To hear short podcasts for suffering, including Scripture devotionals with calming hymn playing, click here for YouTube podcast.
Music therapy-inspired podcast for suffering with chronic illness and pain, including anxiety and depression
DID YOU KNOW?
These podcasts for suffering help us to use slow, deep breathing as we listen to these music therapy-inspired hymns. Combining this with Scriptures, filling our hearts and minds with praise and gratitude to our Lord? We have a healing gift from Him, built into our bodies and brains!
“Changing your breathing… is one of the quickest ways to change your emotional state. Breathing affects the brain through signals carried by the vagus nerve. It also carries signals up into the brain stem. Vagus nerve signaling is important in activating circuits for resting and relaxation, known as the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic system is the opposite of the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the fight-or-flight instinct. Slow breathing increases activity in the vagus nerve and pushes the brain toward parasympathetic activity. So slow, deep breathing calms you down. By contrast, rapid breathing deactivates the parasympathetic nervous system and activates the sympathetic nervous system. When you are anxious, excited, or scared, you breathe quickly. But it’s also true that if you breathe quickly, you’re more likely to feel those feelings. Fast breathing can make you more nervous” (Korb, 2015, pp. 147-148).1
TIP:
Although singing music aloud is even more powerful, simply breathing in time to music will activate our parasympathetic nervous system, the part of our autonomic nervous system that needs “resetting” when we suffer from chronic illness and pain.
Most people think they should just put ethereal, non-rhythmic music on and hope that it somehow infuses calm. But in chronic pain, chronic illness, anxiety, or depression, our bodies and brains usually need to be more actively engaged as we breathe to its pulse.
Our podcasts will help us do so, taking us from shallow and fast breathing to deeper and slower breathing, easing our pain and anxiety. Based on principles of music therapy and my own professional and personal experience (and need!), we are offering these podcasts as free gifts. Soli Deo Gloria!
- Korb, A. (2015). The upward spiral: Using neuroscience to reverse the course of depression, one small change at a time. New Harbinger Publications. ↩︎