The power of enjoying sound
Is it possible to improve your hearing? Maybe. But first try caring for your auditory system in four important ways:
- Mindfully enjoy sound on a regular basis (try this week’s video!)
- Wear ear plugs when you must be in loud environments (above 70 decibels).
- Get involved in the noise regulation movement and care for your environment.
- Look into medical treatment if needed.
Hearing loss and tinnitus can be very distressing. And so can sound pollution. I wish we didn’t have to accept any of these things, but the only place to start is…now.
Your hearing “is what it is” in this moment. Perhaps it’s been compromised, you have some hearing loss, or tinnitus. You can still experience sound in some way, though. Are there any interesting sounds in your environment right now?
What can you gather about the source of those sounds and the distances they are traveling from their texture, volume, and duration?
Let the sound come to you instead of “trying” to hear.
Think of self-improvement as a side effect, rather than a goal. Striving to improve is a hidden source of stress, anxiety and depression for many people. We can never be good enough.
Sound pollution also causes a multi-layered stress response in your system that is deeply connected to anxiety and depression.
So, instead of falling for the fear and stress, try building your own innate capacities for sensory joy. Music. Birds. The sound of the wind rustling in the drying autumn leaves.
This week’s video introduces you to the vast resources and capacities of your auditory and vestibular systems. It is a tiny part of what I cover in my Cranial Nerve Sequencing workshops.
The hype about hearing loss and dementia
While recent research on hearing loss connects it strongly with dementia, please know that it’s not a one to one correlation. It’s only one of many factors that are related to dementia (here is a link to the study).
There is a connection, but we don’t understand it yet. And of course, if you have serious hearing loss, do take care of it because – we don’t know!
Because the internet is a space driven by fear and hype, I choose to accept that and use it to my advantage, which is why I chose the headline I did…but don’t fall for the hype.
Coping with tinnitus and hearing loss
Building your capacity for sensory experience, good coordination, and joy is my jam. So even if you have hearing loss or tinnitus, I invite you to explore your auditory system for the fun of it, not the fear.
The advice professionals give, in fact, if you have tinnitus, is:
- Ignore the tinnitus as much as possible and consciously focus on other available sounds (hopefully pleasant or beautiful ones) in your environment until you can get tested.
- Get evaluated by a physician, audiologist, or otolaryngologist. Chances are there is nothing organically wrong, but treatments are available.
Whatever we pay attention to gets amplified in our body, and creates neural pathways in our brain. It grabs all your attention. Your narrowing attentional field then affects your whole body.
On the other hand, if you open or expand your attention, your system expands. More circulation, more respiration, move available movement, better health.
That’s why today’s video is about exploring your auditory system through learning about cranial nerve 8, the vestibulocochlear nerve! Here is what it looks like. The spiral is the cochlea, and the three arcing tubes are the vestibular organ:
Devote yourself to learning and growth, not improvement
Our health and wellbeing depends on our ability to learn, build capacity, and grow. We improve naturally when we are empowered with information. We relax and open to learning when we have enough food, water and rest. We take risks and explore our capacities when we have a sense of being accepted with all of our bumps and warts.
Our sensory systems are healthier when we have healthy environments to live in and explore. Challenges that interest us contribute to our growth and development.
Improvement is a side effect of this relationship between self and world. We are no different than any other animal on this planet in that regard. Building capacity to face challenges is more relational and empowering than self-improvement, conceptually.
Sound Regulation for Well-being
Our modern sound environment is challenging in the United States. It is almost completely unregulated. If you want to do something for your cognitive and emotional well-being, get involved if you can. Leaf-blower haters, unite! Here is a bill that never made it past committee in NY State…what can we do about it? This is not just an issue for wealthy folks.
Our environment is not separate from our body, and our evolution is an expression of this reality. Studies of dolphins showed that those in the wild – richer and larger sound environments – have much better hearing and vocalize more, and with more variety, than those held in small tanks.
Whales and dolphins are profoundly damaged by noise pollution in the ocean. We are the same.
The evolution of our hearing in relationship to our environment is fascinating because it’s such a big piece of how this sense organ is designed.
The evolution of your auditory and vestibular system tells a story
Vestibular sense organs were the first to develop in living organisms to help them perceive gravity in our watery environment. These early organs had a kind of a hair like cell that could sense vibration. Both gravity and sound produce different kinds of waves, so the auditory system evolved second, naturally, from this same kind of cell as we became curious about sound waves in the environment.
At first, the inner cochlea was just a straight tube, but as our need to hear higher tones developed, the tube started to spiral in order to save space inside our skulls. This spiral expanded our ability to hear high tones, while lower tones are perceived at the base.
Both of these organs rest in a unified bony labyrinth in our skull on either side of our brain stem and spinal cord where it exits the skull. Their development was intricately linked to the evolution of our jawbones. The three tiny bones in the inner ear were once, in fact, jaw bones.
We perceive sound waves in order to move through whatever medium we live in to get food. We open our jaws to swallow that food, and this primary movement of survival is what our bodies and our all our senses evolved to support.
The vestibulocochlear organ sits right in line with the atlanto-occipital joint in the center-back of your skull, and your jaw joint sits along that same balance line near the bottom of your ear hole.
The atlanto-occipital joint is where the spinal cord exits the brain and goes down into the spine. From there all your nerves travel out into the distal ends of your limbs. The postural importance of movement and freedom at this joint is a central concept in Alexander Technique practice.
Why our sound environment matters
Whales and the dolphins have even more powerful auditory and vocal systems than we do. Whales can produce sounds as loud as 180 decibels, and can hear sounds made 1000 miles away. Imagine how noise pollution might affect their emotional and cognitive life, as well as their ability to navigate in the ocean!
We humans are also living in noisier and smaller environments and our attention is aimed towards tinier and tinier devices. This is affecting our coordination, and our mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
I hope these somatic practices support you in expanding your awareness, building capacity to navigate this reality, and taking action to care for yourself and our environment.