All of the meditation guides at the Spring Forest Qigong Centre come with background music, which helps to set the mood and settle your mind and your body while you listen to the narrative. But what happens when you’re meditating without one of these guides? After all, if you know the meditation, the visualizations, the posture and everything else by heart, then the narrative guide might be more off-putting than anything else, but you could still benefit from the music.
That’s where Inner Beauty and other original SFQ musical compositions come into play. This meditation music was created by Master Chunyi Lin, the founder of the Spring Forest Qigong Centre, and was designed to help you to drift into a deeper state of meditation. But where did this music come from, who was it designed for and how can you get more out of it?
What is Inner Beauty?
The Inner Beauty meditation music was composed by a musician who was working under Master Lin’s guidance. He did not set out to create a piece of music, but rather it came to him while he was meditating. At the time it came to him and he began toying with the piece, Master Lin had been meditating for several hours, and by the time he finished, he had spent 5 hours in a deep meditation. Upon finishing, he immediately sought assistance from a musician, who was able to play and then record everything that Master Lin remembered.
Within a few hours of him finishing his meditation, Master Lin had helped to create the Inner Beauty meditation, which has gone on to be used by countless students over the years.
This music is ambient, gentle and relaxing. Typically, music is bad news for meditation. That’s because it is designed to be heard, to stimulate and to excite, not to be played as background noise. If you have ever tried to meditate when there are a lot of distractions around then you will have a good idea of what it is like to meditate when music is being played. But Inner Beauty is different, as this was all taken into account when it was being created and Master Lin made sure he created something that would assist and not distract.
Inner Beauty simulates the sounds of nature. That doesn’t mean you will hear a succession of bird songs and waterfalls though. Instead, it uses calming, gentle nosies that help with the visualization process, making you feel like you are sitting in the open air, with the wind on your face, the sun beating down on you and the trees swaying in the distance.
When to Play Inner Beauty
This meditation music is especially useful for beginner and intermediate students. It is something that can be played while you meditate and while you perform exercises. It can also help you when you are performing healing techniques such as those described in the Qi-ssage Healing course, as it helps to set the mood and to ensure you and the patient (if you are not working on yourself) is calm at all times.
It also works very well with all of the following meditations, as they all involve intense visualizations that ask you to imagine you are outside:
- Sun Meditation (included in the level 3, Qigong for Advanced Healing course)
- Moon Meditation (included in the level 3, Qigong for Advanced Healing course)
- Healing Our World
- Cancer Healing Meditation
Of course, you don’t need to limit yourself to these meditations as it works just as well with many other SFQ meditations, including all of the following:
- Small Universe (included on the level 1 SFQ Fundamentals course)
- Energy Breathing
- Enhanced Energy Breathing
As mentioned above, you need to make sure that you know these meditations by heart first, because only then can you perform them without playing the guide. Otherwise, the guide and the Inner Beauty music will create a wall of noise that is sure to distract.
Other Meditation Music
Inner Beauty is not the only meditation music you will find at the SFQ Centre. As discussed earlier, all meditation guides come with ambient music played throughout, but you can also find something known as Back into the Universe, which is 100% ambient music. This is similar to Inner Beauty in nature, but it sounds completely different. That’s because Back into the Universe was designed for more advanced meditations and is particularly useful when performing the Rainbow Meditation and Temple of Heaven, both of which require you to go into a deep meditative state for a sustained period of time.