CHAPTER 16
Finding Your Voice—the Way Sound Moves Us
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
For years, neuroscientists believed that music was processed the same way as any other kind of sound. But recent research cited by Steve Connor in The Independent demonstrates that there’s a specific group of neurons in the auditory cortex that are only activated by listening to music, meaning we can distinguish on a cellular level between it and other, non-musical sounds such as speech (which the study authors also connected to a distinct group of neurons).1 This suggests there may be other responses to music in the body and brain that we have not yet discovered.
Of course, music isn’t merely a neurological thing. Has a song ever reduced you to a crying, quivering mess? Or have you been at a show with friends and felt an overwhelming sense of rapture that seems to not only wash over you but entrain the entire crowd into one swaying organism? The affective power of rhythmic sound is one of the reasons it’s universal and present in literally every culture across the globe, regardless of geographic location, economic status, race, etc.
Music is a life force permeating literally every society. It’s as crucial a part of any cultural motif as food, and the best part—it’s also an anti-fragile, renewable resource that only gets more profound under stress. Rhythmic sound has been a facilitator for the optimal functioning of human biology in shamanistic cultures for thousands of years. Archaeologists have found instruments dating back as far as 43,000 years, such as the Divje Babe flute made from the femur of a cave bear found in Slovenia. Think about that: Your ancestors were holed up in caves more than 40,000 years ago while avoiding being prey and still felt an innate urge to carve a wild animal’s leg bone into a sound maker for their own wellness.
Music is the perfect translation for the human experience, free of the constraints and potential deception entwined within spoken language. When a person feels understood at the deep, visceral level that only the undefined languages of touch, dance, and music can access, the physical body and psyche begin to relax, granting permission to be taken on a journey of feeling instead of the necessity to always drive the train.
We also have the non-musical sounds like the soothing burble of a mountain stream or the cacophony of police sirens, honking cars, and construction equipment in a city. The sonic component of every environment has an impact on our nervous system, mood, and, like music, even our cellular biology. In this chapter, we’ll compare and contrast different aural environments, and also give you some ways to fine-tune your home and headspace so you can benefit from calming sounds while recovering from overexposure to the harsh ones.
HEALING SOUNDS
A study of 6,000 adult Americans found that 51 percent of women and 60 percent of men had suffered at least one life-altering traumatic event in their lifetime, with 8 percent struggling with chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).2 Over the past decade, we’ve started to see alternative treatments to medication gaining traction in both military and civilian populations. One of the most popular and effective is musical intervention. Though there have been only four major clinical studies to empirically investigate the clinical impact of sound, they all suggested that music helps PTSD sufferers avoid fixating on recollections of their traumatic experiences, reduces perceived stress and anxiety, boosts self-confidence, and lowers levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Group-based music therapy was also shown to improve social connections, which creates further calm through an increased sense of belonging to a caring community.3
So how exactly does all this work at the neurological level? One of the mechanisms is believed to be the way that music calms down the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for modulating fear and anger. This area can become hyper-sensitized during repeated exposure to high-stress events, such as soldiers who are in firefights day after day for an entire tour of duty, or a lawyer who works eighty-hour weeks. Rhythmic sound seems to reset the amygdala back to a more normal baseline by taking it out of a high-alert state.4
It has also been proven that listening to and performing music increases blood flow to the ventral striatum, orbitofrontal cortex, and other areas of the brain involved in regulating emotion and reward-based responses. Simultaneously, both the creation and consumption of sound triggers a release of dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, and other pleasure-related hormones, which can help replace sadness with joy.5 A meta-analysis even found listening to music and playing an instrument can trigger neurogenesis, which is a fancy term for the creation of new brain cells.6
ALIGN YOURSELF
If you’re feeling stressed out or overwhelmed, purposefully set aside some time to play your instrument of choice (this includes the oldest human instrument, your voice box). Or stack some tension-relieving techniques such as walking outside in the fresh air under the sun with some of your favorite music in your earbuds. Your body enjoys stacking wellness variables; take advantage of that and bring your music outside. Perhaps take your shoes off, and maybe you could even go nuts and pass a smile to another human (sounds a lot like a music festival; no wonder they’re so popular).
YOUR EMOTIONAL REMOTE CONTROL
“Did you know that our soul is composed of harmony?”
—Leonardo da Vinci
Singing transforms a passive experience—listening to music—into an active, participatory one, literally making you part of the song. It can help you empathize more with the feeling the singer is conveying, or you might come up with your own emotional take on a song. Sometimes we sing to lift ourselves up, as in a scene from Night at the Roxbury, and at other times we’re feeling more contemplative and an Amy Winehouse–style melody is better to navigate through the introspective terrain.
The various tones produced in song are like keys for unlocking specific states of mind. Here’s an interesting excerpt from The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy by Deb Dana on the way sound conducts the state of your nervous system:
Through a Polyvagal perspective we know the autonomic nervous system responds to sound. Certain frequencies activate ventral vagal safety and others signal danger and a move into sympathetic or dorsal vagal survival responses. Low frequency sounds bring a neuroception of danger with an autonomic reminder of long ago predators. Your client’s focus shifts from social connection to survival actions. High frequency sounds take your clients out of connection into concern as their attention shifts to the source of the sound. Unpredictable sounds from outside the therapy office door can activate protective reactions.7
This paragraph is geared toward therapists but relates to all human interaction. You can look at the power of sound as an emotional remote control and your present state as the image projected on the screen. Here’s how the controller works: Choose your desired state, find music that matches said state, belt it out (dance along with it, if you prefer the image to be in HD), and witness your internal channel change.
Listening to what Dr. Stephen Porges refers to as a prosodic voice (one with pleasing tone and rhythm) is certainly good for you, but you also want to engage your own voice prosody to get all the soothing sonic benefits! By activating the muscles in the back of your throat, singing stimulates the vagus nerve, which triggers a relaxation response via the parasympathetic (rest-digest) nervous system. And that blissful feeling you sometimes get when you’re singing like nobody’s watching? It comes from the release of the pleasure hormone oxytocin, which bursting into song like a morning lark triggers.8
MECHANICS OF SINGING AND SPEAKING
Remember in Chapter 1 when we discussed that your posture is connected to how you feel? Well, it’s also foundational for how you sing and speak! Your body is an instrument of expression, and the richness of the tones projected is a product of the shape and tune of the instrument (your postural patterns).
Your voice can project you to be strong, confident, and stable, or weak, unsure, and out of control based on the tone, rhythm, pitch, and pacing of your language. As we’ve learned, it doesn’t just affect the way other people feel about you—you’re literally tuning your own nervous system as you speak (or sing)! When your body is in alignment, your vocal cords are set up to project across a large room or speak with confidence in an intimate space.
There’s good news: You don’t need to learn a special singing posture, because the Aligned Standing principles we discussed in Chapter 6 are consistent with what you’d learn from a singing coach. In case you haven’t noticed the pattern, the fundamental principles of moving well discussed in Part II are consistent with most any modality of movement, including speech and song!
Here are a few postural pointers to help align your voice:
Feet about shoulder-width apart
Slight micro-bend in knees
Neutral pelvis (Try squeezing your butt muscles and notice what happens to your pelvic orientation: This will be closer to neutral. Then try to relax your butt while maintaining the position.)
Level your ribs to be stacked over your pelvis to avoid the ribs flaring upward.
Relax the shoulders and hands. (Think of your hands as tools to guide your vocal expression, like a musical conductor manipulating a baton to guide an orchestra.)
Imagine a string is slightly pulling the back of your head upward toward the sky to lengthen your spine.
ALIGN YOURSELF
I learned this exercise from my friend, the Broadway star Carrie Manolakos, during a singing lesson recently. In order to train breath capacity to hold longer notes (which she does like no one else I’ve heard), she recommended this technique: Start in the Aligned Standing position and place your hands on the sides of your ribs. Take your largest nose breath in by expanding your ribs out to the sides, and as slowly as you can, begin breathing out all of your air, making a shh sound with your mouth. You can also do this same technique while slowly rolling your spine down into a forward fold and repeating on the way back up to standing.
KEEP HUMMING ALONG
Certain kinds of meditation involving humming and chanting can also trigger positive physical and emotional effects, due to the resonance of the vibrations created. One Indian brain imaging study found using the “om” chant during yoga quiets the region of the brain associated with depression.9 Another yoga humming technique called Bhramari involves buzzing like a bee. A paper published in the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine found this time of pranayama reduces blood pressure, encourages parasympathetic recovery, and reduces stress.10
The same paper noted people who hummed reported feeling blissful and said their mind felt refreshed afterward. This is in large part because humming on the exhale lengthens the overall duration of each breath and reduces the number of breaths per minute; it helps to rebalance the autonomic nervous system and encourage a transition from feeling stressed out to relaxed.11
To tap into these benefits, simply breathe in through your nose and then hum as you breathe out through you nose.
TECHNIQUE
Bhramari Pranayama
A brief disclaimer: This one looks a little weird—OK, it looks very weird—but it works wonders to calm your nervous system and create a little mental reset. It’s reminiscent of what a child may naturally do when they feel overwhelmed and need to calm down (it’s interesting how often the natural self-care practices of kids and animals will look a lot like what adults pay big money to learn). It’s really simple to do. Start by using your thumbs to close your ears by lightly pressing the cartilage of your ear over the ear canal. Then with both ears plugged, close your eyes and take a full breath in through your nose and make an mmmm sound for as long as you have air to make it happen. Repeat this six times and check in with how you feel.
Piping Up to Wind Down
Have you ever wondered why they do that long-winded “om” at the beginning and end of some yoga classes? Yes, it’s said to represent the original sound of the universe. That’s cool, but who the heck really knows what the initial sound of creation was like in the first place, and how does that help me pay my bills or finally get me into a handstand?
More tangibly for your day-to-day use, you’re activating those same restorative parasympathetic switches in your body via emphasizing a long out-breath while exhaling any stagnant bits of air in your lungs. The sound is actually pronounced A-U-M, with the M part being a closed-mouth mmmm sound, followed by silence. Yes, each of the distinct syllables (including the silence afterward) have deep symbolic meanings, but for the sake of this book, let’s stick to its physiological effects. The creation of each sound causes the reverberation to be focused on a different part of your head and thorax like a biologically built-in sonic massage system. Not to mention, the effects of this tradition along with other forms of breath practice (pranayama, if you prefer yoga speak) have been scientifically shown to improve pulmonary function, increase mental alertness, relieve stress, and even resolve depression via stimulation of the vagus nerve!12
ALIGN YOURSELF
Next time your significant other drags you to a yoga class, you can appreciate the science-based benefits of the long and at times perhaps slightly awkward group humming experience that may ensue. Start integrating the same principles while you’re driving or any time you’re feeling a little stressed: Simply belt out a few long-winded hums or oms, and feel free to explore a variety of pitches while doing so, then check back with how you’re feeling.
MUSIC AND MEMORY
Ever heard couples claiming, “This is our song,” when a certain tune starts piping in through your local coffee shop’s speakers? Of course you have. And you’ve likely got several songs that you’d claim as your own, too. Each one is probably tied to a different time, place, and/or person. We can link music in our minds to positive periods in our lives—like going to a summer festival with your high school besties (the kind of fond remembrance that psychologists call a “reminiscence bump”)—or sad ones, such as a relationship breakup or the passing of a loved one. Consciously, we comprehend that songs are tied to emotions, locations, seasons of life, and so on. Yet in the subconscious mind, the associations run much deeper, like a subterranean river.
Rather than just involving one part of your noggin, listening to and performing music fires up extensive neural networks and lights up huge swathes of the brain like one of those satellite photos showing the twinkling lights of big cities against the blackened expanse of the night sky. When we have a recollection prompted by hearing a familiar oldie, fMRI scans show that the prefrontal cortex bursts into life. The more vivid the memory, the more activity is sparked in this part of the brain. In an article for Psychology Today, Daniel Bergland explained that listening to music also triggers a potent response in areas tied to creativity, cognitive processing, and even movement.13 The latter hints at why music and dance go together so naturally—they’re literally hardwired together in a dynamic neural circuit in our brains.
Collective singing can be just as potent. Harmonizing in a group, whether in a choir, at a concert, or during a road trip with your buddies à la Harry and Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber, has been found to increase heart rate variability (HRV)—more variability is better, because it indicates fuller recovery from stressors and a greater balance in the autonomic nervous system than low variability. Interestingly, it wasn’t just the singers’ voices that synchronized, but also their heart rates and HRV.14 Group singing is also good for your mood. A six-month study in England discovered that those who participated in a weekly singing group improved their overall mental health and reported feeling more positive and able to cope with their problems.15
One of my favorite slightly outlandish activities is the Monday Night Kirtan here in Santa Monica, where folks spend the evening doing call-and-response singing along with dancing. After a couple hours it feels a whole lot like the purgative effects of many spiritual practices, just sweatier. Song seems to supersede religious dogma and strike a chord deeper than intellectual thought—it’s like a nameless, faceless, deep web connecting all of humanity. Our only responsibility is to trust it and dive in.
ALIGN YOURSELF
Find five songs you love that make you feel energized, and make a playlist. (You can even call it your Align Playlist!) Listen to it in the mornings or when you’re doing some of the other movements in the book. Change it and update it with new music as new songs strike your fancy, but starting a positive association between the moves in this book and your musical experience will help you stick to the habit and feel great doing it. And, per that same Psychology Today article, be sure to dance if you want an even richer musical experience.
SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE?
“Dance is the hidden language of the soul.”
—Martha Graham
There’s a reason that, like music, dance is universal: It’s a way to nonverbally communicate powerful emotions, demonstrate cultural flair (think of those debonair Brits with their Lambeth walk or fiery Latinos and the flamenco), and let loose. A twenty-one-year study conducted by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York discovered that while reading reduced the chance of developing dementia by 30 percent and doing crosswords and similar puzzles by 47 percent, dancing was the most effective preventive measure, reducing the incidence of dementia by a whopping 76 percent.16
In a commentary on the study, Stanford University dance instructor Richard Powers explained the reason for this brain-protecting power of the polka, waltz, and any other style: “Dancing integrates several brain functions at once—kinesthetic, rational, musical, and emotional—further increasing your neural connectivity.”17
Another paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that while physical exercise and a free-form dance class both improved mood by around 25 percent, the latter had a greater impact on participants’ creativity. The authors suggest, “The slightly greater improvements in creativity after aerobic dance could possibly be due to the nature of the exercise, which allows more freedom of movement than the regimented aerobic workout.”18 So while there’s nothing wrong with a structured workout, you might also do well to cut loose more often and dance like nobody’s watching.
ALIGN YOURSELF
You don’t have to become Fred Astaire or Shakira to reap the brain- and body-boosting benefits of dance. My experience is that dance classes are very open and welcoming to all levels and body types of movers. Try starting with a partner dance like bachata or tango for the social engagement or Zumba, West African, dance hall, break dancing, or hip-hop for a more physically demanding experience.
THE SOUND OF SILENCE
Every faith tradition refers to and encourages the combination of silence and solitude. In the Bible, we are told, “Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him.” (Luke 6:12–13) Buddhist texts also contain frequent references to silence and solitude, with the Buddha saying in the Sutta Nipata, “One should wander solitary as a rhinoceros horn.”19 Elsewhere in Buddhist literature, we encounter the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, whose name means “The one who listens deeply to the sounds of the world.” The only way he is able to hear these sounds? Silence.20
It’s all too easy to confuse solitude and loneliness, so let’s take a moment to distinguish between them. Solitude occurs when someone deliberately seeks out quiet time by themselves and is a positive experience. In contrast, loneliness is a state of isolation that is typically associated with negative emotions like sadness and depression.
Creating space in one’s life for idle moments of observation and appreciation is an indication you have control, instead of being a slave to continually appearing “busy” to yourself and those around you. Sure, you could go on a monastic retreat to ensure silence—but no matter how frenetic and loud your life is, I’m betting you can steal away to a quiet place for at least a little while most days or begin to observe the silent spaces between the noise of the day. I heard world renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma once say “Music happens between the notes.” Is it possible we can become sensitive enough to our surroundings as we move through the world to notice the spaces between the sounds and take solace in them?
ALIGN YOURSELF
In an interview Dan Rather did with Mother Teresa, he asked, “What do you say during your prayers?” She responded, “I listen.” Dan then asked, “What does God say?” She responded, “He listens.” Next time you’re out for a walk or even sitting in traffic, truly listen to the rhythm of the ambient sounds you likely previously took for granted. Can you detect a pattern in surrounding birds chirping (biophony), people honking (anthrophony), or wind blowing (geophony)? Pay closer attention to the sounds and sensations inside your own body as well. It’s almost like you’re extending the shavasana part of a yoga class (the bit at the end when you lie down and observe your breath and body) into the rest of your day. If you pay extra close attention, you may hear the world in a more melodic way than you’ve ever noticed before. Imagine what a shame it would be to make it through your whole life and realize you never listened attentively enough to actually hear the music.
MOTION OF THE OCEAN
It’s not just performing music that can relax us. Listening to nature’s inbuilt soundtrack can have similar positive effects. I remember when a dear friend’s mother was struggling with insomnia related to her arthritic pain, she bought two nature CDs—one of ocean waves lapping on the shore and another of thunderstorms—and listened to them every night before bed. The result? No more insomnia. Science shows she might have been on to something, particularly when it came to the sounds of the sea. “Slow, whooshing noises are the sounds of non-threats, which is why they work to calm people,” Orfeu Buxton, an associate professor of biobehavioral health at Pennsylvania State University, told the Live Science website. “It’s like they’re saying: ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry.’”21
ALIGN YOURSELF
You can bring the soothing sounds of running water into your home by making a small investment in a tabletop fountain—$30 on Amazon should do the trick. Also find some soothing playlists on Spotify or, if you’re old school, pick up a couple of those nature CDs I mentioned earlier at your local thrift store. Want a more versatile sonic experience? Then you could grab some Bose Sleepbuds, which come with an app that lets you select among several natural sounds and will pipe them into your ears all night to promote restful slumber.
Alignment Assignment
Notice how your posture affects your tone while communicating. You can practice with singing or humming around your house to avoid weirding anyone out. Explore vocalizing from these three positions:
1. Overextended: Your spine is arching back with your head facing upward and low back arched (Swole or Bendy archetype)
2. Collapsed Forward: Shoulders drooped forward, spine hunched, and knees collapsed inward (Mopey archetype)
3. Aligned: Standing tall in the Aligned Standing position mentioned in Chapter 6 (Aligned archetype)