00:00
Welcome back to Pause Here, where we delve into the art and science of breathing to improve our daily lives.
I’m your host, Sarah, here to guide you through the science and simplicity of breathing, meditation, music and relaxation techniques that can transform your day, your health, and even your sleep.
And today, we’re turning the volume up a little; as we explore something that is already woven into almost every part of our lives:
Music.
The song you put on while you make breakfast.
The playlist that gets you through a workout.
The track you cannot hear without suddenly becoming seventeen again.
The piece of music that makes your shoulders drop.
The one that makes you cry for reasons you cannot quite explain.
And, of course, that one song your brain decides to play internally at 3 o’clock in the morning on repeat…
Music can change the atmosphere of a room, the pace of a walk, the feeling of a memory and sometimes even the rhythm of our breathing.
So today, we’re asking how and why does music affect us so much?
01:30
In this episode, we’re exploring The Soundtrack of Your Day.
We’ll look at why certain songs give us goosebumps, why music has such an extraordinary relationship with memory, why rhythm seems to make the body want to move before we’ve consciously decided to move it, and why anticipation may be one of the secret ingredients behind musical pleasure.
We’ll also explore what happens when music interacts with breathing, heart rate and stress, why singing or moving together can help people feel connected, and why the silence between sounds may matter almost as much as the sounds themselves.
And throughout the episode, I want you to think about your own soundtrack.
Not your favourite album of all time.
Not the songs you think you should like because somebody once told you they were musically important.
I mean the actual soundtrack of your life.
What wakes you up?
What helps you focus?
What accompanies the drive home?
What song can reach into some dusty archive in your brain and pull out an entire summer you thought you’d forgotten?
Because music is not simply something happening outside us.
When we listen, our brains predict, remember, move, anticipate, feel and respond.
02:56
Let’s start with one of music’s most uncanny abilities.
Time travel.
You know the experience.
A song begins and, within seconds, you are somewhere else.
Maybe you’re back in your childhood bedroom.
Maybe you can suddenly remember the fabric of the seats in your first car.
Maybe a song brings back a person, a holiday, a breakup, a wedding, a terrible haircut, or a phase in your life when apparently you thought wearing three belts at once was reasonable.
The interesting thing is that music does not just remind us of facts.
It can evoke something closer to a scene.
Researchers sometimes call these music-evoked autobiographical memories.
In a well-known brain-imaging study, neuroscientists examined what happened when people listened to music that became associated with autobiographical memories. The research implicated a region called the medial prefrontal cortex, an area involved in self-referential processing and autobiographical information.
And that helps explain why music can feel so strangely personal.
A familiar song may not simply trigger the thought:
“Oh yes, I heard this in 2004.”
It can bring back who you were in 2004.
Your surroundings.
Your relationships.
Your emotions.
Sometimes even sensations that seem far more vivid than a deliberate attempt to remember the same period.
And there is another fascinating layer to this. Musical memory can sometimes remain surprisingly resilient even when other types of memory are affected.
Research in Alzheimer’s disease, for example, suggests that aspects of musical memory can be partly spared, and familiar music has been studied as a way of supporting mood, communication and autobiographical recall.
That does not mean music is a cure for dementia.
It isn’t.
But it tells us something profound about how widely music is represented across the brain.
A song is rarely filed neatly in one little neurological drawer labelled: “MUSIC.”
It can involve auditory processing, prediction, movement, emotion, reward, memory and personal meaning all at once.
Which may be why a three-minute song can carry an absurd amount of emotional luggage.
So let’s try a tiny experiment.
Think of a song you loved somewhere between your teenage years and your mid-twenties.
Got one?
Now notice what arrived with it.
Did you remember only the melody?
Or did a place appear?
A face?
A smell?
The inside of a room?
A particular version of yourself?
Music can operate almost like a key. The notes themselves are small, but they can unlock an enormous room. The music around us can become part of the emotional architecture of our days. We are constantly attaching sound to moments. So in a very real sense, today’s playlist may become tomorrow’s memory.
06:28
Now let’s talk about that deliciously strange moment when a piece of music sends a shiver down your spine.
The swell of an orchestra.
A singer suddenly entering after a quiet passage.
The bass dropping after a long build.
A chord change you knew was coming and somehow still were not prepared for.
People use different words for this experience:
Chills.
Goosebumps.
Shivers.
Frisson.
And scientists have been very interested in it because, from an evolutionary point of view, it is rather odd.
There is no sandwich arriving.
No warm shelter.
No obvious physical reward.
It is air vibrating at carefully organised frequencies, and somehow your brain reacts as though something deeply important has happened.
One study led by Salimpoor and Zatorre found evidence of dopamine release in the brain while participants listened to music that reliably gave them intense pleasure and chills.
Dopamine is involved in reward, motivation and learning. But here is the especially interesting bit. The researchers found different patterns related to anticipation and the eventual peak emotional moment. In other words, part of the pleasure of music may lie not only in what happens, but in your brain sensing what might happen next.
And that makes perfect sense when you think about music.
Music unfolds in time.
A note creates an expectation for another note.
A rhythm establishes a pattern.
A chord creates tension that wants somewhere to go.
A composer can give your brain exactly what it expects, delay it, interrupt it, disguise it or surprise it.
Music is constantly playing a tiny game with prediction.
Your brain says:
“I think I know where this is going.”
The music says:
“Do you, though?”
And somewhere between expectation and surprise, something awesome happens.
Too predictable and music may become boring.
Too chaotic and it can become difficult to follow.
But that sweet spot, where there is enough structure to form expectations and enough surprise to keep updating them, can be super compelling.
This is also why a musical pause can feel enormous.
Nothing is happening acoustically.
But your brain has not stopped.
It is waiting.
Predicting.
Holding the shape of what came before.
And that expectation gives silence tension.
A good pause in music is not empty.
It is absolutely crowded with possibility.
Here’s something fun to notice next time you listen to a favourite song.
If there is one moment that always gives you chills, notice what happens in the ten or twenty seconds beforehand.
That feeling may already be building.
Your brain has learned the musical landscape and knows that something is approaching.
That build-up is one reason we can listen to a favourite piece hundreds of times and still enjoy it.
We are not simply surprised by the music.
We learn to enjoy anticipating it.
And that idea is interesting from a relaxation point of view too.
Habits and rituals work partly because the brain and body learn patterns.
The first notes of a familiar evening playlist.
The sound you associate with meditation.
The opening of a breathing track.
10:00
Now, rhythm. One of the great mysteries of music is why it is so difficult to keep it entirely in your ears.
A beat begins and suddenly your foot is tapping.
Your head is nodding.
Your fingers are drumming on the steering wheel.
Your shoulders have apparently signed up for choreography without consulting you.
Research into beat perception shows that the motor system is involved even when we are merely listening. Brain-imaging studies have found activity in areas associated with movement and timing during rhythm perception.
So when you hear a beat, your brain is not just passively receiving a string of sounds. It is actively predicting when the next beat should happen. That relationship between hearing and movement is often described as auditory-motor coupling.
And this matters because human beings are remarkably good at synchronising movement to sound.
We march together.
Dance together.
Clap together.
Row together.
Sing together.
And when a song has a good groove, it creates a biological urge to move.
Here is a fun detail. Studies of groove suggest that the most irresistible rhythms are not necessarily the simplest ones. A little rhythmic complexity can actually increase the desire to move.
In one study looking at syncopation and groove, listeners tended to report the greatest excitement and desire to move at a kind of middle ground.
Not boringly predictable.
Not rhythmically impossible.
Interesting enough to engage the brain while still giving it something to lock onto.
Essentially, your brain enjoys having a job. But not a tax return.
There is also something beautifully social about rhythm. When groups move or sing in synchrony, people often report feeling greater closeness and connection.
Researchers have explored several possible mechanisms behind this, including shared timing, increased coordination and the sense of community - of being part of something happening together.
The biology is complicated. And claims that everything comes down to one magical “bonding hormone” tend to oversimplify things.
But the broader finding is quite compelling. Coordinated musical activity can help turn a collection of individuals into a group.
Anyone who has stood in a crowd at a concert singing and shouting the same chorus in time with each other probably understands this without needing a brain scanner.
For a few minutes, hundreds or thousands of separate people breathe, vocalise and move around the same pulse.
It is synchrony on a giant scale.
And perhaps that is part of why music has appeared in rituals, celebrations, ceremonies, work and community life across cultures for so long.
13:03
So, something that we’re especially interested in at Pause Here, can music change your breathing?
In simplistic terms yes, music and breathing can influence one another.
But the relationship is more interesting than simply saying:
“Slow music equals slow breathing.”
In one frequently cited study, researcher Bernardi and colleagues measured breathing, heart rate, blood pressure and other cardiovascular changes while participants listened to different types of music.
Faster tempos were generally associated with increases in breathing rate, heart rate and blood pressure.
Slower or more meditative music could support a calmer physiological pattern.
But one of the most intriguing findings involved the pauses. During periods of silence inserted between musical selections, participants showed reductions in several physiological measures. And in some cases, the relaxation response during the silence was even greater than during the slower music itself.
We often imagine wellbeing as adding something.
Add calming music.
Add meditation.
Add candles.
Add lavender.
Add a herbal tea.
Add a weighted blanket.
But sometimes the useful ingredient is subtraction.
A gap.
A quieter transition.
A few seconds in which nothing new is demanding your attention.
And music can make that contrast easier to feel.
Our bodies contain rhythms already.
Breathing.
Walking.
Heartbeats.
Sleep-wake cycles.
External rhythms can sometimes influence how we organise those internal patterns.
Now, that does not mean your heart becomes a metronome obediently matching every drumbeat of whatever song is currently playing.
Biology is far messier than that.
But rhythmic cues can influence things like timing, excitement and movement.
And breathing is particularly interesting because it sits at the border between automatic and voluntary control.
You breathe without deciding to breathe.
But you can also deliberately change your breathing.
Music gives that voluntary side something to follow.
That is one of the ideas behind counted breathing with musical cues.
Instead of sitting there thinking:
“Was that four seconds?”
“That felt like six.”
“Have I ruined my breathing, ah I’ve got to start again?”
The timing is carried by the sound.
The rhythm becomes scaffolding.
And when the cue is musical rather than purely mechanical, the practice can feel less like following instructions and more like entering a flow.
But here is an important caveat. There is no universally calming song. Human beings refuse to be that convenient. Music that one person finds peaceful may make another person restless, nostalgic, irritated or deeply sad.
Research on music and stress is encouraging overall. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have found beneficial effects of music interventions in many different settings.
But the outcomes vary depending on the music, the listener, the context, how the music is selected and what exactly is being measured.
Personal meaning matters.
Preference matters.
Context matters.
And sometimes the music that helps you regulate is not conventionally “relaxing” at all.
For one person, settling down might mean a quiet piano piece.
For another, it might mean putting on something loud enough to let a difficult emotion move through before they can soften.
Wellbeing is not always about turning the volume of our emotions down.
Sometimes it is about giving that emotion somewhere safe to go.
17:13
And that brings us to another thing music does extraordinarily well.
It keeps us company.
We use music at beginnings and endings.
At weddings and funerals.
Before competitions.
During long drives.
In hospitals.
At birthdays.
On road trips.
In films, where apparently nobody is allowed to walk dramatically through an airport without an orchestra knowing about it.
Music helps organise our emotional experience.
And interestingly, we do not always choose music that matches the emotion we want to end up with. Obviously, we’d all love to be happy most of the time, right? But that doesn’t mean we exclusively listen to happy music in hopes that we can end up happy at the end of the song.
Sometimes when we’re sad, we choose sad music.
Which may sound counterproductive until you consider what that music may be providing.
Recognition.
Validation.
Beauty.
Emotional structure.
Or simply the sense that our current state has an appropriate soundtrack.
A sad song does not necessarily make sadness worse.
Sometimes it gives sadness edges.
It turns a difficult and diffuse feeling into something we can sit beside.
And that is one reason the phrase “music as medicine” needs a little care.
Music can absolutely be used therapeutically.
And music therapy is an established clinical discipline delivered by trained professionals.
Research has found benefits across a range of settings.
But everyday listening and clinical music therapy are not the same thing.
Your Spotify playlist is many things. But it has not completed a doctorate in psychology.
What everyday music can offer is a wonderfully accessible way of shifting attention, supporting routines, creating transitions and exploring emotion.
You can use energising music to help begin something.
Familiar music to make an unfamiliar environment feel safer.
Instrumental music to create a space for focus.
A slow playlist to begin easing toward sleep.
Or no music at all when your day has simply contained too much sound already.
19:32
One of the beautiful things about music is that it exists not only in the notes, but in the spaces between them.
Silence gives music shape.
Without gaps, phrasing disappears.
Without contrast, loudness loses some of its power.
Without anticipation, arrival means less.
And I think the same can be true of our days.
We spend a lot of time filling the spaces.
Waiting in a queue? Phone.
Walking somewhere? Podcast.
Cooking? Television.
Folding laundry? True crime documentary, because nothing complements the mystery of how to fold fitted sheets like an unsolved disappearance.
None of those things is inherently bad.
I love sound. I have built rather a lot of my life around it.
But if music teaches us anything, it is that continuous input is not necessarily richer input.
A pause changes what surrounds it. The rests are part of the composition.
And perhaps this is where music and mindfulness meet most beautifully.
Mindfulness is not about forcing the mind to become blank.
It is learning to notice what is here.
Music asks us to do something very similar.
Listen closely enough and you start hearing layers.
The attack of a note.
The fading resonance.
The rhythm underneath the melody.
A breath before a singer begins.
The tiny silence before the next phrase.
Attention becomes more precise. And for a few minutes, instead of trying to escape the present moment, you become curious about its soundtrack.
21:26
So, what have we learned?
Music is doing far more than decorating the background of our lives.
It interacts with brain systems involved in memory, movement, prediction, reward and emotion.
Familiar songs can cue vivid autobiographical memories.
Rhythm recruits motor and timing networks even when we are sitting still.
Musical pleasure involves not only the moment we love, but often the anticipation of that moment.
Tempo and rhythmic structure can influence our breathing and stress responses, depending on the individual and the context.
Making music, singing and moving together can support social connection through synchrony and shared experience.
And silence is not the absence of music’s effect. Sometimes it is the moment when that effect becomes most noticeable.
So here is a small experiment for the week ahead.
Instead of asking only:
“What music do I like?”
Try asking:
What does this music help me do?
What helps you begin?
What helps you focus?
What helps you move?
What helps you feel something you might have been avoiding?
What helps your breathing soften?
And when might silence actually serve you better than another song?
Your soundtrack does not need to optimise every second of your life. Please do not turn listening to music into another productivity spreadsheet. Embrace the magic and mess and mystic of music and see how your favourite songs can accompany your life in old, new, different, and exciting ways. Maybe try a new genre, or artist, or setting. Become just a bit more intentional about the sounds around you. Because the music you hear is not simply passing through the room. Your brain is meeting it halfway.
Thanks for Pausing Here with me today.
If this episode has made you a little more curious about the relationship between rhythm, breath and the body, that relationship sits right at the heart of Pausing Point. Our counted breathing music is built around steady breathing patterns, so rather than watching a timer or counting in your head, you can simply let the musical cues carry the rhythm for you.
You’ll also find music for focus, relaxation, unwinding, re-energising and, of course, simply taking a pause. And if you’ve enjoyed our time together today, why not share this episode with someone who could use a little more music in the soundtrack of their life? You can follow Pause Here on your favourite podcast platform, so you never miss an episode. And you can find us on social media - we’re @PausingPoint to get updates and stay connected.
24:22
Next time on Pause Here, we’re exploring awe. Those moments when something quietly takes our breath away, whether it’s a piece of music, a night sky or the ocean. We’ll discover why these experiences are more than simply beautiful, and how a little more wonder might be exactly what our busy minds have been craving.
24:53
Before we finish today, I want to leave you with a different kind of listening. Not just listening to music… but noticing what happens when you move with it. For the next few minutes, you’ll hear Serene Strings: Relax, one of our Pausing Point counted breathing tracks. The music follows a simple rhythm: a four-count inhale… and a longer, six-count exhale.
But you don’t need to concentrate on counting. You don’t need to get every breath perfectly right. Just let the music carry some of that work for you.
Find a comfortable position, seated, standing, leaning, whatever feels good. If you can, allow your eyes to gently drift close, or simply soften your gaze.
Let your hands rest somewhere easy.
Let your shoulders settle.
Unclench your jaw.
And for a moment, don’t change anything.
Just listen.
[Allow music to breathe here]
Notice the strings beginning to rise.
The sound expanding.
And when you feel the invitation… allow the breath to rise with them.
Breathing in… gently… steadily… letting the inhale follow the shape of the music.
And now hear the music begin to soften.
Let the breath soften with it. A long, easy exhale. No pushing. No emptying every last bit of air. Just letting go.
Again… hear the music begin to lift. And breathe in with it.
[4-count inhale]
Then follow the music as it falls away. Breathing out… a little longer than you breathed in.
[6-count exhale]
And now see if you can begin to let my voice fade into the background.
You already know what to do.
Listen for the rise.
Breathe in.
Listen for the release.
Breathe out.
[Allow one or two full breathing cycles with minimal or no speech]
Perhaps notice how different this feels from watching a clock.
Or counting inside your head.
The rhythm is already around you.
You simply meet it where it is.
[Pause through another breath cycle]
The strings swell… and the body gently expands.
The music begins to resolve… and the body releases.
Your breath becomes part of the phrase.
[Pause]
You might even imagine that, for these few moments, you are not listening to a soundtrack at all. You are inside it.
Each inhale adding something.
Each exhale allowing something to fall away.
[Allow another full cycle]
There is nothing you need to achieve here.
If your breath falls out of rhythm, simply meet the next musical cue.
If your mind wanders, let the next swell of the strings bring you back.
No starting over.
No getting it wrong.
Just returning.
Again…
and again.
[Pause for two breathing cycles]
And perhaps now notice what the longer exhale feels like.
Not forcing yourself to relax.
Simply giving the breath a little more room to leave.
Letting the music stretch that moment for you.
Breathing in with the rise…
and out with the release.
[Pause]
For these final few breaths, see if you can stop thinking about the pattern altogether.
Let the music know the way.
Let your body listen.
[Allow two or three mostly silent breathing cycles]
And then, as the music begins to move toward its close, allow your breathing to return to whatever rhythm feels natural.
Feel the surface beneath you.
Notice the space around you.
Perhaps roll your shoulders gently.
Move your fingers. Your toes.
And when you’re ready…
open your eyes.
Today we’ve talked about how music can hold memories, create anticipation, invite movement and shape the rhythms of the body.
But sometimes… you don’t need to understand any of that.
Sometimes you can simply press play… and let the music meet you where you are.
32:56
I’m Sarah, and you’ve been listening to Pause Here.
Until next time…
notice the rhythm,
leave room for the rests,
and keep listening
