If you have started meditating and noticed a high ringing in your ears, or if you have had tinnitus for years and come across Nada Yoga describing an inner sound heard by yogis, you are asking a reasonable question and the internet will give you a bad answer.
The spiritual sites will tell you it is the unstruck sound and a sign of progress. The medical sites will tell you it is tinnitus and offer nothing about why you were meditating in the first place.
Both are incomplete, and the gap between them matters more than usual — because the wrong answer here can delay a diagnosis and, separately, can make the ringing worse.
Here is the honest version. Nada practice — covered fully in our guide to Nada Yoga — is not the same thing as this symptom, and the difference matters.
Start With the Practical Answer
If you hear a persistent ringing, buzzing or hissing that is present outside your meditation practice, get it assessed. Not instead of practising. Before deciding what it means.
Most tinnitus is benign and has ordinary explanations — noise exposure, age-related hearing change, earwax, an ear infection, certain medications. But a minority of cases have causes that need finding, and the features that separate them are specific and easy to check against.
Seek medical assessment promptly if any of the following apply:
Urgently, the same day, if the ringing comes with sudden neurological symptoms such as facial weakness, uncontrolled vertigo, or anything suggesting a stroke.
Within twenty-four hours, if it comes with hearing loss that developed suddenly — over three days or less — within the past month. The treatment window for sudden hearing loss is short, and this is the one where delay genuinely costs.
Promptly, if the sound is:
- One-sided. Most ordinary tinnitus is in both ears or feels central. Unilateral tinnitus is usually benign too, but it is the feature that most often prompts further investigation. - Pulsatile — a whooshing or thumping in time with your heartbeat, rather than a steady tone. This has a different set of possible causes, some vascular, and warrants its own assessment. - Accompanied by hearing loss, particularly if the loss is worse on one side. - Newly changed in character, volume or pattern. - Audible to someone else. Rare, and always worth investigating.
And within a couple of weeks if it is distressing you — affecting sleep, concentration, or your ability to get on with the day. Distress is a legitimate reason to be seen, not a soft one, and effective help exists.
That list takes two minutes to check and it is the responsible starting point regardless of what you conclude spiritually.
What the Tradition Actually Describes
Now the interesting part, because the classical descriptions do not match tinnitus especially well.
The Hatha Yoga Pradipika’s fourth chapter describes a sound encountered inside a specific practice, and the framing is consistent throughout: sit in a quiet place, after pranayama, close the sense gates, and attend. The sound arises in that context.
It is also described as changing. The text gives an explicit progression — the ocean, thunder, a kettledrum at first; then a conch, a bell, a horn; and finally the flute, the vina, the humming of a bee. The whole practice consists of following the sound as it becomes subtler over months and years.
And it is described as accompanied by bliss. The four stages of nada practice are each characterised by an increase in absorption and happiness.
Tinnitus, characteristically, is the opposite on all three counts. It is present continuously rather than arising in practice. It does not refine — most people’s tinnitus sounds the same after twenty years as it did in the first month. And it is neutral at best and distressing at worst.
This is a difference in description, not a diagnostic test. Do not use it to talk yourself out of seeing a doctor. But it is worth knowing that the tradition is not describing a constant tone that follows you around the day, and that reading it as though it were requires ignoring most of what the text says.
Attention Is the Variable
This comes from the tinnitus research rather than the yoga literature.
What maintains distressing tinnitus is not the sound. It is the pattern of attention paid to it — narrow, vigilant, threat-driven monitoring. People with troublesome tinnitus check for it, track it, and find their attention captured by it, and this selective attention is a substantial part of what keeps it prominent.
The therapeutic approaches that work do not ask people to attend to the tinnitus harder. They work by widening the attentional field — cultivating a receptive, non-judgemental, chosen quality of attention that includes the tinnitus alongside everything else, rather than narrowing onto it. Mindfulness-based approaches have shown promise here on exactly this mechanism, with participants describing a shift from being at war with the noise to being able to notice it without being consumed by it.
Now consider what nadanusandhana asks you to do. Seek out an internal sound. Find it. Follow it. When a quieter sound appears beneath it, go to that one instead. Do not let attention leave the field of sound.
That is effortful, narrow, seeking attention directed at an internal sound. Structurally, it is closer to the pattern that maintains tinnitus distress than to the pattern that relieves it.
There is a further problem, and it is the interpretive one. If you believe the ringing is a spiritual attainment, two things follow. You are less likely to have it assessed. And you are more likely to attend to it constantly and with significance attached — which is the exact behaviour that makes tinnitus louder in a person’s life.
The spiritual framing can therefore cause both a delayed diagnosis and a worse symptom, while feeling like progress the entire time.
So Should Someone With Tinnitus Do Nada Practice?
Not a simple no, and the nuance matters.
If your tinnitus is new, changing, or undiagnosed: get it assessed first. Do not take up inner-sound practice in the meantime.
If your tinnitus is distressing you: nadanusandhana is probably the wrong practice at the wrong time. Seek out something that widens attention rather than narrows it — breath practice, movement, or a formal mindfulness-based programme, ideally with support from someone who works with tinnitus. Nada practice can wait; it will still be there.
If your tinnitus is established, assessed, stable and does not bother you: there is a reasonable case that a contemplative relationship with the sound may suit you well. The endpoint the nada tradition describes — absorption, non-reactivity, the sound ceasing to be an intrusion — is not far from what tinnitus habituation looks like. Several people with long-standing tinnitus have described exactly this: that having a practice which treats the sound as an object of interest rather than an enemy changed their relationship to it.
The distinction to hold onto is the quality of the attention, not the target of it. Receptive, unhurried, unafraid attention is helpful. Vigilant, searching, significance-laden attention is not — and it is possible to do nada practice in either mode.
If you notice yourself checking whether the sound is still there, monitoring whether it has changed, or feeling anxious when you cannot find it, you have slipped into the unhelpful pattern regardless of what the practice is called.
What Teachers Should Do
If a student tells you they are hearing a ringing, do not congratulate them.
Ask whether it is present outside practice. Ask whether it is one-sided. Ask whether their hearing has changed. If any answer gives you pause, tell them plainly to get it checked, and say that this does not mean their practice is going badly.
Do not tell a student that a symptom is a spiritual attainment. Even if you believe it might be, you are not in a position to know, and the cost of being wrong falls entirely on them.
This is not a failure of faith in the tradition. The texts describe a sound arising in practice after preparation, and they are silent on constant ringing in a person’s daily life — because that is not what they are about.
Common Misunderstandings
1. That any inner sound is anahata nada. The classical descriptions are specific: arising in practice, changing and refining over time, accompanied by absorption. A constant unchanging tone matches none of that.
2. That getting it checked shows a lack of trust in the practice. It shows ordinary care. The tradition has nothing to say about whether you have an ear condition.
3. That paying attention to tinnitus always helps. The evidence points to a specific quality of attention — wide, receptive, non-judgemental. Narrow monitoring, which is what inner-sound seeking involves, works the other way.
4. That tinnitus means you cannot practise meditation. It does not. It means some practices suit better than others, and inner-sound work is the one to be thoughtful about.
Closing Thought
There is a version of this article that reassures you the ringing is your subtle body awakening, and it would probably perform better than this one.
But the honest position is that the tradition describes something that arises in silence, after preparation, and refines over years — and that a persistent tone in your daily life is a different phenomenon with ordinary causes worth identifying.
Get it looked at. Then come back to the practice knowing what you are working with. Nothing in Nada Yoga is diminished by finding out that your ears are fine.
If the ringing is causing you real distress, please do speak to a doctor about it — this is a common and treatable source of suffering, and there is genuinely effective help available.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ringing in my ears a sign of spiritual progress?
Probably not, if it is constant and present outside practice. The classical descriptions of inner sound place it within practice, after preparation, and describe it changing and refining over time. Persistent daily ringing is more likely tinnitus.
When should I see a doctor about ringing in my ears?
Urgently if it comes with sudden neurological symptoms or vertigo, and within twenty-four hours if it comes with hearing loss that developed over three days or less in the past month. Otherwise seek assessment promptly if it is one-sided, pulsatile, associated with hearing loss, newly changed, or distressing you.
What is pulsatile tinnitus?
A whooshing or thumping sound in time with your heartbeat rather than a steady tone. It has a different range of possible causes, some vascular, and should be assessed separately.
Can meditation cause tinnitus?
Meditation does not appear to cause it, but quiet environments and inward attention make an existing quiet tinnitus much more noticeable. Many people first become aware of tinnitus when they start sitting in silence.
Can I practise Nada Yoga if I have tinnitus?
If it is established, assessed and not distressing, quite possibly — some people find a contemplative relationship with the sound genuinely helpful. If it is new, changing, or bothering you, choose practices that widen attention rather than narrow it, and get it assessed first.
Does focusing on tinnitus make it worse?
The quality of attention matters more than the direction. Narrow, vigilant monitoring tends to maintain distress; wide, receptive, non-judgemental awareness tends to reduce it. Inner-sound seeking has more in common with the first pattern.