So Hum

So Hum is one sitting of ten minutes, building to twenty over about two months, in which you think the syllable SO on each inhale and HUM on each exhale and do nothing else. Early morning or evening, an hour after a light meal, sitting or lying down. There are no rounds to count and no counts to keep.

As the syllables settle, the breath usually slows towards four counts in and six out on its own, and that is where its effect comes from as much as from the syllables. The traditional name is ajapa japa, the repetition that is not recited, because after a while it goes on without you deciding to do it. The syllables are also read as hamsa reversed, and the phrase is given a meaning in the philosophical literature which I am not qualified to expound and which the practice does not depend on.

This is the practice I hand out most freely of anything on this site. There is no hand position, no nostril to close, no retention, no force, and nothing that can make anybody dizzy. It is also the one I offer to students who would rather not chant a syllable with a religious history, which is a reasonable preference and easily accommodated.

Ten minutes to begin. Twenty as the working practice. Once a day.

• Week 1 to 4: 10 minutes, once a day, sitting. Use a soft timer out of sight.
• Month 2: 15 minutes.
• Month 3 onwards: 20 minutes. This is a complete daily practice and I would not extend it without a teacher.
• If ten minutes is too much: three minutes, twice a day. Frequency beats duration for the first month and I would rather have three minutes daily than twenty once a week.
• Lying down: perfectly acceptable, and the right choice at three in the morning when sleep has gone.

There is nothing to count and no target. The only measurable thing about a sitting is whether you did it, which is why I ask students to keep a mark on a calendar rather than a note of how it went.

Meditation instructions rarely give a ladder at all, which is one reason people start at twenty minutes and stop after four days. The ratio column here is the breath the syllables tend to settle into rather than a count to impose.

That last row exists because sitting quietly with the eyes closed is not neutral for everybody, and a short sitting with the eyes half open is a real practice rather than a consolation prize.

The obvious question about this practice is why bother with the syllables at all, and there is a decent answer.

They are a pacing cue. A randomised crossover trial of twenty five healthy adults found heart rate variability rose in every slow breathing condition tested and rose more when an external cue set the rhythm than when people paced themselves, with breathing dropping from about eleven to about seven a minute. The syllables do that job from inside: they mark the beginning and end of each breath without anybody having to count, which is why the breath slows without being told to.

They occupy the part of the mind that talks. This is my observation rather than a measurement, but it is consistent. A student watching the breath silently narrates the whole time. A student thinking so and hum has that channel busy, and the narration quietens.

What the trials show, at their actual size. The 2022 mantra meditation meta analysis pooled fifty one randomised trials and found anxiety at g equals minus 0.46, depression at minus 0.33 and stress at minus 0.45. Not one study was at low risk of bias, and effects were bigger against passive controls than active ones. The breathwork meta analysis found similar sized effects for slow breathing. So: a small to moderate benefit on stress and mood, on evidence the authors themselves describe as weakened. That is worth ten minutes a day. It is not a treatment for a diagnosed condition, and the anxiety page here says the same thing at more length.

Three ways to spend the same ten minutes, and they suit different people.

My order for a beginner is this practice first, because it is the one nobody fails at. Om chanting if you have privacy and want the vibration. Trataka if even two syllables are not enough to hold on to and you need an object outside your own head. Watching the breath with nothing added is the hardest of the four and I would not start anybody there, whatever the books say.

It goes last, after everything else, when the body has stopped asking for attention.

1. Asana, if the day includes it, ending with Savasana.
2. Anulom Vilom or three part breath: 12 rounds, five minutes.
3. So Hum: 10 to 20 minutes, sitting in Padmasana, Vajrasana or a chair.
4. Half a minute with the eyes closed, half a minute with them open, then stand.

On its own it needs nothing at all, which is its real virtue: ten minutes on the edge of a bed counts, and so does ten minutes on a chair at a desk, which is the version that fits alongside the desk sequence. At three in the morning, lying down with the syllables and no expectation of anything is the practice I would use, and it is a gentler option than getting up.

If you are assembling a first routine at home, the home practice guide has the order, and I would put this at the end of it from the first week rather than treating meditation as something to earn. In the online classes we finish with this, and I say nothing for the last ten minutes.

It is the closing practice across most of this site, and the substitute wherever something else is unsuitable.

• Yoga for anxiety recommends it, with the caution that stillness and closed eyes are not neutral for everybody and that a shorter sitting with the eyes half open is a real practice.
• Yoga for high blood pressure uses it as the sitting practice, since it involves no retention and nothing forceful.
• Yoga for beginners over 40 puts it in the first fortnight alongside three part breathing.
• Chair yoga and restorative yoga both close with it without any adaptation.
• The eight limbs of yoga explains where dharana and dhyana sit, which is the wider context this practice belongs to.

If sleep rather than stillness is the problem, yoga nidra has better trial evidence behind it and a script you can follow. And if you would like to sit in a room with other people doing it, which makes the first month easier than anything I can write, that is what an introductory class is for.