The Safe and Sound Protocol: Notes on hearing and the felt sense

“Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.” – Haruki Murakami

“There is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.” – Edward Elgar

The experience of music

The wave pulsations of sound have enlivened and soothed humans throughout history. Music can reach through states of disconnection, dementia and even dying to bring soothing and relief into the human experience. A calm and lyrical human voice can soothe a distressed child, or relieve relationship conflict. And yet, often the potential for our hearing to help us calm and soothe our busy bodies (and minds!) is not realized, because of how our hearing changes with injury, illness, emotional trauma and simple life experience. 

Sound effects

The music of the Safe and Sound Protocol changes that. Computer filtered and enhanced songs exercise the tiny muscles of middle ear and restore hearing function through conditioning the muscles. Now sounds that were blocked because of lax muscles are carried deeply into the body. Stimulation of cranial nerves V and VII affects the muscles of the ear, face, mouth and throat. Some impulses go directly to the heart as well and change the heart rate. Impulses from our hearing go to the brainstem and organs via cranial nerve X, the Vagus.

Sense of safety

The ear has been called the ‘organ of feeling.’ The filtered vocal music of the Protocol falls within hearing ranges that signal safety for the human ear. Safety states relax the body as the rhythms of breathing, heart rate and pulsation of the blood through the vessels are made to change. The body feels comfortable, skeletal muscle tension from sympathetic activation diminishes, and the body functions of ‘rest and digest’ begin. Sense information helps us decide if we are safe.

Relaxation effects

Reflexes are movement reactions to sensory information. While listening to the SSP unrecognized chronic reflex patterns may become noticeable. There may be sensations of tensioning, brief pain or small relaxations and tension changes in your face and head. You may experience changes in what you sense in your interior, particularly abdomen and chest. You may ‘rewire your sensorimotor’ patterns. That is because our hearing is part of our alert/reflex system, and in reflex states our bodies are reactive and responding to sound changes by orienting moment to moment. Sense information helps us decide if we are safe.

Energizing

Through our hearing complex waves of energy pulse throughout the vagus and the brainstem, changing habitual impulse patterns to the organs and the senses. Imagine, changing how much energy is being delivered throughout the body through blood, oxygen, digestive products. Eighty percent of the fibers within the vagus carry impulses from the senses to the brain. Senses brighten and also balance, as the body’s responsive tuning can adjust for stimuli that have previously been overwhelming. It is our senses that communicate with our muscles, providing balance, orientation and calibrating movements to the needs of the moment.

Balance can be hard

Still, we are creatures in balance, even if that balance is not optimal. Our body may say “feeling safe and relaxed is not smart, because suddenly things can happen.” This system is on guard at all times. The music says ‘relax’, while the change in felt sense says “something isn’t right.” It takes repeated experiences that relaxation is ok for the body to accept the new messages. As your body is learning this you may need to help it by doing small things that bring safety through your own actions. Here are a few things that you can do to help stimulate the balancing function of the ventral vagus:

Humming, singing

Cold showers

Meditation practice, such as eye rest meditation

Movement practice-such a Feldenkreis

Listening to quiet vocal music, especially female

Low stress, nature, beauty

Bodywork such as face and head massage; craniosacral massage, Jin Shin Jitsu, etc.

Co-regulation with a safe other: cuddling, breathing together, touch

Pressure to the joints in the forms of trampoline, pushing/pulling heavy objects, moving weight

Moderate exercise

The Social Engagment System: The face heart connection

Increased sensory responsiveness enhances awareness of the ‘feeling’ of the body interior and brings more conscious awareness to the messages that the body has been sending. The cranial vagus nerve combines with the accessory cranial nerve, which controls the movement of the muscles of the face, mouth, throat and head. These are the muscles of expression, speech and tone (as well as eating and swallowing). Together they comprise the Social Engagement System (SES), which is critical for communication and our social comfort as humans. As a therapist, I am especially fond of the effect that the SSP has on the SES, as the face becomes mobile, monotonous voice changes to become a more lilting, prosodic and informative. Communication is easier, more congruent and more inviting.

(https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_ways_music_strengthens_social_bonds) Music and connection

(http://www.aliveinside.us/#land) Music with dementia

(https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200708105935.htm) Hearing during dying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxwzCO5sO8o).  The role of tone in conflict

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2560/11/3/036011/meta Vagal stimulus selective to baroreceptors reduce blood pressure in humans.

https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ar.1091390312 There are between 40,000 – 150,000 individual nerve fibers in the vagus nerve bundle.