Mystical systems
Nada yoga
Direct answer
Nada yoga is a teaching within yoga that takes listening as its discipline: first to outer sound, music and the voice, and then to subtle sounds said to be heard within when the mind is still.
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At a glance
- Also called
- yoga of sound, nada brahma, inner sound, anahata nada
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Mantra, Om Symbol, Pranayama, Japa
Nada yoga is a teaching within yoga that takes listening as its discipline: first to outer sound, music and the voice, and then to subtle sounds said to be heard within when the mind is still.
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What is nada yoga?
Nada is Sanskrit for sound. Nada yoga treats sound as a way of gathering attention. Its outer side is music, chant and the trained voice, which Indian tradition has long counted as a spiritual discipline. Its inner side is listening, with the ears closed, for the fine sounds the texts say arise in a quiet mind, and letting attention rest on them until it grows still.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a handbook of the fifteenth century, gives its last chapter largely to this practice and lists the sounds a listener is said to pass through, from the roar of the sea and drums to the flute and the bee. Indian theory of music opens from the same idea, dividing sound into the struck, which the ear hears, and the unstruck, which is said to be heard inwardly.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Sound and mantra.
What sets Nada yoga apart
Most yoga works with the body or the breath; this teaching works with the ear. Its method is to hand attention something fine to follow, on the reasoning of the hatha texts that the mind is held by sound as a deer is held by a bell or a snake by a pipe. The listener is told to expect coarse sounds first and subtle ones later, and to let go of each for the next. The tradition also lends Indian classical music its claim to be a discipline of the spirit, since a raga is practised as an offering as much as a performance.
- Word: Sanskrit nada, sound or tone
- Chief text: Hatha Yoga Pradipika, chapter four, fifteenth century
- Two kinds of sound: ahata, struck, and anahata, unstruck
- Music treatise: the Sangita Ratnakara of Sharngadeva, thirteenth century
- Modern catchphrase: nada brahma, spread in the West by J.-E. Berendt in 1983
Often mistaken for something else: Mantra practice repeats a chosen sound; nada yoga listens for sound that is already there, outside and then within.
The story behind Nada yoga
The phrase that the world is sound belongs to the philosophy of the grammarians and the Tantras of the first millennium CE. The thirteenth-century treatise on music by Sharngadeva begins with the two kinds of sound and joins music to yoga. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika of Svatmarama made listening to the inner sound the favoured road to absorption. In the twentieth century the German writer Joachim-Ernst Berendt spread the phrase nada brahma in the West, and teachers of yoga adopted the name for classes that join chant, instruments and silence.
Why Nada yoga matters
Nada yoga is the place where Indian thought about music and about attention meet, and the source of much modern talk of sound as a path.
How to read Nada yoga
The term helps a reader place a class or a book: whether it draws on the old texts on listening or simply borrows the name for a concert.
Nada yoga in practice: an example
After a period of chant a class sits with eyes closed and listens, first to the room, then to the faint ringing of its own quiet.
Where readings of Nada yoga go wrong
Faint ringing in quiet is ordinary. Ringing that is new, loud or lasting is a matter for a doctor, not a sign of progress.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- nada yoga meditation, yoga of sound, nada brahma, inner sound, anahata nada
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is nada yoga?
Nada yoga is a teaching within yoga that works with sound and listening to steady the mind: music and chant outwardly, and inwardly attention to the subtle sounds said to be heard in stillness.
What is the unstruck sound?
Indian theory divides sound into the struck, made by one thing hitting another, and the unstruck, anahata, said to be heard inwardly by a quiet mind. The heart centre of yoga takes its name from the same word.
Is hearing a ringing in the ears part of nada yoga?
The texts describe inner sounds met in deep quiet. A ringing that is new, loud or does not go away is tinnitus, which has medical causes, and a doctor is the person to ask.
