Fight, Flight or Flow: How Sound Shifts Your Nervous System

Feeling Sound — Episode 2

Fight, Flight or Flow: How Sound Shifts Your Nervous System

Hello! How are you? I'm Clare — welcome back to the podcast. This is where we get to go a little deeper, to understand how sound baths, sound therapy and meditation can help us feel a little more like ourselves. How they can help us unwind and give us that guilt-free permission to finally, truly rest.

In this episode, I'd love to talk about something that's become something of a buzzword in the world of wellness: regulating your nervous system. And I'll be honest — when I first heard that phrase, I didn't really know what it meant either. But as I worked through my qualifications as a meditation teacher and sound therapist, we did explore the neuroscience behind it, and once I understood it, everything started to make sense.

When I first came to this world — looking for ways to de-stress, cope better with anxiety, and manage the everyday overwhelm I was struggling with — I had no idea about any of this. But understanding the neuroscience gave me back a sense of control. It made me feel like, ah, that's what's going on. Because so often we turn inwards and blame ourselves, don't we? We worry that we're broken in some way that nobody else is. Understanding the science behind it changes that.

So let me simplify this. Our autonomic nervous system operates in two key states. One is called the parasympathetic state. The other is called the sympathetic state. And crucially, both of these interact with sound and music in really interesting ways.

Let's start with the one you're probably most familiar with: the sympathetic state. You may have heard the terms fight, flight, fawn or freeze — it seems like they keep adding more these days! I've come to realise that fawn is actually my own default response — I just stop, hold still and brace myself. These responses describe how our body, mind and hormones react when we're under stress. Heart rate goes up, blood pressure increases, the immune system partially shuts down because the body is in survival mode. Our pupils dilate, we start to sweat, our mouth goes dry. You know that feeling before a job interview or a big presentation? That's your sympathetic nervous system doing its thing.

Now, you might think this sounds entirely bad — but it isn't. We actually need our sympathetic state to get out of bed, leave the house and get things done. Without it, we'd feel sluggish, lethargic, stuck. When I was going through a period of depression, I wanted to do nothing but stay under the duvet and shut the world out — that was the absence of that get-up-and-go energy. So the sympathetic state isn't the enemy. The problem is when we spend too much time there.

That's where stress hormones like cortisol come in. Some cortisol is perfectly healthy — it's what gets us moving. But chronically elevated cortisol? The list of effects is long. I've written an article on the Feeling Sound website that goes into detail about the impact of stress on the body, mind and hormones if you'd like to explore further.

The parasympathetic state is where we switch into what's called rest and digest. This is the state of calm, relaxation and restoration — feet up, PJs on, genuinely winding down. But here's the thing: too much time here, and you can start to feel sluggish and lethargic too. What we're really aiming for is balance. A kind of yin and yang — a Libran scale, if you will (it's my star sign, so I'm biased). The goal isn't to always be relaxed. It's to be able to move fluidly between both states, as life requires.

And you already know when that balance is off, don't you? You can feel it — that sense of overwhelm, overstimulation, low-level anxiety humming away in the background. People talk about living with disease, but dis-ease is essentially exactly that: a lack of ease, a lack of balance.

So how do sound baths and meditation help restore that balance? Let's talk about frequency. Low frequencies are said to calm, ground and stabilise us. Holding a long, low tone can feel almost like a hand placed gently on your heart — steady, reassuring, safe. High frequencies, on the other hand, can energise and uplift. Think about the difference between the music in a yin yoga class versus a gym class. In yin yoga, you might want something slow, low and spacious. In a spin class, you want something fast, bright and driving. Both are valid — it just depends on what your nervous system needs in that moment.

In my own sound baths, I play between both throughout a session. The overall aim is deep relaxation, but there's a thread of stimulation woven in too — because balance, remember, is the goal. I'd also encourage you to think about how you use music and sound in your everyday life. Instead of defaulting to the radio or the TV, try calming delta wave binaural beats or long, low recordings when you need to settle. They're all over Spotify and YouTube for free, and I have a free sleep recording on the Feeling Sound website too — one I actually use myself when I'm working from home and struggling to focus.

On the subject of music, I want to mention a brilliant book: This Is Your Brain on Music — or more recently, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine — by Dr Daniel Levitin. He's a neuroscientist and a guitarist, and he works with people living with Alzheimer's, recovering from strokes, dealing with cardiovascular disease and various cancers, using music as a genuine therapeutic tool.

One of the things he talks about is that just 15 minutes of listening to your favourite music can have a remarkable healing effect. And what's key is that it's your favourite music — not someone else's prescription. It might not be what I'd choose, and that's completely fine. It's about what resonates with you personally. This connects back to the hormones involved in our nervous system and our brain's reward circuitry. When we activate the parasympathetic state — that rest and digest mode — and when we listen to music we love, we get a boost of dopamine and serotonin. Those feel-good hormones that give us that warm, positive glow.

So it could be as simple as curating a playlist of songs that genuinely lift you. Your own personalised medicine playlist. I love that idea.

One more thing worth saying about meditation: it's a bit misunderstood. Not everyone finds it easy, and that's completely normal. When we first slow down and sit with the quiet, we're often confronted with everything we've been busily avoiding. The discomfort, the worries, the thoughts we've been pushing aside. Flicking the switch between sympathetic and parasympathetic isn't always as simple as lying down and closing your eyes — and there's no green light that tells you when you've got there. It's a practice. Even a couple of minutes makes a real difference, especially over time.

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In other words: the more you prioritise rest and practice these tools, the more naturally relaxed you become day to day — without having to try as hard. That's the long game, and it's worth playing.

I know this from my own experience. Twelve years ago, my baseline stress level was probably a seven out of ten — and it didn't take much to push me to a ten. Now? I'd say I'm around a three. I'm still naturally quite an anxious person, and I'm at peace with that. But I've made a lifelong commitment to working with it, using these tools every day. Not as a destination I'm trying to reach, but as a way of living. And that shift — from feeling powerless to feeling equipped — is what I want to help share with you.

If you're curious about how this might look for your life, I'd love to connect. I work both online and in person — if you're in the Manchester, Buxton, Stockport or Peak District area, come and find me. Head to feelingsound.co where you'll find the free sleep recording I mentioned, guided meditations, and more about what I do.

The stream is quietly rippling beside me and the birds are settling for the evening. Sunset isn't far off, and I'm going to leave things here and just enjoy this moment. This is my moment to unwind. I hope you get yours too. See you soon.