Whilst it is always best to see a qualified hearing specialist when it comes to managing the symptoms of hearing loss, there are a few things you can do yourself to help you maintain better hearing. These are called focus exercises.
Focus exercises can help you improve your sense of hearing and also enhance your concentration. Here are some strategies that you can employ to further develop your current level of hearing ability.
Repeating sentences
You’ll need a partner for this one, so find a friend or family member to help you. They’ll need a book or magazine to use as source material.
It is important that you don’t recognise the material, so try to use something you’ve not read yourself. It will also be beneficial to do this exercise in a place with no background noise or distractions – it will help you to concentrate on listening to exactly what’s being said to you, which will add much value to this exercise. Once you are ready to go, have them read you a sentence.
After hearing each sentence, repeat back the words you heard to your partner. Once you are able to repeat the words that you heard, you can move on to more difficult exercises, such as increasing the length of sentences or having a go at repeating more than one sentence at a time.
Noise filtering
This exercise is aimed at helping you to choose the sounds you want to hear. It’s an activity that will help you to differentiate between background noise and the things on which you want to focus. Enhancing this skill is useful for situations such as staying engaged in conversation without being distracted or hearing an announcement advising that you need to leave a train or bus.
Once again, you will need a partner for this exercise. You will also need two different sources of music to play while you are talking to your partner. To start, play the music softly and begin to chat with your talking buddy.
Try not to raise your voice. Simply focus on listening and understanding what is being said in your conversation. Once you are comfortable, add the second source of music. Keep talking, but make sure you keep the discussion at the same volume level as before, and actively listen to your partner’s speech.
You can challenge yourself by adding more external sound sources. A good way to test yourself even further is to try having a conversation during a radio talk show, as well as your music. You could even turn on the television. The important thing is to stay focused on your discussion with your partner.
You can book a free* hearing health check up with HearingLife.
