Sound therapy for anxiety and stress | Jonathan Adams and Montana Skies | TEDxTelfairStreet

Understanding music as more than just a way to entertain and move our emotions, Jonathan Adams recounts his own struggles with stress and anxiety and explores the potential of sound as a healing force. He then soothes us with Tibetan bowls and Native American flute music, and then, as the duo Montana Skies with his partner, Jenn, they play a self-composed song with cello and guitar.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

I'd like to talk to you about something
I've gotten intensely interested in

in the last few years,

and that's sound therapy.

I came to sound therapy
by actually needing it myself.

I found myself experiencing deep anxiety.

Physiologically,

I was experiencing rapid heart rate,

my breathing was short,

my muscles were extremely tense.

And to me, it literally felt
like I was dying.

Mentally, it was equally as painful

and almost psychedelic

as I felt like I was really losing
control of my reality,

and as bad as all of that sounds,

it was actually a wonderful blessing

because it taught me so much
about my mind from the inside out,

my body and my spirit.

And I learned about
several tools that could help.

Sound therapy turned out to be
one of those great tools,

and I discovered that sound and music
are not only great ways to entertain us

but that sound itself can also have
many deep, therapeutic benefits for us,

mentally and physically.

The first thing I did
following this experience

was to start to read
as many books as I could

on neuroscience,
psychology, spirituality -

basically, anything
that I could get my hands on

that had to do with the mind.

I wanted to come to a more
grounded scientific understanding

of this experience,

which seemed very mystical to me,

and also convince myself, hopefully,
that I wasn't completely insane -

which I'm still working on.

(Laughter)

The first book I read was on stress,

and what caught my attention was a section
that talked about our brain wave states

and how they relate to our stress states

and how those brain waves themselves
are measured in hertz.

Well, this piqued my attention

because as a musician,

I use hertz as a measurement of sound
all the time in my music.

So I use it for recording, performing,
when we did soundcheck here.

So it's something I'm very familiar with,

and I found that brain waves
and sound waves

are measured the exact same way,

so we're literally creating
frequency waves with our thoughts.

We have four main brain wave states:

they're beta, which is our waking state,

then into alpha and theta,

which are more relaxed
or meditative states,

and then into delta,
which is a deep-sleep state.

Each of those states

has their own frequency range,
or frequency band,

and it's very similar
to how the EQ on your stereo works

from bass to treble,

so there are ranges
for each of those states.

Sound therapy works because our mind
has a natural response

called the "frequency following response."

And so when we hear a certain oscillation,
or frequency or sound,

that's in this frequency range,

our mind naturally tends
to synchronize with that state.

So I found that when I was in
my really stressed-out state,

I was having a lot of random thoughts
and seemed out of control,

and what I needed to do
was bring my mind down and relax,

and I found that sound therapy
was a great tool for helping me do that.

What I found, also,
was that with sound therapy,

I could not only alter
my brain waves and relax more

but that when I relaxed
those brain waves, and mentally,

that my body relaxed,

my breathing relaxed,

my heart rate relaxed
and my muscles were less tense.

Stress, of course, is caused
by the fight or flight response,

and I found for myself

that I was reacting to things in life
with these stressful responses,

that I really didn't need to.

So my body was producing chemicals,
like adrenaline and cortisol,

and over time, this was,
of course, damaging healthwise.

Well, I discovered that our body
has an opposite response,

which is called the "relaxation response."

And so by relaxing consciously,
using sound therapy as one of those tools,

I found that I not only started
to not feel anxious

but that I started to feel better
and better and better.

And eventually I felt so good

that when I was relaxing at night,

that I actually felt high, or euphoric.

And so then I was
a little concerned about this

and thought I've gone too far.

(Laughter)

So I went to the doctor
to get it checked out.

It turned out everything was just fine.

And then I realized that feeling good
is how I'm supposed to feel

and how we're supposed to feel.

So I had a little epiphany
from this whole experience,

that physiologically speaking,

that I am both the producer
and the experiencer of stress,

but physiologically speaking,

that I'm also the producer
and experiencer of good feelings -

like joy, euphoria, bliss -

and that I have a choice

by choosing the thoughts
I want to engage with

and then how I'm going to react
to those thoughts,

and that I have that choice
to basically feel good

and to choose either fear and stress
or love for myself and others

and all of those good feelings
that go with it.

And so that's really what I want to share,

and that I think
that at the heart of it all

is just the ability to relax deeply
and sort of let go and just be,

and I found that sound therapy

was a wonderful tool for me
in getting there.

So just to recap -

sound waves can alter our brain waves.

By altering our brain waves,

we can find deep states of relaxation.

And by relaxing consciously
and deliberately,

that over time, it can create
a lot of really wonderful things for us,

physiologically and mentally.

So next I'd like to play
just a short taste of this sound therapy.

And what I'm going to do
is play these Tibetan bowls -

I have a set of them up here -

and these are kind of like
the original sound therapy.

They've been around for thousands of years

and create those sounds that can help
to synchronize our brain waves.

So I'm going to play the Tibetan bowls

and some Native American flute

as well as some nature sounds
that I recorded,

and then Jenn, my partner, and I

are going to play a song
that we wrote for guitar and cello,

called "Canyon Breeze."

So I hope you enjoy this.

Just take this time to breathe deep,

maybe close your eyes,

and just let go and try to totally relax.

(Ethereal, soothing music
with Tibetan bowls and nature sounds)

(Native American flute music
with backround nature sounds)

(Tibetan bowls music
with background nature sounds)

(Bowls and nature sounds fade
and cello music starts)

[Montana Skies]

(Guitar music added)

(Music slows down)

(Music ends)

(Applause and cheers)