Rhythms That Regulate

Season 4- Episode 48

 In this episode, Lauren delves deeper into nervous system regulation, exploring how rhythm can be a powerful tool for finding your window of tolerance—both reactively and proactively. She explains how engaging with steady, predictable rhythms activates a state of safety, calm, and social connection. Plus, she shares practical ways to incorporate rhythm into your daily life. 

If you haven't already, check out Five Ives to see how strategies like this can be applied to adults, especially in the workplace. Five Ives works with staff in high burnout jobs to help them incorporate regulation strategies into their daily routines.

Try at Home Tip: Try one of the rhythmic activities Lauren suggests: Take a walk outside while listening to calming music, gently sway or rock, drum or tap, and listen to binaural beats or isochronic tones.

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Transcript:

“I've been doing this whole series on the nervous system. It makes me so excited. I don't know why I feel like the nervous system work is one of the most life changing things people can do. It changes so much.

 

Okay, let's get right into it, though, because I want to keep these short so that they are digestible enough for people that are moving through life pretty fast. So all these episodes on what is the nervous system and things around it. And how do we regulate it? How do we? How do we shift it? How we change it? And in a nutshell your nervous system has kind of 3 parts, 2 parts, but visually I'm going to ask you to kind of visualize it with 3 parts. So in the middle is your window of tolerance. When you leave your window tolerance, you might go up, and you might be more prone to like anxiety and tension, impulsivity, defensiveness. That's the sympathetic side totally normal. I go there all the time or you might be a person who's more likely to go down and down below the window of tolerance is the parasympathetic side, which is more the like dissociative, depressive, disconnected, flat, affect like just withdrawn. Neither side is is good nor bad. What's not so good is when you leave the window of tolerance, that middle zone, and you go up and you go down and or regularly, because it's like a muscle, and what happens is, the more you leave your window of tolerance and go up or go down. The more those zones strengthen and get bigger, and it shrinks your window of tolerance because it takes up more space, which means those zones become a stable state for you. So if you're more prone to anxiety you become more anxious the more you go into that state. It's the same as if you are more likely to fall down below to the parasympathetic side. So that's kind of like the nervous system movement in a nutshell that we've been talking a lot about recognizing when you leave the window. Tolerance. What takes you out. What are little micro stressors or big stressors that take you out? Traumas take you out.

 

The beautiful thing is, we are somewhat resilient beings. We can recover, and we can build our resiliency. And that's by doing things to get back into our wind of tolerance or doing things preventatively, to never even leave our wind of tolerance.

 

So today we are diving into the power of rhythm. The brain, the body, the nervous system, loves rhythm, rhythm is regulating so movement, music, just anything with a rhythmic beat, rhythmic walk, like literally walking, is rhythmic. Step step. Step. It's a rhythmic pattern. So all those things are incredibly regulating, and they can literally rewire your nervous system into a state of equilibrium and balance. So even when you think about like music like music, can be really like, up or down, regulating. If you're listening to like really slow chill, even like arguably like moody music it might bring your energy down, which maybe you need, because maybe you're in this like heightened state, moving too fast. What you might be drawn to is is music or movement that moves really fast, but what you need is the opposite. You need slow, or you might be kind of the opposite, where you need music like pumps you up and lifts you up and energizes you. But you're listening to more beauty music. So either. Or just think of it in opposing beats or rhythmic patterns is typically what works best. But either way, rhythm in any sense, consistent, patterned, rhythmic things really help us to feel grounded and feel regulated. So it helps us to shift from stressed out, overwhelmed to regulated and balanced.

Okay, so let's do this. Let's talk about the science of rhythm and how it impacts the nervous system. And then we will talk about a couple rhythmic music rhythmic movements you could adopt like music. So I was trying to say, far too fast. Okay. So, as stated earlier, the brain, the body, the nervous system. It craves rhythm because the autonomic nervous system which is that window of tolerance, sympathetic parasympathetic side that fight flight, freeze fun. It responds so well, so incredibly well, to deeply patterned, rhythmic, repetitive, input it makes it feel regulated and safer. So engaging with steady and predictable. Even if they're fast, it's predictable.It activates a state of the nervous system that is associated with safety, connection, calm, social engagement. Let me think about. Even when we do music things a lot of times, it's in events or with people and we're engaging socially. And it's a social activity more often than not. On the flip side,If we're listening to or exposed to like really erratic and chaotic rhythms, it's going to really increase our stress and keep us in a state of like hyper alertness, hyper, hypervigilance, hyper aware. So a slow, steady drumbeat, something like that really calms us. And and the specifics around that is like we regulate to 80 beats per minute, because that's what the maternal resting heart rate was. So anything faster than that kind of like up regulates us, but anything slower than that kind of down regulates us. I think if, like a steady drum beat is much slower than that, it brings our energy down. Walking depends. Do you walk at like 80 beats per minute, faster or slower? If you need to move slower, me, probably should walk a little bit slower. If you need to move faster, to kind of get your heart rate up, to wake your body up, then maybe move a little bit faster. but it also synchronizes our brainwaves, which I think is kind of fascinating and shifts us potentially depending on what you're listening to out of a state of stress. Think of like vibrational states. And your brainwave states, Hertz, and all the things I'm not going to go into today because it's just too sciencey. But there's some science behind it, between songs and vibrations and beats and rhythms, and how your brain moves through the different brainwaves. So really interesting, very interesting.

Okay, so how do we access rhythm, movement, dancing patterns, all the things. Dancing. Even if you're not a dancer, you could literally just sway like everybody could sway and it might be hard for you to catch a beat, but if you do it more and more frequently you might get better at it. But it's all just fun. And it's a movement based tool which gets oxygen to your brain. When oxygen goes to your brain. Your brain is happy, and it thinks more clearly, and you stay more regulated. So the other thing that movement and and dancing and swaying really hit on are it engages what we call like proprioception. So our body's awareness and space and that helps to release stored tension. And it connects us to other people. So there's a benefit of if we can dance with people, especially like in physical contact. There's a lot of co-regulation happening. Unless that person is extremely dysregulated, then quite the opposite would happen. But it allows us to sync up our nervous system to the safe person if that person is safe, and if that person is regulated.

So even if you're not like, even if you're like dancing and swaying. You're like, oh, I'm not even sure about swaying.

Okay. Rocking like on a chair on the floor, on a swing, swinging, tapping like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap your shoulders, you can tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap your legs. That's pretty easy to do.

Another one is walking or pacing so much like dancing. You're just. It's rhythmic walking and pacing is without even really thinking about it. You're kind of in a rhythmic movement or notion. The biggest thing here is just to think about, how fast are you walking? Do you need to walk faster, or do you need to walk slower, and usually depends on your nervous system state, but moving opposites. But it's the bilateral movement, left foot, right, foot, left foot, right foot. It stimulates both parts of the hemispheres, both parts of the hemispheres, both hemispheres, both parts of the brain, which helps us to integrate thoughts and emotions. Does that make sense. Dual benefit, If you can walk outside, you've got the additional benefit of nature, and nature is really regulating because of its vibrational state, gets you in the right way, brainwave state, and it supports your heart rate variability which we love, and that's directly correlated to the nervous system.

So, can you integrate walks more like walking meetings to help yourself regulate while you're on that meeting, especially if you know it's gonna be a tough meeting or like a phone call. Even if you're on a tough phone call, can you walk while you do it? Sometimes you can't. You need notes and other things. But if you can give it a go.

Okay, Dancing, walking, drumming like actually take up the act of like, it doesn't have to be drumming. It can be guitar keyboard any other form of instrumental thing. I love the little like toy, not toy. They are toys, but instrument bags for kids. I don't know if you all have ever seen them. But if you have young kids, you can buy like a bag of instruments. I love that. There's like bells and chimes and drums and keyboards and xylophones, and all these things. And I I think it's such a beautiful thing to let kids kind of free range regulate with them. So drumming has been used for centuries, like. I remember spending time in Cameroon, Africa, and there was drumming there, and I have a friend that used to play the sitar and the tablas. And so there's drumming in other Asian cultures. And it's all over the world. It's been a practice of most cultures for eons. So and for good reason, it's very regulating. But there's like specific studies that even show that drumming synchronizes brain activity which reduces the stress hormone which boosts the immune function. So whether you drum or you're listening to drumming, it's got benefits to it. But then you've got the addition of like a lot of like countries. They will drum in groups like they have multiple drums. Think they have a marching band like that's drumming or activating music in in groups. So that activates this, what we call social engagement system, which again solidifies like connection belonging safety. Yeah, I mean, even if you don't have a drum back to tapping. You could literally tap parts of your body. You could tap a steering wheel. You could tap anything like just tapping.

Another one that I really really love. This is the last one I'm gonna give you is something called kind of 2 things binaural beats or isochronic tones. It sounds really weird and wild, but they're pretty simple. You can search isochronic tones on your like spotify, or whatever you listen to apple music, and you'll get a bunch of playlists. Those can be used with just playing it out loud. Binaural beats. You're gonna need headphones because it plays 2 different beats in your ears and it helps you to get into like a more regulated brain state. There's a lot of science behind both of these, actually, but they are 2 forms of rhythmic auditory stimulation that just really change your brainwave activity and not like alter your brain and make you crazy. It's like you move through brainwave States and like Beta to Alpha, to Theta, to Delta and Delta is like deep sleep, and Beta is like activity. And you kind of want to not always be in Beta. But we're kind of always in Beta and moving to to Alpha and Theta, allow you to slow down or like be in a better working state or eventually in Theta hit like a relaxation state. So that's all science. And that's that's a good thing. The problem is, actually, we stay in the wrong. Brainwave states too too long. So this helps you get there. So again, binaural beats just play 2 slightly different frequencies in each ear, and then the brain kind of perceives this rhythmic pulse and the different frequencies playing in the ears kind of help your vibrational state get to a state of relaxation and focus, and even potentially depending on what type of beats you're playing. Binaural beats could even get you into a good rested state for a deep sleep. Isynchronic tones. They're just single tones. They pulse at specific rhythms, and that helps also to move you through these different brainwave States. But you wouldn't need headphones for those you would for the binaural beats.

Okay? So reduces anxiety. There's a lot of research on that. It also improves your concentration, which we like, and we're having a difficult time with, because of all the stimulation of devices and technology, and it even can, depending on what type of beats you're listening to can shift you into meditative state. Usually, when you search these 2 terms in a playlist, it'll tell you like what it's for, what it's designed for. Audio specialists create them if you haven't, there are lots and lots of options for you.

Okay, so how can you use rhythm to regulate your nervous system? I gave you lots of ways to do that. Walking, dancing, tapping, drumming, isochronic beats, binaural beats so many ways to regulate your nervous system by just using musically inclined rhythmic things, even if you're not a musically inclined person. So here's some quick, practical things you could do. Start your day with a walk like just walk, and you can, like dual, regulate it with like walking and tapping. or walking and listening to to peaceful music. You can also just take a mindful walk like, just take a walk around outside and look at things and notice and hear different things related to your your senses and maybe focus on your breath. You can also try gentle swaying or rocking. If you feel overwhelmed, you can try drumming or tapping rhythms when you're stressed out. Also, like helps you like, get it out like physically. Get the stress out. And then binaural beats or isochronic tones will shift you into a better mental or brainwave state. So rhythm isn't always just music. It can be medicine for your nervous system. So integrate these activities both preventatively, reactively, so preventatively meaning like into your daily lives. And then reactively, when you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed, use them at those moments.

Okay, well, that is rhythmic regulation in a nutshell. So your try to help tip is to to try one of those things and try not to even just use it reactively, but try and also use it preventatively, like, how can you pair it with an already existing routine in your life.

And if you are looking for more support in the areas of stress, trauma,  overwhelm, burnout for your organizational whole, Jessica Doring and I created an organization called 5 Ives, and we serve a lot of service based organizations so ones that have high secondary trauma, high burnout, high overwhelm high stress. So medical police nonprofits, education. And we have so many amazing programs for all of these arenas of service organizations. So if you want to learn more about anything that we offer, or even have a conversation with us about anything related to stress, trauma, overwhelm, burnout, organizational well-being and and culture and health, We would love to chat with you, feel free to hop on to the 5 Ives website. It's FIVE, IVES. Or you can shoot me an email, Lauren at 5 ives.com. Don't forget to lock in what you learned today by applying it right away or sharing it with someone else. Sharing the episode with someone else, having someone else listen to the episode, and then you reflect on it. Hold each other accountable for doing some of the rhythmic things that we can stay more regulated until next episode. Keep moving. Keep listening. Keep regulating. Use that rhythm. We will see you soon.”

 

Calming & Coping, Emotional RegulationLauren SpigelmyerComment