behold. (Having a bad day? Push me down on the floor and watch the show).

I propped myself up with a pillow against the headboard, sat in some imitation of a lotus position, lengthened my spine, dropped my chin, and pressed play. I made sure that I was streaming the meditation directly to my Bluetooth enabled hearing aids to increase the probability that I would be hearing every word spoken. Might as well use technology to my advantage this fine morning – Brad would have been proud. 

I skimmed the description of the meditation in the article mentioned above, and was instantly struck  by the encouragement to use the captions and to meditate with eyes open. 

My visceral reaction? NOPE. 

I have ADHD and a mind that whirs constantly – it is the purveyor of many ideas (or as Brad has affectionately referred to them – at least I think it is with affection – “harebrained ideas”). I knew that with my eyes open it would prove near impossible to concentrate, as they would be darting around the room making a mental list of what needed to be done for the day, questioning my design choices – especially the artwork above my desk – and eventually expanding to creating future ideas for blog posts as I tried to bring my “monkey mind” focus back to the present moment. 

While all that is true – I also had a second, more pervasive reaction – I saw it as a challenge. A resistance to accommodation. I was raised and continue to function in a largely auditory world. I am entrenched in an endless battle against full acceptance that I have a “disability”. I somewhat balk at the term “hard of hearing”, defaulting to my forever term “hearing impaired” which many in our community find wildly offensive. In short, bending and accepting assistance is not in my nature. About anything. 

Apparently that resistance streak present in my inspiration, Princess Leia of Star Wars, also extends to a guided meditation designed for people with hearing loss. People like me – whether I want to freely embrace it or not. 

Screw it, eyes closed was how I was going into this experience. 

I pressed play, and almost burst out laughing when I detected a light, lilting accent of the narrator. It was almost laughable to me that a guided meditation for the hard of hearing – to hell with it – hearing impaired – had an accent. Did that drive me to even consider the captions? Nope. 

I settled in, started listening, tried to focus on the breath, and the unexpected happened – I started to cry. Not a quiet cry, not a silent “looking out the window at the rain in a black and white movie” cry, oh no – not me. Always the overachiever, I began bawling. I am talking wrecking, heaving, choking sobs. Ava Gardner would have been proud. It was raw and – to use the word that Brad loves to toss about, and a word I despise – vulnerable. 

I was experiencing a type of crying that I can only describe as a release – it wasn’t the type of cry one employs during anger, frustration or grief. It felt different – I felt like I had been broken open and everything that I have been carrying around with me either consciously or not, was pouring out of me, finally. As I sit here and reflect on it, I know deep in my soul that it was needed as I have kept quite a bit to myself over the years with regards to my hearing loss. I let myself cry, for once. I didn’t stop myself and berate myself to “pull it together” or “toughen up” or “you’re a fighter, get back to fight mode”. I just let it go – and it was terrifying to surrender as that is not a word in my vocabulary, ever. I will fight to the end until my point has gotten across or resolution is reached. 

I cannot remember the order of how all of this was presented but I remember that towards the start the narrator acknowledged the listening fatigue that we experience as those with hearing loss. The tears are falling in earnest, and at the same time I am talking to myself – saying, “Well – I don’t have that all the time”. The meditation continues – and this was when I really got going – when the concept of “being enough” and “self worth” – are mentioned. They were mentioned relative to hearing loss, but to me it felt like a complete gut punch. I come across as incredibly confident with a hard to puncture exterior, but deep inside I still struggle with feeling like I am enough. 

I didn’t really need that meditation related to my hearing loss – I guess it found me at the right moment for a higher purpose of healing. Judging from the flood that emitted from my eyes and the gasps escaping from my lips, it was just what I needed. 

And I hated every minute of it. 

Even though I will begrudgingly admit that I feel better. 

Brad’s Thoughts

Being a seasoned meditator, I know what works for me. Guided meditations generally don’t. I prefer to keep my eyes shut and not have to actively listen for instructions. While the people doing guided meditations don’t shout at the top of their lungs or talk as fast as the Micromachine Guy, It still poses a problem for me. Janaki’s meditation was no exception.

She has a soft voice which, admittedly, fits guided meditations. It also fits my past experience of straining to hear. She has a slight accent, too. It also is common amongst the guided meditation ilk. But here’s where she differed; she had closed captions. Proving that she had forethought a-plenty, since the meditation was published as a YouTube video, she was afforded the ability to provide captions for her audience. The words were front and center and had enough contrast between the white font in the foreground and black background to be easily read. Behind the words were lazily meandering scenes of nature. Trees and brooks and lakes oh my! It lent a very serene feel. 

The meditation itself was a focus on the breath followed by body scan; that’s when you call attention to your head, then your shoulders, and so on down to your toes. It’s a great way to find where you’re keeping tension and relax that part of the body. But this scan was started with an acknowledgement that listening fatigue is real. That was a first. I appreciated the acknowledgement of the stress of being hard of hearing subjects me to. But in so doing, it highlighted the very challenge I was experiencing, the same challenge I always experience when doing a guided meditation: I was actively listening. It also presented a new challenge: I was actively reading. 

As I mentioned, I meditate with my eyes shut. I find keeping them open makes it harder for me to stay present, to relax into my breathing. I needed the captions to get through the meditation. I tried to keep them closed but occasionally I would mishear a word, then my mind would go a-fishing with its rod of context clues. And I’d hook onto the correct word a sentence or two later. Which would then force me to rewind what I’d just heard and figure out what she was talking about while I was fishing. Which meant I was always behind. So I kept them open. 

Once resolved to keep them open, I had a better time of it. Her body scan was familiar, as was her suggestion to anchor myself with my breath. What wasn’t familiar was centering it all around the struggles of hearing. Early on, she mentions my worth isn’t defined by how well I hear, that I’m enough no matter what I hear or don’t hear. Cue the waterworks. It was shocking to cry during a meditation. It proves how internalized the audist mentality is. I know I often feel like a failure when I don’t hear someone or something. But I didn’t know how deep and perhaps omnipresent that feeling is. Her giving voice to the feeling, her giving voice to the lie of that feeling was hard to hear. But very much needed.

I finished up the meditation rather raw and not a little exhausted. But in a good way. I couldn’t replace my morning meditation with this one. Nor could I do it daily. But I see the value in doing it periodically. Simply acknowledging how my hearing affects my self-worth isn’t enough to stop feeling that way. I can see doing it on a particularly turbulent day at the library but it’s too challenging both to hear and to experience, to do in the morning.  

Closing Thoughts

If you’re new to meditation and an old hand at hearing loss, this is most certainly worth a try. Since we’re both experienced meditators we know what works for us. Just because this won’t replace our meditations, not as our sole meditation that day anyway, doesn’t mean it won’t work out that way for you. Just like there’s no one way to be deaf, there’s no one way to meditate. She is very intentional in her choices. She strikes a good balance between drawing attention to hearing loss and painting a relaxing meditation picture. This niche Janaki’s carving out has the potential to be very helpful to a lot of people. 

Breathe in and breathe out,

it really is that simple. 

Simple’s not easy.