2.2.1. An exercise involving musical perception

The goal of this exercise is to perceive the influence of music on our body. With daily repetitions (morning and evening) for three weeks, this exercise makes it possible to observe gradual changes. Several types of research have shown that listening to enjoyable music generates physiological well-being in our body, due to the release of dopamine and oxytocin, among other things. Music has a positive effect on health, provided that it is chosen rather than forced on us [BON 13, BLO 99, HAA 10, MOR 18, MOR 11, RAG 15, SLO 91, ZAT 07].

The objective of this exercise is to physically perceive the effects of music on our body:

• – choose a song without lyrics that is enjoyable and uplifting;
• – listen it while standing, with your knees slightly bent and your arms at your side;
• – close your eyes and take three long breaths;
• – focus on breathing by simply paying attention to it without trying to change anything;

• – with your eyes closed, breath in for three seconds, hold your breath for three seconds, breathe out for three seconds and hold your breath for three seconds. This breathing cycle, called square breathing, should be repeated for three minutes. At the end of this square breathing, listen to the song, keeping your eyes closed;
• – focus on the music and feel the vibrations in your ears for one minute;
• – then focus on your stomach, heart and body in order to perceive the vibrations generated by the music. Listen to the whole song again with this aim;
• – listen and feel;
• – at the end of the song, ask yourself: what did I feel? Which part of my body is heavy or light, which part of my body is relaxed or moved? What is smiling in my body?

The perception of music may have been “confined” to specific parts of your body. From your feet to your head, identify the main feeling in relation to a part of your body (legs, pelvis, stomach, plexus, thorax, throat and head). Listening to music may have provoked enjoyable emotions and perhaps allowed you to visualize images or recall a memory. Anything is perfect as this choice is specific to everyone.

Here are some suggestions of songs to listen during the exercise given in section 2.2.1: Donald Fagen – New Frontier, Peter Bence – Here Comes The Sun, Pachelbel – Canon in D, Telepopmusik – Breathe, Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke – Shadow Magnet, Dave Brubeck – Unsquare Dance, The Blues Brothers – Peter Gunn Theme, Sade – Soldier of Love, Lama Gyurme – The Tsaok Offering, Levon Minassian – Im Ayrogh Veuchlitz, Deva Premal – Gayatri Mantra, Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer, Car – Drive, Ennio Morricone – The Mission, Dead Can Dance – Yulunga, The Alan Parsons Project – Eye in the Sky, Handel – Lascia Ch’io Pianga, Emma Shapplin – Carmine Meo, Dany Cudd and Markus Johansson – Once Again, Fréderic Delarue – A Healing Gift to Humanity, Mozart – Ave Verum Corpus, Elton John – Song for Guy.

Choose those you enjoy the most and listen them two to three times a day for three weeks in order to perceive more distinctly the effects of music and the vibrations on your body and to benefit from an actual improvement in your well-being including, among others, an improvement in your mood [RAG 15].

2.2.2. The influences of music

Cymatics (section 1.4) allowed us to see that vibrations create forms and influence water. As music is vibratory, does it affect our body?

In recent years, science has demonstrated the effect of music on the way our brain works, on the changes in blood flow and on the activation of certain areas of our brain [BLO 99]. Music, unlike chocolate or drugs, is not a pharmacological substance. It is an abstract stimulus. Undoubtedly, music has no more “special” qualities than other enjoyable stimuli, such as those that derive from looking at an artwork. Music simply provokes an emotional response.

Hervé Platel, a neuropsychology researcher at the University of Caen, points out: “The paths through which music enters our brain are much more complex than those of speech, for example, and engage different regions of our brain: music stimulates, relaxes, sooths our pain, but it can also increase the plasticity of our brain and cause changes in the synaptic connections”. According to this researcher, listening to music while working could then boost memorization and decrease our feeling of tiredness [PLA 05, PLA 10a, PLA 16].

Listening to music also causes changes in skin conductivity, heartrate, breathing and body temperature [SAL 11]. It reduces negative emotions and warps our perception of time. Some researchers have even highlighted that musical tempo affects the pace of the activities carried out [KAM 10].

The feeling of pleasure increases when an area called the “reward pathway” is activated [OLD 54]. Thus, the “pleasure and joy” effect manifests itself through the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and oxytocin [BLO 01, NOR 03, NOR 09]. Therefore, music affects the expression of our emotions, memory and learning through the activation of the amygdala and the set of subcortical nuclei situated in the temporal lobe [BLO 99, KOE 06].

Music sets off a process of physiological well-being by acting on positive mood in relation to the feeling of control that an individual has on music, namely the possibility of choosing a specific type of music [BON 13, SLO 05]. The freedom to choose which type of music to listen to is a source of pleasure and motivation [KRA 14].

More broadly, music and vibrations affect flora and fauna. In fact, plants exposed to music grow more rapidly, tomatoes are more resistant to hydric stress and vineyards “steeped” in a musical environment are healthier.

In the animal world, cows exposed to music move faster toward automatic milking, as if they enjoyed listening to the music [KRA 97]. It has also been noted that cows produce more milk when certain types of coherent and soothing music are played [NOR 11], whereas other, incoherent types of music yield no observable results [KEN 16].

These surprising phenomena can be observed and measured. However, as of now they cannot be understood or explained. It is true that interviewing a cow to ask it “Why does music make you produce more milk?” is not feasible. In the plant world, the phenomenon is equally unexplainable. These phenomena related to causality (if… music, then… an effect) can only be understood to a certain extent. We can naturally observe the facts without, however, being able to understand a phenomenon scientifically.

Today, we have no mathematical model to understand and find the correlations between music and all of its possible effects. Several studies are being carried out in healthcare, medicine and education.

2.3.1. The “vascular autonomic reflex” phenomenon

The “vascular autonomic reflex” (VAR) or “Nogier pulse” corresponds to a perceived change in radial pulse variation. The first scientist to observe the VAR phenomenon was surgeon and professor René Leriche in the 1950s. A decade later, a doctor called Paul Nogier observed that, by touching a specific point on the ear of a patient, he could notice a change in the patient’s pulse.

Nogier’s works highlighted the existence of a connection between an auricular stimulation (of the ear) and pulse variation. This is a reproducible phenomenon that does not occur by accident (even if the VAR phenomenon does not always immediately follow an auricular stimulation, since everything depends on the area of the ear stimulated and the laterality of the ear [left or right]).

In the research on VAR, we can also find such expressions as “vascular autonomic signal”, “vascular autonomic reaction”, “Nogier’s activated and dynamic pulse” [NOG 69, NOG 77, NOG 85] or “auriculo medicine”. The last term is not necessarily the right one, according to a report by INSERM [GUE 03], which lists the research and clinical cases where auriculotherapy has been used by showing the contributions and limitations of this technique.

According to Rouxeville [ROU 07], “the pulse is linked to the pressure wave set off by cardiac ejection and reflected by the digital arteriolar wall”. The pressure wave (9 m/s) is not the propagation wave of the blood column (0.9 m/s). The VAR is a phenomenon of a different nature added to the pulse. Presystolic arterial parietal stiffening is governed by the autonomous system. This is a reaction to stimuli (emotional or physical), which is unconscious, autonomous and takes place on a vascular level. The author points out that “the cerebral cortex and the adrenal gland are inevitably involved in the VAR phenomenon. For a few seconds, we can see that something (or nothing) happens”.

Stimulating the ear does not cause an observable phenomenon, but the pulse may change in two ways. Either it seems stronger and wider, as if it there were a rebound with an increased tension in the arterial wall – leading to the perception of a positive VAR – or it seems weaker and softer, as if there were a dip – leading to the perception of a negative VAR.

2.3.2. Exercising the perception of pulse variation

• – Feel your pulse below your throat with your thumb and index. Press very gently on the part of your throat under the joints of the jaw and feel your pulse. Move your fingers forwards or backwards, as well as higher up or lower down your throat, to feel it better.
• – Repeat the exercise by using your other hand and observe on which side you can feel your pulse more clearly and distinctly.
• – While feeling your pulse below your throat, close your eyes and with your free hand gently tap your auricle from the rear toward the front.
• – Notice the pulse variation that takes place either through a light rebound (VAR+) or a light dip (VAR–) for a few heartbeats. If no variation is perceived, stimulate a different area of your ear, either higher or closer to the lobe.
• – Repeat the exercise with the other ear to observe if your perception is similar, stronger or weaker.

It is necessary to train to perceive the VAR. To this end, it is recommended to do this exercise daily for three minutes. With this type of training, the perception will become more precise, subtle and rapid day after day. Step by step, it will be possible to perceive the VAR without feeling it with your thumb and index under your throat. Some people may even feel the VAR directly at their temples, solar plexus or in another part of their body.

2.3.3. Exercising the perception of intuition

By training the VAR (the perception of radial pulse variation), we can now do some exercises. The (VAR–) test and science are now validating what Reik put forward in 1948: “Intuition is perceived as a moment of absence and emptiness for a second” [REI 48].

Simple and quick exercises for the perception of intuition involve liquids. At first, we need to focus our attention and perception on the inner part of our body, for example with the inner smiling exercise below.