“Listening” as used here refers to “comprehending” or receptive language—understanding spoken language, written language, sign language, or another shared code such as Morse code or picture symbols. It involves perceiving, receiving, decoding, and storing a message.

The Listening Body

Depending on the type of shared code that you’re using to communicate, different parts of the body are involved in listening and receptive language.

The most common code, spoken language, requires the listener to have a working outer, middle, and inner ear, Eustachian tube, and auditory nerve.

For comprehending written language and picture symbol codes, the reader must have functioning eyeballs, eyelids, eye muscles, and optic and oculomotor nerves.

To gather input from tactile symbol systems such as Braille, the reader needs to have functioning fingertips. Then to communicate those sensations to the brain, the vagus nerve is utilized.

In order for everything to work properly, all of the interacting body systems (nervous, musculoskeletal, circulatory, respiratory, gastrointestinal, integumentary, urinary, reproductive, immune, and endocrine) are involved. Some parts of our bodies can compensate to a certain degree if other parts are not doing their job, but the extra work is taxing overall and makes us tire out more quickly.

So the bottom line—if you want to be a good listener, take care of your body!

The Listening Mind

In order for the mind to listen, the body has to tell it that there’s something present in the environment Then the mind can decide whether or not that particular thing is relevant, interesting, or familiar, etc. From there, all kinds of brain activations take place. You can get a free download here that illustrates and describes the Listening Mind at work for you:

The Listening Spirit

Listening definitely benefits from having a healthy spirit. Your spirit is the driving force that makes you want to attend to what the senses stimulate. The spirit is what helps you “know” the incomprehensible beauty of music, art and nature. It helps you listen to your own intuition, to your inner wise self, and to the voice of God.

When you are listening with your heart and soul, your spirit is being nourished. You are receiving energy from the love, peace, and harmony of all that is good and just. You can know and understand the Spirit of another person by gazing into his or her eyes.

We look with our eyes, hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, but there is a deeper kind of seeing, listening and feeling with the mind and heart that is necessary in order to gain spiritual comprehension. So, go deep!

If you are a parent, grandparent, or other caregiver and want to encourage a child to grow in speech, language or literacy development, the Reading and Speech Clinic can help. Let’s begin by email by signing up for a free mini-assessment. By participating, you will discover your child’s precious gems in the areas of Talking, Listening, Expressing, Reading, Writing, Mind, Body, and Spirit. You will find out which gems are currently shining in your child, and which ones might need a bit more polishing. Start