Singing daily is one of the best habits for your brain, happiness and health! For some, it’s natural to sing along with any music. For most, we don’t even consider it, especially if someone is in earshot. Maybe not our kids; we can pretty much embarrass ourselves in front of them. However, when it comes to neighbours, colleagues, friends, and other family members, we tend to hold back unless we have had alcohol or other substances to bolster up some Dutch courage to belt out our favourite tunes.
One of the most potent things about singing and even speaking publicly is that it can resurrect our deepest fears and judgments and place them on display in broad daylight for all to see. When faced with this counterfeit terror, a typical behaviour is to run, mask our vulnerabilities, and try to pretend we don’t care. We end up suppressing our true feelings and burying our heart’s desire to sing, speak or express ourselves freely at any given moment.
The fear that arises during singing or public speaking for some can be so acute that it floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline. Panic stampedes through the body, which unhinges our faculties and causes us to either quit before starting or fumble like Mr. Bean? Before we know it, we have already lived out our fear of looking foolish! These wild emotions are hard to navigate and momentarily leave us paralysed without enjoying the present moment and not giving a hoot what anyone else thinks.
I believe when we heal our voice, we can heal our lives. Our voice, success, happiness, relationships, wealth, health, and well-being are all tied in with our beliefs. Our sub-conscious mind holds a vast amount of knowledge, wisdom, and memories. Those old memories and the stories we have attached to them have shaped and conditioned our lives and determine the filters we perceive our reality through. We are all products of our beliefs from our past and childhood conditioning. All species evolve out of adapting to survive in their environment. To avoid the threat of danger, we do whatever we can to feel safe. The body follows the brain, so to change our outer world we must change our inner world.
Singing positive affirmations may seem silly but science would argue that it is one of the most potent ways to improve mental, physical, and emotional health. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change itself by reorganizing the incoming information and allocating brain cortex real estate. Quite simply, the most used neuronal pathways gather strength and become our default setting. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on singing positive affirmations to program the brain to increase self-worth, self-esteem, and self-love. These are fundamental components to a happy, healthy, and prosperous life.
This, my friends, is where singing is in a league of its own. It triggers the production of feel-good chemicals in the brain. These chemicals are the KEY…. Together with boosting happiness and pleasure, they consolidate the brain’s new neuronal growth speeding up the remapping changes. For example, oxytocin enhances trust, which helps us to believe that we do have what it takes to create a great life for ourselves. Ultimately, we do; however, any past childhood or negative conditioning can sabotage our efforts.
When we immerse ourselves with singing an affirmation and positive statements for at least 21 days, we can expect to have well developed neuronal pathways. Science has shown that it takes up to 144 days to create long-lasting permanent change. In the grand scheme of things, this is such a short amount of time to reprogram the brain totally.
By consciously choosing specific words, we can rewire our brains, which helps boost joy, fortify our immune system and navigate the daily challenges of life. The act of singing positive statements influences our bodies’ chemistry and the neuronal pathways in our brain. It allows for different routes to be created. These are positive, self-loving super-highways to enhanced creativity, intuition, and the ability to tap into our true potential ……. and I haven’t even mentioned all the health benefits that come from singing. More to come on this in my future blogs.
Dream Big, Sing Daily, and Live Happiness.
Julia WilliamsonMay 13, 2021
