Music and our nervous system...
While listening to Dr. Porges talk about the Polyvagal theory, a question was raised about how music relates to our nervous system. The mind blowing easy and obvious answer was that music is a safe way to experience the world (inserts many exclamation points here !!!!!!!! and thank you, Dr. P!)
It reminds me of how one may experience war while listening to Shostakovich without having to crawl under any furniture and hide, or how I accessed universal love through Bach's fugues (don't judge me) when Covid first hit, and how it instigated a sense of connection and structure with the past and the present in a time of isolation and unpredictability.
And also!! why romantic love songs / Country western music are so popular: it saves and protects us from having to expose our own vulnerability of having to say the "scary" words to another in real life. Similar stuff may be experienced from reading books or watching a movie I imagine, but music invites a more visceral, direct path, surpassing the cerebral translation of actual words. These are safe ways to nourish, activate, or calm our neurons.
So, here is a gift that will hopefully vibrate and pluck your vagal neurons today.