The Power of Your Summer Soundtrack

“Summertime… and the livin’ is easy.”

The classic Gershwin tune has been reinvented by legends from Ella Fitzgerald to Janis Joplin. There are countless songs we might associate with summer. To this day, I cannot hear “Fame” without imagining the iconic movie scene from one of my favorite childhood summers.

We often associate music with these sun-drenched days of pool hangs, road trips, or leisurely afternoons in the shade. Whether your vibe is Dua Lipa or The Doobie Brothers, this warm and vibrant season invites its own annual playlist. 

Perhaps your summer soundtrack leans more toward nature’s sweet song of crashing waves, roaring thunder, rushing rivers, chirping crickets, or rustling leaves dancing on a breeze.

Sound has the power to transform our biological and emotional responses.

It intensifies our experiences and ignites our memories.

Music can deepen our human connection and integrate us with our own and others’ cultural and historical influences.

As one of our earliest human experiences, we are first exposed to sound around 18 weeks after conception. Safe in the womb, we encounter the rhythmic beating of our mother’s heart and the resonant vibration of her voice. 

Some sounds are primal and seem organically related in phenomenal ways. The whooshing sound of blood we hear coursing through our mother’s body in utero is remarkably similar to the ambient noise heard by ocean divers in the depths of the sea and the cosmic noise recorded from the far reaches of outer space.

Sound can comfort and reassure us, or alert and warn us of imminent threat.

It holds tremendous power to connect us with nature, to transcend time, and to heal and restore our body and mind.

The longest cranial nerve in our body, known as the vagus (Latin for “wandering”), runs between our brain stem and our gut. It serves as a communication super highway passing through nearly every major organ providing critical biofeedback to and from the brain. This nerve directly influences the parasympathetic branch of our nervous system which is responsible for restorative functions such as the body’s immune, digestive, and reproductive systems. 

The vagus also communicates with the striated muscles of our face and neck, to include the ear and the larynx. Evidence indicates we might improve our vagal tone, and thus our body’s restorative abilities, by stimulating our auricular nerve (associated with the ear) or vibrating our vocal cords.

Perhaps jamming out in the kitchen while you chop veggies or singing in the shower to your favorite playlist is actually good for your health. Not only does it have the potential to influence your mood, it can also invoke a sense of (parasympathetic) well-being and safety.

The rhythm, tone, and vibration of music can have a profound impact on our physiology:

* lowering blood pressure

* reducing anxiety

* improving mental focus

* enhancing our quality of sleep

Stephen Porges, Ph.D., who has brought an understanding of the vagus nerve into the mainstream, emphasizes the value of how sound can activate our social engagement system. When we hear the sound of a soothing and familiar voice, sing collectively with others at a concert, or simply hum a favorite tune, we cue our nervous system to a sense of safety. He recommends prosodic (melodious) music to bring calm to the body. 

Music can also help facilitate healing experiences from events in which safety has been compromised. Renowned trauma expert, Bessel van der Kolk, suggests rhythmic music can help resolve traumatic experiences by restoring function to areas of the brain negatively impacted by trauma.

Especially when experienced collectively, song and movement can reignite feelings of pleasure and engagement following a traumatic experience.

Listening to music with imperceptible discrepancies in sound frequency can also produce interesting benefits. Known as binaural beats, this is best experienced through headphones, in which slightly different tones are played in each ear. Evidence suggests this auditory experience may result in improved mood, cognition, creativity, and memory. 

Beyond the tone, rhythm, and frequency of music, the accompanied words also have a powerful influence on us. Throughout history, music has been used as a means of storytelling. We connect with lyrics that educate, resonate, and inspire us. As the recent Taylor Swift tour mania demonstrates, musicians speak to our souls when they share their own experiences of heartbreak, victory, shame, desire, loss, humor, rage, or simply the urge to shake a tail feather.  

Whether it is the lyrics or the composition itself, the potential to evoke and intensify our emotional experience strengthens our memory associated with specific music. This connection with memory may contribute to how people who suffer from aphasia (the loss of speech) due to stroke, dementia, or Parkinson’s are sometimes still able to sing, particularly songs from their youth.

Music transports us to another time and place.

Even decades later, we can revisit significant moments of our lives and gain access to the emotional range of our experiences from comforting to distressing, sentimental to celebratory.  

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Musical Instrument Museum in Arizona which hosts a collection of thousands of instruments from over 200 countries around the world. The diversity of instruments and musical styles is overwhelming. Yet, the cultural soundtracks are strikingly similar and have the powerful capacity to transcend global divides. In this way, music can be our bridge in the incredible shared experience of being human. 

The sense of interconnectedness music offers can be experienced more locally when we take a musical trip down memory lane with our friends from high school, or congregate at a summer concert in the park, or sit and listen to the sound of crashing ocean waves at the beach.

What is your soundtrack this summer? 

Create a meaningful playlist, whether you choose to curate the present moment or reminisce about a time passed.

Experiment with how different tones, tempos and frequencies make you feel (emotionally and physically).

Invite the power of sound to transport and transcend, to comfort and connect, to intensify and inspire.

Sing at the top of your lungs, or hum a tune from your childhood, or just listen with intention to the sounds all around you.