Open Awareness Meditation to Solve Sensory Overload

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There is a type of meditation called Open Awareness. Instead of focusing on breathing, you focus on everything. Every sound, sensation, sight. For example, the bird chirping, another bird "screaming", a jet plane going over, a neighbors indistinct talking outside, my breathing, the tingling in my leg, a small pain in my stomach that just started, everything. For those not familiar with meditation, the one thing you do not meditate on is your thoughts.

I normally do regular meditation, but the past 2 days I have done Open Awareness in one 30 minute session at the start of the day. Today (about 30 minutes ago and 30 minutes after meditation) I walked to the local gas station to get some red bull and on may way there was this construction going on with loud hammering. Normally the hammering goes straight into my head in an almost painful way, but today it was nothing. I simply heard the hammering, I heard the birds, the cars, and nothing bothered me at all. I just got back from the store and wanted to post this so maybe others can try it and hopefully will work for them.

I like doing that with music. With complex music like classical or rock bands I like to listen to see if I can follow one instrument at a time, then try to hear them all together and the sound relationships they have to each other.

My doctor recommended this and I'm looking into it as a serious method to reduce sensory overload.

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*** High Functioning Autism - Asperger's Syndrome ***

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I've been doing the similar stuff for the last 7 years. Almost everytime I pace across the city. Even more so if the city is like a ghost town in certain holidays.

It's also how I ended up figuring how to 'take' stimuli instead of mentally 'shielding' myself from it.

In my own version, though, instead of sounds and sights -- it's more something to do with space and whatever it was occupied, and the moving presence of self and other.

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This sounds like what I do all the time anyway. I'm not sure how much it helps, but it's possible that I could have subconsciously adapted to it as a coping mechanism.

I also really like doing this in the park or forest. I try to hear each individual bird's song,then I try to hear who is chirping back and forth, who is being territorial to who. Or, all the visual patterns in nature. The way leaves spiral from a plant, the way branches reach for the sky and make a pattern.