How Can Sound Help Decision-Making?
Entering Heart & Soul
The short answer: we can use sound, both musical and “vibrational” to help put us in a state of mind that will facilitate our decision-making process.
We all have the experience of sound affecting our mood, Through music we may become joyful, nostalgic, outraged or inspired. There’s good reason why massage therapists don’t play heavy metal during your session, and why dance clubs don’t play recordings of bells and gentle rain. Music has the power to shift our attention and mindset quickly.
I mention “vibrational” sound because we don’t necessarily need, or even want sound that is organized in the form of music. Very simple sounds, like rainwater tapping on the pavement, or the pure tone of a crystal bowl singing can also very quickly and strong impact our minds and hearts. Sometimes “music” is too organized and keeps us in our conventional thinking and remembering minds which can actually get in our way. Fortunately there are many ways to create beautiful, calming and mind-opening sounds to set us up “listen” holistically to our hearts and minds.
Like meditation this is a deep and vast area and you will find more in-depth content here on the site. I do want to mention one other way of using sound, which is what is called “binaural beats”. Our brains emit electromagnetic waves in the process of carrying out their business, and the nature (frequency) of these waves varies depending on the type of work our brains are doing. There are “alpha” waives being emitted when we are busy thinking in a conventional way (e.g. planning, problem solving, communicating with others) and “delta” waves when we are in deep sleep. “Theta” waves are emitted when we are engaged in creative and focused (think in-the-zone) activities. The labels alpha, delta, theta, are just conventional labels assigned to specific frequencies so don’t have to talk about the 10-20 Hertz range or the 0-9 Hertz range when discussing them. It turns out we can coax our brain into an alpha mode or a delta mode by playing specific tones. This is a simplification of the topic just to introduce you to it and set the stage for using binaural beats.
Take a listen to the following recording and see how it affects your mood and state of mind. Taking fully into consideration that there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to sound, what is pleasant to one person may very well be annoying to another.