What Yoga Teaches Me About Living With Hearing Loss

Living well with hearing loss requires knowledge, practice and a healthy attitude. When these elements come together, we can take on any difficult listening situation confident we have the necessary skills to meet the challenge. In my latest article for Hearing Tracker, I describe how my yoga practice helps me develop the mindset to not only live with hearing loss, but to thrive. An excerpt from the article is below. To read the full post click here

Tree Pose Helps Me Live Well with Hearing Loss

Tree pose requires both stability and ease, concentration and comfort, strength and flexibility. It is a posture of opposites that when skillfully combined, create balance. It teaches us to build a strong and stable foundation upon which we can grow. These are the same skills I use to manage living with a hearing loss every day, but especially during a pandemic.

Communication with hearing loss is always challenging. Even with perfectly calibrated hearing devices, background noise, low talkers and bad sightlines can make conversation hard. Face masks, while critical for health and safety, add to the difficulties, since they eliminate our hearing loss superpower — speechreading.

Rather than retreat discouraged, we must find the right balance of strength and ease to take on these new challenges.

Strength From Knowledge and Practice

Reflect on the communicate best practices you already know – As people with hearing loss, we use many best practice communication tips and tricks each and every day. We ask our conversation partners to speak clearly and at a normal pace. We ask them to face us and keep their mouths visible so we can utilize body language and lip movements to help us fill in the blanks that we miss. Review the strategies you already know and redouble your efforts to implement them when needed.

Continue reading on Hearing Tracker.

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7 thoughts on “What Yoga Teaches Me About Living With Hearing Loss

    1. Shari Eberts – NYC – Shari Eberts is a passionate hearing health advocate and internationally recognized author and speaker on hearing loss issues. She is the founder of Living with Hearing Loss, a popular blog and online community for people with hearing loss, and an executive producer of "We Hear You," an award-winning documentary about the hearing loss experience. Her book, "Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss," (co-authored with Gael Hannan) is the ultimate survival guide to living well with hearing loss. Shari has an adult-onset genetic hearing loss and hopes that by sharing her story, she will help others to live more peacefully with their own hearing issues.
      Shari Eberts says:

      Wonderful! I hope it works well for you. Thanks for your comment.

  1. My partner introduced me to Bikram yoga a year prior to the pandemic. I was nervous at first as I cannot hear at all once I take my hearing aids out. However I found yoga to be so soothing and empowering. I am looking forward to getting back into it together.

    Thank you for sharing your views.

    1. Shari Eberts – NYC – Shari Eberts is a passionate hearing health advocate and internationally recognized author and speaker on hearing loss issues. She is the founder of Living with Hearing Loss, a popular blog and online community for people with hearing loss, and an executive producer of "We Hear You," an award-winning documentary about the hearing loss experience. Her book, "Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss," (co-authored with Gael Hannan) is the ultimate survival guide to living well with hearing loss. Shari has an adult-onset genetic hearing loss and hopes that by sharing her story, she will help others to live more peacefully with their own hearing issues.
      Shari Eberts says:

      Bikram yoga is my favorite! I have been practicing online, but I am missing the heat of the studio. Thanks for your comment.

  2. I’m a newbie with Yoga. It does help. Can you or anyone else in the hearing loss community assist me with a challenge? I’m about to move and I’ll be living alone with profound hearing loss. How do I procure smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors that I can hear without hearing aids at night? Is there a website or a place that I can start my research. I’ll be living 1000′ from a National Forest in a dry area that has had many fires over the years. Thank you in advance for your help!

    1. Shari Eberts – NYC – Shari Eberts is a passionate hearing health advocate and internationally recognized author and speaker on hearing loss issues. She is the founder of Living with Hearing Loss, a popular blog and online community for people with hearing loss, and an executive producer of "We Hear You," an award-winning documentary about the hearing loss experience. Her book, "Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss," (co-authored with Gael Hannan) is the ultimate survival guide to living well with hearing loss. Shari has an adult-onset genetic hearing loss and hopes that by sharing her story, she will help others to live more peacefully with their own hearing issues.
      Shari Eberts says:

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