MUSIC / MENTAL HEALTH / HEALTH AND WELLBEING
The Sounds That Make Me Calm
Brian Eno’s 1978 masterpiece “Ambient 1: Music For Airports” has never failed to ease my anxiety
Sound and music can have a profound effect on our brains and our bodies.
Physiologically, sound can be used to evoke feelings of nausea, headaches and dizziness, as is the case with low-frequency sound below 20Hz, known as infrasonic sound. An estimated 1 out of 50,000 people suffer from a condition known as hyperacusis, whereby a heightened sensitivity to even normal environmental sounds can cause pain and anxiety.
Both physiologically and psychologically, sound can be used to create fear and confuse the mind, such as in the “sound disorientation techniques” used by the CIA in the torturing of detainees.
In her 1986 track Experiment IV, Kate Bush sang about a plan by a secret military agency to create “a sound that could kill someone from a distance” to be used in warfare. Even back in 1986, the possibility that these kinds of experiments were actually taking place was not such a stretch of the imagination.
