three years ago I asked a group of
people to you one by one enter a dark
room with sixteen light speakers what I
would call a sonic room I connected them
to a device resembling a lie detector
and I fixed a camera to record their
facial expressions I then asked them to
listen to the following paying close
attention to the sensations felt and any
emotions or memories triggered now let’s
[Music]
at this point you might be aware of some
surprising physical sensations like
blood rushing to your cheeks or
dizziness or chills down your spine or
you might just be busy wondering what
kind of torture is this Who am I and
what Ethics Board approve this classic
school of art but please allow me to
explain myself when I don’t do sonic or
psychological research I’m a cello
player I’ve always been fascinated by
the power of sound to trigger a wide
range of emotions and sensations whether
that’s all in our casual recitals
hedonic bliss and dance clubs or
sickening fright watching Japanese
horror movies I have had music pull me
out of a debilitating depression and it
has helped me induce catharsis many
times to help me to feel my distress
more deeply and understand it so that I
can demystify the anxiety and eventually
overcome it but what is catharsis well
in philosophy in psychoanalytic theory
catharsis is defined as the purging of
pity and fear the shedding of trauma
induced pain an unsuppressed energetic
reaction may be triggered by watching a
Greek track sorry Greek tragedy ha tear
tear jerker movies are some of our most
common outlets for catharsis in the
modern world and music is used for mood
regulation by many so if we need to
ruminate in a depressive state we might
listen to Radiohead or if you want to
feel fragile than angry and eventually
empowered
I really recommend Beyonce’s lemonade
it’s worked for me this is catharsis
it’s what we feel when pain eventually
goes away through the release of tension
and coming to terms with grief if we
refuse to acknowledge our pain or give
ourselves time to grieve and reach a
catharsis then where’s the SAP to build
post-traumatic stress disorder
a fragile volatile state in which
intrusive memories can burst into her
consciousness randomly or triggered by
sound so if the trauma is not fully
processed if we distract ourselves from
the pain delaying a catharsis
this can cause a more prolonged harm a
slow burn of anxiety and depression
but today I’d like to tell you about a
new way in which you can use music for
therapy to trigger catharsis and to
better understand and live with anxiety
you might already retreat away from city
noise or your colleagues chatter by
plugging in your headphones with a
chill-out playlist at the ready the
reason why we do this is so that we can
control our sound environment but this
makes out that the everyday soundscape
is something to be seen as ugly anxiety
inducing something to be blocked out
rather than chill out
my most transformative playlist I use
every day is called fierce and it
features high-energy
emotionally intense power ballads from
Beyonce or Queen RuPaul Charles even
James Bond themes or the noisy abrasive
techno metal hybrids of Death Grips
these musics are all quite extreme and
hyperbolic they synthetically induce
exaggerated emotions at times when I’m
unsettled or I’m numb maybe you listen
to Adele when you need to cry out or
Philip Glass when you study music and
sound has been used manipulatively for
millennia to ensure social cohesion and
elicit religious all with the hymns of
churches or the prayer calls emanating
from mosques
however Sangha is also essential for
capitalism it’s used to sell us products
think of those perfume advertisements
that rely on a rata sighs sensuous
breaths or hypnotic music signs are also
make us empathize with a fictional
character so in mainstream narratives
frightening sound effects like gunshots
lightning strikes or Tigers snarling
convey a fatal threat to the character
and then musical scores with pounding
heartbeats and breathy string
instruments remind us of both the
characters and our own body’s fragility
therapists know it too that sound can be
used to frighten War veterans might play
a virtual visual virtual reality game to
reenact as traumatizing combat scenario
usually with a few gunshot sounds or
ambiences but rarely with sound as the
focus therapists also use sound to heal
and palliative care arvo pärt tabula
rasa has been
it by many terminal AIDS patients now
what is an emotion what you felt earlier
as you listen to that sign escape was
caused by your heartbeat clocking in to
rhythms or intakes of breath at
confusing or shocking sounds but also a
rapid cascade of noodle chemicals mostly
adrenaline cortisol
strangely enough dopamine one that’s
associated with bliss or even prolactin
a soothing you know chemical induced by
listening to sad music your body might
have involuntarily triggered a flight a
fight-or-flight response like this one
first evolved when humans fended for
themselves in the wild and they had to
decide whether it’s fight or flee from a
fatal threat perhaps even triggered by
the sound of a branch snapping revealing
an approaching predator but even when
there are no life-threatening or drastic
traumatic events in our lives we
catastrophize everyday stress if we
don’t take don’t take time to press
pause to process unresolved anxiety
sometimes trigger instinctive reactions
whereas others are learned conditioned
responses an example of an automatic
response is how the high frequency
scraping of nails on a chalkboard
activate the brainstem and make our toes
curl or how a loud sharp sound following
a silence makes us jump
however we each carry a collection of
personally resonant sounds with learned
associations so in my experiment one
participant we imagined her memory of
luckily a non-fatal childhood house fire
when she heard the sound of flames
raging and another even felt pain in the
ankle where stitches have previously
been removed when they heard the sound
of scissors snipping so even if the
sound itself might not seem particularly
abrasive we can easily be conditioned to
react both mentally and physically to
seemingly innocuous sound for example we
might be conditioned to associate the
sound of a slamming door with an
intensely upsetting argument or the
whizzing of bike wheels with an
approaching mugger that’s one of mine
unfortunately
this is like Pavlov’s dog associating
the sound of a bell
with the approach of its dinner so the
dog would salivate even when it was just
the bell sound on its own every time we
hear the sound of a slamming door we
might get an intrusive memory of that
upsetting argument unless we desensitize
ourselves to the sounds by repeating
them or pairing them with Pleasant
harmonious music this soundscape
exposure experience was designed to let
the participant tune in to their own
emotions there is a persistent
instruction for them to evaluate the
strengths of each of their reactions
after every soundscape now as pedantic
and repetitive as that sounds this was
actually a form of psycho education the
anxiety is temporary and our emotional
state is easily influenced as fleetingly
as anxiety can be induced it can recede
maybe even replaced with bliss in a
matter of seconds the environment as a
whole is unique an extended two-hour
session in which the participants
listened attentively a nervous and
anticipation wondering what would happen
next
surrendering to the unknown no screens
no distractions no interruptions
just the sound and their reactions you
might wonder it surely this has been
done before indeed their numerous
exposure therapies such as the visual
virtual reality games or augmented
reality Holograms of phobias or even a
social anxiety sufferer might be led to
a shopping center with a therapist
however there’s a lack of purely sound
based exposure therapy especially one
which is immerses the listener in a
constantly moving womb of real-world
sound blended with emotionally
manipulative music sonic or music
therapy at the moment is mostly used for
distraction or as a painkiller however
if an anxiety sufferer relies on calming
music to distract themselves from a
panic attack
then this only works as a temporary
pacifier and it perpetuates the cyclical
fear of fear catastrophizing the anxiety
symptoms
rather than using sound to numb pain or
distract I actually took the opposite
approach
so I induced temporary discomfort for a
long lasting positive impact now I
decided to make a lot of work for myself
to construct my own sound scapes rather
than using existing music and I locked
myself in this dark windowless sound lab
for six months panning each individual
sound around the room and I collected
many sounds recording in diverse locales
like the vibrant natural signs of
waterfalls and geysers erupting in
Iceland or the densely populated
ambiences in New York City I combed
through entire sound items sound effects
libraries to extract anxiety listing
sounds that were out with my Beach
because I don’t have a collection of
guns or work in a factory
so I also commit and vocal performances
and compose cello and synthesized music
I even asked this dancer if he could
scream and release terrifying drones
underneath this huge bridge just along
the road which certainly gave a few
cyclists a fright you could say I got my
own back to make these song escapes even
more unsettling I panned the signs
around the room feeding between realism
and hyper reality so for a realism if I
wanted to make the listener feel like
they were being cracked up on I would
send the sound of footsteps from behind
them or an absurd scenario I simulated
was that the listener was standing in a
hot frying pan and the sound of bubbling
oil would emerge from the floor yeah it
was a long six months in there and I
used questionnaires to track the
participants subjective emotional
responses but what if participants
didn’t remember every single song that
triggered an emotion
I’ll remember that device resembling a
lie detector I told you about earlier
these sensors allowed me to map spikes
and sweat secretion gasps our pauses and
breathing rates and rises in pulse rates
directly onto the timeline of signs so I
could identify the most potent ones
so what happened to the participants did
they feel better emotionally not
immediately negative emotions increased
by 4% immediately after heating the Sun
escapes but after participants were
given time to recharge move on from
their catharsis and put the
psychoeducation into practice for a week
negative emotions dropped by 12% from
their original emotional state one month
before they experiment so the long-term
emotional drop in negative emotion was
three times the short-term induction of
negative emotion on the day the
long-term benefit outweighed the
short-term distress what about catharsis
well for participants explicitly stated
reported a sense of resolution of
underlying fear trauma or grief as a
result of the sign scape exposure
eventually they did experience catharsis
another sign of catharsis was that tears
were triggered in the sound lab several
times including one instance where
Hospital signs imaginative launched a
participant back to the ward where their
grandparent passed away remarkably the
participant reported that this was a
warm experience of grief when hundreds
of signs are layered there’s a high
chance that at least a few would
resonate with each participants personal
histories and a significant reflection
on the unique approach of soundscape
exposure as a passive and meditative
experience rather than the social
pressure of having to verbalize quite
ambiguous emotions and talk therapy was
that one participant reported often
talking to people about themes of grief
can involve judgment
whereas with sound that’s absent which
makes it easier and safer so remember
those physical sensations from the
fight-or-flight response
blood rushing to your cheeks dizziness
chills down your spine chills down the
spine can be triggered by both musical
bliss or high-pitched abrasive sounds
the same sensation to be triggered by
either positive or a negative stimulus
so you can see that there are some
anxiety symptoms that could maybe be
perceived as positive but we all know
and our everyday lived experience
anxiety symptoms seem invasive
surprising distressing however they are
vital they’re our body’s Way of telling
us that something needs to change that
we need to press pause stop running away
from unresolved traumas and
uncomfortable emotions to confront our
fears sometimes we need help to feel
more deeply an immersive sign escapes
fused with emotionally manipulative
music can provide this kick now I’m
going to see something which may seem
like a very grim conclusion no one can
ever be cured from anxiety it’s an
instinct that keeps us alive what we can
do is educate ourselves about the
benefits of emotional immersion to
understand our anxiety and learn from it
use it to improve our lives and discover
just how resilient we can be so if you
are currently lost in a monotonous
looping cycle of anxiety or depression
instead of tuning out why not tuned into
the noise even amplify it so you can
understand it better the effects might surprise you
people to you one by one enter a dark
room with sixteen light speakers what I
would call a sonic room I connected them
to a device resembling a lie detector
and I fixed a camera to record their
facial expressions I then asked them to
listen to the following paying close
attention to the sensations felt and any
emotions or memories triggered now let’s
[Music]
at this point you might be aware of some
surprising physical sensations like
blood rushing to your cheeks or
dizziness or chills down your spine or
you might just be busy wondering what
kind of torture is this Who am I and
what Ethics Board approve this classic
school of art but please allow me to
explain myself when I don’t do sonic or
psychological research I’m a cello
player I’ve always been fascinated by
the power of sound to trigger a wide
range of emotions and sensations whether
that’s all in our casual recitals
hedonic bliss and dance clubs or
sickening fright watching Japanese
horror movies I have had music pull me
out of a debilitating depression and it
has helped me induce catharsis many
times to help me to feel my distress
more deeply and understand it so that I
can demystify the anxiety and eventually
overcome it but what is catharsis well
in philosophy in psychoanalytic theory
catharsis is defined as the purging of
pity and fear the shedding of trauma
induced pain an unsuppressed energetic
reaction may be triggered by watching a
Greek track sorry Greek tragedy ha tear
tear jerker movies are some of our most
common outlets for catharsis in the
modern world and music is used for mood
regulation by many so if we need to
ruminate in a depressive state we might
listen to Radiohead or if you want to
feel fragile than angry and eventually
empowered
I really recommend Beyonce’s lemonade
it’s worked for me this is catharsis
it’s what we feel when pain eventually
goes away through the release of tension
and coming to terms with grief if we
refuse to acknowledge our pain or give
ourselves time to grieve and reach a
catharsis then where’s the SAP to build
post-traumatic stress disorder
a fragile volatile state in which
intrusive memories can burst into her
consciousness randomly or triggered by
sound so if the trauma is not fully
processed if we distract ourselves from
the pain delaying a catharsis
this can cause a more prolonged harm a
slow burn of anxiety and depression
but today I’d like to tell you about a
new way in which you can use music for
therapy to trigger catharsis and to
better understand and live with anxiety
you might already retreat away from city
noise or your colleagues chatter by
plugging in your headphones with a
chill-out playlist at the ready the
reason why we do this is so that we can
control our sound environment but this
makes out that the everyday soundscape
is something to be seen as ugly anxiety
inducing something to be blocked out
rather than chill out
my most transformative playlist I use
every day is called fierce and it
features high-energy
emotionally intense power ballads from
Beyonce or Queen RuPaul Charles even
James Bond themes or the noisy abrasive
techno metal hybrids of Death Grips
these musics are all quite extreme and
hyperbolic they synthetically induce
exaggerated emotions at times when I’m
unsettled or I’m numb maybe you listen
to Adele when you need to cry out or
Philip Glass when you study music and
sound has been used manipulatively for
millennia to ensure social cohesion and
elicit religious all with the hymns of
churches or the prayer calls emanating
from mosques
however Sangha is also essential for
capitalism it’s used to sell us products
think of those perfume advertisements
that rely on a rata sighs sensuous
breaths or hypnotic music signs are also
make us empathize with a fictional
character so in mainstream narratives
frightening sound effects like gunshots
lightning strikes or Tigers snarling
convey a fatal threat to the character
and then musical scores with pounding
heartbeats and breathy string
instruments remind us of both the
characters and our own body’s fragility
therapists know it too that sound can be
used to frighten War veterans might play
a virtual visual virtual reality game to
reenact as traumatizing combat scenario
usually with a few gunshot sounds or
ambiences but rarely with sound as the
focus therapists also use sound to heal
and palliative care arvo pärt tabula
rasa has been
it by many terminal AIDS patients now
what is an emotion what you felt earlier
as you listen to that sign escape was
caused by your heartbeat clocking in to
rhythms or intakes of breath at
confusing or shocking sounds but also a
rapid cascade of noodle chemicals mostly
adrenaline cortisol
strangely enough dopamine one that’s
associated with bliss or even prolactin
a soothing you know chemical induced by
listening to sad music your body might
have involuntarily triggered a flight a
fight-or-flight response like this one
first evolved when humans fended for
themselves in the wild and they had to
decide whether it’s fight or flee from a
fatal threat perhaps even triggered by
the sound of a branch snapping revealing
an approaching predator but even when
there are no life-threatening or drastic
traumatic events in our lives we
catastrophize everyday stress if we
don’t take don’t take time to press
pause to process unresolved anxiety
sometimes trigger instinctive reactions
whereas others are learned conditioned
responses an example of an automatic
response is how the high frequency
scraping of nails on a chalkboard
activate the brainstem and make our toes
curl or how a loud sharp sound following
a silence makes us jump
however we each carry a collection of
personally resonant sounds with learned
associations so in my experiment one
participant we imagined her memory of
luckily a non-fatal childhood house fire
when she heard the sound of flames
raging and another even felt pain in the
ankle where stitches have previously
been removed when they heard the sound
of scissors snipping so even if the
sound itself might not seem particularly
abrasive we can easily be conditioned to
react both mentally and physically to
seemingly innocuous sound for example we
might be conditioned to associate the
sound of a slamming door with an
intensely upsetting argument or the
whizzing of bike wheels with an
approaching mugger that’s one of mine
unfortunately
this is like Pavlov’s dog associating
the sound of a bell
with the approach of its dinner so the
dog would salivate even when it was just
the bell sound on its own every time we
hear the sound of a slamming door we
might get an intrusive memory of that
upsetting argument unless we desensitize
ourselves to the sounds by repeating
them or pairing them with Pleasant
harmonious music this soundscape
exposure experience was designed to let
the participant tune in to their own
emotions there is a persistent
instruction for them to evaluate the
strengths of each of their reactions
after every soundscape now as pedantic
and repetitive as that sounds this was
actually a form of psycho education the
anxiety is temporary and our emotional
state is easily influenced as fleetingly
as anxiety can be induced it can recede
maybe even replaced with bliss in a
matter of seconds the environment as a
whole is unique an extended two-hour
session in which the participants
listened attentively a nervous and
anticipation wondering what would happen
next
surrendering to the unknown no screens
no distractions no interruptions
just the sound and their reactions you
might wonder it surely this has been
done before indeed their numerous
exposure therapies such as the visual
virtual reality games or augmented
reality Holograms of phobias or even a
social anxiety sufferer might be led to
a shopping center with a therapist
however there’s a lack of purely sound
based exposure therapy especially one
which is immerses the listener in a
constantly moving womb of real-world
sound blended with emotionally
manipulative music sonic or music
therapy at the moment is mostly used for
distraction or as a painkiller however
if an anxiety sufferer relies on calming
music to distract themselves from a
panic attack
then this only works as a temporary
pacifier and it perpetuates the cyclical
fear of fear catastrophizing the anxiety
symptoms
rather than using sound to numb pain or
distract I actually took the opposite
approach
so I induced temporary discomfort for a
long lasting positive impact now I
decided to make a lot of work for myself
to construct my own sound scapes rather
than using existing music and I locked
myself in this dark windowless sound lab
for six months panning each individual
sound around the room and I collected
many sounds recording in diverse locales
like the vibrant natural signs of
waterfalls and geysers erupting in
Iceland or the densely populated
ambiences in New York City I combed
through entire sound items sound effects
libraries to extract anxiety listing
sounds that were out with my Beach
because I don’t have a collection of
guns or work in a factory
so I also commit and vocal performances
and compose cello and synthesized music
I even asked this dancer if he could
scream and release terrifying drones
underneath this huge bridge just along
the road which certainly gave a few
cyclists a fright you could say I got my
own back to make these song escapes even
more unsettling I panned the signs
around the room feeding between realism
and hyper reality so for a realism if I
wanted to make the listener feel like
they were being cracked up on I would
send the sound of footsteps from behind
them or an absurd scenario I simulated
was that the listener was standing in a
hot frying pan and the sound of bubbling
oil would emerge from the floor yeah it
was a long six months in there and I
used questionnaires to track the
participants subjective emotional
responses but what if participants
didn’t remember every single song that
triggered an emotion
I’ll remember that device resembling a
lie detector I told you about earlier
these sensors allowed me to map spikes
and sweat secretion gasps our pauses and
breathing rates and rises in pulse rates
directly onto the timeline of signs so I
could identify the most potent ones
so what happened to the participants did
they feel better emotionally not
immediately negative emotions increased
by 4% immediately after heating the Sun
escapes but after participants were
given time to recharge move on from
their catharsis and put the
psychoeducation into practice for a week
negative emotions dropped by 12% from
their original emotional state one month
before they experiment so the long-term
emotional drop in negative emotion was
three times the short-term induction of
negative emotion on the day the
long-term benefit outweighed the
short-term distress what about catharsis
well for participants explicitly stated
reported a sense of resolution of
underlying fear trauma or grief as a
result of the sign scape exposure
eventually they did experience catharsis
another sign of catharsis was that tears
were triggered in the sound lab several
times including one instance where
Hospital signs imaginative launched a
participant back to the ward where their
grandparent passed away remarkably the
participant reported that this was a
warm experience of grief when hundreds
of signs are layered there’s a high
chance that at least a few would
resonate with each participants personal
histories and a significant reflection
on the unique approach of soundscape
exposure as a passive and meditative
experience rather than the social
pressure of having to verbalize quite
ambiguous emotions and talk therapy was
that one participant reported often
talking to people about themes of grief
can involve judgment
whereas with sound that’s absent which
makes it easier and safer so remember
those physical sensations from the
fight-or-flight response
blood rushing to your cheeks dizziness
chills down your spine chills down the
spine can be triggered by both musical
bliss or high-pitched abrasive sounds
the same sensation to be triggered by
either positive or a negative stimulus
so you can see that there are some
anxiety symptoms that could maybe be
perceived as positive but we all know
and our everyday lived experience
anxiety symptoms seem invasive
surprising distressing however they are
vital they’re our body’s Way of telling
us that something needs to change that
we need to press pause stop running away
from unresolved traumas and
uncomfortable emotions to confront our
fears sometimes we need help to feel
more deeply an immersive sign escapes
fused with emotionally manipulative
music can provide this kick now I’m
going to see something which may seem
like a very grim conclusion no one can
ever be cured from anxiety it’s an
instinct that keeps us alive what we can
do is educate ourselves about the
benefits of emotional immersion to
understand our anxiety and learn from it
use it to improve our lives and discover
just how resilient we can be so if you
are currently lost in a monotonous
looping cycle of anxiety or depression
instead of tuning out why not tuned into
the noise even amplify it so you can
understand it better the effects might surprise you
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