Sound and Emotion

Have you ever noticed how intimately sound and emotion are connected? Have you ever hurt yourself without saying 'ouch!' or something like it? Have you noticed how well one of the infamous 'four letter words' accompanies anger, frustration or rage? Celebrating just isn't the same without a yippee! Or hooray! And what about an 'oooooo' when pleasantly surprised, or a scream when terrified? Laughter is accompanied by all kinds of emotions, even attempts to cover up emotions. Have you ever burst into spontaneous song (or humming) when absolutely thrilled or excited?

Emotions move us. If you look at the word like this, e-motion, notice that most of word is motion. Emotion needs to move through us. But this isn't always the case. Sometimes emotions are repressed and get stuck in our bodies.

So let's take a look at the biology of emotions. Candace Pert's work gives us a clear picture of how emotions work and move in the body. In her book, "Molecules of Emotion" she states:

"The point I am making is that your brain is extremely well integrated with the rest of your body at a molecular level, so much so that the term mobile brain is an apt description of the psychosomatic network through which intelligent information travels from one system to another. Every one of the zones, or systems, of the network ' the neural, the hormonal, the gastrointestinal, and the immune ' is set up to communicate with one another, via peptides and messenger-specific peptide receptors. Every second, a massive information exchange is occurring in your body. Imagine each of these messenger systems possessing a specific tone, humming a signature tune, rising and falling, waxing and waning, binding and unbinding, and if we could hear this body music with our ears, then the sum of these sounds would be the music that we call the emotions. As we have seen, the neuropeptides and their receptors are the substrates of the emotions, and they are in constant communication with the immune system, the mechanism through which health and disease are create. My Research has shown me that when emotions are expressed ' which is to say that the biochemicals that are the substrate of emotion are flowing freely ' all systems are united and made whole. When emotions are repressed, denied, not allowed to be whatever they may be, our network pathways get blocked, stopping the flow of the vital feel-good, unifying chemicals that run both our biology and our behavior. This, I believe, is the state of unhealed feeling we want so desperately to escape from. My research has shown me that the body can and must be healed through the mind, and the mind can and must be healed through the body. Your body is your subconscious mind and you can't heal it by talk alone."

We are all familiar with the adrenaline (a peptide) charge we experience with certain situations, especially if we perceive them as threatening. As we repeat the story of this experience to ourselves (over and over) and to anybody else who will listen, we continue to experience the charge. The body does not know the difference between the real experience and the imagined one. Not only that, Ms. Pert's research also shows that maintaining a barrage of emotional (peptide) charge in the body can alter the peptide receptors. That means not only that this emotional charge becomes addictive, returning the receptors to their normal state can be challenging. The movie, "What the Bleep do we Know," has an enlightening animation of how this happens.

So we end up with our thoughts creating emotional blocks, stuck patterns and possibly disease. If you get to the stage where you decide to create a change, there is good news. Although most of this information network works at an unconscious level, we can enter it consciously at will. And it will respond. Sound, particularly your voice, and sound with visualization work at the level of mind, body and emotion simultaneously. The "story" never needs to enter the picture.