To Whom It May Concern:

When practicing meditation and relaxation techniques sometimes beginners tend to drift off. It is not the same as someone 'dozing' off in normal life but with some similarities. Nothing to be alarmed about.

As the body relaxes, the muscles of the soft palate relax (back of the roof of mouth) and the muscular sheath relaxes and becomes loose and flutters. Individuals drifting off to sleep (when lying down) have sometimes been woken up by the sound that is similar to snoring. Indeed it is the 'beginning' of snoring, technically speaking. The sound wakes them up and they sometimes wonder if it was them snoring or someone else or if it was one of the hypnogogic/pompic hallucinations (hearing a clear voice just as one is drifting off to sleep or when just waking up).

In meditation, one is sitting up and this relaxation of the soft palate and uvula (the muscular finger like projection hanging down at the back of the mouth. The relaxed muscles flutter ever so slightly and the vocal cords also relax and flutter and all of this creates a sound, as if one is clearing the throat.

On the one hand, it is normal and nothing to be scared about or for that matter nothing to get overly excited about either.

Sometimes people also can hear the movement of their intestines (borborygmi is what they are technically called, I believe). These are all body's ploy to distract one and bring one back to the habitual state of awareness. With persistence, the body and the monkey brain soon learn and adapt to accept meditative state as a normal and accepted state and all these distractions become diminished in intensity.

Quite apart from this, it is also possible to hear a deep gutteral sound that sounds like OuM, the pranava nada or primordial sound. It is more often felt as opposed to heard and the entire body resonates to it and actual tactile vibrations are felt over time.

All of these are to be amused by and then one moves on staying focused on the meditation...!

Take care

Rohiniranjan