Why Some Music Gives you Goosebumps
![]() There is a word that describes this common human response to music--a word for "that moment" when a song pierces your body and soul. It's called "frisson," and it's the reason why music from artists as seemingly disparate as Johnny Cash, Metallica, Céline Dion, and Mozart are all featured on a recently released, scientifically-backed playlist of songs that researchers claim are likely to give people "chills." The 715-song playlist was curated by a team of neuroscientists and is available on Spotify.
"Frisson" derives from French and is "a sudden feeling or sensation of excitement, emotion or thrill," and the experience is not confined to music. Historically, frisson has been used interchangeably with the term "aesthetic chills." According to a 2019 study, one can experience frisson when staring at a brilliant sunset or a beautiful painting; when realizing a deep insight or truth; when reading a particularly resonant line of poetry; or when watching the climax of a film. In his 2006 book Sweet Anticipation, musicologist David Huron offers a compelling explanation for why we experience such powerful responses to music. He calls it "contrastive valence theory," in which feeling states are strongly influenced by contrast. "If we initially feel bad, and then we feel good, the good feeling tends to be stronger than if the good experience occurred without the preceding bad feeling." This is due to a regulatory process called "cognitive appraisal," in which our minds use cognitive and linguistic processes to reframe the meaning of a stimulus. Huron uses the idea of a surprise party to illustrate this phenomenon: "When a person is unexpectedly surprised by her friends, the first response is one of terror: her eyelids retract and her jaw drops. But within half a second, fear is replaced by happy celebration as the individual recognizes her friends and the positive social meaning of the event." According to Huron, when the appraisal response confirms that there is no threat, contrastive valence transforms the negative feelings into something positive. On the Spotify playlist for frisson, consider Metallica's "Master of Puppets". It is understandable if your immediate emotional reaction to the song's shocking intro is one of fear and foreboding. But thanks to "cognitive reappraisal," that initial adrenaline rush can be transformed into something positive when you realize that you are safe, and that it is music making you feel this way. Our minds, which evolved to predict future outcomes to ensure our survival, are always anticipating how something will play out. And when our initial predictions are wrong, depending on the situation, we can feel anything from anger to surprise to frisson. Consider the soaring choruses in Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" or Adele's "Hello" or John Lennon's screams on The Beatles' "Twist & Shout" (all featured on the playlist). Or listen to Merry Clayton's legendary backing vocals on the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter." QUANTUM HEALTH TIP: Use our Clean Sweep clearing spray when listening to music to calm and harmonize the space your in for more enjoyment and more frisson! |
Mind-Body Approaches to Pain Management
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For example, a study of people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) presented in June 2021 at the annual conference of the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) concluded that people who are most extreme when describing pain levels are less likely to have their disease in remission compared with those who don't (34 percent versus 70). But these reactions to pain aren't inevitable. "We have to teach the brain that chronic pain is like an alarm that just keeps going off. It doesn't necessarily signal danger," Kennedy-Spaien says. Calm the mind and the alarm subsides, and often the chronic pain along with it. Kennedy-Spaien says patients may also find benefits from biofeedback and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), techniques that also train the mind to reframe. Other modalities that have been shown to be effective in reducing brain activity around some types of chronic pain are pain reprocessing therapy (PRT) and pain neuroscience education, which use education and psychological techniques to retrain the brain to better respond to bodily signals and encourage positive sensations and feelings instead. A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in December 2021 found PRT eliminated or nearly eliminated chronic low back pain in two-thirds of participants. Improving your daily health habits is something every pain expert agrees is key, Steven P. Cohen, MD, chief of pain medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, says. "Getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet, staying active, and not smoking" should be on the top of every pain patient's to-do list, he says. Exercise is especially important. Although years ago, pain patients were instructed to take to bed, doctors now know that movement is a crucial component for healing the body and the mind. "There's a widespread consensus that exercise seems to be beneficial across the board," and especially for musculoskeletal conditions and nociplastic pain, Cohen says. Many pain patients find relief by doing yoga, a practice that soothes both the body and the mind. Research shows the benefits for pain mostly derive from the fact that it is a form of exercise, the review in The Lancet noted, so if yoga is not appealing, taking up any activity is fine. Changing up your diet can also be surprisingly effective: Research confirms that dietary changes have pain relieving effects. A review published in 2020 in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, for example, shows that plant-based diets especially reduce musculoskeletal pain. The same review found reducing fat and sugar aids "wear and tear" osteoarthritis. QUANTUM HEALTH TIP: Use our Relief Energy Cream and Vital 360 Combo to effectively manage pain issues. |
3 Biggest Myths About Meditation
(from Kate Spina, Meditation Teacher, Los Angeles) Myth 1: "I can't meditate" - You can't meditate YET. Often "I can't meditate." is followed by, "I went to this class one time." or "I don't like savasana at the end of yoga." These are singular or particular experiences that were challenging, but that doesn't translate to the whole field of meditation being out of your capacity forever. If I sat down at a piano for the first time and made a cacophonous noise it would be illogical for me to assume that meant I could never do it. And a huge part of why this myth is pervasive is because of a lack of understanding of what meditation actually is, which brings us to myth number two. Myth 2: "I can't clear my mind" - Mindfulness, which is a predominate meditation technique in our culture (and my primary practice), has nothing to do with "clearing" the mind. The goal of mindfulness is to witness phenomena (body sensations, sounds, thoughts, etc.) as it arises and passes away in the present moment experience without judgment. Often, and especially at the beginning of practice, it is hard to watch the flow of sensation without attaching to specific thoughts or experiences or judging how much is really happening in the mind. It can be overwhelming. This does not mean you are doing mediation wrong. The mind thinks. It's just what it does. That is not a problem. The difficulty comes when we attach too deeply to our thoughts. As we practice more we begin to witness thoughts and see that they arise and pass away. We cultivate a wiser relationship with the thinking mind. So, if we understand that meditation is not "clearing" the mind and that we do actually have the capacity to do it, what gets in the way? Myth 3: "I don't have time to meditate" - We have busy full lives, with so many things pulling at our time. So many aspects of our day can feel mandatory so that we often do not feel like we have agency over our own time. So when we choose to commit to meditation, we're often having to prioritize it over something else that we maybe feel like we should be doing instead. So, yes, we're busy, and yes, there is still time in the day to meditate. But, it requires choosing it, committing to it, and prioritizing it. That choice is not an easy one to make. The fruits of meditation practice unfold differently in each of us, so it can feel like we're not getting results as quickly as we would like. There were huge chunks of time in the beginning of my practice where it felt like every meditation was just my mind telling me all the things I should be doing instead. What kept me committed? There were people around me clearly benefiting from the practice. I could see the possibilities of it. I had tried so many other tools to help increase my well-being and this was something I could do that didn't require anything except my willingness, and a quiet-ish space to practice. And as I have stuck with it I have seen innumerable benefits in my relationship to myself and to others. QUANTUM HEALTH TIP: See the Meditation Elixirs to enhance your cognitive natural abilities to meditate effectively. |
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