Why Music Can Heal You… or Keep You Stuck

In this episode, we dive into the science and soul of music as a healing tool. What starts as a curiosity about goosebumps from music (aka frisson) turns into a deeper conversation about the nervous system, memory, and how sound can both regulate you or keep you stuck. We explore how music is stored in the brain, why certain songs bring you back to specific moments in your life, and how your body responds to rhythm on a physiological level. This is a conversation about how music interacts with your nervous system — and how to use it intentionally as part of your healing process.

In this episode:

• What frisson is and why some people experience goosebumps from music
• The connection between frisson, HRV, and nervous system regulation
• Why feeling “stuck” can limit access to pleasure and emotional experiences
• How music is stored in the brain through the hippocampus (memory) and amygdala (emotion)
• Autobiographical memory recall — why music brings you back to past versions of yourself
• The “good” side of music: regulation, connection, and emotional access
• The “not-so-helpful” side: how music can reinforce stress, heartbreak, or old patterns
• What an amygdala hijack is and how music can trigger it
• How music therapy is used to retrain emotional responses in the brain
• Rhythmic entrainment and how your body syncs to sound
• Music in neurological rehab (Parkinson’s, stroke, speech, and movement)
• Osteopathic principles and the body’s inherent rhythm
• Frequency healing — what the research says vs. what we assume
• Binaural beats, low-frequency vibration, and nervous system effects
• Why music is not passive — it’s something your body is constantly responding to

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Continue the conversation on Instagram: @alannacrawford_

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Summit of Deck, where science meets goal and you don't have to pick one or the other. Hi, I'm your host, Elena Crocker, osteopathic manual practitioner and wikimatic teacher. On the pod, we're talking about body wisdom, energy, intuition, and becoming an expert on your own life. Whether you're looking to find yourself again, create a new version, or see, just here for the results, you're in the right place. I'm here to demystify spiritual curiosities while adding a layer of humanness to the healthcare experience. No gatekeeping, no pedestals. This podcast is for the woman who is ready to take her power back. Let's do it! Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday!

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Uh, I love music. Doesn't everybody? I've always felt like music heals. I read something on Instagram the other day that said not everybody gets those like goosebumps or chills from listening to music, and I thought that that was insane because I get full body goosebumps, full body chills, like it's a very visceral reaction from music. Honestly, it makes me cry a lot too, like in a good way. And I know that music is said to have healing properties. I feel like that's pretty obvious. I feel like it's something we can all agree on in some way or another. But I guess what I'm trying to say is I want to know what healing properties music actually has. So during Reiki training, we talk a lot about the frequencies of a chakra. So each chakra actually has a unique healing frequency that coincides with what that chakra point represents. So people who are really low, um just like in life and energy, they're not in a good spot mentally or extremely overwhelmed by trying to implement changes in their life. It's suggested to sit in stillness with the specific chakra healing frequency, which I honestly I don't doubt that it works. Like I do believe that that works. I I don't understand why. Well, I guess I do now after researching for this episode, but I didn't understand why. Um, and I do it a lot with the heart chakra. I'll sit in the in the heart chakra frequency, but I thought, like, why not dig into some data here and let's work with some facts and maybe I can answer my own kind of musings, let's call them. So, needless to say, today we're talking about the healing capacity of music, what it can do for us, and how you can use it on your own healing journey. Firstly, I want to talk about the thing I read on Instagram. So it's called Freesen. Um, and I think that this is also a great place to start because it's fun and it's where I thought this episode was headed. Just be like a little lighthearted episode. Um, but then I really got into research in how a rhythm can help reshape the brain from trauma. So freezing. We'll get there. Friezen is actually a scientific term used to explain like pleasurable chills. I'm pretty sure it's the French word for shiver, which really hits when you think about what that chill, goosebumpy feeling is. So when you experience something and you get chills, but like in a really good way, almost euphoric, that's freezing. That can be applied to memory, experiences, smells, thoughts, sounds. But apparently, according to social media, it's more rare. I think the thing I came across, it's like less than 10% of people experience goosebumps or chills when they hear a certain tone or certain music, certain songs. Guys, that's a lie. It's not true. Musical freezing is actually one of the most likely sensory experiences. We get the goosebumps or the activated chills. Can't believe everything you see on social media. Um, but that made me wonder why some people get it and some people don't? Because it's not stating like every single person will get this. It's just not that it's some uniquely low odd that you do get it. You're not special. I'm just joking. You are special. Um, okay, so now we get a science lesson, and it's gonna take us back to regulation. I made that sound fun for you guys because I can see the eye rolls where you're like, back to regulation, Elena. You can't go through a freaking episode without talking about nervous system regulation. I can't. I can't, because it's important. Okay, so why do some people experience freezing and some don't? On the most basic level, and this is where we're gonna touch on regulation, personality and sensitivity. So studies suggest that people who are more open to new experiences or have higher levels of emotional sensitivity are more likely to experience it. And these individuals tend to be more attuned to emotional stimuli and may have a stronger connection between the auditory and emotional centers in their brains. And a really interesting study I came across to prove this point, is mind you, it's a very, very small-scale study, but is still data nonetheless. And it's it's a reputable publisher. So higher HRV, so higher heart rate variability, which is what we want, we want it to be higher, was linked to a higher association of experiencing freezing and getting the benefits from ASMR. You know those videos on Instagram? I would say TikTok. I think TikTok made them famous, but I don't know because I'm not on the talk. But I never really understood what ASMR was. I thought it was just some like trend. It stands for autonomous sensory meridian response. And what it is, is that when you do that like soft whipper whisper or like the tapping or like the I hope that that sounds good when I just tap my microphone, it creates a relaxation or a low grade euphoria. Something new we learn every single day. So they're actually trying to lower your stress response by doing that ASMR. Anyway, what this is telling us is that higher HRV, which we want, can trigger both of these euphoric events. And if we need a refresher on HRV, it is your nervous system's ability to jump back and forth more easily. Meaning, yes, we love that rest and digest phase of our nervous system, but in reality, we can't live there, and that's okay, we're not meant to. We go back and forth from sympathetic to parasympathetic, and we call that nervous system flexibility. So a higher HRV says we have more nervous system flexibility. And when we have that, when we have that higher HRV, we have a regulated nervous system. So all that to say, when we have nervous system flexibility, we are able to be more emotionally sensitive and open to new experiences because we're not stuck in the like hypothetical tunnel vision. And I love that there's data behind this because it's not something that it's sorry, it's is something that comes up a lot in my clinic, especially when people are feeling stuck. And I'm like, hey, what do you do for fun? What do you enjoy? And they literally can't answer the question. Like maybe even ask yourself that question right now. They're not accessing their joy well, let's call it. And to even find an answer of what they like to do seems daunting. And so, our first step in before we can even answer the question of like, what do you enjoy? What brings you joy? What do you like? Let's start regulating the nervous system through the physical. So, long story short, we want to look at our nervous system health if we feel like we are lacking in or feeling joy. And music can bring you back to a balanced state or keep you in a balanced state. But interestingly, it can also keep you stuck through nervous systems through neuroscience. So, when we talk about our nervous system being regulated, we're talking about our ability to be in the present. Therefore, things like freezing would be creating emotion in real time. But music is also tied to brain structures that store emotion from the past. So the key players for understanding how music affects us and can and help us is our amygdala and our hippocampus. And this is bits of this are taken from the Cleveland Clinic because I wanted to explain this correctly to you guys. And I was really down a rabbit hole. So um, our hippocampus converts short-term memories. So things like experiences, etc., it takes those short-term memories and it stores it stores them into long-term storage, long-term memories. So it acts as a primary center for memory learning and mapping surroundings while also contributing to emotional regulation and neurogenesis. So uh neurogenesis, by the way, is part of a process that creates new nerve cells in the brain. So if you're like, why do we care? I talked about this on my last episode that for a long time it was believed that the brain could not grow new cells after a certain period of time, and we found out that is not true. So the hippocampus is actually one of the brain centers that contributes to new growth. But the hippocampus also works with the amygdala to collect to connect emotions to memories, particularly fear and anxiety. So the amygdala serves as a primary processing center for emotions, particularly fear, threats, and aggression as a key component of the limbic system. The limbic system is just like our emotional nervous system. So it regulates emotional responses, memory consolidation, social cognition, and it triggers our fight or flight response to stress. So why do we care about this? The hippocampus is like your memory bank. So it stores the details of your life, where you were, who you were with, what was happening. It's like the hippocampus is more like facts and events and then puts them into long-term storage. And the amygdala is your emotional tagging system. So the amygdala decides like, was this safe? Was this stressful? Was this exciting? And it attaches that feeling to the memory that the hippocampus is storing. So when we incorporate music into the mix, or when you're listening to music during a certain period of your life, your brain is pairing that song with the emotional state that you're in. And then later, when you hear that same song, it's not just a memory of a specific moment. You're actually you can reactivate the state your nervous system was in when that memory was created. And this is called autobiographical memory recall. But honestly, that fancy name just means your body remembers. And this can be a good thing and this could be a bad thing. The reason music gets stored with memory is for many reasons. Like a lot of fancy neuroscience terms that I'm just gonna sum up for you because I don't know if you guys share the same thrill of research that I do. But anywho's all. The reason music gets so deeply tied to your memory is actually pretty simple. Your brain encodes it during the most emotionally intense and identity-shaping parts of your life. So there's this thing called the reminiscence bump, which basically means we remember things most clearly from about age 10 to 30. That's when you're having like all of your first, like your first love, your first heartbreak, you're really figuring out who you are. But the same time this is happening, your brain is kind of in overdrive. So your memory center, the hippocampus, is highly active. And your emotional center, the amygdala, is more sensitive. So when you're listening to music during that time, it gets encoded deeper and stronger than other points in your life, or like later points in your life. And not to say that you're not going to encode deep and strong memories. It's just if you look at the that time frame, those are pretty like big, informative, life-changing years. So, okay, we've got memory, emotion, and reward. Sorry, I didn't mention the reward yet. Dopamine. Okay, so your brain at this time is also releasing dopamine. We know that's a reward chemical. It's what makes things feel good, meaningful, and worth remembering. So now we have memory emotion, and we have our reward, our dopamine system firing all at the same time. And when that happens, your it tells your brain like all of this matters, but all these processing things are happening, and let's keep this memory in the brain box and this feeling, this emotion, this state. And in that, you're typically listening to the same songs on repeat. Like, who doesn't do that when you really love a gym? And when you're in those emotional firsts, right? Like be it a breakup. You probably had a couple breakup songs you just like continuously listen to during that period. Or like you're in a new relationship, or in a long-term relationship, you guys have a song. You know what I mean? So when you repeat listening to those songs, you're actually strengthening those neural pathways through repetition. So your brain is essentially wired that song to a specific part of you. And when you hear it, you can relive it in that state of existence. So let's look at the good side of this. Because if your brain can attach music to positive experiences, connection, joy, confidence, then hearing that song can actually bring you back into that state. So in that sense, it can act as a regulation tool and it can bring you back into regulation, or if you're regulated and great, it can honestly just trigger some like really great emotions. But the not so helpful side is the exact same thing can happen with stress or heartbreak or anxiety or like really any emotion. If a song is tied to a really emotional or painful time in your life, your brain doesn't always recognize that that's over because it's bringing you back into feeling in that same state, right? Like our brain doesn't really know the timeline, it just knows what it's functioning and what it's feeling. And here's where things get a little bit more messy, and it's called the amygdala hijack. So remember, the amygdala's job is to keep you safe. It scans for patterns and goes like, hey, have I felt this before? Do I need to react? So when you hear a song that's tied to a strong emotional memory, it can trigger that same emotional response before your thinking brain has time to catch up to explain, like, hey, slow down, this is just a memory, we're not here. So the amygdala actually processes the information milliseconds earlier than your rational brain, your thinking brain. So if the amygdala matches the incoming stimulus to a past, like threatening or like traumatic memory, which was recorded in the hippocampus, it perceives a fight, flight, or freeze situation. And then it triggers the HPA access. So our stress response, and it starts firing a stress response and it's hijacking the brain function before our thinking brain can give its two cents and provide correct direction or a better direction. So in theory, you can be having a completely normal day, hear one song, and all of a sudden your body is triggered back into a version of your life that doesn't really exist in the current moment. Now, that being said, not all hijacks are negative. It can do this in a positive way and take over the system with like intense joy or laughter. We've probably all been there, right? And in these cases, the hijack becomes easier to manage than the impact it has in a negative way because it's not triggering the release of hormones through the HPA axis. But interestingly, when you have an amygdala hijack, and like this is not just exclusive to music triggering it. I'm just using that as an example because the episode is about music, but amygdala hijacks are common in people experiencing like extreme stress, anxiety disorders, and PTSD. And one of the therapeutic tools for reprogramming the dominating emotional response from the amygdala is music therapy. Certain music can reduce the amygdala activity enough that it lets your thinking brain step in and assess the situation instead of firing the emotional response. So, with that music therapy and giving it that like time and space for the thinking brain to step in, you can retrain the emotional response and reprogram the brain. So, research also shows that auditory stimuli can tap into evolutionary pathways in the brain to influence feelings of joy, love, or fear. And this is done through something called rhythmic. Um why did I write entertainment? It's not entertainment, it's entrainment. Oh, Alana, Alana, it is 7:58 p.m. If anybody needs to know where my brain is at this episode. Okay, so what that means is your body naturally sinks to rhythm. So your heart rate, your breath, and even movement can sink to music. And we actually use this in neurological rehab. So with Parkinson's patients, walking actually improves with rhythm. So they use music in in Parkinson's treatment. With stroke patients, speech improves with rhythm. So your body is constantly trying to match rhythm. So if you hear a steady beat, your brain and your body start organizing around it. And they've proven like your breathing can shift, your movement can change, and your nervous system can start to regulate. And I found this really, really interesting because in osteopathy, the practice of osteopathy, like we follow a set of principles and treatment. And one of the first principles you learn is that the body has a unique inherent rhythm. So when I treat someone, I'm feeling the rhythm in their body and I'm trying to work with it, not in against it, because in that sense, we're we're treating with the body, we're not imposing treatment on the body. So, for example, we use a technique called oscillation. It's kind of like a repetitive back and forth motion. And I vividly remember this. In first year of osteoschool, there'd be like, let's say 10 people. They're gonna be face down on 10 different tables. And we would put our hand on their sacrum and oscillate, and we would try to feel for their rhythm. Then once you got it, you would move on to the next body, you move on to the next body, you get the picture. And it was really neat to see each person's oscillatory need was a little bit different. And like, I don't know, guys, the stuff is just like so freaking cool. Like, yes, we have amazing medical advancements and we can heal a lot of stuff, but then we look at things like inherent rhythm for healing, and it just like it really lights me up because the body is so amazing, and sometimes I think we miss the plot when we're trying to enforce it or like put a treatment on our bodies instead of working with what the body naturally wants and what it's like built to do. Anyway, a little food for thought, I guess. Okay, so let's bring it full circle to my original ponder. Can frequencies heal? Well, from what we have learned, if you think about a frequency, you're tapping into a rhythm. So I think on the fact that fact alone, frequency can override emotion, it can lower your stress response, and tap into creating new neural pathways. But what does the data suggest? So music therapy is strongly backed by research and it is clinically supported. We use it in stroke rehab, Parkinson's disease, anxiety and depression, pain, pain management. And the findings for these things are um it can improve motor coordination. We know that one through rhythm, reduce cortisol, so that's our stress, that's our stress hormone, increase dopamine, we love some dopamine, and support emotional processing. Um, and this is tied to entrainment, not entertainment, uh, and limbic activation. So we already use sound clinically to change brain function. I just don't think we call it air quotes frequency healing. But if we do look at specific frequencies, so we know frequencies are measured in Hertz at 432 Hertz, studies show that music tuned into that 430, 432 can lead to a significant decrease in heart rate, lower blood pressure, and reduce in respiratory rate compared to the standard 440 hertz tuning. I don't know why 440 is the standard, but apparently 432 is the sweet spot. 528 hertz. So this one's interesting because in the spiritual world and the energy energy healing world, that's supposed to be what is it called? DNA activating or DNA sequencing frequency. So you can fix your DNA, they're saying, if you work at this hertz level, 528. So data suggests music has a strong stress reducing 805. Oh my god, guys, I'm so sorry. I should really edit these things. Okay, 528 Hertz. Music has a strong stress-reducing effect on the endocrine system, significantly lowering anxiety, tension, and fatigue. Okay, is that DNA healing? I don't know, but that's still some pretty strong data. Then we look at a low vibration, so 40 hertz. So low frequency vibration at 40 hertz has been shown to support neural cell growth in laboratory studies. Great, we love that. And so sound therapy and pain is actually done at low frequency sound stimulation, so less than 100 hertz. And it's sound research for managing chronic pain, such as fibromyalgia patients, and enhancing fibroblast migration for wound healing. You've probably heard of um binarial beats. So it's auditory beats at a specific frequency, example like 10 hertz, and it can modulate brainwake brainwave activity to improve focus, cognitive performance, and reduce anxiety. I actually use this all the time. There's a great playlist on Spotify. It's called Deep Focus. And I use it, honestly, I play it when I am researching and writing these podcast outlines, but I do it a lot when I'm when I'm at my computer work. Um my girlfriend, mom Ashley, she taught me it in osteo school because she would study to the to the deep focus playlist. Actually, I was playing it in clinic the other day, and she told me it was triggering for our days at osteo school. Okay, so yes, my friends, it works. I think on many different layers in many different ways, music can in fact heal. I do think it's important to state it's a participatory process. Like we aren't just turning on music and expecting miracles, but if you engage music in your healing, I think you can expect some pretty solid results. And that's it. That's what I have for you today with my verbal diarrhea. I so apologize. We will not be recording podcasts at night anymore. So thank you for making it to the end of my musings. And I'm not gonna lie, that was not a question that has been asked three times. Last week I was having a transcendent moment listening to a talking head song, and after that was after I read that Instagram post, and I was like, okay, what's going on in the brain? And here we are. So I hope you all have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next Wednesday. Have a good one.