A few years back my hubby had been coming home several days in a row frustrated and annoyed with his job. When I asked him what was wrong, his response was always the same – bad day at work. I want to be patience and supportive, but I can only handle gloom and doom for so long before I start to feel like someone is raining on my parade. The minute I start feeling my emotions dropping in a frenzy to bring the attitude around me back up I start to persuade and then take over as I begin to force him to work through his problem so things could hurry and get back to normal.
Well you can probably guess where this chain of events lead, right down a hole. It’s a well known fact that forcing anyone does not work. One if not both individuals usually get frustrated and even angry. Words start flying and then someone gets their feelings hurt. Not a happy ending.
While preparing to give a seminar on the power of music to heal, I found my solution. Sympathetic resonance and entrainment. Have you ever heard of these?
Entrainment – The ability of a more powerful rhythmic vibration of an object to change the less powerful rhythmic vibration of another object, resulting in the synchronization of both rhythms to the first object. There are three body rhythms affected by entrainment – brain waves, breathing and heart rate…. these rhythms also entrain with each other.
A Dutch Scientist, Christian Huygens in 1665 discovered entrainment while working on the design of the pendulum clock. He discovered that when he placed two clocks on the wall next to each other and swung the pendulums at different rates, they eventually started swinging at the same rate.
Sympathetic resonance – The natural ability of a substance to vibrate to a frequency imposed from another source with a similar frequency. Example: take two tuning forks of the same frequency. Hit one tuning fork and then set the other fork next to it with out touching. The second tuning fork will begin to vibrate.
Lets put this in simpler words, who’s ever mood is the strongest will dominate drawing others moods to match.
Think about being in an office or somewhere starting out the day. In comes the office downer. Instantly the atmosphere of the whole office shifts. People get quiet, and your high flying mood drops down a few notches. Sympathetic resonance and entrainment.
Now that your aware of what is happening, see if you can hold your own emotion and maybe even, if the other person allows you, lift the situation. Here’s how.
You are feeling great and greet your work associate with a smile. The response is a grunted hello and a complaint about some misfortune that happened that morning. You can feel your energy dropping as you tap into their feelings. But wait, instead of stepping into an old pattern and allowing yourself to be drug down, you chose to create a sense of harmony. This is done as you smile but instead of drowning them in sunshine, you start to think of strong positive thoughts and the things that you appreciate about this person. The appreciation brings in an aspect of respect and understanding. They begin to feel validated and allow their mood to be entrained raising to a closer match of where you are.
Before I had this understanding of our frequencies impact one another, I found myself face to face with someone whose anger had gotten out of hand. Rage was running through their veins. I remember standing firm thinking that if I could stay in a place of unconditional love and then let that love radiate out from me, this person would be able to calm down. I had never done anything like this….it was an impression that came to me at that exact moment. I followed the prompting focusing my thoughts on a simple statement, “I love you”, which I played over and over in my mind. I looked straight into their eyes letting these words pulsate from me to them. Within seconds, which felt like minutes, this person began to calm right down and become very peaceful. Wow, I was amazed at what had just happened and very much relieved!
We entrain with people all the time either for good or bad. The direction it goes is your choice.
I love the power of music; its ability to resonate and to pass all mental barriers. Our focus as we create music, is that it will create an inner attitude, that change is possible.
Our CD Comfort could be classified as entrainment music because it has the potential to (1) connect or resonate with the listener’s feelings, (2) give the body and emotion recognition and then transform negative into positive, and (3) promote as the individual becomes ready a state of serenity or liveliness.
Paste this address below into your browser and listen to a sampling of the music.
http://cathyfreemanrpc.com/Resonatingmelodies.php