Dahn Yoga Class New Mexico

When people go out to a nightclub or blast the latest pop tunes from their car stereos, they are, in a sense, “self-medicating” their own brain waves. Typically, these songs have very heavy beats, which allow the brain to settle down to a more primitive, prerational state of being, in much the same way that tribal drumming helps produce subconscious, trance like states in primitive healing practices. Of course, the effects are not quite so dramatic, but the constant, heavy beat does provide the brain a chance to “simmer down,” escaping from the constant left-brain, prefrontal cortex activity that modern life demands. So the next time you see the guy in the car next to you bobbing his head up and down to the rhythm of the latest top-ten hit, you can think to yourself, “Oh! He knows Brain Wave Vibration, too!”

In his book This Is Your Brain on Music, neuroscientist and musician Daniel J. Levitin discusses the effect music has on the human brain. He notes that music is unique in its ability to stimulate all areas of the brain at once. He says, “Musical activity involves nearly every region of the brain that we know about, and nearly every neural subsystem.”