Ashok Gupta discusses how music and singing support healing and wellbeing by shifting attention from analytical (left-brain) thinking to emotional/limbic states, reducing stress and pain, improving memory and concentration, and triggering beneficial hormones/neurotransmitters (endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, endogenous opioids). He emphasizes singing — individually and in groups — as evolutionarily rooted, socially synchronizing (heartbeats and brain rhythms can align), and therapeutically powerful, and gives practical suggestions (karaoke, family singing, instrument playing) to reintroduce communal music into daily life.
Chapters
And connected to laughter. You know why when we go to an event which is a celebration, might be a wedding, might be a birthday, might be some religious event, There are always some key components. There always tends to be laughter, very important part. There always tends to be music and singing and dance. Why is that? It's because these things take us away from that left brain obsession of our intellect and measurement and work and analysis and shifts us to more creative part of our brain, the right part of the brain and more of our limbic system, the emotional side, and takes us beyond the mind, beyond the thoughts, beyond the worries, and connects us to our soul. They say that music is the soundtrack of the soul play through the instrument of the heart. And another quote I love here by Plato. Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything. What would life be like if we didn't have music and singing and dance and laughter? And so how can we incorporate this as part of our healing journey? We've talked about laughter now with music. We know that actually music has very similar benefits to laughter in terms of our cardiovascular system, our emotional state, the hormones and neurotransmitters, even has a direct impact on our amygdalas. Our amygdalas are these structures in our brains that process emotions in the limbic system part of the brain. And the laughter has a very powerful effect as well as music on that part of the brain. And we know that music actually is a natural trigger of the opioid system. That's a natural pain killing system in the body. And the brain, reduces pain, anxiety, stress. There's so many different benefits we could list. And it improves memory as well. So we know that there's certain types of music that can really improve our innovation intellectual capacity and our memory. And that often is music which is by Mozart. That kind of music actually has been clinically shown to improve our concentration. Now when you listen to music which has lyrics in it, that can sometimes interrupt the flow of our work. But natural relaxing music, flute music, baroque music, chamber music, Mozart, they have been shown to actually potentially increase our ability. Now that will depend on you. And experimenting with working in silence versus occasional breaks with music versus actually working with music in the background. So you have to experiment with that. And so music is such an important part of our lives. We have those difficult and challenging emotions, sometimes taking ourselves away from the world, sitting down and really listening to pieces of music that heal. And we know that slow music, calmer music, actually slows down our physiology, reduces our heart rate and can trigger the parasympathetic nervous system. So very powerful. And in a similar way, the power of singing. Singing fires up the right temporal over our brain. It releases endorphins and just makes us healthier and happier and more creative. And singing is really the lost art because music is something that we all engage in, but very few of us in life really engage in singing. And why is that? You know, I do think that is because of the X Factor and Britain's Got Talent and all these different shows that, you know, singing. And maybe it's always been like this. Singing has always become like a performance. Oh, I can't sing. You know, we're embarrassed to sing. Oh, I can't sing. I want to sing. Because we've made it into a performance, we're dependent on what other people think of our singing. Yeah, Just like there's no path to joy, Joy is the path. There's no path to successful singing. Singing is the path to joy. So singing is something that is part of our evolutionary makeup. And in fact, studies have shown that our vocal cords are designed to sing, just like birds are designed to sing. We as human beings are designed to sing as part of our tribal inheritance. And so what can we do to make sure that every day we sing, it helps shift us to more of a right brain orientation in our lives? And singing groups triggers communal release of endorphins, serotonin and oxytocin. And believe it or not, there's been studies showing that heartbeats, people's heartbeats synchronize when they sing together, which is the power of group singing or choir singing. And this has also been shown in meditation, that when people meditate together, some of their brain rhythms actually synchronize. Isn't that incredible? Yeah. So just like in colonies of ants, people have always wondered, how do ants communicate? There's a kind of collective consciousness that they have, which is often mediated through the release of certain chemicals. Incredible kind of hive intelligence. And in the same way we as human beings, when we're together, when we meditate together, when we breathe together and when we sing together, there's an incredible synchronicity that makes us feel like part of the whole, part of a bigger space or a bigger power, connects us to that higher power. Such incredible benefits that come from singing. So how do we promote singing and music in our lives? How can we benefit from the therapeutic aspects of this? I'd love for us all to sing karaoke songs now. All of you know I'm a Big karaoke fiend. I have karaoke parties at home, but you don't have to be good at singing to enjoy and get the benefits from it. You just need to overcome that little shyness in your mind. Just practice on your own. You don't need to have people around you. You can go to YouTube, type in any song that you enjoy singing, followed by the word karaoke. And all the karaoke soundtracks are there on YouTube for free for you to sing straight away. And I've even held online parties where we've sung karaoke songs together online by Simply sharing the YouTube video with everyone online. Yeah. And finding songs that evoke that positive mood within you. And slower songs for feeling calmer and faster songs for that upliftment and moving away from the modern campfire of our civilization, which is sitting in front of the television. It's a very passive experience and no doubt it entertains. But does it uplift after you've watched a two, three hour movie, right? Do you feel uplifted and think, wow, I want to watch another movie? Or do you actually in fact feel a little drained, no matter how good the movie was? Whereas you'll notice when you sing, when you listen to music, when you dance, it is energizing and uplifting for your spirit because it takes you beyond the mind into your deepest nature and connects you to your soul. And that should be the new campfire of our generation. Let's start that movement to say in the evenings. And it's not even a television substitute. It can just be a short period of time. Maybe you with your family, say, right, we're actually going to sing some karaoke songs on YouTube for 20 minutes just for fun. Or perhaps one of you has a musical instrument and you're good at playing that instrument and you can sing together. This was always part of families coming together, communities coming together. Let's reenact that in our lives right now.
