Making our own music and singing are essential to our sense of security

How can we optimise feelings of safety? Not by rigid control, but by listening to body signals (based on neurobiology) and training to integrate these feelings and experiences. Music appears to be essential for this.

In the Polyvagal theory By prof Stephen Porges is neuroception defined as the subconscious system of detecting hazards and feeling safe and evaluating risk. Activating the social engagement system leads to autonomic balance in the Autonomic Nervous System (measurable with HRV biofeedback).

There are several ways in which this can be achieved:

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• breathing with flank breathing (well known in the music world)
• soft humming (like rocking a child to sleep)
• singing (causing long exhalations to lead to activation of the vagus nerve)
• prosody, the intonation of the voice expressing emotions
• trumpet playing
• resonant breathing with HRV biofeedback or breathing guidance
• smile

So music in healthcare facilities and concert halls, music education in schools is relevant not only for cultural development but also for building our system of safety, social engagement and stress management. Read below how we came to this conclusion. 

Thinking and being

The role security plays in our lives is of great importance. Therefore, in this article, we want to focus on a scientific approach to feelings of security from the perspective of neurobiology. In many ways, our culture has subordinated bodily sensations to thought processes ('I think therefore I am', Descartes). It is possible that words we use to describe safety do not match the way we as humans physically experience safety. Within our healthcare, could we transform from control and registration towards learning to listen to body signals and deal with them effectively?

The neurobiology of feelings of safety was taken up as a topic by US professor of psychiatry Professor Stephen Porges in the 1980s. He then developed the polyvagal theory. Since then, new ideas on the integration of body and mind, emotional, mental and physical, have resurfaced in abundance.

Variable heart rate

Prof Porges put heart rate variability (HRV) on the map as an indicator of safe mode, balance in the autonomic nervous system.

The body has a clever system to constantly return to stable equilibrium (homeostasis). The autonomic nervous system has two main branches: on the one hand, the sympathetic nervous system, associated with activation, energy mobilisation, or the accelerator. The other branch is the vagus nerve (formerly called parasympathetic nervous system), associated with braking, with restorative and vegetative metabolic functions. Too much stress, trauma, anxiety and panic has over-activated the sympathetic nervous system, and can damage the functioning of the vagus nerve. We now know that breath, as well as music, can be used to restore balance to the autonomic nervous system: autonomic balance.

Balance sheet

Breathing in the resonant frequency (5 breaths per minute, or 5.5 or 6 or 4.5) and breathing out longer than breathing in achieves autonomic balance, for example with the app Respriroguide Pro or biofeedback devices. There have been more than 4,000 studies on methods of heart rhythm variability (HRV) biofeedback, which have been found to be very successful in depression, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, burnout and prevention of cardiovascular disease (Blase et al 2016; Gevirtz, 2014; Blase,2018), but in this article, we want to focus mainly on breath and music.

We have a very ingenious system in our body that perceives whether we are in a safe environment or an unsafe environment: the autonomic nervous system. Porges in his polyvagal theory calls this process of perceiving hazards neuroception (Porges,2003; Porges,2018). Our cognitive assessments of risk are secondary to our instinctive reactions to people and environmental si- tuations.

Whether someone feels safe depends on three conditions:

• the autonomic nervous system may not be in a state that supports defence.
• the social engagement system is activated (autonomous balance sheet).
• safe cues should be detected via neuroception (e.g. prosodic vocalisation, positive facial expressions). Prosody is the intonation of a voice that expresses emotions.

Fences

Instead of demarcating security using fences, metal detectors and surveillance techniques, polyvagal theory proves our body's internal sensitivity, which assesses security through regulation of our autonomic nervous system. So instead of rigid control, focusing on mastery is important, and instead of fear and control processes, building sensitivity and reliance on intuition in conjunction with social engagement.

The process of neuroception does not always go well. In poor neuroception, a person may detect risks when they are not there.

Pleasant life

Training and building the positive experience to stay in autonomous balance are key, not only in psychotherapy and trauma treatment but also in pleasant living in a social community and resolving mutual conflicts. How do we move from control to sensitivity and trust intuition and body responses. How do we change the overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system to a balance between vagus nerve and sympathetic nervous system.

Activation (and over-activation) of the sympathetic nervous system puts the body in the mode of fight/flight and creates risk of behaviour such as (often unwanted) violence, swearing, careless use of words, crossing boundaries of morality or conscience.

In autonomic balance, boundaries are sensed well, a more appropriate choice of words is often used and distance or rapprochement is sought in social ways. When our nervous system detects safety, it is no longer defensive. In healthy development and upbringing, children and adults are in autonomic balance for much of the time. In trauma, stress and anxiety and circumstances where social norms are taken less seriously we experience overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system, and thus much more defensive responses.

System

The social involvement system is shown in this diagram. It consists of the consciously controlled (somato-)motor component (efferent nerve cells, which conduct consciously controlled impulses from the central nervous system to the muscles) and the heart and bronchi, which is called viscero-motor component (viscero = unconscious). With heart rhythm and breath, we can bring the nervous system into autonomic balance, as we wrote earlier. And with a smile, friendly voice, singing, music, sound through the larynx and head movements, we can also influence the social engagement system of someone else and ourselves. So it is a combination of conscious and unconscious processes, and the moment we develop that body awareness, we can manage the social engagement system more positively.

This knowledge is not soft or floaty but neurobiological knowledge, which has been known in science for more than 20 years but has not yet penetrated society as much. To measure is to know and in this field much has been measured with HRV biofeedback measurements and studies conducted in more than ten thousand studies.

Breathe

Here is a description of the various ways by which the vagus nerve is stimulated. Many of these ways are well known in the music world:

1. Flank breathing stimulates the vagus nerve and inhibits the sympathic nerve. This involves relaxing the psoas muscle, the muscle connected to the diaphragm (David Berceli, Trauma Release Exercises). In flank breathing, you create space (emptiness). Then inhale by releasing and letting the lungs do their natural work.
2. Gentle humming activates the vagus nerve through the larynx, and gentle tightening of the pyramidalis (below the navel) causes the diaphragm to bulge back towards the lungs, creating a natural but controlled flow of air outwards. Humming is important because it is more sensitive.
3. Singing requires slow exhalation, training the engagement and disengagement of the vagal brake while meanwhile controlling the muscles of the face and head to produce the modulated vocalisations we recognise as vocal music. With the neural regulation of the muscles in the face, the middle ear muscles for listening and the muscles of the larynx and pharynx, the entire social engagement system is trained. Through art practice, the unconscious, feeling and cognition are connected. Inhale as if smelling a flower.
4. Prosody, the intonation in the voice that expresses emotions. When the voice lacks prosody, when someone's voice is less modulated and sounds monotonous, we wonder if something is wrong (dangerous?). Prosody depends on the neural regulation of the muscles of the larynx and pharynx.
5. When playing the trumpet, just as with the voice, feeling contact can be made. Relaxing and making emotional contact with the lower back and tailbone automatically leads to better focus, control and concentration. This causes activation of the vagus nerve and, together with vocalisation and imagination, creates a naturally beautiful trumpet sound. Many trumpet players tilt their pelvis slightly as soon as they want to play higher. By playing trumpet from relaxation, rhythmically the notes naturally fall into place, sound automatically in the imagination. Playing the trumpet from strength and sympathetic dominance is not going to create this mechanism. Porges describes that young animals play with each other to learn to recognise the difference between play and danger. This is the same experience as art and art education. It involves learning, discovery, experience and observation, and that leads to insight.

The so-called social engagement system is a method further developed by Prof Stephen Porges and at the Kinsey Institute for Trauma and Autism and is now used all over the world. It involves activation with music, breath, HRV training, prosody and singing, taking essential steps in the treatment of trauma and autism with the basis of restoring a weakly functioning vagus nerve. It is also relevant in stress-related disorders and actually for a healthier and better world. 

Music education

This is why music education is so important for healthy personal development and for prevention. It is not only healthier, but also more effective, if in our social institutions we start to transition from rigid control to learning processes and training sensitivity to the signals of the autonomic nervous system, the signals of safety and danger. It is relevant to embed this socially, for instance in educational and care institutions. We therefore advocate complementing stress management training with HRV biofeedback, working with music and prosody exercises.

We often don't realise how many of the signals our nervous system receives trigger defence responses. If we manage to reduce these kinds of stimuli, our nervous system will no longer react hyperalert and the sense of security, so important for healing processes, will become firmly established. It is important to be able to allow ourselves to become aware of what we experience sensorially and to shape our lives from this awareness. Experiencing the right and personal balance in our autonomic nervous system is crucial, not only for us personally, but also for our environment and perhaps for our social system. 

Literature

• Berceli D., Evaluating the effects of stress reduction excercises employing mild tremors: a pilot study (dissertation). Arizona State University,2009.
• Blase, K., et al, Effectiveness of cardiac rhythm variability biofeedback as an adjunct in treatment of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder.
• Journal of Psychiatry, 2016, 292-300.
• Blase, K., Balancing the autonomic nervous system yourself with your heart rhythm. Journal of Integrative Medicine TIG, 2018, 20-25.
• Hendricks (1991), Radiance, Breathwork, Movement & Body-centred Psychotherapy.
• Jascke, Honing, Scherder, (2018) Longitudinal analysis of music education on executive functions in primary school children. Frontiers in Neuroscience 12 (103).
• Porges, (1992) Vagal tone: a physiologic marker of stress vulnerability. Pediatrics 90(3), 498-504.
• Porges, (2007) The polyvagal perspective. Biological Psychology, 74(2), 116-43.
• Porges, (2011) The polyvagal theory neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication and self-regulation. Norton ed. 2011, Man ed. 2020.
• Porges, The Polyvagal Theory and the transformative experience of security. Publisher Man,2019
• Vickhoff, et al, (2013) Music determines heart rate variability of singers. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 334.