This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing...
...practice humming as a way to calm your nervous system and shift your mood. Hum simple, familiar tunes (lullabies are great for this) or just make humming sounds, mindfully focusing your attention on the vibration and the rhythm, to take a break from distressing thoughts and feelings, activate your parasympathetic nervous system and create a sense of calm and safety.
Humming is a way to slow our breathing without focusing on our breathing, which is great for people who start to feel like they can't breathe when they are paying attention to their breathing. Humming ensures a nice long out-breath, which gives our bodies calming bio-feedback and changes the CO2 concentration in our blood, which also has a calming effect. Humming slow, soothing kinds of songs like lullabies produces vestibular input through our inner ears and is a way of modulating our sensory input in a calming way too. Humming is a very simple action that does a lot!
Once you are comfortable with this practice, add Hum to your Personal Coping Kete for times of stress and distress.
Tag Archives: Music Strategies
No. 108: Hum
No. 96: Learning a Theme Song
This week, to attain, maintain or regain my sense of wellbeing… 
…I will use music to help me improve the moment and connect with positive emotion by learning to hum or whistle a song I associate with happy vibes and good energy. If no song jumps to mind automatically I will get to spend some time listening to different songs until I find one I like. Then as I move through my day, I will periodically remember to practice humming or whistling the tune while I am doing my daily tasks. This could help to insert some pleasant energy into whatever I am doing. Once I am comfortable and familiar with humming or whistling my tune, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete as a distraction and self-soothing technique for times of stress and distress. Then, when I find myself stressed or distressed, I can distract myself for a moment by trying to remember the tune and whistling/humming it. The act of humming and whistling changes the level of oxygen in the blood and can physically help to soothe negative emotions I could be feeling, so I can return to the situation later with a clearer head. Whenever I hum or whistle my tune, I will be reminded of the positive message of the song I chose and this might also help inspire me through tough moments. This is also a pretty good strategy to use if I ever feel so anxious that it gets hard to breathe. Humming or whistling a song could help to counteract that without having to focus my attention onto my breathing.
…I will use music to help me improve the moment and connect with positive emotion by learning to hum or whistle a song I associate with happy vibes and good energy. If no song jumps to mind automatically I will get to spend some time listening to different songs until I find one I like. Then as I move through my day, I will periodically remember to practice humming or whistling the tune while I am doing my daily tasks. This could help to insert some pleasant energy into whatever I am doing. Once I am comfortable and familiar with humming or whistling my tune, I will add it to my Personal Coping Kete as a distraction and self-soothing technique for times of stress and distress. Then, when I find myself stressed or distressed, I can distract myself for a moment by trying to remember the tune and whistling/humming it. The act of humming and whistling changes the level of oxygen in the blood and can physically help to soothe negative emotions I could be feeling, so I can return to the situation later with a clearer head. Whenever I hum or whistle my tune, I will be reminded of the positive message of the song I chose and this might also help inspire me through tough moments. This is also a pretty good strategy to use if I ever feel so anxious that it gets hard to breathe. Humming or whistling a song could help to counteract that without having to focus my attention onto my breathing.
