A Sound Diet
/Our five senses feed directly into our brain and body systems and they can influence us on many levels. The color of the room you are sitting in as you read this is likely impacting your mood. The effect colors have on us has long been used (for and against us) in advertising, design, and color therapy to shift our emotional states and our behaviors. Each color has a corresponding frequency and humans can perceive about one octave range within the visible light spectrum.
Compare that with the human auditory system which can perceive a ten octave range, from about 20 Hz all the way to 20,000 Hz, ten times greater than our visual capacity! Of all our senses, hearing stands out above the rest because of its ability to rewire neural pathways in the brain and bring us into more coherent and even transcendent states of awareness. The ear is one of the very first organs to develop in utero. While our eyes rest at night when we sleep, our ears never sleep and in fact are active 24/7 throughout most of our lives. Studies have shown that sound in our environment can impact not only our emotional state, but also our autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, heart rate and blood pressure. In the same way it’s important to eat a healthy diet of organic, whole foods, we should also be mindful about the stimuli we are feeding our nervous system through our sense of hearing.
The world can be a very chaotic place for our ears as they are constantly bombarded with the sounds of traffic, radios and televisions, social media, the hum of computers and refrigerators, and even perhaps the sounds of the people we have been quarantined with for months. With all of this noise, our system can easily be thrown out of balance. We cannot control all of the sounds in our environment the way we can throw out all the junk food from the pantry. However, by intentionally feeding our system with nourishing sounds on a daily basis we can entrain the brain and body into a more coherent, balanced state.
How can we do this? Aside from seeking out sound therapy in the form of Biofield Tuning or sound baths, I would like to offer 3 exercises you can do at home in the next month to experiment with sound and its effect on your well being.
Getting quiet. Silence is like a cleanse or detox for the nervous system. But unless you are already a skilled meditator, sitting silently often ends up being a fight with your mind to turn off thoughts of to-do lists, regrets, worries and anxieties. It is helpful to have something for the mind to focus on, which is why many meditation techniques involve paying attention to your breath or a candle flame. But another technique allows you to test and expand your auditory capacity at the same time. Try this: Sit quietly in a room where you live. One by one, identify all the sounds you hear in the room. The hum of the air conditioning, a faucet dripping in the sink, a clock ticking. Then turn your attention to outside the room, what is happening in the next room over? Can you hear the washing machine or people talking? Then, stretch your hearing further and try to identify any sounds outside your home. Are there birds chirping, traffic sounds, people in the next apartment? Try to expand your perception, how far away can you hear? When you’ve reached the limits of your perception, try eliminating the sounds one by one coming back inside, back into the room, back inside your own body until the only sound you are focused on is the sound of your own breathing. You should be feeling much calmer and centered than when you sat down.
Trying new music. Listening to music causes your brain to release dopamine, but studies show that this effect gets a boost when we listen to music we haven’t heard before. It also builds new neural networks in the brain. Try listening to types of music that your brain is unfamiliar with, music from different genres and cultures, like sitar music, or music based on Pythagorean or Solfeggio tuning. Some music composers have created music using specific frequencies, harmonic patterns and binaural beats that when combined can entrain the brain into a synchronized brainwave state conducive for relaxation, meditation, focus or creativity, depending on the frequencies used. A quick search on YouTube for “Binaural Beats” will bring you a plethora of music to choose from designed to help everything from migraines, anxiety, sleep, or performance.
Singing in the shower, or in the car, or in the kitchen. A simple way to use sound to nourish the body is to use the power of your own voice. When we sing, we not only hear through our ears, we also hear the music from inside our own body as our vocal chords vibrate. Singing releases endorphins and has a positive effect on stress, memory, the heart and the immune system. Many of the benefits of singing come from using the diaphragm to breathe deeply rather than the shallow upper body breathing many of us fall into during a stressful day. Studies show that singers have lower levels of cortisol and singing can instantly lift your mood. Feel free to belt out your favorite tune while cooking dinner tonight and know that you’re improving your health.
By feeding our ears an intentional diet of sound and silence, we can learn even in a chaotic environment to become like the eye of the storm and maintain a quiet mind and coherent state in spite of the noise around us.